Maybe (Maybe Not) (4 page)

Sure, sometimes these activities are just a matter of taking care of personal business or routine tasks. But as often as not, we use these times to reflect and talk to ourselves.

Or meditate—even pray.

Just because you aren’t on your knees in church or sitting still in a cramped position doesn’t mean you can’t be talking to God. Just because both you and God are busy doesn’t mean you can’t be in touch.

Such times are the sacred part of the secret life.

Such times keep my soul sane.

When I asked my mother difficult questions, she would avoid complicated explanations by saying, “Someday you’ll understand.” Lovey taught me that while I was waiting for some understanding to come, I could iron a shirt.

W
hile I was filling out a form this week, I wondered how many times in my life I have written down my name, place of birth, and address. It seems like such simple information, yet it has complications.

NAME:_________________________________

The first blank on your birth certificate and every other form and application you’ll see for the rest of your life. However, “What’s your name?” and “What do people call you?” are questions with shifting answers.

My parents chose “Robert Edward Lee Fulghum” because my daddy was a Civil War buff and admired the general. But the registrar of births could only handle
three names. My folks settled for “Robert Lee Fulghum.” When I asked them, “Why Robert?” they couldn’t remember.

“Bobby Lee” was what my parents usually called me.

“Sonny boy.” My dad called me that, child and man, all his life. The day I went off to first grade and the evening I caught the train for college, and the night of my wedding and the day of the birth of my first child, it was the same: “Good luck, sonny boy.”

There are even more—about thirty names in all, but that’s enough to make the point. All of these are names given me by other people. But not names I would have given myself. My name is not mine, it’s theirs. It’s a series of costumes put on my life by other people.

I remember reading in some anthropology book about cultures in which your original name is given you by your family until you are old enough to choose a name for yourself. I would have liked that.

In high school, I wanted to be called “Doak” or “Buck” or “Ace.”

Later, when I was in seminary in Berkeley, I went to foreign movies and always stayed for the credits at the end to see if I could find some elegant, mysterious, strong name from another country that I could use. “Miloslav” or “Czabt” or “Jean-Pierre.”

In the sixties, when the hippies reached for more expressive names and I considered myself at least semi-hip, I briefly considered “Nigel Seven Morningstar” as a name tag connecting me to the Age of Aquarius.

But now I guess it’s too late or too much trouble. The name is not that important anymore—it’s the tone that counts. I feel like an old dog I know. He will come to any name you call him, just so long as your demeanor carries with it the promise of affection or food.

An actor I met in Roanoke, Virginia, solved a name problem for me. He’s my age and has grandchildren. We talked about the hidden disappointment of names that get stuck on you when your children have children. This happens at a time when you have reached seniority in the ranks. You feel experienced and wise. Some respect is due. You deserve it. And then some slobbering little bundle of joy who can’t speak the language starts calling you “Boppa” or “Nungnung” or “Moomaw.” And everybody thinks it’s so damned cute. Not only does the child call you that, but everybody else in the family starts calling you that. There’s nothing you can do about it. You feel for sure like the old family dog.

How can you have a dignified role in the life of the family when everybody thinks of you as good old “Moomaw” or “Gandy Bippy”?

But this guy I met in Roanoke beat the system.

Actually, his wife had the idea.

Her name was plain old “Mary.” She hated it all her life. She saw this “Gandy Bippy” thing coming and was determined to head it off. When her first grandchild reached the age of semiconscious intelligence, she carefully explained to the child that Grandmother was to be called “Delilah” and nothing else. “Delilah”—after that sexpot in the Bible who did a number on old Samson.

Her husband didn’t much care to be called “Samson,” but since he had been “Fred” all his life and didn’t much care for that either, he opted for the German nickname “Fritz.” He’s not German, but “Fritz” had a certain lively, foreign sound.

It took the family a while to get used to the fact that Granny and Grandpa were usually unavailable for child-care duty. However, Delilah and Fritz would be glad to take the children to the zoo or anywhere else, anytime, just call their names.

P
LACE OF BIRTH:____________________

How many times have you filled in that blank? All our official records bear it. Our obituaries will carry it. “Where were you born?” The question always comes up.

And from me always gets a reply of “It’s not really very important.” My family and I lived there about six weeks and have never returned.

Ask me instead where I spent my childhood, where I spent those years of grade school and junior high school and high school. Ask me what it was like one mile in any direction from my house at age nine. Ask me where I grew up. Ask me, “Where do you come from?”

There’s yet another question in this vein—one never asked in official forms. It exists only in the secret biographical records of my mind.

CONCEPTION:_________________________

Where was I conceived—and under what circumstances?

Since both my parents are dead, I’ll never know.

But I’d like to know. I’d
really
like to know.

They spent the years I can remember sleeping in separate beds in separate rooms. Never once did I see them embrace or kiss one another. At times they fought, but most of the time they were politely civil. They led lives apart.

I wonder how was it for them at the beginning. How were they feeling when I was conceived? As best I can figure, it must have been in early September. Where? Was it planned or an accident? A matter of love and passion or a matter of course? Was I wanted? Did they at least love each other then?

For reasons I cannot articulate, it would settle my mind to know.

Over the last year, I’ve asked many people these two questions: “Where were you conceived?” or “Where were your children conceived?”

A surprising number of people seem to have come into being as a consequence of passion and laughter. Not a bad mix for a beginning. Sites and occasions
that stand out so far in my poll: in an elevator, on a windowsill, in a boat, in a closet, in the backseat of a car, in an outhouse, in a bathroom during a reception after a funeral, in a church office, in an airplane, and in front of the TV while watching Nixon make a speech.

A young friend told me what she knew about her conception and birth.

For reasons she will never comprehend, she was placed for adoption the week she was born, even though her parents were married at the time. Years later, when she was thirty, she was reunited with her biological parents. She asked many questions, especially about the “why” of the adoption. The answers were difficult and confusing to her, because her biological parents were equally confused about it—then, and now.

Her father told her it might make some difference to her to know that when she was conceived, he was in love with her mother and she with him; that they were engaged to be married in late summer. They were young—not yet twenty-one. It was April. And that on a lovely, warm Saturday afternoon in the spring in Texas, they went on a hike along a remote and secluded section of a river. They waded in the water, played, splashed one another until they were soaking wet. They took their clothes off and made love in great passion, in the hot sunshine, on a sand-bank
in the middle of the river. The Spanish had named that river “
Los Brazos de Dios
”—the arms of God.

In a way, this story answers the question of my own conception.

Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same.

We come into being in the arms of God.

A
fter the blanks for name and place of birth on official forms, we come to

ADDRESS:_____________________________________________

Where do you live? For many of us, the answer changes often in a lifetime.

Nearly one in five Americans moves every year. About half the population has moved in the past five years, according to the most recent census. More than 19 million people will move between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year.

Not surprising. We’ve always been a nation of migrants. We think the earliest arrivals came across a land bridge from Asia, and 65 million more people sailed from Europe to North America between the seventeenth
century and the Second World War. Even after we got to the edge of this continent, we kept on moving.

The genealogists in my clan say I can follow my own genes by starting with a Danish sea raider, who rowed off to what became Normandy in the eighth century. From there the gene strain invaded England, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington State.

Still there’s no settling down. I’ve moved my domicile twenty-seven times in fifty-five years. And that’s not counting short-term addresses connected to college dorms, summer jobs, and military training.

I have been living aboard a houseboat in Seattle. Now, for part of the year I live in another neighborhood—San Juan County, Utah.

You may not realize it, but you’ve seen this Utah landscape. It’s high desert, red-rock canyon-lands country. John Wayne filmed some of his most famous cowboy pictures hereabouts. And every now and then, there is an ad on TV showing a beautiful woman in an evening gown marooned alone with a late-model pickup truck on top of a thousand-foot sandstone spire out in the middle of nowhere. These places are in my new neighborhood.