“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.” – Emily Dickinson
Ever since my grandkids were old enough to fill a diaper, I’ve been getting to know them better by practicing a little ritual with them. It starts with the simple notion that as humans we have a natural desire to be recognized and acknowledged. Even as grown adults, as we play our own version of the game of hide and seek, we eventually want someone to look under the proverbial bed and find us. We crave are own space but we also have the innate desire to be around other people, and more importantly, to be verified and confirmed for who we are. We can be an island for a short amount of time, but as we were reminded of so vividly during Covid, our fierce independence brought out some deleterious mental side effects. So, this business of being near one another is a push-pull phenomenon. We need our own areas, our “personal space,” but we also don’t want to feel that we are alone either.
Growing up with two other siblings, when noise reached fever pitch and tempers were short around the house, one of my parents could be heard bellowing, “Can we have some peace and quiet around here!” Hearing that voice of authority, all three of us kids would get quiet and slink away, usually outside to play basketball until dinner time. Funny thing about that slinking, though. Inside the house, one of our parents began missing our company. I know they did, because we could look through the windows and see our mom and dad talking and gesturing, kind of intensely, and not really looking like they were enjoying their precious peace and quiet. It seemed, at least from our perspective, that they were the ones who were being loud and temperamental.
And guess what happened? In short order, at least one but usually both of them would come outside with us, those little hellions that only moments before had been the cause of the crises. Dad would dive into the basketball game, which we had only just started when we saw them start to come outside, and my mom would walk amongst us passing out carrot sticks. I never understood the carrot thing, but apparently, she had learned through an issue of Better Homes and Gardens that carrots provide a wonderful re-bonding experience for families who are experiencing stress.
And so it was. We all had rejoined the family game. Where before we had gone hiding, each of us had shown our ID at the door of the family unit and found our way back into the show.
Earlier, I mentioned a ritual I have with our two grandsons, where I teach them what it looks like for me to recognize who they are. It begins when I appear at their door and anticipate that hug that all grandparents love. expect a hug. However, that doesn’t always pan out the way I would like.
Let’s say I’ve just walked in the door to their house and the kids are wild and crazy, running around like a herd of wildebeests on the African Plains of Instability. After a while, when they sort of burn themselves out, they wander over to me, and begin explaining everything that’s happened lately, including their latest toilet habits or when they tried to eat their cereal out of the dogfood dish.
They are still basically uncontrollably excited as kids are want to be, and it’s obvious that I’m not going to get that hug, which is a horrible thing for a grandpa. At this time, according to my ritual, I do nothing and say nothing but stand there, looking out into space as if they don’t exist at all in my world. I take that position because I know a secret about my grandkids. I know that eventually they will not be able to cope with not being recognized, that my lack of attention will eventually drive them batty. This is where things get interesting.
At this time, I simply look over to my wife or to their mother and ask, “Have you seen Cash or Carter? I haven’t seen them anywhere. The Cash and Carter I know always give me a hug. Hmmm,” I say, “I wonder what happened to them?”
Well, you can imagine what happens next… They come in for that hug like a couple of F-14’s on a mission from God. I mean, it works every time. Admittedly, it took a few times to get them trained, a couple of visits ignoring them, a few blank stares and so forth, but they did eventually learn that until they hugged me, nothing else much was going to happen. They began to recognize me to be the hugger I knew they could become. And the significance, I think, of what has become kind of a game in our family, is that now when I arrive at their house and begin with “Do I know you?”, they come right to me like wildebeests at a watering hole.
In her book How to Disappear, Akiko Busch describes in beautiful soliloquy the need for invisibility in our modern world where networking and wireless dialogue has made it almost impossible to be lost. Throughout her book she intimates that where once we could safely retreat and eventually be safely found, we now find it almost impossible to be invisible even for a short while. She follows that it is important for humans to have the capacity, and more importantly the freedom, to both be there and not be there.
Reading Busch’s chapter on imaginary friends, I had the sudden recollection of my childhood companion and protector, Davy Crockett. Perhaps it was the popular TV series that inspired me, but I had long conversations with the “king of the wild frontier” as I set out down the street with my play-rifle and coonskin hat, loaded for bear. Like most kids who have an imaginary friend in tow, I used both voices in my neighborhood excursions – “the me voice” and “the Davy voice.” Unknown boundaries that could never be tamed in my own unfinished mind, were not so scary when my frontier companion, Davy, could be sent out ahead to scout the unknown, then report back to me. He was unquestionably loyal, fearless and adaptable to every “treacherous” adventure.
Who are the people that recognize us then? That depends on what your priorities are. If we continue our most important relationships by including ourselves in what author Jack Kerouac described as the “mad swirl of everything to come,” we run the risk of not being recognized by anyone after a while, or at least not available. They will see us only as a function of the activity we are involved in or perhaps only see us as their imaginary friend. However, if we come out from under the covers of our game of hide and seek and allow ourselves to be discovered, and in effect take off our Davy Crockett hat, we immediately can be recognized say, “It’s me! I’m here!”
Do I know you? It is not exactly what we want to be asked as we are greeted by those we love, because it cuts to the heart of whether what they are seeing is the truth, the real McCoy, or some imaginary friend that is our temporary stand-in. While you may think that I am manipulating my grandsons into hugging me, that this is only pretend game, their hug tells me all I need to know about who they really are at the core. They may be running around with underwear on their heads or eating cereal out of a dogfood dish, but I get a chance, if only for a moment, to recognize them for who they really are – loving, caring, and empathetic. After that, I don’t care what they do, I know where to go, and who I’m going to find when I ask for them again.
