CLEMENT DIGBY: MAN OF INCONSEQUENCE

I have a trove of photographs from when the kids were small. I keep them in an old Hush Puppies box in the den underneath the cramped shelf where our old unused turntable sits.

It's a sad corner of the house and as such, no one cares to tamper with it. I should have taken the turntable and all the old Peter Paul and Mary LPs to the Goodwill a long time ago. Instead they lay there ignored or more precisely, baring witness to the sad fact that we take this god forsaken trivial life of ours for granted.

I once read - don't ask me where - that the writer Henry James (and don't ask me what he wrote either) described the artist as "someone upon whom nothing is lost."

Damn!

To think of all that I've lost simply because I wasn't paying enough attention. And in retrospect, how could I have done it any differently? You work, you raise kids, you eat, you shit, you sleep and from time to time you take a little vacation.

The other day I found one of those little photo albums you used to be able to get for a quarter at the dry goods store. Stuck within its pages were pictures of my sons, Will and Clem Jr, and my daughter Irene when they were still in grade school. Will, like his name, is stubborn and determined and was a hard kid to raise. Clem was my splitting image which then was cute and which is now rather unfortunate. Irene, well, what can I say ... Irene was and still is annoyingly perfect.

Anyway, I'm leafing through this thing, which for some reason carried a faint but unmistakably vomitous smell, and I start balling like a child. I mean, I'm weeping and shaking and gasping for air and it was some time before I was able to regain something even remotely resembling composure.

It dawned on me with a brutal, unambiguous clarity that forty years ago when the kids were growing up, I barely found the time to even kiss them goodnight. 

Was I too busy?

Sure!

But I made myself busy and I can see now that my preoccupations were nothing short of an evasion of the intimacies required to form a bonding and lasting relationship with my family. Sure my job had its demands but who told me to become a deacon at St Eusebius?

It took me four years to get through all 11 steps and by the time I was done Bobby Kennedy was killed and I stopped believing in god overnight.

And the bowling league ... what was that all about!? I'm a lousy bowler, beer gives me gas and half the guys I played with were from work. Didn't I see enough of them during the day?

And the volunteer Fire Department crap!

Wasn't I paying taxes so that the town's fires could be attended by paid professionals?

Poor Betty. 

My wife is a veritable saint and to this day I have no idea how she put up with me. The kids all turned out fine and if they lived closer to Elmira I would make up for my idiotic evasions and spend gobs of time with my seven grandkids.

Maybe there's a reason why all my kids moved so far away.

Will, Clem, Irene ... I know it's too late but for what it's worth ...

I'm sorry ...

GOOD LORD!

My wife Betty and I have been married for forty-two years. We have a lot in common and I guess that explains our relative harmony. I love her the way one loves an old dog, which isn't to say that my affections are in any way diminished. People are very attached to their dogs.

If only Betty would treat me more like a poodle. At least I'd get stroked every once and a while.

There are, however, a few fundamental things that divide us. 

I'm more the autonomous type. Show me a system and I'll find a way to beat it. Betty, on the other hand, loves to have rules. She works for Guillame Capital, an all-purpose investment consulting firm that has weathered the storms of the recession and has actually managed to grow.

This is in no small measure due to the meticulous and conscientious hard work of my wife. Every day, with knuckles to the ground, she sits in her cubicle and for eight unbroken hours stares into the vacuum of her company issued Dell. What she actually does I couldn't tell you but every time her boss pats her on the head she comes home beaming like a schoolgirl.

Last October she was voted regional employee of the month, something I'm reminded of each time I reach into the refrigerator for a beer because the faded red ribbon and plastic gold medallion have been fastened above the handle ever since.

About ten years ago Betty joined the Grace Church of God Almighty, an over-sized congregation that meets twice a week at the Shrine Auditorium downtown. The place seats four-thousand and unless you get there at least forty-five minutes early, you'd be hard pressed to get a seat. Officiated by the legendary Most Reverend Eddie Tauschen, the weekly services fall somewhere between an auction, a rock concert and an Amway infomercial.

Leni Riefenstahl would have had a field day! 

Smooth-tongued Eddie let's everyone know in no uncertain terms that they are all big bad sinners but heck, Jesus loves 'em anyway.

Betty is butter in his already greasy paws. She loves to have someone do her thinking for her, especially when the thoughts in question are so ennobling.

"You are perfect," Reverend Eddie reminds the flock each week, "because the God of Abraham and his only son Jesus have a special place in their hearts just for you!!"

Of course, Betty is far from perfect and that's why I fell in love with her forty-plus years ago. But I guess as her cheeks sag and her bones begin to ache it must be nice to know that in the eyes of the big guy upstairs "you are like a gentle, celestial mist hovering sweetly over a blessed field of the great and good Lord's daisies."