Sebastian's LessonA scalding passion for justice burned in my heart;a furnace in which mere emotion could be pounded into the hard steel of equality, the framework of any righteous citizen’s mindscape. I was about four, I think. Maybe five? The previous night I had stayed up with my grandfather: tall, lean, gentle, deliberate. He peeled me a tangerine with a pocket knife older than I was— which isn’t saying much, but it was a big deal at the time. He helped me glue together a plastic fighter jet, while I made a mess of the table with the glue and newspaper. Later, we poured over maps and encyclopedias and journals and he told me what the world was, (dinosaurs, Napoleon) and what the world is, (highways, airplanes) and what the world should be (summer home, security). My mind was a sippy cup that could only hold so much wonder and bewilderment— magnets, the equator, longbows, Sicily— it sloshed around and overflowed. I was the smartest boy in the whole world apprentice to the wisest man who ever lived. The next morning he went outside to play with my sister. By his decree, I was to remain in the kitchen until lunch, without reason or exception. I stood at the back door, a thin sheet of glass between the A/C and the warm air of a waning summer. Smoldering, I watched her kick her legs on the swingset, pushed gently by my grandpa. I watched and mourned the death of equality, hoping that she’d fall off the swing, or get carried away by birds, or he’d realize she was just a boring three year old girl. The tension of the injustice was unbearable. I littered the back porch with pieces of the door on my second kick, and I fell on my rear and cried in horror of myself. Grandpa removed the glass splinters; he didn’t speak, but he shook his head from time to time, and sent me to the guest room until my parents came to serve supper and justice. |