The WeeWonk Stories

December 27, 1995

It seems fitting somehow to memorialize, in the
Grandfathers' Book of Stories and Stuff, our Christmas together at Chris and Helena's palatial Lawrenceville apartment,
especially since the WeeWonk was there too, though still in the
complete custody and confines of Helena. Nonetheless, we all got
constant reports of the WeeWonk's activities, and from these
reports it certainly seemed that WeeWonk was sharing our various
activites and even liked the music, when we sang at home and when
we went to the chapel to hear the other children sing. Moreover,
a goodly share of the gifts were for the Weewonk, whose presence
pervaded the presents, directly or indirectly; all the
festivities welcomed the coming of the child-to-be, the new
arrival amongst us, yclept the Alien by the distaff side. I hope
that you will supply the pictures and any other materials you
feel should illustrate the events and this letter.

It seems quite right to write another letter now, on the
eve of the epiphany of WeeWonk, as a sort of first birthday
message. Somehow it all fits together: as the WeeWonk is coming
closer to term, so our project has really begun to take form and
to become manifest. And as the grandfathers prepared for their
great trip,- to travel to their summit and the revelation of
their project, so the WeeWonk was also preparing for a greater
trip and epiphany. Indeed, the grandfathers had been preparing
for their trip almost as long as the WeeWonk (well, give or take
a couple of months), and worrying about it more. And the
directions prepared for the delivery of the grandfathers to
Lawrenceville were no less careful and complete than those for
the delivery of the WeeWonk. I was given several lists and an
exquisitely and elaborately detailed map and trip guide, complete
with the exit numbers and the length of the intervals in miles.
And I refered to my lists and then on the road to my travel
directions with the same regularity with which Helena visited
the doctor who on each occasion measured out the length of
WeeWonk in centimeters. And towards the end of my trip I was
refering to my directions with greater frequency, just as Helena
now has to visit the doctor more often. But at the beginning
when the school term had just ended, and when I was packing my
truck over a day ahead of schedule, in the hope of beating the
approaching storm, I was thinking in classroom-clouded literary
images; my road trip was only an outer, visible version of a
more important inner trip to the state of grandfatherhood, as
Helena's trips to the doctor were also only an outward sign. The
WeeWonk's trip was something quite different from both of these
and yet related, and the cause of the other trips. These were
very different sorts of trips moving simultaneously towards a
conclusion that would be a beginning.

Just as I became more excited, the closer each passing
mile brought me to Lawrenceville, even so with each passing day
the WeeWonk was getting more active. In fact, s/he was becoming
increasingly automotive, in preparation for the great epiphany
when s/he will become a completely independent self-contained
entity. So as I drove my truck down the road to Lawrenceville, I
was thinking in terms of automobiles and other automotive
entities. First I thought, of course, of the word 'automobile'
itself. It comes partly from a Greek word meaning 'self' and
partly from a Latin word meaning 'moving'. The word is the
product of two parent cultures, both of which are particularly
dear to me. Then the phrase 'self-moving' caught my attention.
This is Plato's definition for soul; soul is the self-moving
cause of all other motion. This also seemed just right. The
WeeWonk was at the nub and navel of all the activity. It was
going to be a long trip, and there was time to think about things
like soul, first causes, and the psychology of grandfatherhood.
This was just the beginning of the ride; I was leaving local
route 107 and getting on interstate 495. I wondered whether
automobiles do better on interstates or local roads. It did seem
natural and proper that trips start out on very local roads and
graduate gradually to limited-access highways.

But before I left New Hampshire and home, I had to come to
some basic orientation on the meaning of 'self-moving', the site
of the first cause. Where was the real starting point? Was it
to the North, my old home in Maine? Was it to the deep South, in
North Carolina where Helena was born? Was it to the far West,
where Chris' home had been? Or was it far to the East, in
Angouleme, France, where the WeeWonk had started its journey? Or
was it where I was headed on my carefully prepared trip guide?
There was some urgency to this question and to this whole trip;
a major storm was coming and I was trying to get to Lawrenceville
before it. I had not had time to get fully prepared before
getting on the road, because the storm was coming up before I had
expected. I had not had time carefully to work through all the
implications. Although I had elaborate directions, I had not had
the time to study them thoroughly, so I was to some extent
'winging it', flying on faith. And there was another level to
this predicament beyond physical direction, a different kind of
orientation that I needed. It is not every day that one becomes
a grandfather for the first time, and when it happens, it is like
a weather change. Here again I was urgently trying to get
somewhere before the storm of a new generation of life hit. It
is something that you need to prepare for; it comes with many
unexpected squalls and accidents, but you know that a lot of
stuff is going to be falling out to the blue on you and that you
better have shovels or umbrellas or whatever. But more than that
you need to have a general plan of action and to know more or
less where you are headed, at least the general direction.

So as I drove down route 495 towards Worcester, I was
trying to sort out my status-soon-to-be of grandfather. The term
carried a palor of elderliness that I did not relish and withal a
well-worn patina of elder-statesmanlike sageness that I did not
feel in myself. But such sageness was urgently needed. How
would I be able to make all those profoundly laconic
pronouncements that grandfathers are supposed to make? I needed
to have some rudimentary map of the route, a working sense of
direction. If I was going to 'grandfather' a self-moving entity,
then I had better figure out more about direction. As I drove
from 495 to the Massachusetts Turnpike, it slowly dawned on me
that the WeeWonk would not really be a 'self-moving' entity when
s/he was born, no more than my truck was really an automobile.
Just as my truck needed me to guide it along the road, so the
WeeWonk would need to have some guidance for a while, someone
steering it down the road of life. This caused me a sort of
detour, as I took route 290 to go from 495 to the Mass Pike;
obviously, the 'self' of 'self-moving' needed some re-definition,
just like the 'moving'. We (I and that alter ego that I talk to
in my head) were not talking just about physical locomotion; we
were really talking about spiritual driving. And so it became
clearer to me that we each have multiple and multiply telescoping
selves in ourselves, sort of an onion of peel-away onion-skin
selves,- well maybe not a big onion, perhaps more like a small
leek.

A memory of my first attempt to drive gave me a picture
of how these onion-skin selves evolved and worked. I was very
young and sitting in my father's lap and holding the steering
wheel as we drove by the dump on the Worthley pond road. My
father had taken his hands completely off the wheel, and I was
steering 'all by myself'. Now this was in the days long before
power steering, but the philosophical point is even truer and
more much more urgent with power steering. Like all new steerers
I was steering very vigorously, over-compensating for every
swerve, as we tacked down the road past the dump. The moment is
cut stone-chisel clear in my memory, and yet I know that I did
not realize the layering of self that I was getting in that
moment; it has taken me years of reflection to realize and bring
to conscious reality the full meaning of that moment, the depth
of paternal wisdom that was being transmitted at that moment.
The first part of the transmission was passed without words. I
had, as all children, observed my parents very carefully and was
ready to imitate them in great detail; naturally, my unpractised
imitation resulted in our lurching crabwise down the road. It
was a father's wisdom that first picked the time and place and
then secondly kept hands off the wheel and let me improve my
efforts by trial and error. The second part of the meaning of
the moment was verbal; as I was doing the trial-and-error bit,
he said: "Driving is like life; most people over-steer. Once
you get the thing pointed in the right direction, steer as little
as possible." I have pondered this for many years, and every
time the profundity of that situation and those simple words
strikes deeper into me. Now I see that he was building a
foundation layer to my 'self' to which my later reflection added
outer layers; and I see that, just like the grandfathers'
project has developed and changed and will continue to change and
grow, so the WeeWonk will not come out a finished self with a
completed identity. Perhaps in our species grandparents are the
closest thing we have to completed selves, and yet paradoxically
they almost never seem to be self-movers and shakers, but very
stagnant, bound to and dependent on the old-fashioned sameness of
things.

And so here I was in Connecticut cruising down route 84,
feeling a little perplexed but generally somewhat calmer and
closer to the state of grandfatherhood; at least the general
direction seemed to be in the process of becoming clearer in my
mind, even if the details were still murky. At least, I was
calmer, and being calm was a grandfatherly thing. Moreover, the
weather report on the radio indicated that although the storm was
still approaching, I was far enough along to beat it. For a
while the sun even broke through and all seemed bright and
beautiful, but then it clouded over with that lowering overcast
of heavy weather. I read in my trip guide that I was supposed to
get off at exit 20 and take route 684, and I was at exit 21 and
the next one was exit 20, but there had been no signs of route
684. Anxiety began to build again. That's the trouble with
superhighways; if you miss the right exit, then you have to go a
great distance to correct it. There is just no easy way to stop
and turn around and correct such a mistake; you had better know
when you get on just where you are going and where to get off. I
should have looked at the map more carefully before I started;
it is very hard and dangerous to try to puzzle out these things
on a map while you are driving. The same is true of having
children or becoming a grandfather; best to work out your
strategy beforehand. I should have learned this very well as a
child,- I had plenty of opportunities. Actually one of them had
to do with learning to drive.

When I was young, my family still had the model A Ford
that my mother had owned before she got married. We used it to
drive around at the farm. One day my mother and father were
picking blueberries in what we called the school-house pasture
because it was a ten acre field across the road from a building
which had long ago been a school house, but now housed the
SunShine Club, sort of a rarely used rural community center.
They had driven the Ford to the far end of the triangular field,
and were picking back towards the road. After a time I became
bored with picking blueberries, and begged my father to let me
drive the model A around the field. I was amazed and overjoyed
when he said yes, so amazed that my mind was oblivious to all but
the immediate prospect of getting the car going. Even though I
was older than in my steering lesson, still I had all the
observant imitating instinct of the very young; as I remember
it, I still had some difficulty reaching the foot pedals. Any
way I got the model-A started up, setting the spark just right
and then backing it off when the engine settled, and I had the
hand throttle set for a nice leisurely pace. I was now an
'expert' steerer, of course, and so I cruised happily around the
field for quite a while, all in low gear.

Then my predicament struck me like a thunderclap of
awareness; it was one of those mystic moments when the flood of
a higher consciousness illumines every crevice of your soul. In
this case it was not for me a joyous moment of beatification;
rather, I was overwhelmed with a sense of befuddlement and
bewilderment beyond confusion. I had absolutely no idea of how
to stop this onward rushing vehicle, and as the panic took hold
of me, the model-A was no longer a car slowly meandering around
in low gear, but an uncontrollable monster of momentum. The
harder I strained to remember what my parents did to get the
thing to stop, the bigger the blank I drew, and the more frantic
I became. I was now driving in a contracting elliptical
whirlpool around my parents, shouting at them every time my
ellipse lapsed close to them and asking how to stop my careening
career. But I could not quite get the answer, because I would be
gone before they could tell me enough; it takes quite a while to
explain the simplest maneuver to a panicked little boy.
Obviously, they finally did get enough across, so I could finally
figure out how to put the brakes on, which I did and immediately
I stalled it. This event made quite an impression on me, not only
the humiliation of it all, made all the greater by my parents'
uncaring merriment, but because it was another instance of a
major loss of control because of my own stupidity; it felt like
trying to drive a herd of wild horses, or holding a tiger by the
tail. Over the years I have continued to find myself in these
situations, but I have gradually learned to cope a little more
successfully. Here is where redundancy pays off, having back-up
systems. Just as in language it is important to have multiple
indicators of meaning, so it is good in giving directions. My
map saved me by having the route number and the number of miles
to it. Route 84 has two exits 20, one in Connecticut and one in
New York, and that was the one I wanted. Even though part of
being parent or a grandparent involves on-the-job training, it is
always better, as Hesiod says, if the directions have redundancy,
and are followed carefully.

So with all this I had gotten across the Tappen Zee
bridge and was proceeding happily down route 87/287 toward New
Jersey, and I believed that I had built quite a philosophical
scaffolding for grandfathering. Little did I realize that the
greatest test was coming. It was getting dark, and the road signs
were sometimes lacking and not so prominent and I was getting
into the more local roads as the goal approached. In our
progress in constructing our own automotive cocoon, and even
more in helping to structure that of our offspring, we must
forget our pride, realize that we do not always have the answers,
and stop and ask for directions along the way. It is a matter of
communication, often between the builder and the built, between
driver and driven. It is easy to lose one's way. I learned this
important lesson, and in a way I taught it, when I went for my
first driving test. I had studied for the written part and did
very well; I had also read the directions for the actual driving
test very carefully. I remember with spotlight clarity the part
that said that I was to obey the examining officer's directions
promptly and precisely, that the examiner would not give me false
instructions to try to trick me. I was ready; I was driving the
family car which was a Studebaker, a somewhat worn and
idiosyncratic Studebaker, but one which had passed the state
inspection. The standards may have been lax in those times.

The examiner got into the car and directed me to go to one
of the steep hills in the town; there were many in Rumford,
Maine, which was a small mill town in the White Mountains. This
did not fluster me, because I knew that the examiners always took
the license candidates to such a hill to stop at a stop sign
going up hill and then continue up the hill without rolling
backward or stalling out. I knew I could handle that with no
problem, so I was quite confident when the officer told me to
stop. I stopped and looked both ways; there was not traffic; I
waited for him to instruct me to start moving again. Instead he
was looking at my foot, as it was gently pumping the brake pedal,
a thing you do if your brakes are worn out and will not hold with
simple depression of the pedal. He curtly ordered me to stop
pumping the brake, which I did. I then looked back over my
shoulder to steer the car, as we accelerated backwards down
towards the busy intersection at the bottom of the long hill. I
waited patiently for him to come to his senses and instruct me to
pump the brakes to stop the car, but instead he seem to panic, as
we hurdled faster and faster down the hill. He grabbed the inner
door handle, apparently to open the door and jump to safety;
unfortunately for this tongue-tied minion of the law, that inner
door handle had not worked for several years. You had to roll
down the window and open the door from the outside. Finally, as
our crashing into the intersection became very imminent, and
after a final glance at the petrified officer, I disobeyed his
order and pumped the brakes with a vigor whose intensity was
matched only by the look of terror on his face. When the car
stopped, the examining officer was somewhat incoherent, but I got
the impression that he wanted me to return to the police station.
Later as I sat in Latin class without a driving license, I
pondered the state of American justice. Perhaps I would have
gotten my license, if we had crashed through the intersection and
into the bridge abutment. I never received any award for saving
the officer's life, but I did finally get a driver's license,-
driving a borrowed car and a different examiner.

With this last caution finally drawn onto my
philosophical map, I was now approaching the destination of my
trip down route 202, stopping every once and a while to confer
and confirm mutual understanding between the road and me.
Frequent consultation is the key to a successful trip.
Grandfathers, as well as examining officers, need to pay very close
attention; much is expected of them, and it may be that they
could learn something from their charges. Being a living link to
the receding and distant past, and yet somehow a pointer and
direction marker to the future, is not easy, but it is what
grandfathers do.

Fraternally yours in the brotherhood of grandfathers,