Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

When my grandfather lost the second love of his life, I worried he would suffer acute loneliness. My grandmother and he enjoyed thirty-eight years together before she succumbed to cancer. He soon after met Ms. Rose. Though they never married, they were the focus of each other’s attention for twenty years. They loved watching Philadelphia sports teams, sharing a bowl of vanilla ice cream — only on Sundays — and recalling the great Motown doo-wop groups of the 60s. She took ill and he was again, suddenly, without a partner.

At nearly 90 years old, he refused an elder care home. A nearby aunt paid his bills and shopped for him, but she had her own family to care for. Shortly after Ms. Rose’s funeral, I visited him, told him I had a surprise. I hooked up an old computer and said if you ever need to talk all you have to do is hit this button. This was in the early days of Skype. We had just begun to chat to each other in real time using our computers. I gave him further instructions, then dialed my wife and children in Burlington, Vermont.

When their faces showed on the screen, he leaned back. He grimaced then walked away. He said, “Take it with you.” I was surprised by his reaction. He wanted nothing to do with this technology. He sat in his lounge chair and clicked the TV remote. ESPN commentators counted down baseball highlights that loudly filled the room.

Born at the end of the first World War, it occurred to me how much my grandfather took in the worlds’ advances. Everything from commercial air flights to space travel to color television to personal, cordless phones that fit in your pocket. Now this, talking to his family through a small TV-like screen. It was just too much for his spirit. Where did all of this begin?

Today’s poem makes it apparent how powerful human ingenuity is, how wondrous it is, but also, too, its limitations. Technology cannot console and quiet our restless, lonely spirits. Only we can.

Genesis
by Megan Pinto

God made the world with his mouth.
He spoke, and heavens appeared. 

Imagine a room with no windows
or doors                                            (once, trapped on an elevator in Paris

                                                                     far away from everyone who knew
                                                                    my name, I was free to be anyone).

Even before sun, there was light–
God smiled and his teeth

gave off an ethereal glow. There are places
                                                                    I can’t go, like the deep sea, where

                                                                         I could not watch a bathynomus
                                                             giganteus emit light. There are things

                                                                  I cannot say, like how dinoflagellate
                                                             who fornicate, relate to dinoflagellate

who divide themselves into two.
All power is a kind of force.

My father tells me when he was a child,
he was bad. Nuns beat his wrists and slapped

his hands with sticks. Sometimes his pinkie
will not fully flex. When he recalls these days

                                                                  I do not know what to say, but I stay
                                                    on the phone and we breathe. He tells me:

You know, I hate hanging up the phone.
Whenever I do, I’m alone.

“Genesis” by Megan Pinto from SAINTS OF LITTLE FAITH © 2024 Megan Pinto. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.