By now most of you know that Wilson Reid Gilhooly was born on November 15th. to my daughter Emily and her husband Matt. Here Wilson is figuring out how to use eyeballs.
This is the first male baby and family member I have ever known. I have two younger sisters. Katy and I have two daughters. Then came wonderful Rowan our granddaughter.
Now Wilson.
A boy child with 25% of my DNA. What to make of him? Changing boy diapers is more complicated than changing girl diapers, I've discovered.
But is there anything I can teach him, in a grandfatherly sort of way, about being a man?
At 70, I suspect I am not going to have much of an influence on his life. I can't take him fishing. I really don't know how to do the outdoors. I could take him to church; though I'm not sure how impressive that would be to, say, a seven year old.
George Bean at St. John's Lynchburg once advertised me to Episcopal bishops as a "man's man". That was the first and only time I have ever been called a "man's man." (I supposed he was speaking in code to his colleagues, suggesting I wasn't gay, and so improving my employability in the early 80's.)
A family friend has said I am "a good father for daughters." I worked my way through graduate school as a night watchman in a woman's dormitory. I served at two women's colleges as a Roman Catholic priest. Those were important moments. As an Episcopal priest I worked at the then all male Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University, but those didn't make as much of an impression.
Maybe since even Kroger lists "gender fluid/non-binary" as survey categories, this shouldn't be a question.
But around the time Wilson was born Robert Bly died. I own a copy of his Iron John - A Book About Men. I had parishoners who went off into the woods and banged on drums. "I want men to be better fathers than their own fathers were," Bly wrote. His second wife was a Jungian therapist, and Bly, the poet, anti-war activist, constructed a "mythopoetic" world of initiation and imitation which borrowed from the Grimm brothers.
My copy was a Christmas gift from the Rev. Nancy Tiederman in 1990 and was inscribed "to a dear male friend and sensitive fellow".
The same month Wilson was born Jane Campion's "The Power of the Dog" came to Netflix. The title is biblical; from Psalm 22, 21: "rescue my soul from the sword, my loneliness from the grip of the dog." The anti-hero among the dysfunctional men in the tale is Phil, the obvious dog from the title. Yet he too is so lonely. By now you have probably seen the movie and have your own analysis. If only he and they had better fathers than their own.
Maybe I will leave Wilson something. I could bequeath him my copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", with the hope he will see what it means to be a bright romantic. "Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God's name." (Song of Myself #48)
I could give him my copy of my candidate for the Great American Novel, Moby DIck. There WIlson would learn the force and beauty and horror of Old Testament America, the dark romanticism of biblical kings and bastard slaves. We are, says Ishmael, " a crew chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals. . . reckless and mediocre". We will chase Job's whale, the white whale, with our godly technology in hand, and be led by mad men to death. An unlikely man is resurrected to tell all.
Though, for his first Christmas this year, I'm giving Wilson a "Paw Patrol" t-shirt. He'll look good in it. (Rowan loves that series. She likes Skye, but always imitates Marshall, who, whenever he tumbles over something in Adventure Bay, gets up and says with a sigh, "I'm okay".) Remember Wilson, "No job's too big, no pup's too small - Paw Patrol". I'll have Rowan remind you.
For this Christmas, Wilson has given me these memories and this meditation.
Thanks Emily and Matt. Thanks Wilson.
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