Читать книгу Dialogues with Jen - Donald R. Fletcher - Страница 6

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in.

Light poured down the front steps and across the driveway. The windows were full of light, of voices and moving shapes. A couple of the windows, set open, let it spill into the dark, an unusually warm and velvet dark for early October. The whole scene at Luc’s house—my long-time friend, Lucas—was bright and welcoming, but I wasn’t sure.

“Go on in.” That was Jay’s voice in my head.

Right! He’d have been glad to be here. I went quickly up the steps.

Inside, there was the noise and bustle of more people than I had expected. Luc’s daughter, Beth, was there, of course, and her friend Ian, whom I knew, along with quite a number of their friends. I was looking around for people I knew from my age group when Luc came up, bringing one of the guests.

“Don,” he said, “I want you to meet Jen—Jennifer—a younger friend of Jay.”

She laughed at the designation. “Not so much younger,” she said, “but proud to be associated with his name in any way I can.”

She was rather tall, for a woman of her generation, and I was struck by her penetrating gray eyes. When she spoke, her voice was strong, though carefully modulated.

I was happy to chat with Jen—Jennifer. Her name, as she told me, was a Cornish form of the Welsh appellation that became Guinevere. That lent it an aura, and it also was good to know that Jen’s friendship with Jay went back quite a few years. It had been only weeks, that evening, since Jay had died, and his strong, serene spirit seemed to be there. I remarked on that, and Jen smiled.

It was about then that Luc rang on his glass with a spoon until all conversation ebbed.

“Beth has a word for us,” he said.

Beth stepped forward, with Ian beside her. Her face glowed, and she spoke clearly: “Ian and I want to share with you that we are going to be married. We are working on wedding plans, and you will all receive invitations. But for now, we just want to share our happy news.”

There was an immediate din of exclamations, embraces, and all of that. It was later, as people were beginning to leave, that Jen drew me aside.

“I know something about the conversations Jay had with you and Luc, Beth, and Ian. They meant a lot to him. Maybe you’d like to get together again. I’m offering my place—not that I would try to continue where he left off, but to take up other ideas that touch us all. I’d propose a focus on some acute issues of daily living, while keeping, always, a spiritual dimension.”

Jen’s frank invitation appealed to me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like that, and I think the others would, too.”

“Good.” Jen plainly had thought this through. She added, “And for a topic, building on this evening, we might like to reflect on Romantic Love.”

That was all at that time, and it was enough. I learned from Luc that Jen lived alone, as a retired middle-school English teacher. Her husband had died rather young, and there were no children. It was three weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon in late October, that the other four of us gathered on the porch of Jen’s home. It was distinctly old-style suburban, with a wide porch that ran across the front of the house and down one side. We were glad to go inside as a chill breeze was coming up, and I was pleased to see a couple of small logs—real, home-style firewood—burning in the fieldstone fireplace at one side. There were comfortable chairs, not pre-arranged but easily drawn together.

After a bit of small talk we seemed, all of us, quite content to let some moments of reflective silence float in the late-afternoon sunlight filtering from outside. Then Jen began:

“I’m the new one in this group, and probably we’re all thinking of our dear and admired friend Jay; but you’ve done me the favor of coming to my home, so I’ll venture to propose a theme. Actually, I’ll reiterate the one Beth and Ian gave us at that delightful gathering when you announced your engagement: what is romantic love, this kind of force between a woman and a man? Let’s think about that.”

She stopped, seeming ready to let anyone else come in. When none of us did, she went on.

“From a purely physical point of view, one can say that it’s a matter of hormones. This is something that happens between a male and a female of our species, a function of the evolution of the reproductive glands that we carry. Luc, as a scientist, probably you can speak best to that.”

Luc shrugged, saying, “I’ll defer to you. You brought it up, so I’m sure you have further thoughts along that line.”

“All right,” Jen said. “As a lay person, I’ll just start by observing that at the center of survival of any form of life is its reproduction. For a wide range of species, from simple to complex, this means some kind of union, of coming together of female and male, that generally has evolved in a rhythm of ovulation and fertilization. And that’s where hormones come in. Such a rhythm, as we move up the scale of complexity, is prompted and controlled by hormones, the chemical substances that reproductive glands secrete.

“I have no expertise to carry that analysis further, and likely don’t need to. What I find relevant, as we’re talking about romantic love, is that the union of female and male, necessary for procreation, opens up a whole panorama of fascinating behaviors.”

“It really does!” That was Beth, breaking in delightedly. “I love the way you put that, about ‘fascinating behaviors.’ All kinds of animals have their rituals of courtship that sometimes appear outlandish, even comical.”

“We humans can be comical enough ourselves, what we will do to attract the other sex,” Luc commented dryly.

“Yes, but let’s not get personal,” Ian said, with an exaggerated gesture.

We all laughed, aware of the pair of lovers among us. Then Jen took up her theme again.

“Each one of us has, or has had, experience with this almost universal impulse. Eros, the Greeks called it, and spun charming, or sometimes frightening, myths of a powerful deity who could also be perverse, like an impulsive child.”

I found that inviting. “Right,” I said. “With the resurgence of Greek mythology in the European Renaissance, Eros becomes the Cupid figure, with his bow and arrows. He may be chubby in some artistic renderings, a cute and appealing child, but he is dangerous. He can choose arbitrarily the targets of his arrows, but the choice is fateful. If Cupid’s arrow hit you, you were in love, no matter what.”

“All are fairy stories, whether charming or frightening,” Ian said. “There could be magic potions, too. A sip of this, and with the next person of the other sex whom you happen to see, you will fall madly in love. There’s a strand of truth, of real-life experience, that runs through such imaginative folklore.”

“What was it, Ian?” Beth demanded, with pretended anger. “What had you been drinking when you told me that you loved me?”

“Don’t worry,” he countered, “there are no magic potions in our world any more. The truth of the folklore is just that we don’t, and we can’t, calculate love. I know, you hear this or that married man say, ‘When I first saw her it was love at first sight’—even ‘I knew that was the person I was going to marry.’ Women say that, too. But I’d say that it’s not a matter of deliberate, rational selection. You may select a person of the other sex as being wonderfully desirable, but you can’t make yourself fall deeply in love with that person nor, much less, can you make that person fall in love with you.”

“So, what is it, then,” Jen asked, “that is operating here? We get back to the sexual impulse. In many forms of life, and taking many patterns, that impulse essentially involves aggressive pursuit by the male and, by the female, passive receptivity. And the behavior moves in cycles. Particularly among the more complex animal species, there is a rhythm established by the sex glands, times when the female is ‘in heat’ and receptive, and when the male, consequently, is more aggressive than usual, and more competitive with other males. Hunters and, in general, people of the woods know about these things—when is the ‘rutting’ season for this or that animal.”

I offered a comment. “It seems very interesting to me that of the more advanced species on this planet, we are one of a very few, if I have this right, who don’t observe a rutting, or mating, season. With homo sapiens it’s common for males to be perpetually taking notice of females and be perpetually susceptible to sexual arousal.”

Jen went on: “What we’re talking about, Eros, carnal love, is as old as the evolutionary beginnings of our species and, at the same time, one of the most basic and important drives in our most sophisticated modern societies. Looking back, we can see that the competition, particularly among males, for a chance at procreation has served a basic evolutionary purpose.”

As Jen paused, Luc spoke up.

“Right,” he said, “Here are some stags in the forest in the rutting season. You see them fighting, butting each other, locking their antlers. Some may be hurt, even killed. Why? It’s the season for mating, and the contest is to see which stag can drive the others away and claim the opportunity to mate with the does that are in heat.

“The result? Their fawns will have his genes, genes of the ablest stag. Stretch that across a hundred, a thousand generations, and you begin to see evolution in action, evolving a viable species.”

“I like that,” Ian said. “And translated into modern society, it means a constant competition and push toward the top. Hormones no doubt are part of the mix; but I’d say that they appear to blend in with much else that human nature and human social traditions add to it.”

“That opens up quite a field for thought,” I offered, “and perhaps, for the men here, a chance to shift away from the theme of the aggressive, promiscuous male.”

“Sure,” Jen responded, getting to her feet. “Let’s make it a chance for a cup of coffee, or what else that I can offer you.”

Beth and Ian followed her toward the kitchen, and soon we were relaxing, enjoying a choice of beverages and of crumpets and the like, set out on the dining room table.

When we had drifted back to the living room and resumed our comfortable chairs, Jen took the lead again.

“I’d like to move now to a different aspect of love. It’s part of the physical, certainly, but among us homo sapiens, it has a spiritual aspect as well. I mean, choosing a mate. Beth and Ian have done that. You represent our primary resource, and I find this a promising subject to explore.”

I spoke up then. “As I left home today to come over here—well, ‘home’ being the snug apartment that I’m renting—there was a honking and, when I looked up, a V of Canada geese going over. I’ve heard how these birds often mate for life. I put that into a haiku once, in a happier time. It was on a fall evening, after rain and almost dark, when this pair of geese passed overhead, low, but in silence.”

Beth prompted, “And the haiku?”

So, I spoke it:

“Gray shadows, silent,

beating damp air, these two geese

pass, faithful, my love.”

“Beautiful,” Jen said. “Thank you, Don. Our inquiry brings us unexpected rewards. About choosing a mate, including a mate for life, one might say that the purpose of coupling is procreation. Each species brings its progeny into the world. After that, it’s a question of survival, and the parts taken by the male and female mates for the survival of offspring are interesting to observe.”

“So, how about an example?” Luc said.

Jen obliged: “All right, consider a clutch of eggs left by a sea turtle, where she has lumbered up a tropical beach and scooped a hollow in the sand. She leaves them there and returns that same night to the sea. It’s the sun’s warmth that incubates those eggs, and when the hatchlings eventually emerge, it’s their instinct that prompts them to wriggle down toward light on the water and, if they escape all predators, to splash into their natural element. They get no maternal care at any point along the way.

“With the sea hawk that has a nest up on a crag, it’s a different story. She broods her eggs, and when they hatch she must begin the task of finding and bringing them prey, and tearing it into bits they can swallow. That continues until at long last, after endless squawking and clamoring, the chicks have grown wings that are strong enough for them to leave the nest, mature, find mates, and build nests of their own.”

Ian spoke up. “I don’t know how it is with sea hawks, but in some bird species the male partner, having done his part to fertilize the eggs as they were forming, stays around and helps to feed and protect the chicks.”

Beth joined in, “That’s the preferable kind of mate. We mammals have it harder, though. With us, the evolutionary process heaps the whole primary burden on the female. She has to carry the progeny in her body until it can live on its own.”

“Until hatched, that is?” Ian put in, with a laugh.

“No,” Beth countered. “The mammalian hatchling, if you want to call it that, can’t manage outside food. It has to nurse from its mother, or a surrogate mother, until it’s more developed. The male may help by foraging for the female, but she has to provide the critical nourishment for the offspring. So instinct varies here. In some mammalian species, the male stays around for protection. In others, he isn’t there, not for the birth, nor afterward.”

“A human parable.” That was Luc, with his dry humor. “Ours is by far the most intelligent and resourceful of the mammalian species, but not the most dependable. Instinct, in us, has been plastered over by layers of civilization. That deadening appears to produce among us a lot of deadbeat dads.”

“Sad, but true,” Jen rejoined to that, “which shows that for our species, and at the present stage of evolution of our society, the female should take special care in choosing a mate.”

She gave that comment whimsical emphasis, with a smile at us three men, so I picked up the thread.

“The choice isn’t always so freely made. Even the most primitive society introduces limits and taboos. Generally, less is left to choice and more to custom and tradition. We all know about societies in which marriages are arranged for children, sometimes almost before they learn to walk. And then, there was the era of royal families, in which marriage was a political tool. Now, that seems passé, although the ‘marriage of convenience’ certainly is still around.”

“But how much is really choice?” Jen asked. “Any sizeable group of youthful people sorts itself, by and large, into couples. Is this by ancient evolutionary instinct? It’s naturally hormonal for the sexes to gravitate toward each other, but what prompts specific, individual selection? That seems mysterious. To be sure, it doesn’t always work. There is the triangle—a framework for sagas of reality as well as fiction—when two members of one sex pursue the same one of the other. And there are other problems, tragedies small and large; but to a remarkable degree, as it seems, when social custom permits it, a spontaneous pairing occurs.”

“Right,” said Luc, “and that’s instinct, left free to operate.”

“Well, now,” Ian came in, “this could be getting personal. What Beth and I announced the other evening wasn’t just a gurgling of hormonal instinct. I hope we see each other as more than that!”

There was a ripple of laughter, with a touch of embarrassment. I felt that I could offer a comment on that.

“Certainly,” I said, “here are two highly complex people. Sexual urges are present, and, no doubt, other instinctual promptings. I dare say we’ve all experienced such. But for human marriage at its best there needs to be a fitting together of two complex beings in many ways.

“Here enters Shakespeare’s theme of ‘the marriage of true minds,’ in his Sonnet 116. Two minds may be very different in their interests, their knowledge, and their skill of thought; but each one needs to bring to their shared life her or his special focus and gifts, and needs to have a full appreciation of what the other brings. Which is to say that neither partner should try to shape the other. Let her be herself, and him be himself. They are unique, even while, living together, they will be building up a single, central home and life.”

“I agree with that,” Luc said. “But the structure of a shared home and life has to have common ground on which it can be built. The two people need to share a bedrock foundation of life, a basic set of ideas and ideals about living. If they don’t have that, they can find themselves pulling in different directions. And if there are children, and Mom is saying, Do this, try to be this; while Dad says, No, not that way, what I’m telling you is better; the kids won’t know which way to go. Marriage partners are different—fine—but they must have a common ground to build on.”

“The sum of it all,” I proposed, “is that these two rich, complex personalities choose to work at fitting themselves together. That’s love—conscious, purposeful love.”

“Thanks, Don,” Beth said, “and Dad, too. That’s how Ian and I see it, as we’ve talked about it. We don’t try to be the same. He compensates for me, and I for him. How boring it would be, if we were too much alike! He isn’t the dominant male, either. Neither of us intends to dominate, but rather to recognize the qualities that each of us lacks, and that the other brings to our being together. At least, that’s how we’ve said we want it to be. Let’s hope we can make it work.”

“Well put!” Jen said. “You are two people with similar viewpoints, so that finding the common ground that Luc speaks of probably is natural enough. But at the same time, you are two different people, and there will be moments—crises, perhaps—in which your differences will stand out, stark and plain. You didn’t go out to look for and to choose a mate who is different, but your love made the choice. Be able to recognize that—even be glad for it. Make of your differences something to cherish in one another, two quite distinct halves of one complete whole.

“That, I’d say, is love. Eros is part of it, the strong, basic urge. But it is also the human spirit at its finest.”

The early winter evening was coming on. Our talk had reached a natural end point, a time for us to rise, find our coats, and, with hearty thanks to our hostess, go out into the brisk, gathering darkness.