Busy, Busy, Busy

I remember two people who passed through my life in the Third and Fourth Quarters who were always "busy, busy, busy." From time to time, I would hear in my head: "I'm too busy for thee." But plates do get full and I've felt that way, lately.

M and I had three children and they had children. Only one of our grandkids is old enough to be thinking of heading off to College but all three families are caught up in life .... Busy, busy, busy .... and still connected to M and H as titular heads of the tribe. Then, there are the visitors who come much like those who would visit my grandfather when I was his preschool student learning the languages of the sacred writings of my forebears ... Grandpa would answer the door, welcome the visitor and -- at least, so it seemed to me -- thoroughly forget the 3-6 year old who would go hiding behind a magical chair made in the late 1940's, I suppose. The chair could open up into a single bed. Maybe I assumed that any such structure as a magic chair could protect me from the abandonment that I felt. Maybe I was trying to wake Grandpa up to my presence by being absent. Could be.

The Last Quarter and its needs to be responsive to at least three generatiuons and others who have gathered to share their circles (oops, in 2014 I could say "networks") with us is quite a busy place, even without the nosy Docs who keep wanting to look inside one's body with their devils'-work cameras ... MRI's and CAT scans, EEG's and EMG's, needles and hands that feel around inside.

And recently, I've added an errand I've taken on while reviewing a biography of a man with whom I have strong personal and professional identifications. He was one of the folk from the generation of pre-WWII thinkers who tried to understand the authoritarian personality, as he and others thought of it ... people who are quite dominant and unnecessarily forceful in their own families and. curiously, tend to subjugate themselves to a great idea or leader ... in the time of these writers? ... Stalin, Hitler and later Mao.

In my own training, years ago, I found the same kind of personality. People who would slavishly take on a given dogma "from above" but then "masterly" try to subjugate others either into a certain set of beliefs or to some sort of social conformity.

The task, a not too lengthy review for a professional journal, is not onerous and the editor is kind. Working through these ghosts from past and present relationships is difficult for this aging fellow who is having the best time and the worst time with it.

Adios!