Make It Do
The day I journeyed through the Now Gate (presence and consciousness)
There’s nothing like spending a day with an 85-year-old retired Louisiana school administrator to give you a deep sense of what it means to make it do. Stereotypes do not exist here. None of your preconcieved notions of Silent Generation and Baby Boomer Louisianians will be applicable in this dimension. You can make all the Boomer jokes you want, but the punch line will not land. Saturday, April 23rd was a day I entered another dimension. Labels became meaningless. Events were timeless. There was a sense of the past, but only as it made the present more humorous, more enjoyable. The future was never thought of. The dead lived again, the living lived now. It began because it did not begin. I just rolled in, parked the car, hugged Canoo, gave her roses, cut the stems with the pruning shears she just happened to have at hand — in this dimension, (anything and) everything you need is at hand. We put the flowers in a watering can, which turned out to be exactly where they were most beautiful. Everything works out in this place, exactly as it ought to, and you never expected or imagined it; you never could have imagined it to turn out any better. I walked through her doorway, into what on the outside would be called a studio, 372-sqft, but which turned out to be the most spacious little heaven, exactly the right size, and filled with Canoo’s favorite books — a total of three bookshelves, each one lined from end to end with books — and her most treasured photos. Even the coffee table was a treasure because it was made by someone beloved and it had her initials carved into it — C.M.C. There was a painting on the wall by her artist brother, Jimmy, and the bookshelf by the window was made by her carpenter brother, one of the twins, I think it was Dick. The twins, Dick and Fred, come up in conversation a lot. They were the babies in Canoo’s family: “I never got any attention because of Dick and Fred,” she said with a loving smile and absolutely no hint of anything but good humor. Canoo was born right in the middle, after the older trio: Edmund, Teeny and Jimmy. All three of the older ones have passed on. Now it’s just Canoo, Dick, and Fred. Six children in total, born during the Great Depression, living through World War II, the JFK assassination, Vietnam, the Beatles and the Beatles breaking up, the election of a TV president — at least in Canoo and the twins’ case, the election of two TV presidents. Politics never came up. I doubt anything political was ever thought of; nothing political came to my mind, anyway. Religion only came up as a point of reference. This day, this dimension was spiritual in the widest sense, limitless, and entirely without label or denomination.
Frank came. He brought his friend who dearly wished to meet Canoo. Frank and Canoo have the strongest bond. Frank’s mother was Canoo’s first cousin. Frank was in Canoo’s summer school in Marksville, back before she moved to southeastern Louisiana to teach elementary and middle school and eventually become the principal. Marksville is where Canoo, Frank’s mother, and Frank were all born. It’s where I too come from in a way. I was really born in Alexandria, but I did live in Marksville for the first year or two of life, and I spent many summers there during my first decade. But it’s Frank who has the longest connection with Canoo. And it’s Frank who has been integral in her life especially in the last decade. He drove her up to New Jersey to visit her sister Teeny before Teeny died. He was there to support her when both Jimmy and Edmund died. He has become quite close to her nephews and nieces and is now almost like a son, the child she never had. Canoo never had children — well, no, that’s not quite right. She did not have the kind of children who are born of the body (and she never married) but how can we say that a lifelong teacher did not have children? Over lunch at a restaurant in nearby Houma, she shared with us many little anecdotes about teaching in the 1960s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. There was the little boy who spoke only Cajun French. It was the mother who told her to “make it do,” using the wrong English pronoun for imploring Canoo to please make something of her little boy. That’s what Canoo did for countless children, one of those being my own father, her godson. She showed them how to make it do. “Make it do” became the slogan, the catchphrase of the day. It was funny because it was so serious, funnily enough. For one day I entered this magical dimension where anxiety did not exist, and there were no regrets. There was only love and a determination to make it do. But that’s not even the best part! The best part is that it was so effortless. It happened easily, without thinking, without expectation, without planning. We walked in with open hearts and it came to us. All it asked in return was for us to make it do. Ask and you shall receive. Only connect. Only allow.
Originally published here: