It’s like Déjà Vu all over again?

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010


It’s like Déjà Vu all over again?

Music is uplifting. A good friend said he was still searching for purity or a sense of order in his life. I think he is a lot closer to finding it than he does but what does that matter. At least he is still searching.

He is a retired professor and I am fairly certain he has experienced a lot of order in the life he has led. I also know of a lot of order was missing from his life for years at a time. He now provides as much of his own order as possible. He does not have to rely on an employer to set priorities for him. He also has one former best friend that was trying to provide order where she saw none.

Because others do not see the order or can not understand it does not mean there is chaos. Order is a very personal thing. Purity is even more personal. One has to dig deep to see how these things interact and rule our lives.

I remember when I was as pure as the driven snow. As a kindergartener I knew that for my mother the world was out of order if the shoes were not shiny and ready to put on for Sunday mass. I decided that I wanted to help my mother. I proceeded to shine my first pair of shoes. They were brown; the polish was black and to me that did not seem to matter that much. It was just like coloring in the book and trying to stay within the lines. I could do that. Pretty much.

I remembered Rosie always put down newspaper because she explained to me her reasoning for that and I got it. What I didn’t get was that brown shoes should be polished with brown polish. I worked in the basement for what seemed like hours getting those shoes polished so my mother would have one less thing to worry about and would be proud of me. I was growing up. I was polishing my own shoes.

I did polish them and did a jam up job. The brown eventually turned black after about the sixth coat of Kiwi liquid polish. The bottle was not the same as it used to be the last time I saw it in the drug store for sale.


I had remembered to take the laces out of the shoes so at least they were still brown. The soles, heels and tongue were not. They were as black as a raven.


At first Rosie was not that happy about my prowess as a shoe polisher but I can remember very few times when she laughed that hard or for that long. She was pregnant with my little sister and I think that might have been what put her in labor.

So we had a little order in the house. The shoes were on the bottom stair all in a row ready for Sunday mass even though Rosie was in the hospital with my new little baby sister. One thing that was fortunate as we all went to church that Sunday without Rosie was that Hermie and my brother both had black shoes as I now did. Inside and outside. Why stop when you are providing order and you are so good at it?

The professor is a very old friend of mine and I have known him since he was a young man. He told me that now he is a listener. He is getting very good at it and spent too much time in his life being a talker. I know he probably felt he spent far too much time listening to me.


He was a very good listener on the afternoon I visited him in his studio. He even liked DakotaDawg and I’ll be darned if she didn’t take a real shine to him.


For the DakotaDawg there is order in her life as long as I can understand what she is trying to tell me in Hochdeutsch. Sometimes she likes to be like the professor and just listens. She does not always acknowledge understanding even though I am sure she does not need a translator most of the time.


Once in a while she would rather sing than listen. She does not seem to have the range of Mrs. Ladd’s wiener dog but she has some rather unique arias when I’ve been out the entire day.


DakotaDawg is pure dog. She knows only a few things. Even fewer of them seem to be commands although she has a real command of what she knows. She knows she loves us and her kitties and she protects and guards us every day. She purely hates taking medicine and can make some of the weirdest faces I have ever seen in my life.

The only one that I really remember that is even weirder than DakotaDawg’s is the one mom made when to show her what a big boy I was I held those shoes on my black hands with black fingers, arms and clothes.

It was pure déjà vu visiting my friend the professor and I am going to go see him again soon. He is always such a good listener and he plays some great music when he is painting.

He seemed to hear DakotaDawg even when she wasn’t speaking. I think I will put on some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I am in that kind of mood. Ohio.

POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 3:06 PM 0 COMMENTS

© 06.10.2010 steven d philbrick SR+