Actions Have Consequences (or Happy Anniversary)(or Seventeen Humans)
Today is my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Or rather today is the 60th anniversary of the day they got married, because legally I think they are no longer married since they are both dead. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure once you’re dead you’re single though I don’t know who came up with that rule. I mean sure, it makes sense when one partner is gone and the other is still here, but when you’re both dead are you both still single? And if you aren’t, is your “new anniversary” the death of the second partner assuming you both didn’t die on the same day?
Bah, it’s all too complicated. For the purposes of this essay, let’s just assume that my parents, though dead, are still married, and that their anniversary is today, though that’s only based on hearsay since I wasn’t present at the occasion. Really all I have is their word for it. Which I hope was correct, seeing as how we have what they said was their wedding date on their headstone and boy howdy would I be embarrassed if we weren’t accurate since I was one of the folks that picked out that final bit of decoration they received.
So, to reiterate, today is the 60th anniversary of the date that my dead parents who, in death may still be or may not be technically married, claimed to have been married as far as any of us know, seeing as how none of us have spoken to either of them since their demise and memories do get foggy over time but we do have the headstone to refer to which we will assume for purposes of argument was correctly done.
There are, near as I can figure, seventeen human beings on the earth as a direct result of what happened on that day: five children, nine children and three great-grandchildren.
(That was weird, I just walked by a co-worker’s desk and saw that he had a book wrapped in a brown paper book cover like I discussed back here; if I believed in such a thing I would say God or Fate knew that I was writing about the past and was supplying extra inspiration. Since I don’t believe in such things, not to say atheism but a belief that supernatural beings are involved in every inconsequential detail of everyday life, for example the sheer idiocy of Mariano Rivera crediting God for Alex Rodriguez hitting two home runs in an inning to get to a 30 homer 100 RBI season, it is merely an amusing coincidence).
So about those seventeen human beings. Man, that is a lot isn’t it? Do you think a twenty-one year old man and a nineteen year old woman of extremely modest means in post-World War II New York City walked into the Little Church Around The Corner (as far as we know) on October 15, 1949 and said to each other “You know, as a result of our actions today there will be seventeen human beings, ten of whom will be female and seven of whom will be male scattered between Staten Island and New Jersey at the end of the first decade of the 21st century?”
In as much as we are taking all of the happenings on that date on faith, I will take it on faith that neither of them thought that, or said that, or even considered what the 21st century would even be like any more than my mother’s mother considered the full impact of her decision to (again, as far as we know) board an America-bound ship that left from Helsinki Harbor about three decades earlier up to and including the return of her grandson to that same place roughly ninety years later to sit there on a dock at the edge of the sea and ponder it all and then put his left hand down into a large, fresh, warm pile of seagull crap.
Not all consequences are dramatic.
In fact, most are mundane. In fact I would hazard a guess that if that twenty one year old man and that nineteen year old woman had not walked into that New York City church sixty years ago the world would not be all that different save there would be seventeen fewer humans on it, perhaps. Or perhaps they each would have bred with other people and produced even more. Who knows? All we know is that the choice they made produced seventeen human beings mainly of little consequence to the world at large. With all due respect to my relatives, no Hitlers or Martin Luther Kings or Pol Pots or Ghandis have sprung from our lineage. We are all merely members of the masses, the other folks who fill out the pages of history never noted by name but instead grouped by class or location or ethnicity, e.g. “The peasants are revolting!” “You’re telling me!” (I love that gag, don’t you?)
It is fascinating (and tragic? No, not tragic, it just is) that entire lifetimes can be summarized like this, isn’t it? Your lifetime too may someday be summarized, tossed off in a few offhanded lines by your children or other relatives. “My (relation), s/he was a (job), he lived in (place), he died in (time)” and there you go, there’s your life, everything you ever did boiled down into a verbal reduction. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to have someone who remembers you, although we’re assuming here that being remembered even matters. My dad used to say “Do for me while I’m alive, don’t show up when I’m dead” and now he’s not qualified to say that anymore, lacking the “alive” part and all. So I have done this exercise in memory for myself, not for them, but if it even matters at all I wish them a very, very happy anniversary and wish they were here and healthy enough to enjoy their day.
Bah, it’s all too complicated. For the purposes of this essay, let’s just assume that my parents, though dead, are still married, and that their anniversary is today, though that’s only based on hearsay since I wasn’t present at the occasion. Really all I have is their word for it. Which I hope was correct, seeing as how we have what they said was their wedding date on their headstone and boy howdy would I be embarrassed if we weren’t accurate since I was one of the folks that picked out that final bit of decoration they received.
So, to reiterate, today is the 60th anniversary of the date that my dead parents who, in death may still be or may not be technically married, claimed to have been married as far as any of us know, seeing as how none of us have spoken to either of them since their demise and memories do get foggy over time but we do have the headstone to refer to which we will assume for purposes of argument was correctly done.
There are, near as I can figure, seventeen human beings on the earth as a direct result of what happened on that day: five children, nine children and three great-grandchildren.
(That was weird, I just walked by a co-worker’s desk and saw that he had a book wrapped in a brown paper book cover like I discussed back here; if I believed in such a thing I would say God or Fate knew that I was writing about the past and was supplying extra inspiration. Since I don’t believe in such things, not to say atheism but a belief that supernatural beings are involved in every inconsequential detail of everyday life, for example the sheer idiocy of Mariano Rivera crediting God for Alex Rodriguez hitting two home runs in an inning to get to a 30 homer 100 RBI season, it is merely an amusing coincidence).
So about those seventeen human beings. Man, that is a lot isn’t it? Do you think a twenty-one year old man and a nineteen year old woman of extremely modest means in post-World War II New York City walked into the Little Church Around The Corner (as far as we know) on October 15, 1949 and said to each other “You know, as a result of our actions today there will be seventeen human beings, ten of whom will be female and seven of whom will be male scattered between Staten Island and New Jersey at the end of the first decade of the 21st century?”
In as much as we are taking all of the happenings on that date on faith, I will take it on faith that neither of them thought that, or said that, or even considered what the 21st century would even be like any more than my mother’s mother considered the full impact of her decision to (again, as far as we know) board an America-bound ship that left from Helsinki Harbor about three decades earlier up to and including the return of her grandson to that same place roughly ninety years later to sit there on a dock at the edge of the sea and ponder it all and then put his left hand down into a large, fresh, warm pile of seagull crap.
Not all consequences are dramatic.
In fact, most are mundane. In fact I would hazard a guess that if that twenty one year old man and that nineteen year old woman had not walked into that New York City church sixty years ago the world would not be all that different save there would be seventeen fewer humans on it, perhaps. Or perhaps they each would have bred with other people and produced even more. Who knows? All we know is that the choice they made produced seventeen human beings mainly of little consequence to the world at large. With all due respect to my relatives, no Hitlers or Martin Luther Kings or Pol Pots or Ghandis have sprung from our lineage. We are all merely members of the masses, the other folks who fill out the pages of history never noted by name but instead grouped by class or location or ethnicity, e.g. “The peasants are revolting!” “You’re telling me!” (I love that gag, don’t you?)
It is fascinating (and tragic? No, not tragic, it just is) that entire lifetimes can be summarized like this, isn’t it? Your lifetime too may someday be summarized, tossed off in a few offhanded lines by your children or other relatives. “My (relation), s/he was a (job), he lived in (place), he died in (time)” and there you go, there’s your life, everything you ever did boiled down into a verbal reduction. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to have someone who remembers you, although we’re assuming here that being remembered even matters. My dad used to say “Do for me while I’m alive, don’t show up when I’m dead” and now he’s not qualified to say that anymore, lacking the “alive” part and all. So I have done this exercise in memory for myself, not for them, but if it even matters at all I wish them a very, very happy anniversary and wish they were here and healthy enough to enjoy their day.
Comments