Discombobulation

It was early evening, I was in the seventh grade, and had just returned home from baseball practice. Grandpa was seated on the couch with The New York Telegram and The Sun and The New York Times, all spread out beside him; my mother was in the kitchen fixing dinner, and as far as I knew, my younger brother was upstairs in our bedroom, and our father would soon be coming home from his office in downtown New York City.

My paternal grandfather, for whom words were important, loved to read newspapers, hand-held, open, or folded in front of him in such a way that he could read or doze at will, the latter going unnoticed, he thought, since he sat behind the paper’s creased or outstretched pages.  On this occasion, the news of the day was less compelling to him than the look of consternation on my face.

“Are you okay?” Grandfather asked.

“I’m fine,” I replied as I turned onto the stairwell, “just thinking about Mrs. Dalmas’ English class tomorrow. She believes vocabulary is important, and it’s my turn to bring in a new word, know the definition, and write a sentence in which it is used on the blackboard. My last turn I used ‘jeopardy,’ a word she liked, so I want a good one.”

He flipped through the sections of The Times then handed me the sports pages through two of the staircase balusters. “Page 1, left-hand column,” he said, “third paragraph down, the fourth sentence.” After laying my books and duffle bag on the stairstep I began to read, “Red Smith had the familiar, slightly,” here I paused, sounding out the unfamiliar word, “discombobulated look on his face that all reporters had when Casey Stengel held court in the Yankee’s locker room.”

“The seventh word,” he continued as he smiled, “look it up. Your facial expression matches what the writer is describing.”

The memory of this scene occurred to me in the middle of the night on January 6, 2021. Earlier in the evening, like other members of my family, I’d been riveted to the television, watching video of American citizens swarming up the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, then forcing their way into the chambers of the United States Congress.

Words spouted by eager, yet wary boots-on-the-ground news reporters included descriptions of the unfolding scene as: anarchy, mob rule, sedition, insurrection, and domestic terrorism. Amazement and concern, astonishment and fear punctuated their rapid-fire pronouncements while their eyes revealed the question: “Am I safe?”

Words that vied for my attention and described my feelings segued from shock, anger, disgust, and outrage to betrayal, embarrassment, woundedness, heartbreak, then finally to gloomy, fed-up, and exhausted.

But the word that later wrapped itself around my soul with a tenacious grip as I tossed and turned in the night was discombobulated. It is a word I rarely use while speaking or writing, but on this night, the one which summed up not only my response to the events of the preceding day, but the potpourri of feelings I’ve had over the last five years, and I’d venture to guess has been shared by many.

I’m not accustomed to being baffled by events for long periods of time, occasionally flummoxed and surprised, certainly, but they’re all fleeting moments that recede.

My grandfather had lived through many perplexing and daunting events and experiences during his lifetime. Certainly, political posturing had been confounding, disturbing and perplexing to him. And though he was a staunch law and order Republican, he was appalled by the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. He talked about the fear and uncertainty he felt during the two World Wars and despaired for those who suffered during the Great Depression even as he maintained steady work.

When, as a young adolescent, I questioned my family’s beliefs in a loving God and a knowable Jesus, he encouraged me to question and never judged my oft times rebellious points of view. I questioned the reasoning of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount when he declared that the poor, hungry, weak and meek, reviled and persecuted, and the merciful and pure in heart would inherit the earth and enter the kingdom of heaven. My grandfather replied, “Keep reading, and listen to what the words have to tell you.” He believed that God would speak to me regardless of what I thought about Him or how godly or godforsaken I ever believed I was.

It would be years after my grandfather’s death before Sigmund Freud played a part in my intellectual and soul’s development. Though the two would have disagreed about the source of hope and light, I think they would have agreed that venturing into the often-foreboding darkness of our human condition, and its discombobulation, can enlighten and help us be who we’re meant to be.

Mrs. Dalmas applauded my word choice, that I do remember. Whatever definition I scribbled on the blackboard along with the sentence demonstrating its use, however affirmed by her, is long forgotten. I don’t recall when my grandfather revisited that staircase scene and the New York Times article about Casey Stengel, but when he did, he reminded me that though the reporters’ faces betrayed their puzzlement, they also were smiling. He further stated that when perplexed and inundated by discombobulation and uncertainty keep asking the questions, try to smile at life’s absurdities, and trust that a light will appear.

_{photos courtesy of Stepping Stones and Etsy}

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