‘It was a dull, gray, cloud-filled Monday morning as I sat on a balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. There was rain and lightening in the clouds over the water’. These words sound like an opening sentences for a Stephen King novel, but they’re not. But it was a Monday, and it was overcast, so to take the place of a beach jaunt I opened a catalogue of books entitled, “A Common Reader: Books for Readers with
Imagination”. It is issued monthly and there’s sometimes an occasional seasonal issue. This one was ‘Summer 1999’. An author’s name, ‘Wilfred Sheed’, struck my memory. I remembered a Sheed and Ward as an English publishing house. My father had, I recalled, books published by them. They issued books by G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. So I proceeded to read a review of a book written by Wilfred Sheed, entitled “In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery”. As I was reading the review, I realized that this was in part a confession by the reviewer. It struck a chord. The words could have been mine. It went as follows:
“‘For a long time I used to go to bed soused.’ In the memoir I never got around to writing I was going to borrow the famous opening line from Remembrances of Things Past, substituting for the “early” with which Proust concluded the sentence, one of the picturesque terms for intoxication which abound in English – looped, smashed, blotto, wrecked, or maybe even just plain drunk. I suppose I felt it necessary to drag teetotal Proust into my remembrances because I assumed that the problem with which I’d been dealing for virtually all of my adult life wasn’t in itself spectacular enough to warrant being written about – I’d have to fancy it up, in a sense; a literarily unvarnished account would never cut it because mine, I figured, was so, well, well-behaved a little problem that it wasn’t, by comparison with real, i.e., out of control, drinking problems, a problem at all.”
The going to bed soused didn’t fit my memories of the past but what really shouted at me were the words, “a well-behaved little problem”. The explanation was mine from the moment it was suggested I even had a problem. The reviewer then describes the joy of giving it up. His analogies are great! “Imagine a man in a heavy wool suit and voluminous overcoat and a hat and scarf and gloves and boots trudging a beach at high summer; jump-cut, and he’s barefoot in the sand in colorful trunks and a white v-neck shirt with a dab of zinc-oxide on his nose and, what the hell, on his face a great big goofy smile he’d no doubt like to but cannot restrain. That’s what the change has been like.” He continues, “If I was going to mourn any of my old life, I’d mourn those unlived early mornings. But mourning turns out to be the very last thing this recovery of mine seems to be about, the first thing seems instead to be rejoicing.” The reviewer’s reflections are my own only better stated. His observations were prompted by his reading in the memoir of Wilfred Sheed’s of his recovery from polio as a boy, sedations and addictions to booze and pills, and depression in middle age; and, then “blind sided” by cancer in his later years. He could have easily become, as the author notes, “a Spokesperson for the justified Self-pity Foundation”. His memoir covers the bad nights and the recovery in a “vibrant, good-humored and irrepressible high-hearted” manner. The review sold me on putting the book on my reading list.
I should point out there were several differences with my problem from the reviewer’s. I was what is described as a “healthy alcoholic”. If ever there was an oxymoron, that is certainly one, a healthy disease! Yet, that was what it was. The explanation was that my exercising, running long distances, marathons, etc. had forestalled the growth, but then when I ceased the running, and was less busy with the practice, etc. it blossomed. It is not a very good term to describe something that is really deterioration, but that’s what occurred. My denial was like the reviewer’s and my daily rejoicing is the same. My denial had a firm logical basis. As do most denials, I could point to my training for long runs and Lenten withdrawals from the use of alcohol; so, ergo it was just a matter of discipline. Ah! Yes so simple yet so complicated. For some reason, just didn’t get it under control. But all that is over and as he says, “mourning” is the last thing I do. I rejoice and with the title of the book reviewed, I’m “In Love with the Daylight”. I daily say “Deo Gratias!”
July 1999 brings the 223rd celebration of the Declaration of Independence. I wonder if Thomas Jefferson now is a bit more optimistic that a ‘Republic’ can survive. He considered those prior ones of the Greek City-States, and the Roman Empire as examples of the ultimate collapse of a ‘republic’ form of governing. “This was a dominant theme of the early republic–the idea of America as an experiment, undertaken in defiance of history, fraught with risk, problematic in outcome” (The Cycles of American History by A.M.Schlesinger Jr.).
He is most revered for his writing of the declaration but like many things in history it might not have happened that he became the author. The accident was that Richard Lee’s wife became ill. Richard Lee was the chairperson of the Virginia delegation and on the day that Tom arrived in Philadelphia (June 8th) he, Lee, introduced a motion that Congress prepares a declaration of their independence from the British Government. It was not warmly received. North Carolina went along since it was Virginia’s idea, but the Mid-Atlantic States and New Englander’s sentiments ranged from “opposed” to “maybe later”. The motion was tabled for reconsideration on July 1st. When that time came around Mr. Lee had left and T j. was made Chair of a committee to consider the motion since it was from his state. On that committee were john Adams, of Mass., Benjamin Franklin, of Pa., Roger Sherman of Conn. (Yale’s Treasurer), and Robert Livingston, of NY. The drafting of the declaration fell to Thomas Jefferson mainly due to his having written for the Virginia Legislature “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” in the year 1 774. It had considerable circulation in the next two years and marked the young lawyer (he was 33 in 1776) as a cogent wordsmith. He tried to get his newfound friend and mentor john Adams to write it, but he refused. The story goes that “when Adams refused, in his blunt way Jefferson asked why and drew from that cannonball of a man a swift succession of sentences delivered like shots on target. ‘Reason enough’ (said Adams) ‘What can be your reasons? (says TJ); ‘Reason first: You are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.’ “They became great friends in those days in Philadelphia. They later both served as President; became political opponents in fact and philosophy; carried on a lifetime correspondence that is a national historic treasure; served overseas as ambassadors, Adams in England and Jefferson in France, and both died on the same day, July 4th 1826, exactly 50 years to the day of their first joint (?) venture. The original motion of Lee’s was passed on July 2nd but was debated for two days before passing as amended. It was entitled, “The Unanimous Declaration of the 13 United States of America”. It was passed on July 4th and signed by most on August 2nd. Thus the “British Colonies of America” the expression used by Jefferson in his “Summary” of 1774, became the “United States of America”.
A bit of trivia about Thomas Jefferson: he was the first American to live on the “Left Bank” of Paris. It happened when he was ambassador to France the home he used was located on that side of the Seine. He hardly fits in some ways as the vision of a left bank occupant but then he was a versatile character, so there is no pigeonholing of him. It is put a bit more succinctly in the sentence; “Anyone who tries to fit him to the procrustean bed of the quintessential ‘man of reason’ will either quit in frustration or distort the reality of the man beyond recognition” (“T .J., Passionate Pilgrim by A. Mapp).
We celebrated the Fourth with Mary Lou and grandson Paulie at St. Petersburg Beach. The beach was a blaze with fireworks that night. In Florida apparently, unless we are having a dry spell, individuals can purchase fireworks and shoot them off. So the beach was full of celebrators doing just that. In fact, Mary Lou brought Paulie back up to the room because of the reckless manner in which many were handling them. We had good weather and were there a total of nearly five days. The pleasure of having only 20-minute drive to be in a cooler and sandy place is exhilarating.
I hopefully will add a note to each.