12-24-2024 4:53am

THE MEASURE : Melancholy

Lesley Misko Editor

by Phil Repko*

There’s an old commercial (I think it’s from Germany) that shows a grandpop doing some unusual weight training. In various vignettes over the course of a year, he is seen lifting a weight – a kettlebell - from between his legs on the floor to a position above his head and at full arm extension to the front. It is not a typical exercise or weight resistance movement. His neighbor sees him, at various intervals, including the early points where he can barely move the weight from the floor. Her facial expression says she believes the man is a little nuts.

The revelation at the end of the advertisement is moving. The previously defeated old-timer who introduces the commercial has been transformed. He is still old, but he is impeccably dressed. He looks strong and confident as he arrives at his daughter’s home for a Christmas dinner. And, after helping his granddaughter to open his gift to her, the audience sees how not crazy the man is.

The Christmas tree star he has gifted is beautiful, but more important is the moment: he has planned and prepared for this. With strength and determination that does not falter, he lifts his granddaughter in the same sweeping movement as the kettlebell exercise, so that she might victoriously place the star atop the Christmas tree.

I need a towel to wipe the paper I have written this on. (No, not really.)

Melancholy, especially at this time of year is the topic for the story. I have reached the conclusion that melancholy, as I now experience it, is a product of luck, and grace, and serendipity. One cannot feel longing, regret, or pangs of sadness as a state of mind unless s/he has been happy, content, or jubilant in some past setting. The surprise of great luck or fortune is the base ingredient for this wonderful gift – the gift of melancholy.

But the waterworks are never far away these days, so I have taken to wonder where this melancholy comes from. You see, life always gives reasons for one to be sad, but reaction to a sad event, or tragic news, is not the same as the pensive but inexplicable wash of longing, regret, disappointment, or dismay that comes with melancholy.

Yesterday was a waterworks day for me, and I have no idea why. All told, life is pretty good. God has given me myriad reasons to be joyful and glad – and usually I am. The trouble is that I spent the better part of life proving to others, but especially my children, that emotions were child’s play. Sure, we have them, but they are meant to be managed, controlled, and ultimately mastered. And then my kids and grandkids catch me crying at pharmaceutical commercials with kettlebells as a protagonist!

In the morning, my wife and I watched a documentary on Michael Jack Smith, the greatest Phillie of all time, and probably the greatest 3rd baseman of all time. I was verklempt throughout. Michael Jack was notorious for being stoic, aloof, and seemingly arrogant. The documentary highlighted his inability to connect with the fans. He overthought everything, and never let on that he had feelings – unless he was taking critically harsh jabs at all his critics.

I was in grade school when Mike Schmidt made the big leagues, and I loved him. I think I loved him for all his bravado and the veil he wore to keep the rest of the world at bay. But mostly, I loved him for the defiance. He was going to show the critics who he really was, and he succeeded to a degree that is hard to fathom when you follow his story.

When he retired, mid-season, the catalyst was a brand of selfishness (for those who wished to be critical). Schmidt walked away when he could no longer live up to his own expectations. He had set standards, and pursued them. He had failed often. But this time, in his 18th season, he knew that he had lost the ability to compete with himself. The standards were no longer within a reasonable reach.

I knew the story. I had lived through it more than 30 years ago. But I cried anyway. When he made his retirement announcement, he described himself as a boy from Dayton, Ohio with two bad knees, who dreamed of being a professional baseball player. As he fell completely apart emotionally, he blubbered, “I’m so glad the dream came true!” in a choked voice. I cried again, as I had cried on that day in 1989.

I need to reel it in here just a little, as I also confess that I knew and know that Schmidt earned a great deal of the grief he was given. I identified then and now with the drive to have life’s successes dictated by personal drive and willpower. Schmidt paid a price for the distance he kept, but he also won the grandest battle: he masterminded a level of success that may have been impossible otherwise.

If you haven’t seen the Michael Jack Schmidt documentary yet, and you are a fan of human achievement, you must watch the show. It’s great.

But it’s the gift of melancholy that rises to the top of this rumination.

My granddaughter’s dance recital/Nutcracker performance was also last night. So I found myself choked up a few times during that, because I sat there with my wife, my son and daughter and their family (including my son’s mother-in-law) and another son and family. I watched the two three-year-olds in the audience play ring around the rosy at intermission, and I listened to them ask questions about the magic in the Nutcracker story. I didn’t cry, but the sweetness of the moment had me ready to let loose with emotion.

At home later, it occurred to me that I needed the wonder of childhood Thanksgivings and Christmases of the past 50 years to build a foundation for the heaviness of the mood.

I was reacting, I think, to seeing the grandchildren live in the moment and enjoy each other’s company. In my mind, and I think in theirs, (though they would not be aware of it) was the overwhelming power of anticipation as Christmas comes forward on tiptoe. They cannot equate this year’s dance recital with anything, but each year, we talk about the holidays for far longer than they last. This is no different. For a few weeks in December each year, our mood is heavily influenced by an accumulated recollection of every season that we have experienced before.

My moral, if an essay must have one? If you are missing someone this holiday season, go ahead and miss them with all your heart. Cry your eyes out. The stoicism and control that came in handy in multiple situations throughout your life are inconsequential now. You needed the rapture of a life lived in the grandest of moments to set the stage for this. I’m saying we should wallow in the bitter sweetness of our own melancholy. Embarrassment with the loss of composure is truly a manifestation of weakness. I think this now.

I think it is also important to note that permission to revel in current grief is universal. It may be easier for those of us who are well-seasoned to take the sober approach when we have circumstances to do so. That is, we may give ourselves the grace to grieve, as we tend to slough off the immature instinct to disguise our true selves. Managing melancholy is not for the faint of heart, but it need not be for the wise and measured either. Give yourself the space to miss a loved one BUT do not forget to celebrate the wonderful experience that fostered the current feeling of emptiness.

So, I cried to start the day with the re-experiencing of the joy and grief of my baseball hero. I ended the day with more than a bit of moisture brought on by the warmth of a dance recital; a family moment that made me ache for Christmas mornings with my eight brothers and sisters in a drafty old farmhouse in the 1960s and 70s.

I almost forgot that I watched the series finale of Blue Bloods in the middle of the day, and saying good bye to those characters in the context of the final episode was also worthy of some melancholy. For the past fourteen years, there has not been a finer show on TV. I know Blue Bloods is the "procedural drama" in a vein that has been done to death. But for most of the run, the writers have been tremendously honest and the characters have been whole and genuine.

The TV show fits the profile. I am so glad to have followed the show for so long, and I am sad to see it end. Looking forward to the next episode was always so fun. I needed the enjoyable past to allow for the germination of the sadness.

Don’t be afraid to embrace the awful heft of current mourning and past exuberance. They are kindred spirits and necessary foils. Enjoy your holidays, even if you need a box of tissues to access the gratitude and wipe away the pain.

Merry Christmas.

* * Phil Repko is a career educator in the PA public school system who has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.