Dear _____,
Every year on this day
for many years, I rum-
inate on this word and
at last I have an of-
fer to make to you, of
how to understand it.
I have to admit, this
comes on no authority
of revelation, but of
attrition, against so
many suppositions of
what hope is.
On a Christmas Eve
long ago, I watched
my mother walk to her
desk and sit down.
She opened a drawer
and withdrew a card
of her stationery,
opened her inkwell
and withdrew her pen
from its cap, and set
about the project of
inscribing to me a
message to accompany
her gift to me.
Abruptly, she turned
to my father, held up
her pen, and said,
"Here. That's all I
can do."
Within two days, she
died of surgeries for
an unsuspected tumor
of the brain. She had
commenced her inscrip-
tion, and my father,
thinking her only the
worse for Champagne,
gallantly completed
and signed the note.
I was terrified; they
would be horrified,
with this disclosure,
but for their know-
ing that the nature of
my life would mean not
raising a family, and
having to give their
gift to me by other
means. I credit them
both with this percep-
tion, some many years
before I could accept
it. They didn't like it.
But they did love me.
Now, I will offer a
way of assimilating
this popular word. It
is natural, possibly
the ultimate struc-
turing energy of our
system. It is not, I
am viscerally certain,
a noun. It is only a
verb; not an object,
but an aspect of the
act of living that is
passed on only congen-
itally, and so absurd
to address eschatol-
ogically.
I am glad to have a
card signed by one of
them for them both,
with the material
verb being the only
word my mother was
able to write. Es-
chewing, as we did,
even the pronoun of
the first person,
that's the only word
in her hand and the
last one there would
be.
Now we come to an oc-
casion renowned for its
invigoration of what is
called, "hope," and one
does not demur because it
simply isn't possible
to interrupt that act.
Moreover, anything which
encourages an apprecia-
tion of its universality
is not to be refused.
But you and I turn to
lifetimes of seeing this
energy enacted in a vari-
ety of extremes, no lambs,
no shepherds attending, in
a very sweet awe at the
gift that it is. It is
fundamentally maternal,
inextinguishably maternal
of course, to be conscious
of it with almost every
breath. But it is assured,
it is secured within all
human life.
I used to worry, that hope
is an obligation; I nearly
would argue that it is,
but one need not. What is,
may I propose, an obliga-
tion, is the certitude
that at the end of the day
that we are its evidence
in what we give.
Not that one could know.
I would just like you,
dear _____, to understand
I am grateful to be your
contemporary, and to know
I am.
Franz Josef Haydn
Die Jahreszeiten
Komm, holder Lenz!
1799
René Jacobs
RIAS Chamber Choir
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Harmonia Mundi, 2004©
