When All Else Fails . . . (Lynn Kerstan)

Helpless, helpless, helpless

Baby can you hear me now?

The chains are locked

and tied across the door,

Baby, sing with me somehow. Neil Young

Yesterday, Pat wrote about love songs. I’ll do that, too, but today it’s all about hopeless, desperate love that spends itself in places it never thought to go.

You know how it feels. Someone you love is ill or in melt-down. Something you care about can’t be changed, not by you. You feel helpless. So do I. But we still have to sing, somehow.

Many years ago, a friend pointed me in a direction I’d been trying to find. There’s nothing dramatic about the path, and it doesn’t satisfy our need to make a difference for the people and causes that most touch our hearts. But it changes us, which is where all change begins. And in ways more profound than we realize, it plants strong seeds in the stoniest of grounds.

I met JimK during my years as a bridge-playing, multi-job-working rambler. He swept into San Diego like a tornado, witty and talented, gay, flamboyant, and kind, son of a schizophrenic mother and just a little wild-minded himself. We soon became fast friends. I loved his humor, curiosity, and inventiveness.

But mostly, I admired the way he made everyone in his company feel special and chosen. The most innocuous, boring, or irritating people were as welcome as the most scintillating of his friends (such as me, or so I hoped!). You could practically see people open up like morning glories in his company. And he accomplished this without ever being the least bit phony, or sucky-up, or preachy. Quite the opposite. He was just plain fun.

But always, he was attentive to others. He noticed things about people and found ways to use the information for their benefit. I’ll always treasure the time he casually invited me over for dinner a week or so before my birthday, which was nowhere in my mind when he wheeled out my favorite of all things . . . grilled lobster tail dripping with melted butter. Lobster tails, I should say, more than a dozen of them, just for the two of us.

At some point in our acquaintance, he later explained, I’d mentioned my love for lobster and how miserable it was to never get enough of it. Unlimited lobster until I was could eat no more. That’s what I wanted. So for a birthday surprise, he went down to Mexico and came back with a bucketful of the critters. We ate them and drank wine and laughed, and I went home with leftovers for lobster salad. But best of all was that he’d noticed, and remembered, and gone to all that trouble to fulfill a casually expressed wish.

On another night, while we were sitting by the pool after a party, he explained his philosphy of life in three words: "Keep it moving." He was talking about Good Things. Kindnesses. Generosity. It didn’t matter whom we gave them to, so long as we sent the best of ourselves out into the world. And if we all did that, then it figures we’d all benefit from the kindnesses and generosity of others.

After a few years, Jim relocated to Mexico. My mother saw him occasionally. She taught bridge on cruise ships, and when the ship docked in Acapulco, he’d take her and some of her fine-lady friends to some pretty raunchy dives. The ladies adored him.

I wish I could say he reaped the goodness he sewed, but some time late, he was murdered. However hard we try to play our parts, life isn’t fair. Our stories are not scripted. At the least, not so that we can understand them.

But I never stopped believing we should keep sending out good things into the universe, even when we are helpless to fix what we want to fix or tend to the people we love. Most especially then. Most especially when there is no reward, nor any sign that we have made a difference.

And if there is an underlying theme in all my books, that is probably it. A secondary character in The Golden Leopard explains it to the hero (I’m condensing madly here) something like this:
"There is someone I care about . . . beset with difficulties . . . but I cannot be of service to her now. Which is why I offer to you what help I can. One must keep the waters stirred, you see."

"Which waters would those be?"

"Oh, I was referring to the pool at Bethesda. In the Bible, one of the Gospels, I think. People with ailments gathered there, hoping for a miracle. And sure enough, now and again an angel would come down and stir the waters. The first person to dive in was cured."

His freckles, bronze on flushed skin, grew darker with his obvious embarrassment. "The thing is, I cannot be of help to the one I would give my life for. She is unable to make her way into the healing waters. But best as I can, I mean to keep them stirred for others to take advantage of. In this case you, and after you, someone else."

Are you keeping things stirred up? Can’t hurt, Jimmie would say. Might help. And we have to try.