Читать книгу The Dwelling Place of Wonder - Harry L. Serio - Страница 12

The American dream for many immigrant families began in basements and coal cellars. Those who left the old world with nothing more than the clothes they wore and whatever possessions they could stuff into their cloth satchels and cardboard luggage wanted nothing more than to own their own home in which to raise a family, a job that paid a decent wage, and the security to know that no one, no government, was going to rob them of their dreams.

They came to the cities where they could find employment, walk to work or take public transportation, but most importantly, be surrounded by fellow landsmen who spoke the same language and continued their traditions and culture. It was a haven of familiarity in a strange land.

My grandparents, both the Serios and Wertzes, were happy finally to be able to purchase their own houses. They were small and cramped considering the number of children that they raised, and the backyards were infinitesimally small compared to the farms they had worked on in Campania and the Russian plateau. As their families grew and more space was needed, there was no room for expansion. The houses in the Ironbound section of Newark were either attached row homes or single dwellings with three- or four-foot wide alleys between them. Sometimes there was room to build out the back.

However, the least expensive method was to convert the basements into kitchens and to change from coal furnaces to oil heat in order to make usable space from the coal bins. The Wertzes had a small woodstove in the basement that heated the house through open grates in the floor. Heat was regulated by opening and closing the grates.

The wood that was used were the scraps from pattern shops. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes. It was fun to build things out of these irregular wooden forms before they were consigned to the stove.

The basement kitchen was the gathering place for the family. Lucas Wertz was a stern and regimented Volga-German who insisted that meals be punctual and eaten in silence. But once dinner was over and Lucas ascended the stairs to roll his cigarette and listen to his radio program, the children were free to talk and to discuss the day’s events. In the Serio basement they often had to devise their own entertainments and amusements, from art to interactive games. Bingo, poker and other card games, and board games were brought out after the evening meal. It was a place to bring boyfriends and girlfriends. A place to be family.

During the day the kitchen was a place of muted light and shadow. Light from the outside came through the small basement windows that were hooked open to allow the sun and air to penetrate. Natalie Wertz, who would spend her life in this room and bring comfort to her children and her grandchildren, instructed me in the art of transcendence and the mysticism of ordinary experience.

There were times when I would bear the cuts and bruises of daily play and come crying to her healing arms. She would hold me close and point to the sunshine hook, a simple twist of metal that held open the cellar window and allowed a shaft of pure white light to illuminate the minute particles in the air. She meant only to distract, to divert my attention from the wounds and scratches of a child’s warfare with the world, but I was fascinated by the interplay of light and shadow and the reflection from the specks of dust that were everywhere around us, but which could only be seen in the light.

It was as if the world had changed, but it was only because I was now looking at it from a different perspective, in a new light. Suddenly I became aware of a new way of seeing. The intricacies of the dandelion in the backyard became an object of wonder. I thought of all the things that existed in the world and how they were made up of an infinite number of parts. How do we direct our consciousness to comprehend it all? We see the multiplicity of Creation, but it is we who impose our meaning on what we see. It is for poets and mystics to see beyond seeing and to help us to become aware of what is present in our everyday lives but overlooked by our own priorities of living. Our world is filled with wonder and mystery if only we had the mindfulness to be aware.

My second-floor bedroom was not heated except for the bit of warmth that ascended through the stairwell. On a cold January night, after my grandmother would tuck me in under the heavy blankets, I would lie awake and watch the moonlight through the frosted windows and think of other worlds and how vast must be the mind of God to conceive of so much. Years later, after seeing the movie Dr. Zhivago, the image that held particular poignancy was that of young Yuri, on the night of his mother’s burial, lying in bed listening to the rapping of a branch against the window as the sound of the balalaika added another layer to the growing complexity of experiencing life.

It is the frame of reference that transforms the ordinary into moments of ecstasy or despair. Meursault, in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, observes everything at his mother’s funeral: “the bright new screws in the walnut-stained coffin, the colors of the nurse’s clothes, the large stomachs of the old ladies who had been his mother’s closest friends, the whiteness of the roots in her grave.” The existentialist finds meaning in the moment, but those who see in the moment the totality of life soar to much larger worlds.

I went to grade school in the days when desks were bolted to the floor and arranged in rows, indicative of the rigid system of education practiced at that time in which learning was a body of knowledge funneled into a receptive brain. You were graded on how much you could absorb and regurgitate on an exam paper. Winston Churchill once remarked that his education was only interrupted by his schooling. We learn not only by the accumulation of facts, but by the integration and interpretation of life experiences.

Childhood is the dwelling place of wonder and imagination. Too soon we pass from it. There needs to be a place for fantasy, astonishment, and the sheer joy of discovery of that which you don’t understand, but which would be made clear either by science or personal revelation.

I watched a ladybug crawl on the back of Diane Podres’s neck in Miss Gless’s fifth grade class. The slow movement of its polka-dot shell contrasted with the twitching of her neck and the movement of her bright golden hair. I stared at the bug as it made its way through the folds and patterns of her green dress to the nape of her neck, wondering if and when she would feel the light pressure of tiny bug feet on her skin and whether I should swat it into oblivion. I still wonder about the significance of that particular bug. It has served its purpose in the fragment of memory that has endured over the years.

The sunshine hook, for those brief moments, suspended my fears and held back the tears, and brightened all the mornings that were to come. I could look forward in hope, realizing that this moment in time was simply one experience of so many more that would comprise my future.