(Above: The Fool in the Tarot cards.)
I recently became a great uncle for the first time. As I looked at the baby photo of my youngest nephew’s son, I heard myself saying “I do declare,” the way my great Aunt Drucy could back in Mississippi during my childhood when a kind of southern-fried wonder would surface in her between lighting up another Kool when she was having a conversation at the honky-tonk cafe she owned or behind the wheel of the Studebaker she drove. I’d duck the smoke from her latest freshly lit cigarette during a weekend visit with her over in Jackson and smile as she said it because I loved the way she laced it all together - the ritualizing of smoking Kools, carrying on a conversation while doing other tasks, putting up with a child in her midst since she was childless herself, calming herself with a mantra without either of us back then knowing what a mantra was - with her “I do declare”s, smoke seemingly smearing the rouge on her cheeks as it checked it out momentarily before evaporating into the Mississippi atmosphere but not my atmospheric memories of such a place. Or maybe it wasn’t wonder at all that surfaced in her. Maybe it was just a way to feign interest as she enjoyed the smoke.
My younger sister is soon to declare “I do” at her wedding to her longtime girlfriend in the Smoky Mountains. When she first told me of their plans, I heard Aunt Drucy’s mantra in my mind because a real sense of wonder did surface within me - not at how two women can now marry deep in the mountains of Tennessee, but how she and my younger brother during our shared Mississippi childhoods escaped the emotional trauma in some way, the trauma I have spent my whole life trying to escape. Our parents died consecutive deaths - our father in a car accident, our mother of cancer - by the time I was 8 and my brother was 6 and my sister was 4. I once resented what appeared to be their happy childhoods where we were given such a loving home by our maternal grandparents, but that resentment long ago transformed into a sense of wonder. From my still solitary perch now at 66, I look on the full and shared lives they have made - are making - for themselves in wonderment and admiration and an abiding love. I just booked my airline ticket to Knoxville in October to attend the wedding and as I did so I had a memory of my sister, not much older than 4, singing “Because” in what her kindergarten referred to as a Tom Thumb Wedding. My grandmother had made her a yellow evening dress to wear in the “ceremony.” I remember singing the song with her in our old Plymouth as we drove to the auditorium making that curve in front of Roby’s Egg Farm and Antiques on the country road where we lived and feigning interest in what we were about to see but sitting in wonder next to her in the backseat as she wore that evening gown that the tomboy already raring inside seemed to resent as she grudgingly sang the lyrics. I’m happy that terrific little tomboy who so often sat by my side is now about to have a wedding ceremony of her own making in which she can revel and at which in wonderment I will be humming “Because” as she walks down the aisle with the woman who is about to become her wife.
My sister has always been a wanderer. She and her partner live a nomadic life in their RV. I always marveled at that but now am about to do the same thing without an RV. As my brother settles into being a grandfather - and when he retires from his medical practice settles even more into making his art in his studio - and my sister settles into her marriage, I will be settling into my new life as a lone pilgrim as I set off into the world. I am trying to get through the fear and doubt I am experiencing at this stage of getting everything in order to set forth - the donating of books and clothes, the selling of furniture and art, etc. - by attempting to have more of a sense of wonder about my instinct to wander. I just got off a Zoom call with the author Paul Quinn who was interviewing me about the process of “asking” for a book he is writing. He wrote an earlier book, Tarot for Life, which is about using the Tarot as an intuitive tool for self-discovery. He told me that the pilgrims’s life on which I am about to embark and the way I was talking about it with him as a leap of faith instead of just the latest attempt at escape reminded him of The Fool in the Tarot cards. He explained what that meant. I assume there are as many interpretations of the Tarot cards as there are interpreters. But this is what I found when I read the first one after I went searching for one about The Fool card on the internet. It corresponds with what he told me. “On The Fool Tarot card, a young man stands on the edge of a cliff, without a care in the world, as he sets out on a new adventure,” I read at biddytarot.com. “He is gazing upwards toward the sky (and the Universe) and is seemingly unaware that he is about to skip off a precipice into the unknown. Over his shoulder rests a modest knapsack containing everything he needs – which isn’t much (let’s say he’s a minimalist). The white rose in his left hand represents his purity and innocence. And at his feet is a small white dog, representing loyalty and protection, that encourages him to charge forward and learn the lessons he came to learn. The mountains behind The Fool symbolize the challenges yet to come. They are forever present, but The Fool doesn’t care about them right now; he’s more focused on starting his expedition.”
“I do declare,” I whispered, thinking the next time someone (including me) questions why I am about to become a pilgrim I will simply say, “… because …”
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Here is a link Tarot for Life by Paul Quinn.
Another beautiful column.
congratulations to your sister and her partner and to you and your great uncleship. i’m from knoxville and nashville (dad was from nash mom is from knox and still there) born and raised but live in SF. your words resonate so much with me and i hope you have a smashing time in the smokies in october. i’m going to knoxville in october too and am looking forward to/hoping the leaves are still raving with color!