Hawk Is One

The Blessing

A voice in the dark: “Ryan.” Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. The bedroom is lit with the eerie glow of the new alarm clock/radio’s blue LED, the sort of light cast by the TV that’s left on by grandmoms when they can’t sleep, only without the flickering.

“Ryan.” There it is again, that voice. Jenifer’s voice. I leap out of bed—which you can do when it’s only eight inches off the floor—and into action. The heartrate soars, adrenaline courses, the klaxons are blaring—DIVE! DIVE!—and I am the personification of power and puissance, I am a ninja, I am the wind, and I am fumbling with epic mightiness to fix a sock on Hawk’s flailing foot—and then Jenifer’s voice cuts in again and points out in no uncertain terms that my efforts are “strictly tertiary concerns” (I apparently having vaulted right over those of the primary and secondary orders) and that my attention is needed on the more immediate and urgent task of changing the wee bairn’s diaper.

Yes, of course, I answer, perhaps not in those words. I’m not sure, really, what I say, only I brave the beacon of Mínas Morgul (so I have come to call the ever-watchful blue LED; and, yes, I know in the movie it’s green) and haul baby Hawk into the bathroom for another stint at natural infant hygiene, otherwise known as “elimination communication”; for Jenifer has developed (and I to a lesser extent) the ability to detect his waste elimination needs almost before he does. Sometimes we miss (hence the diaper), but more often than not we anticipate in time and thus enjoy Hawk’s happy attention rather than his unhappy wrath. This, as you can imagine, is exhausting.

And I wonder why I find myself already a week out from the final day of the Screenwriters’ Conference of the Austin Film Festival. The conference was the first time I was away from little Hawk since his birth eight weeks (already!) before. During the summer Jenifer and I had decided that the conference would be sufficiently far away in time that my going would not be an issue; in fact, Jenifer insisted I go.

For weeks the trip loomed large in my imagination as I looked forward to the epic anchor point of the year, the screenwriter’s New Year; and if my departure was less grand than that of Húrin son of Thúrin, or of Hector’s taking leave of Andromache, each famously dandling their sons on the eve of their doom, then my return home was a triumph neither of those heroes could lay claim to. I had survived the foreign campaign unscathed and returned to hearth and home restored by the effort. During the conference, Hawk was never far from my thoughts, but upon seeing him again I was completely surprised by how overcome with emotion I was. How had he grown so much in only five days’ time? What had I missed? What new superpowers had he manifested? I felt reborn from four days of paneling and partying, but nothing could compare with Hawk’s evident transformation and the incessant march of his metabolism.

I had returned to the new world, the one without order or plan, the one that demanded an abandoning of expectation and preference for structure and predictability. In this world, as I have suggested, things tend to take longer to accomplish and at times risk not being done at all. So it was with our planning for Hawk’s baby blessing.

Jenifer and I had struggled to come up with a location and format for the event. When asked what a baby blessing was, I’d joke that it was a christening without the Christ, but really what we were after was a gathering of our closest friends and family that was reverent but not overly programmed. We felt that it should have a sense of ritual about it, should be led by a qualified facilitator; we didn’t want to just wing it. Here Hawk would be officially introduced to our community and we wanted to get it right.

Jenifer’s father joked that, knowing us, we’d enlist an East African shaman to conduct the ceremony. I wish I’d been there to see the look on his face when Jenifer reported that our first choice was, in fact, Malidoma Patrice Somé, noted shaman and elder of the Dagara tribe of West Africa. Unfortunately, his schedule was booked.

On to Plan B: The Great Quentini, a local performance artist known for his unconventional drum kits (fashioned from junkyard scraps), irreverent but heartfelt spoken-word pieces (on the importance of chlorophyll), and genius for unusual hats (carved from foam). But he, too, was unavailable.

I mentioned our dilemma to my local men’s group and one of the guys suggested we require everyone to bring their own blessing. YES! We would have everyone else shoulder the load. Perfect!

That left the location to find. We wanted an outdoor site and had originally dreamed of holding the event atop the nearby Hawk Mountain for obvious reasons, but with October you never know what kind of weather you’re going to get and we had mobility concerns to take into consideration for a couple of our guests. For a time the leading contender was Wayne’s Woods (named for General “Mad Anthony” Wayne) in the Valley Forge National Historical Park, but here there was no guarantee of freedom from crowds.

In the end we held the blessing at ocean earth wind fire, the yoga studio where Jenifer works and our home base in Phoenixville. Jenifer and Hawk and I took our place in the backyard and the gathered joined in an effortless circle. My mother started to Jenifer’s left, presenting a cross-stitch wall hanging announcing Hawk’s birthday, and then each member of the circle in turn presented his or her gift to Hawk. Each gift beautifully bespoke the giver’s individual talents: testaments, artwork, performance, poems both original and carefully chosen.

Just as the city sounds penetrated our patch of greenspace, we made no effort to block out the external world or the public atmosphere of failures and bailouts, the sense of crisis in the air. The world has always been ending, but with such folk as were gathered about us it will always begin anew. These extraordinary people, our community, had witnessed and supported our growth as we pursued our callings, and now Hawk had heard the call. Perhaps Tom, in identifying what was required of each of us, put it most simply: “Never be afraid to be great.”

Afterwards Hawk’s two families spent the remainder of the afternoon at Chanticleer Garden, followed by dinner in downtown Wayne. The day had been perfect, the weather beautiful, and finally the time came for our families to part ways. Jenifer and I decide to take “the back way,” as we often do, and here that means a passage through Valley Forge Park. But Hawk’s cries of hunger mean that we have to stop for a feeding, and Jenifer and I smile at each other as we recognize that the only stopping place is the great Arch. This stone monument is one of my favorite places, a sanctuary.

We are alone, the three of us, at this sacred spot. I think of it as the spiritual epicenter of the land, where General Washington and his men braved the harshest of winters during the Revolutionary War. At the edge of the field are the darkening trees of Wayne’s Woods, and as I collect photos Jenifer and Hawk remain at the Arch under the silent watch of the deer and a burning sky.

Darkness falls and Hawk finishes. Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. We get in the car and, guided by moon and stars, find our way home.

Brüder

Ed. note: In June 1999, my grandfather Alex M. Brand included a version of the following story in the tribute life-history album we presented to my father on the occasion of his retirement from teaching. The story was later published on April 9, 2000 as a special to the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Sunday News in the “I Know A Story” column, under the title “In ’50s, young bicyclist had scare in Berlin.”

. . . . .

A Jan. 5 newspaper report stated a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Policeman handcuffed a 9-year-old boy he had stopped for not wearing a bike helmet. At age 81, I am reminded of how another policeman handled a graver biking offense (against the German public order) almost 50 years ago in West Berlin, at the time an “island in a Soviet sea.” In this case, my son Teddy, also 9, was the malefactor, and the year was 1953. I was an undercover U.S. intelligence team leader. Teddy’s mother and I were living among the German populace in Dahlem Dorf, a residential and diplomatic suburb of West Berlin. Teddy joined us there, and soon acquired a very personable German playmate, Erwin (pronounced “Air-veen”), also 9. Erwin was actually a refugee “Volksdeutscher” (German by blood) whose family had fled the then-Yugoslavia with the German defeat in World War II. At supper one evening, where Erwin was our frequent guest, I inquired as to the events of their day. The story tumbled out, in excited, alternating German and English, that they had been riding their bikes through a nearby park when a very solemn-looking policeman stopped them and informed them that they were breaking the law. He read from a pocket-statute book he carried: “It is forbidden to ride bicycles in a public park where there is not a Radweg (bike path). Bicyclists must dismount and walk their machines through.” With great solemnity he informed them that they were under arrest and were to proceed with him to the nearby Revier (precinct) Polizei station. Needless to say, the procession drew much amused attention from the many passersby. Teddy said that his great concern was how he would explain his predicament to his father. He and Erwin gloomily pushed their bikes up to the long flight of steps leading to a forbidding stone building, looking every bit a dungeon. As they turned to ask the Polizist what to do about their bikes, he suddenly smiled, and, recognizing Erwin as both villain and interpreter, lectured him and Teddy on bicycle-riding priorities, and the “Public Ordnung.” He ended with: “Und jetzt (and now) you brats, Hau ab! (‘beat it!’), and don’t do it again!” As Teddy exclaimed, “and Pop, we didn’t wait, we ‘Haued ab’ all the way home!” Another time, about a year later, Teddy was less fortunate. He and Erwin were observed by a park attendant to be riding their bikes somewhat eccentrically on a Radweg. The attendant admonished them as to their “reckless driving.” The matter would have ended there, but for Teddy’s brashness. Teddy was, by that time, quite fluent in street German. I had drilled him in his conduct when and if approached by strangers. To Erwin’s dismay, as he related it to us, Teddy asked the civilian official “Hast du ein Ausweis?” (Do you have an ID?), using the familiar “du” (for “you”) instead of the formal “Sie,” which is mandatory address in German by juniors addressing elders. Erwin said he knew all was lost when he heard this gaffe from his pal. The startled, or perhaps bemused, official produced not one, but two IDs. Teddy commented that he couldn’t read them, but they had his photos and “Stempels” (stamps), so he guessed they were OK. Perhaps as a result of such disrespect, this august public servant proceeded to give both bikes an inspection complete to the most minute detail — Teddy said it took an hour, but perhaps it only seemed so long to the boys. The official filled out two forms that listed the defects found on their bikes, with the order that certificates would have to be submitted within a week to the local police that the bikes had been brought “up to snuff.” He then lectured the boys, and again, “Hau ab!”

. . . . .

Last week my father and his childhood accomplice, Erwin, met for the first time in over 50 years. They had found each other through the Internet. Erwin, my father learned, had recently retired from a 40-year career as an industrial insurance claims adjuster. A flurry of e-mails ensued and Erwin soon learned that my parents were planning a Scandinavian cruise this spring. They would be stopping briefly along the northern coast of Germany, near Rostock. This was a fine excuse for Erwin to drive the three hours from Berlin to meet my parents in the Baltic port of Warnemunde, but soon his plans blossomed even further, and within a few short months he was in the States for the first time. For a week my parents and Erwin toured the local sites, including Amish Country and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Before moving on to Niagara Falls, New York City, and Washington, D.C., however, Erwin made the trip with my parents to Phoenixville. My mom joined Jenifer and me for a yoga class, leaving the two old friends to hang out at Artisan’s Café, and when we joined them it was clear that they were having no trouble catching up, and that for them time had no meaning. At one point, Erwin turned to me and smiled, explaining, “We are old now, and we may not have liked each other.” After lunch we visited the expansive Valley Forge Historical National Park. Erwin and I discussed Napoleon and European battlefield tactics, the history of Prussia, and the use of mercenaries, such as the Hessians employed by General Washington during the Revolutionary War. Erwin’s knowledge of both European and U.S. history was formidable. He even corrected my pronunciation of the name of the Saxon antagonist of my Norse historical epic. I was pleased to be able to share with him one of my favorite local places. I also shared with him the story of my first visit to Germany. The day after I graduated from high school, my sister and I were on a plane for Hamburg, where we would be part of an exchange program. For part of the trip, however, we traveled to West and East Berlin, going through Checkpoint Charlie during its last days of operation. (We even shook hands with Henry Kissinger in the Pergamon Museum). But the highlight of our Berlin excursion was our discovery of my father’s old house in Dahlem Dorf. Here was the home base of Erwin and my father’s adventures, of which my grandfather had told at many family dinners. There was the balcony from which they gazed at the stars through the old telescope. At that moment, the stories gained a place. And now, 18 years later, all the characters were assembled.

. . . . .

One more story. It was winter in Berlin and my father had a special kind of sled. Erwin wanted to try it out, but being shy and not knowing my father asked a girl nearby what the new kid’s name was. “Teddy,” she replied. Erwin was dumbfounded. “Like the bear?” he asked. That couldn’t be right, he insisted, but the girl introduced the two, and the rest is history.

A More Perfect Union

Change will not come at another time, with another people. We are the ones we've been waiting for. — Barack Obama

Read the text of today's speech here.