In
Roland Merullo’s lyrical novel, “In Revere, In Those Days,” we find a loving
and moving memoir of the lead character, Anthony (Tonio) Benedetto. Tonio grows
up in Revere, Massachusetts, in a home of love with his struggling but hard
working and adoring Italian-American parents. All is well until at age 11 his
parents are killed in a plane crash. Young Tonio is crushed by this tragedy and
overwhelmed by what seems like life’s harsh indifference. But his paternal
grandparents, gentle people who treasure Tonio, enter into his grief and
envelop him in a love so rich it fortifies him the rest of his life. His uncle Peter,
too, steps in to be a caring father figure. Tonio eventually finds ways out of
his sorrow and out of Revere. But there are other challenges and heartaches to
face. And he learns to love through them as he was loved.
Here
is a story of family affection and commitment, sorrow, tragedy, society’s prejudices against
immigrants, the struggle to survive in low paying work, the value of authentic
religion, and the courage to find one’s own meaning in life.
The
novel opens with a mature Tonio having already lived much of his life as he introduces
himself to us:
“My
name is Anthony Benedetto, and I live what might be called a secret life….If
you passed me on the streets of this sleepy little town, you’d see an
average-looking middle-aged man burdened by the usual cares and lifted by the
small pleasures of the modern domestic whirl. What I mean when I say ‘secret
life’ is that I often feel the visible part of me is a plain wrapper that hides
a gem. I feel that way about people in general: there is the wrapping, and then
there is a sort of finer essence. She is tall, sexy, greedy; he is loud,
brilliant, addicted to amphetamines. We are crude, generous, beautiful,
vicious; we wear a patchwork disguise made from a hundred talents, habits, and
needs, and underneath it lies this spark of something else, something larger
than our labels and flaws. You can see that spark clearly in children before
the coat of the personality grows too thick. You can sense it when you first
fall in love, before the beloved’s failings and troubles swell up into view;
and then, later, if you’ve come to terms with the failings and troubles and
built a mature affection. It’s not that I don’t see the evil, pettiness, and
pain in the world; believe me I’ve seen it, I see it. It’s just that I also
seem to have an eye for the secret essence that lies beyond that, the gem in
plain wrapping.”
These
are the musings of someone who has lived; someone who has learned that what
builds endurance within us, what gives us our own human authenticity, is as poet
Wallace Stegner once said, not really wisdom but “scar tissue and callous.”
And
out of that awareness can truly come this amazing ability to see and sense more
in both people and in life. It can give to us “an eye for the secret essence
that lies beyond.”
If
George Zimmerman could have done that; looked beyond the hoodie, beyond the
young black stereotype, beyond the sinister suspicions created from his own
fears; if he could have instead taken time to just assess the situation more,
paused in his terror and assumptions and simply seen a teenager walking; had he
had an eye for the secret essence in a young stranger, it all might have been
so different.
And
the truth is, all of us need this capacity.
What
might happen if we could, out of the difficulties we have ourselves faced and
overcome, find the ability to look for that secret essence in all other
people? And not just in people but also in all of those hard hitting
circumstances of life? In all of the confusing conflicts that challenge us in
society?
Our
politicians seem incapable of this. Can you imagine what our government might
accomplish if our political leaders saw their work as a chance to see deeply
into the lives of our citizens, to consider the reach of their legislation and
how it might touch people in ways that lift and heal and affirm them?
What
happened to the American ideal that our future as Americans is one of promise
and not threats? That the world is ours to know and understand and partner with,
not control or own or make enemies of? How did we get so far from the belief
that here in this country we live to create, produce, achieve, help,
contribute, cooperate, learn, change, excel, and love?
Poet
and novelist Wendell Berry has said, "Rats
and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the
privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy."
How did we forget that?
How did we come to this
place in our land where so often our actions are enough to make the stars weep?
Most of us have been
through our own dark days and nights. We have felt the sting of life’s sharp
slaps in the face. We have been bent over and taken to our knees with grief and
loss and some form of failure. We have all messed up in our own ways. Why can
we not let those experiences gift us to look on others and on life with an “eye
for the secret essence that lies beyond,” for the ability to discover “the gem in
plain wrapping”?
© 2013 Timothy Moody
Comments
Post a Comment