A Ship Piled High With Oranges

My friend Mr. H. called me from England today. Perhaps it was his tea time and he had an urge to chat. Sometimes he gets a bit melancholy, you see. He told me that a special book was in the post on its way to me, a beautiful Cornwall book that his daughter gave to him in 1976, and now he has inscribed it for me, and he thinks I will enjoy the style of writing and the place it is about, but it will also represent a link between our families.

It’s no small thing when someone takes a long-cherished book signed by a daughter and sends it on to you, and I shallreceive it humbly and with full appreciation of its significance. Then we talked about daughters a bit, for each of us has one, and a quote by J.M. Barrie came to mind: Fame is rot; daughters are the thing. It is a thought that always makes me sigh with agreement, although lately I inevitably feel a little shortchanged too, because mine is both singular and absent, becoming an abstraction, capable of happiness but having chosen a kind found only faraway. 

"There's an early frost on the ground here," Mr. H. tells me, and for a moment I picture the daughter that is mine in her perennial flip-flops, toes getting numb, but she has probably switched to boots by now.

My friend Mr. H., whom she indirectly brought into my life by virtue of his being the grandfather of her boyfriend, is quite tender and sympathetic on the subject of daughters getting cold, but he believes that the kids have plenty of duvets, even if their house is drafty.His worries are more substantial, extending far beyond this winter and trudging deep into a future where he fears those young people will face hard times and bleak prospects. I respond with my usual talk of hope and better outcomes; I'm good for that. But  Mr. H. remains unconvinced, for he is, he says, a pessimist and a cynic.

You know what bothers him especially? That those scoundrels always get away with it. They'll go on to live richly while others are struggling. Such terrible inequities. So little justice, really. But that’s always been the way of the world, hasn't it? A man could get bitter, watching it all unfold.

But there are other thoughts to travel along. There is something Mr. H. still dreams about that happened long ago. It's not for me to tell you here, but It's funny how fresh those old hurts and desires can seem, how stunning and real even way past the time in which they mattered.

The world was different back then, but it comes in clear sometimes, the things you wanted and almost had. And what you actually had and somehow lost, maybe that’s the most painful one of all.

You know, it isn’t easy being here with your mind so crisp and your life so narrowed down, when even your pen won’t write with the eloquence in your head, and ruminations turn to melancholy.

It is better to stay tangible, and here in the present. Set the table, be seated, comport yourself with dignity. Let your mind rest on concrete thoughts: bridges, books, and bicycles, Mousehole Harbour crowded with boats.

Consider oranges, perhaps.

"Ah, yes, how is the weather in California?" Mr. H. asks.

I tell him, mild, warm, autumnal slant of light.

"I wish," says Mr. H., "that you could go outside and pick me some oranges and somehow I would have them here on my table in twenty-four hours."

Oh, I’ll pick you oranges, I tell him, as soon as the crop really comes in. Yes, I’ll pick you oranges and ship them to you! (For I am thrilled to have a mission.)

And I understand all at once that Mr. H. is not as pessimistic or cynical as he claims to be, nor is he bitter. He is disappointed, perhaps, and troubled on behalf of those he loves, but  Mr. H. remains sentimental at the core of him, with a residue of romance.

Who among us doesn't sometimes feel a bit sad at the first sign of frost and the dimming light of early evening?

"Ah," says Mr. H, "aship. I am picturing a ship piled high with oranges sailing across the sea to me. That is a picture I shall keep."