Giuseppe Rosso: Thanksgiving (1968)

" … an experience one cannot choose but for which might feel gratitude later."

I had not understood when, sixty-seven installments ago, I began this Being Exiled chronical. I thought I might be trying to release some trauma by recounting it; a strategy long ago rejected as ineffective by trauma specialists. I had no intention of discovering justifications for gratitude, for had we not been wounded by the experience? Didn't it ding our dignity and leave us wondering about our viability? Of course, it did, but those feelings seem no different from what any random day might deliver. Nothing's strictly one thing or another. We live bittersweet existences, usually more salty and savory than sweetness, anyway. As we age, we grow to favor bitter flavors and think of ourselves as more sophisticated for appreciating them. We find our friends in the most unlikely places and grow to appreciate experiences that might have otherwise just made us bitter.

I might as well feel grateful, for all was not lost. Much was lost, but much remains. Much was wounded, but more recovered. We were genuinely terrified at times. We lost more than anyone could deem reasonable. We never returned from our Exile, and some we'd hoped would greet us on our return had already gone ahead, ditching us without their necessary presence. My darling daughter Heidi left just a few scant weeks before we attempted to return. We found an empty living room where we slept before a cold fireplace to wait for our furniture to catch up to us. I stood in that marvelous front window that overlooks the center of my universe and wept with dread and gratitude, knowing I would never return from being Exiled.

The remaining world was not lacking charms. We distracted ourselves, moving back into a place we hardly remembered after twelve years gone. We remodeled until the old place seemed new and different as if it hadn't seemed different before. Our Exile continued, this time back home, for we struggled to assume a residency so rudely interrupted. The rhythms we'd established in all innocence before would not return, regardless of the diligence we attempted to employ. We would inhabit our good fortune again, though never again, it seemed, on our original terms. Love might also be wonderful the second time around, though it can't help seeming different and oddly unfamiliar.

I feel grateful to have found a place in this world. I reflect on how rarely anybody realizes their dreams, and I feel fortunate. I felt my fate had been dealt off the bottom of the deck before surprising myself with an unanticipated winning hand. I'd seen the opposite manifest as well when a well-planned fate turned to shit before me through no genuine fault of my own. Together, these produced a fire-or-ice puzzle. Would I have rather been Exiled this way or that? How ultimately important was self-determination, anyway? We might believe we know the way we could never know beforehand. I suppose I reassure myself, believing that I know. I've proven resilient to inevitable disappointments. I'm still learning that they were never really my fault but just one of the ten thousand outcomes that happen to every fortunate one. The luckiest might receive worse.

If being Exiled was supposed to be a punishment, it didn't quite work. Oh, it hurt plenty and seemed to take The Muse and me down at least a peg, but it didn't defeat us or hasn’t completely defeated us yet. It was a new beginning in that respect, a reordering of expectations, an opportunity to try, try again. Participation only sometimes seemed punishing. It sometimes seemed rewarding. It was like turning twenty again just as I was fixing to turn sixty. It provided opportunities to replay many of those early dilemmas while bringing considerably greater experience to play. They were the same dilemmas, but I was not innocent by then. Nobody knew me when I was the most down and out, except I'd come to know myself better by the time I was down and out that second time.

How else would I have confirmed whether all that struggle had been worth the effort had I not been given the opportunity to replay the struggle at a later date? By the time they turn sixty, many dream of retiring rather than facing a necessary reinvention from zero again. What a great and terrible blessing that challenge proved to be! The Muse and I must have been worthy recipients of such a rare and curious gift because we received it. We seem to have risen to the occasion. I would not have traded any valued possession in return for being Exiled, so The Gods, in their infinite wisdom, threatened to take everything I owned from me in return for an Exile instead. Who would I have had to have been to believe I could purchase such a lesson at a reasonable price? We had to risk losing everything to engage in the Exile game, but we could never have willingly engaged. Some results can only happen against one's will, contrary to preference and choice. Being Exiled seems a prominent example, an experience one cannot choose but for which one might later feel genuine gratitude. I believe those are known as Blessings in the end.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz