Our we hour (one e and two) got me thinking about patterns.
We (one e) includes Henry and yours truly. After roughly four hours of sleep, I need to (two e’s) wee. Henry’s bladder could hold out longer, but then he’d be pawing at dawn, too early to rise and too late to doze. A “good night’s sleep,” so easy young, becomes trickier with age. Hearing me rustle, Henry hops to, eager for a jaunt. While he may yawn adorably with his little pink tongue (set off by his milk-chocolate fur), he never grumbles at exertion, unlike his elder, who favors torpor.
Carll (wearily) and Henry (perkily) make their way to the graveled parking area, which has come to expect this nocturnal sprinkling. A surprisingly tender experience, peeing together has not received the literary attention of other combinations. (Joyce features his two tipsy protagonists peeing in Ulysses.) Relief achieved, Carll shuffles and Henry prances back indoors, not to the bedroom where Jane’s sleeping (or yearning to), but to Carll’s study, with its fecund silence.
The fecundity of silence is another topic underserved by authors. Plop a notion into the hush and watch it exfoliate. I outlaw electronic beeps from my study best I can, so I can listen. Funny, I muse tonight, how preferences ossify into patterns, might into must, choices into creeds. How do routes become ruts become rote become rituals? When and why did this unwelcome we-hour interruption turn pleasurable recurrence. I never noticed the moon until Henry introduced us.
Our word, “pattern,” derives from the same root as “patron,” which originates in “pater,” the Latin word for father. I didn’t expect this but it makes sense. We imitate the paternal example and it becomes our model, how things ought to be. Kids mimic their parents before they know they’re choosing. Small boys striding beside their dads sometimes seem a parody.
This ossification – of happenstance into pattern – occurs inexorably, incessantly, insensibly. We do a thing once, repeat it, and before we know it we’re “stuck in our ways.” Every detail of our family Christmas gathering, for example, has become tradition for our grandkids and any alteration of expectation a scandalous violation. So with Henry and my we hour. I slide on my slippers, grab flashlight and dog-treat, release Henry. Having performed our business beneath the grandiloquent moon, Henry receives his treat, and we return indoors – to my study, where we bed down. Laptop aglow in my lap, I check email to be sure my missive has been dispatched, then switch off the light and listen to the silence’s suggestions.
Patterns protect us from the chaos of possibilities. I crave my routines almost crazily for they spare me doubt. Repeating I don’t need to think, just proceed robotically, freeing my mind to meander elsewhere. I can notice the cheery plash on the gravel and the shadows flung by the moon.
As with persons, so with communities and nations. We repeat established patterns, revere traditions, until one day, resentful of our enslavement to old rituals, we rebel. That’s what’s happening in America today. Many Americans are trashing democracy, our justice system, notions of fairness and decency, truth itself, in favor of – who knows what? – something else – tyranny perhaps, like China’s, Hungary’s, Russia’s. These rebellious malcontents favor anarchy because, well, they’re pissed, no better reason. Fury kicks the cat (or shoots the dog).
Contentment cleaves to patterns. I love my life, Henry’s and my dreamy we hour sessions, how ideas root and sprout in the hush. I love murmuring to you while the world sleeps.