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necessary socio-emotional machinery
Wednesday, April 23 2003
It was cold again today, but this last death rattle of winter came too late to staunch the flow of the juices of Springtime. Many trees, particularly those low in the Esopus Valley, look as if they've been lightly sponged with daubs of yellow-green paint. Just a week ago, these same trees looked like they were quite prepared to remain leafless until July. Now suddenly they're almost on schedule for the same late-April leafout familiar to me from such places as Staunton, Virginia and Oberlin, Ohio. It's interesting that the Spring leafout happens at about the same time in such widely different latitudes. I suspect one of the reasons is the difference in the types of trees. In Staunton, for example, the forest is comprised mostly of oaks, and these tend to leaf out later than maples, the primary component of the deciduous forests here in the Catskill foothills. The oaks here still seem as lifeless as they did back in February.
I met Gretchen this evening at our favorite local restaurant down on the banks of the Esopus. With her was Tony, one of her clients. She was ticked off at another of her clients who, after hearing her complain about WASPy traits in her mother, had made the observation that she didn't seem Jewish. "Come on!" she demanded of us, "Do I seem like a WASP to you?" It was a most unWASPy question delivered in a decidedly unWASPy manner. Later she conceded that some of her least WASPy traits might be a reaction against behaviors modeled by her mother. True WASPs, though, are incapable of reacting against the WASPyness of their parents. They lack the necessary socio-emotional machinery. I'd cite myself as an example, but I've never reacted against any of the traits modeled by my parents, except (perhaps) when intoxicated, but in those cases I might have just been reacting against that other slag who occupies my body when I'm sober.
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