Life: The Big Voyage

Odysseus Hears the Sirens' Call 

One Christmas, when I was about 10, I opened a present, a book, which I think was the last present I opened because it was so clearly a book and I was 10 and more interested in boxes which might have toy guns or baseball mitts. The book was "The Iliad and the Odyssey" and I asked my parents what it was and why I'd been given it and they simply smiled knowingly and said, "Read it."  I still have that book, one of my all time favorites.  My own sons were captivated by the Iliad, and my older son read it again in college in a course called, "Anger" and I asked him why they read that book in that course and he smiled and said, "Well, there isn't much in the Iliad that isn't anger." Of course, there was more, but he had got at a core theme. 

Later, in college, when I read Dr. Faustus and that famous line, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?"  the face being that of Helen (of Troy, formerly of Greece) I needed no explanation for what that meant.  And when Faustus added, "Her lips suck forth my soul,"  that, too was clear enough to me. I had been on that voyage as a youngster and its lessons stuck with me.

The Iliad, which followed the Greeks piling into their ships to sail off to Troy to retrieve the stolen princess, was thrilling and dark and wonderful, but what really set me dreaming was the Odyssey, the trip back home, the trip through so many surreal and fantastical places in time and space. 

Odysseus just wanted to go home, back to his roots,  but he had no phone, and he had to get there through all sorts of obstacles. It was not the last story about a man who travels through a long path seeking to return home--Cold Mountain springs to mind, and there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of others--but the Odyssey was one of the first. And the expression "the journey is the reason" derives from that. 

Some years ago I decided to leave home, the town where I'd grown up and to which I returned after 16 years away. I was Odysseus returned home, back to my roots.   I lived the next two decades there. I raised my kids where I had grown up, and they attended some of the same schools I had,  but then they left to seek out their own adventures and I faced the choice of simply living out the rest of my life where I had "roots" or seeking out a new adventure. 

John Steinbeck addresses this notion of "roots" in Travels with Charley, and he cites the remarks of a man he met along the road who lived in a mobile home, an electrician who told him the whole notion of a person being "rooted" was bogus. He could find a job anywhere and if business dried up, nobody, not his family, not his friends, not his current customers would be able to help him, so he would have to move. But he embraced that idea of rootlessness because people, he said, are not trees. People can move and should. We really are not organisms with roots. We evolved to move. 

Here in New England, I meet people every day who were born in a town like Haverhill, Massachusetts or Methuen or Laconia, New Hampshire and have never moved. Their families live within a few miles and they are "rooted."  And there is something wonderful about that continuity, but it may be, in some senses, illusory.

Vacationing on  Kezar Lake, in Maine, I was invited to play baseball by the plumber who came to fix a toilet in our cabin and I quickly realized the guys in this game had all grown up in the town and had known each other since childhood and had played in this game for decades. They never had to finish a joke--they all knew all the punch lines. That was remarkable to me because I had grown up with kids who knew we would all be leaving home after high school and few of us expected to return to our home town. There was something warm and rich about that sense of continuity among these baseball players.

But, as I listened, I realized these men who had remained physically planted and rooted were not the same kids they had been decades earlier. Some had made more money than others. Some had led happy lives, others not. Apparently, one had married the former wife of another. Nothing remains the same, no matter how "rooted" you are. 

One of my favorite nephews is facing an uprooting and it has been traumatic for him and his family. He was raised in the South, in  North Carolina, and he went to college in Nashville, where he now lives. His wife is from Michigan, but she has lived in the South since she married him. His kids were born in Nashville. Now he has to move to New York City for three years as part of a corporate training program. 

At first, they thought they would try to reproduce their suburban life by living in New Jersey, but once they looked around New York City, they began to see the virtues of adventure. The wife took her daughter to a local private school in Manhattan for an interview. They were told there were really no places available for either child, but the school agreed to at least meet with the family. The children were gone for an extended period, and when the school officials finally emerged, they were smiling. Things had changed dramatically. "We'll make room," they said. "We would be very much like to have Ellie and her brother become part of our family."  

Apparently, the daughter had answered whatever questions they had asked impressively. The son had kept responding, "Yes, sir" and "No Ma'm."  These children would not have to be taught manners and whatever the daughter said apparently got the attention of the adults who run the school 

So the disruption may prove less injurious and more positive than they had imagined.
The daughter was quite taken with the subways and the son was thrilled by the Lego store on 5th Avenue. Leaving Nashville behind will not be a problem for these kids. The parents will simply learn from their children.

In our New Hampshire town, most graduates of Winacunnet High School, I gather, stay in New Hampshire of nearby New England. But some go further afield. A neighbor's son finished college and traveled to China, where he is now studying for a degree at a Chinese university. He speaks Chinese. He is going boldly forth where few of his classmates will ever go.  What combination of parenting and experience and talent allowed him to become an explorer? 

Not all change is good. Not every journey through life is harmless. But there is a chance the new will be as good or better than the old. We go forth boldly where we have never ventured before. 

My grandparents took an even more perilous journey--they left Europe on a boat for New York City, with little in their pockets and unknown risks ahead of them. That was the greatest gift they ever gave me. They took a chance and although they did not reap the benefits much, I did. 

There is a wonderful musician on the internet who calls himself simply, "Big Voyage."  He's got that essence of what life is all about.