Pietà
A distant cousin recently befriended on facebook, connected via a dear aunt of mine, just posted a yellowed and faded lo-res smalltown daily news photo of me as a high-school sophomore, escorting a good friend and classmate who’d most deservedly been named Homecoming Queen. The fact that she actually achieved that honor as a sophomore over formidable juniors and seniors proved not only the beauty of her appearance but moreso that of her character, heart, and spirit as well.
My memory of that particular event is dim at best, and wouldn’t exist at all but for that photo turning up nearly 50 years later. But seeing the photo did stir an old and familiar memory of those times … not quite sure why I share it here and now, but that’s what blogs are for, eh?
As I recall, the highlights of this particular celebratory evening were the annual student art show and auction in the halls and auditorium, followed by distribution of senior class rings during a sodas-and-snacks gathering (coffee and tea for the adults) in the library. Many details and much of the sequence of the event are forgotten, yet the event remains logged and lodged in memory.
Everyone’s yearbooks had been selectively circulated among friends and idols, faculty and fellows, for autographs accompanying the usual juvenile doggerel, belligerent barbs, and sweetheart sentiments. As Mr. Popularity (which puzzles me still), star (swimmer/diver) athlete, promising math, art, theater, and writing student, I appeared in many solo and group photos, perennial poses and spontaneous snaps alike. Several pages held heartfelt accolades, encouraging predictions, and friendly jibes. An entire page in the back held my steady girl’s romantic tribute to ‘us’. I truly cherished that yearbook, especially for those personal sentiments, of course, as every graduate surely does. I like to think my scribbles in others’ annuals held similar value and meaning for them as theirs did for me, but I wonder.
For the art show and auction I had labored painstakingly for many weeks on a realistic small poster-sized pencil rendering of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Learning that the master sculptor had chosen a fine translucent pale green marble from the Carrara quarries in the Apuan Alps of Tuscany (which still operate today), I used a sheet of heavy pastel paper in a similar color for the work. If I saw the drawing today, it probably wouldn’t live up to my memory of how good it was, but I vividly remember doing the work, struggling especially with contrasting the transcendent grief and grace in Mary’s eyes and the lifelessness in Jesus’ (despite my adolescent agnosticism). Seeing the frozen miracle Michelangelo’s actual life-sized work months later in Rome, I realized just how far I’d missed that mark. Yet savory scents of pastel dust, ebony pencils and drafting leads, kneaded, art gum, and ruby erasers rise with this memory every time.
The drawing took a blue ribbon in the show. I remember thinking I didn’t stand a chance against my best friend’s life-size sculpture (done in styrofoam covered in auto body putty and spray-painted bronze and black – how innovative!) of a man rising from a seated position, hand outstretched. But we both took blue – in different categories (sculpture and drawing). previous year we had taken first place together at the state drama competition with a duo performance of selected scenes from Murray Schisgal’s “Luv”. It was the first acting I’d ever done, though my friend was considerably more seasoned (he won best actor for the entire competition).
As the show and judging closed with winners announced, I left my sport jacket, yearbook, and other personals at the table with the drawing (blue ribbon affixed) to join everyone else in the auditorium for the auction, curious to see how it would go.
Dutifully yet nonetheless proudly, my parents won the bidding for my drawing. Bids were competitive in a friendly way, as everyone wanted them to have it – but at a price that at least acknowledged the workmanship, such as it was. Their winning bid was $50 and my steady girl’s mother was their stiffest competition … $50 doesn’t seem much today, but inflation-adjusted to 2010, about $325 dollars. They were my parents, after all, but that didn’t diminish the delight of the moment for anyone – and I certainly relished being among the highest bids of the auction. But better things lay ahead … I fidgeted in my seat as the auction dragged on, eager to get to the library and seize my senior ring at last, then rush to offer it to my steady girl (certain, of course, that she’d been happily awaiting that moment).
The party in the library was enjoyed by all and gave the evening exactly what everyone hoped – the pinnacle of the event that would fade gradually, sweetly, as families and dating couples leisurely wandered away. After bestowing the ring on my steady, we parted for the evening and joined our parents. Headed for home, my parents and I headed back to the table to retrieve the drawing, the ribbon, the yearbook, and the other things.
The drawing, the ribbon, and the yearbook … gone. Hasty inquiries quickly ended in shrugged shoulders, sincere utterances of sympathetic concern, but ultimately, in complete mystery.
I don’t recall being angry; but surely I was. My parents, if angry, didn’t show it then or later in private – at least not in my presence. The next day, in unspoken agreement, we put the loss behind us. In a few days more, no one at school mentioned it or seemed to think of it, and the theft seemed casually and easily forgotten. By graduation day a week or two later it was, by all appearances, forgotten by all, including my steady girl and our families. In the several decades since, however, the unsolved mystery and the lingering sadness of that evening’s loss have surfaced occasionally, perhaps a half dozen times, as one of many vignettes in the no doubt self-serving nostalgic gestalt of my youth.
Mixed emotions always accompany the memory of that evening, of course. I’m pleased to say the initial bitterness, anger, and resentment never resurfaced, and I honestly don’t recall them being intense or dominant at the time, compared to the pure puzzlement of it all. What emerges with the memory of it now is a melancholy brew of wonder about … who? Why? Have they thought of it since? Do they now? Did they ritualistically trash or burn the items? Surely it was a juvenile personal (albeit anonymous) attack of some sort. Does it prick their conscience a bit now, just as the mystery pricks my curiosity? Pardon the pun, but was I that much of a prick in my youth to invite and deserve such attacks? Probably so. Lord knows I was often unbearably self-overinflated, and can get there all too easily these days, without a good wife and daughters to keep me grounded (if not actually humble).
The greatest effect of this memory now is its resonance with the beauty of my parents’ love for me. Most of all, I cherish those two shining souls, gone now for twenty years and more, for gifting me with freedom from being overly attached to mere things like labor-of-love drawings and yearbooks filled with precious sentiments and poignant images, and I find I’m more than a little ashamed that I haven’t lived a life since that evening that fulfills the love, hopes, and dreams they poured into that particular freedom and the countless others they lavished upon me every day of their lives.
