On Tuesday it all came down at once
The Column: 10.01.21
The world is turning wondrous again, maples and ash and goldenrod turning golden Van Gogh colors and I got into a weepy mood on Tuesday, which is unusual for me, a man with dry eyes, but I was overwhelmed by everything happening at once, thinking of an old friend and sweet singer who’d died, and on Tuesday a reunion of my Anoka high school class (1960), feeling kinship to old rivals and antagonists but now we’re all in the same boat, a sinking ship. The names of some of our dead were mentioned, including Henry Hill Jr., a star athlete and a good guy who enlisted in the Army and made first lieutenant and was killed in action in Quang Ngai province in 1968, leading his unit of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division.
The woman who spoke of Henry remembered a few lines of a song I wrote about him, “His picture’s on the piano in a silver frame and his family weeps if you speak his name. In ’68 he went off to the war and now he’s forever 24.”
And then that evening I opened my phone to find a picture of twin baby girls born the night before in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, to my nephew Jon and his wife, Hieu, two sleeping infants tightly wrapped with little skullcaps, arrived by C-section. Each of them has two names, a Vietnamese and an American, and the plan is that they’ll have a Vietnamese childhood and then come to America to start school. Vietnam is in lockdown to control COVID and so their American grandma can’t go see them but she can study them on FaceTime all she likes.
It was too much for one day, so I sat and wept, remembering that I was not a good father — I never wanted to be one — I only wanted to go down to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I asked was a tall ship and a star to steer her by. But Suzanne took me down to her place by the river and the sight of her turned my brain matter to Jell-O and I touched her perfect body with my mind and instead of the white sail’s shaking and a grey dawn breaking suddenly I was eating breakfast with a lady with a basketball under her nightgown who was nauseous and held me responsible.
A lot for one day, to see up close the ravages of old age and remember the tragedy of Henry Hill and then to see these beautiful sleeping infants in Saigon, the center of one of our country’s two disastrous wars of my era, children of parents born after that war ended, and all this coming at a time when I, along with most people I know, am fearing for the future of our beloved country for which Lieutenant Hill’s life was taken: the heart breaks, it simply does.
Henry is remembered not for his athleticism so much as his openhearted friendship with everyone he knew. He was a Black kid in a very white school and kindness was in his nature. He would’ve been an excellent daddy, but he put on the uniform and followed orders and was killed soon after arrival. And now these two infants lie sleeping who someday will come to America and pledge allegiance and learn to play basketball, maybe ice hockey, and maybe they’ll come to love jokes and cheeseburgers and one day sit beside the Mississippi and if I’m still around, I’d sing “Shall we gather at the river where bright angels’ feet have trod” and then maybe “I got a feeling called the blues, oh Lord, since my baby said goodbye. Lord, I don't know what I’ll do, all I do is sat and sigh” so they get to hear both sides.
I looked up the song I wrote long ago; the last verse is:
I’m older now and bitter today At how our country has lost its way But the young ones coming, I hope they will Redeem the faith of Henry Hill.
It’s a large responsibility to put on two infant girls and their parents but I do. My classmates and I are united by our mortality and the young are united by possibility. We have learned nothing from history; the little girls will grow up free of our history and I pray they find their way to the shining river that flows by the throne of God.
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Our archive feature show this week is from our base camp at the Fitzgerald Theater on Exchange Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The California Honeydrops ward off the autumn chill with smokin' Bay Area R&B, and The Cactus Blossoms sing their sweet songs in sibling harmony. Christine DiGiallonardo adds a touch of Brooklyn to scripts and duets. Join the fanbase community on Facebook at 5 PM Saturday or listen right here.
EVENTS COMING UP
Oct 2 Sellersville Theater, Sellersville PA (Live Stream available)
Oct 3 Mauch Chunk Opera House, Jim Thorpe PA
Oct 12 City Winery Boston
Oct 13 City Winery New York City
Oct 20 The Birchmere in Alexandria, VA
wonderful writing today! I just don't like these criticisms of you I read in your posts. Not one in a million could capture for all of us as you do the way we feel at being alive right now in our twilight years. Ignore them. Keep writing for us. We love your mind and heart.
Tam mui stretchem po rekoyu! When I came to Upstate New York, I was lonely for the companionship that I used to have with coworkers in California. One Friday afternoon I prayed for some sort of "community" - I assumed it would be a religious group, to have fellowship with. At one o'clock, the exact same time, a Ukrainian immigrant woman learned she had failed her US Citizenship exam. She prayed for an American who knew Russian to come to her church, and to help her pass her Citizenship exam retest.
In the grocery store on Saturday, I heard a mother speaking a Slavic language to her kids. I asked if she spoke Russian, and said that I missed hearing that language. Her husband, a deacon in the Slavic Full Gospel Church, found me and invited me to come to church on Sunday.
When I got there, they seated me next to the one church member who had studied English in the Ukraine. We quickly became best friends. That day, as I sat in the second row, I felt a sharp pecking on my shoulder. When I turned around, an extravagantly dressed woman in a real fur hat invited me to lunch after the service. At her house, she quickly outlined her predicament. I began helping her to understand about Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches that afternoon. Within six months, she successfully passed her test and received her Green Card.
That was the start of my decade-long connection with this Pentecostal immigrant church. I was readily included in weddings, birthday parties and funerals. At every funeral, we were sure to sing "Shall We Gather By the River" as the coffin was lowered into the ground.
It might seem strange to hear these Ukrainian immigrants singing distinctly "English language Protestant songs. There were several of them: Kak Tui Velik! = "How Great Thou Art;" "Ne Menai Mne Me Space" = "Do Not Pass Me By", "The Little Brown Church in the Dell" come to mind, too. There was a rational connection, though. In the early 1900s, a Ukrainian immigrant had been walking the streets of Chicago when a street-corner evangelist stopped him. He was so impressed that he began going to the Moody Bible Institute. Eventually he became a preacher and returned to the Ukraine. He translated and introduced the American hymns that he had loved the best from that epoch. And here I was, a century later, a born American singing American hymns in a foreign language in an immigrant church - because of one travelling man!
"It's a small world, after all!" For most of us, I think we envision Brazilians in the jungles of the Amazon, Swiss climbing the Matterhorn, and Hindus bathing in the Ganges. It helps us form clear, individual images to fill our mind banks with. But the reality is more complex than that. There are all these small, even one-person tendrils joining us internationally, like morning glory vines weaving among cedar trees. We are One World, and even one person can make a difference!