The Family . . .
Zebulon Vance is playing now. His belly is full. His puppy is running circles around him. His older sisters in cooperation with his mother have now cleared the dinner table. His supper is already in the process of preparation. His last birthday was his fourth. The demands of life-sustaining work are being laid upon him. In a few minutes, he will be required to carry in more wood to keep the hearth fire burning.
In another time, in another day, a committee of learned scientists would vote on the number of grams of protein that Zebulon Vance would be wise to consume. They would vote on the milligrams of niacin . . . the micrograms of selenium. They would vote on the composition of his little body . For in that other time and day, it would be universally accepted that people are what they eat, and if they don't eat right, then obviously they wouldn't . . . couldn't . . . be right.
Mrs. Vance didn't have the luxury to sit down for a few minutes. She didn't get out the Wednesday newspaper. She didn't look for the sales. She didn't clip coupons. She didn't make the market basket shopping list. She didn't even plan a well balanced diet. She didn't consult anything but her survival instincts. She had nothing else to consult.
In another place, in another time, political action committees with vested interests in “family,” “marriage,” “morals,” “patriarchy,” “control,” “power,” “demonization,” “votes,” the power of the color “red,” would vex themselves with hysteria in writing the exclusion of the very existence of a part of society into constitutional law.
Committees, with non-recommended allowances of daily hate and bigotry, succumbing to the feeding frenzy of fear.
Committees, terrified of accepting the freedom to think for themselves, grasping instead. with desperation, to ignorance, myth, and prejudice of the life-controlling clerics of millennia past.
Zebulon Vance's day progressed . . . nearly like any of the 1500 or so days that had preceded it. Nobody stuffed him into a poly-styrene safety-harnessed cocoon and strapped him on the back of the buggy. Nobody hustled him around on a million errands. No other kid down at day care mashed his granola bar. Nobody gave him a little aseptic box of milk and cute little straw with which to blow bubbles and then have fun making white moustaches. Instead, his work was his play . . . his play was his work. His sister gave him a bowl of peas to shell. He ate enough in the process to get a tummy ache.
He was perceptive enough to realize that he would grow . . . get big . . . become like his older brother . . . become like his father. He watched the role of the woman at work, of the man at work. He longed to be big . . . big in body. . . big like his brother . . . big like his father. His notion of being big in spirit would take more time.
The evening meal soon arrived. He took his place, his own little private place, on the end of the bench . . . on the end of the bench at a right angle, next to the left hand of his father. His mother seated herself at the opposite end of the table. His older sister placed the steaming bowls of food on the table around her father. Mr. David Vance, a merchant and farmer, a former officer in the war of 1812, directed each of them to lower their head in thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth, for the blush of the summer harvest. Zebulon squirmed with impatience. His father glowered at him. His mother shrugged with exasperation.
The established ritual of the portioning of the food was initiated. Mr. Vance picked up the next empty plate. He looked across the table at the next recipient. Brief . . . effective eye contact was made. The affirmation of a bond was again re-validated. The primordial drive of every father as provider was rushing through him and sustaining a satisfaction that was indefinable.
Zebulon was next. His mother affirmed that he had been good and helpful that day. He hadn't teased the chickens like he had yesterday. Mr. Vance stirred the pot with his big fork. A small, choice morsel was found. It was carefully placed on Zebulon's plate.
Both the boy and his father knew that food would make him a man. Between the man and the man-child, it was only the man who knew that it would take more than food.
In another place, in another time, a series of men, for some archaic reason each called "Mr. Secretary," would sit at polished tables in opulent rooms. They would look at thousands of little Zebulon Vances as faceless, nameless, populations. They would devise and implement laws and programs that spelled out to three decimal places the composition of food that would convert the statistical norms of little Zebulon Vances into nutritionally correct men. They would appropriate money . . . define rules . . . implement 'guidelines'. They would demand, under penalties of fines and incarceration that the cooks and the bakers and the candlestick makers of these programs allocate and administrate a plethora of conflicting and confusing rules. It mattered little if these programs destroyed the nuclear family, drove the man from his own table, forced the television, the microwave, and the refrigerator into primary child-rearing devices. It mattered little if the new little Zebulon Vances were coached into eating by well timed TV commercials showing how to rethermalize the latest in totally engineered, totally unrecognizable, precisely identified, quantified, and politically corrected nutritionally labeled comestibles.
In the fleeting moment of eye contact between father and son, an instantaneous assessment of nutritional need and nutritional provision was made.
They didn't know that though.
They didn't need to know it.
Zebulon, with a look of impish anticipation, with the conveyance and communication of inherent trust in his father, inexplicably expressed his nutritional need, his relationship need, his bonding need.
Mr. Vance, with his assessment of not only the fulfillment of the physical and emotional need of this one son, was driven by and responding to the sinew of his cultural fabric. He must, and would apportion what was available to all, to all within his domain.
Zeb's older brother was cutting wood,
haying, tending the crops for the inevitable winter. They all were working hard, they were hungry.
His older sisters were being courted, expected to be taken as wives, expected to bear children, expected to administer households of their own. Sickly girls weren't marriageable girls.
His mother had been coughing more lately. She would try and hide it, but sometimes the sputum on her little hanky showed red. She was getting noticeably thinner.
And . . . with all of these conflicting decisions . . .
Mr. Vance made the best nutritional assessment decision for each that he could.
And . . . so he placed that small, but choice portion on Zebulon's plate.
There had to be enough . . . everyone would get his due . . . father would see to that . . . mother would make certain that he could . . . it would be understood by all.
In another time, strangers would come and gawk at the table of Zebulon Vance. With a little perception and reflection, the strangers could re-learn a valuable lesson . . . man does not live by dietary recommended intakes alone. Perhaps Mr. Vance erred in his assessment of Zebulon's caloric need. Perhaps Zebulon was chronically shorted of his recommended protein requirement. Perhaps his mother was chastised in the WIC clinic because she was seen spending her vouchers inappropriately. Perhaps Zebulon was a deprived child and never felt the mush of a mouthful of palliative Twinkie. Perhaps he was stunted by a couple of inches. Perhaps he should have filed a lawsuit for child abuse. But, perhaps his cup "did runneth over" . . . Runneth over with relationship, with parent-child bonding, with allowances of recommended daily nuturing. With the essence of real family.
Perhaps.
Perhaps, someday.
Perhaps the day will come.
A day when the visitors to that re-constructed home of days of yore, will be themselves of a new construct of family.
Yes. FAMILY.
Families of an inclusive dimension.
Families of strength, honor, diversity. Families so very committed to nurture. Families infused with the tolerance to honor the love of which their very existence is made.
Families with children, the offspring of the co-mingling of their parent’s sperm, the invitro-fertilization, the surrogate motherhood, the beautiful life of a child, new Zebulon Vances of a progressive age.
Families held together with the nuclear fusion and cohesion of two loving, committed, dedicated women, raising their children, their Zebulon Vances, their gift to the richness of humanity.
And even though Zebulon Vance became know as the “War Governor of the South”, resolute and highly principled, shielding the citizens of his state of North Carolina in the possession of their basic rights, motivating North Carolina to make the greatest contribution in men and spirit to the Southern cause, and his untiring efforts as Governor during the famine and sadness of war, ensured his place in the minds and hearts of the people he served.
But Zebulon Vance was of another time, another place, another era. The essence of his scriptural-based “Southern cause” has been exposed for its depravity. His concept of family was rich and traditional. But his concept is limited. Limiting. For family is simply the knowing that one belongs. For belonging. For the sharing of the very essence of survival and life. For the inclusive love of parent and child. Of sibling and sibling. Of adopted and birthed. Of being tied together with the blood of genetics and bound with the love of shared existence, but in the actuality of life itself, no necessity for the simultaneous duality of both.
A family is a family with or without the blessing of a religious creed. With or without the legal shelter of governmental system.
For family is really a simple entity of love and nurture and survival.
Family is what is in the heart of mankind and in the eye of the Inclusive God.
The Refectory Manager
In another time, in another day, a committee of learned scientists would vote on the number of grams of protein that Zebulon Vance would be wise to consume. They would vote on the milligrams of niacin . . . the micrograms of selenium. They would vote on the composition of his little body . For in that other time and day, it would be universally accepted that people are what they eat, and if they don't eat right, then obviously they wouldn't . . . couldn't . . . be right.
Mrs. Vance didn't have the luxury to sit down for a few minutes. She didn't get out the Wednesday newspaper. She didn't look for the sales. She didn't clip coupons. She didn't make the market basket shopping list. She didn't even plan a well balanced diet. She didn't consult anything but her survival instincts. She had nothing else to consult.
In another place, in another time, political action committees with vested interests in “family,” “marriage,” “morals,” “patriarchy,” “control,” “power,” “demonization,” “votes,” the power of the color “red,” would vex themselves with hysteria in writing the exclusion of the very existence of a part of society into constitutional law.
Committees, with non-recommended allowances of daily hate and bigotry, succumbing to the feeding frenzy of fear.
Committees, terrified of accepting the freedom to think for themselves, grasping instead. with desperation, to ignorance, myth, and prejudice of the life-controlling clerics of millennia past.
Zebulon Vance's day progressed . . . nearly like any of the 1500 or so days that had preceded it. Nobody stuffed him into a poly-styrene safety-harnessed cocoon and strapped him on the back of the buggy. Nobody hustled him around on a million errands. No other kid down at day care mashed his granola bar. Nobody gave him a little aseptic box of milk and cute little straw with which to blow bubbles and then have fun making white moustaches. Instead, his work was his play . . . his play was his work. His sister gave him a bowl of peas to shell. He ate enough in the process to get a tummy ache.
He was perceptive enough to realize that he would grow . . . get big . . . become like his older brother . . . become like his father. He watched the role of the woman at work, of the man at work. He longed to be big . . . big in body. . . big like his brother . . . big like his father. His notion of being big in spirit would take more time.
The evening meal soon arrived. He took his place, his own little private place, on the end of the bench . . . on the end of the bench at a right angle, next to the left hand of his father. His mother seated herself at the opposite end of the table. His older sister placed the steaming bowls of food on the table around her father. Mr. David Vance, a merchant and farmer, a former officer in the war of 1812, directed each of them to lower their head in thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth, for the blush of the summer harvest. Zebulon squirmed with impatience. His father glowered at him. His mother shrugged with exasperation.
The established ritual of the portioning of the food was initiated. Mr. Vance picked up the next empty plate. He looked across the table at the next recipient. Brief . . . effective eye contact was made. The affirmation of a bond was again re-validated. The primordial drive of every father as provider was rushing through him and sustaining a satisfaction that was indefinable.
Zebulon was next. His mother affirmed that he had been good and helpful that day. He hadn't teased the chickens like he had yesterday. Mr. Vance stirred the pot with his big fork. A small, choice morsel was found. It was carefully placed on Zebulon's plate.
Both the boy and his father knew that food would make him a man. Between the man and the man-child, it was only the man who knew that it would take more than food.
In another place, in another time, a series of men, for some archaic reason each called "Mr. Secretary," would sit at polished tables in opulent rooms. They would look at thousands of little Zebulon Vances as faceless, nameless, populations. They would devise and implement laws and programs that spelled out to three decimal places the composition of food that would convert the statistical norms of little Zebulon Vances into nutritionally correct men. They would appropriate money . . . define rules . . . implement 'guidelines'. They would demand, under penalties of fines and incarceration that the cooks and the bakers and the candlestick makers of these programs allocate and administrate a plethora of conflicting and confusing rules. It mattered little if these programs destroyed the nuclear family, drove the man from his own table, forced the television, the microwave, and the refrigerator into primary child-rearing devices. It mattered little if the new little Zebulon Vances were coached into eating by well timed TV commercials showing how to rethermalize the latest in totally engineered, totally unrecognizable, precisely identified, quantified, and politically corrected nutritionally labeled comestibles.
In the fleeting moment of eye contact between father and son, an instantaneous assessment of nutritional need and nutritional provision was made.
They didn't know that though.
They didn't need to know it.
Zebulon, with a look of impish anticipation, with the conveyance and communication of inherent trust in his father, inexplicably expressed his nutritional need, his relationship need, his bonding need.
Mr. Vance, with his assessment of not only the fulfillment of the physical and emotional need of this one son, was driven by and responding to the sinew of his cultural fabric. He must, and would apportion what was available to all, to all within his domain.
Zeb's older brother was cutting wood,
haying, tending the crops for the inevitable winter. They all were working hard, they were hungry.
His older sisters were being courted, expected to be taken as wives, expected to bear children, expected to administer households of their own. Sickly girls weren't marriageable girls.
His mother had been coughing more lately. She would try and hide it, but sometimes the sputum on her little hanky showed red. She was getting noticeably thinner.
And . . . with all of these conflicting decisions . . .
Mr. Vance made the best nutritional assessment decision for each that he could.
And . . . so he placed that small, but choice portion on Zebulon's plate.
There had to be enough . . . everyone would get his due . . . father would see to that . . . mother would make certain that he could . . . it would be understood by all.
In another time, strangers would come and gawk at the table of Zebulon Vance. With a little perception and reflection, the strangers could re-learn a valuable lesson . . . man does not live by dietary recommended intakes alone. Perhaps Mr. Vance erred in his assessment of Zebulon's caloric need. Perhaps Zebulon was chronically shorted of his recommended protein requirement. Perhaps his mother was chastised in the WIC clinic because she was seen spending her vouchers inappropriately. Perhaps Zebulon was a deprived child and never felt the mush of a mouthful of palliative Twinkie. Perhaps he was stunted by a couple of inches. Perhaps he should have filed a lawsuit for child abuse. But, perhaps his cup "did runneth over" . . . Runneth over with relationship, with parent-child bonding, with allowances of recommended daily nuturing. With the essence of real family.
Perhaps.
Perhaps, someday.
Perhaps the day will come.
A day when the visitors to that re-constructed home of days of yore, will be themselves of a new construct of family.
Yes. FAMILY.
Families of an inclusive dimension.
Families of strength, honor, diversity. Families so very committed to nurture. Families infused with the tolerance to honor the love of which their very existence is made.
Families with children, the offspring of the co-mingling of their parent’s sperm, the invitro-fertilization, the surrogate motherhood, the beautiful life of a child, new Zebulon Vances of a progressive age.
Families held together with the nuclear fusion and cohesion of two loving, committed, dedicated women, raising their children, their Zebulon Vances, their gift to the richness of humanity.
And even though Zebulon Vance became know as the “War Governor of the South”, resolute and highly principled, shielding the citizens of his state of North Carolina in the possession of their basic rights, motivating North Carolina to make the greatest contribution in men and spirit to the Southern cause, and his untiring efforts as Governor during the famine and sadness of war, ensured his place in the minds and hearts of the people he served.
But Zebulon Vance was of another time, another place, another era. The essence of his scriptural-based “Southern cause” has been exposed for its depravity. His concept of family was rich and traditional. But his concept is limited. Limiting. For family is simply the knowing that one belongs. For belonging. For the sharing of the very essence of survival and life. For the inclusive love of parent and child. Of sibling and sibling. Of adopted and birthed. Of being tied together with the blood of genetics and bound with the love of shared existence, but in the actuality of life itself, no necessity for the simultaneous duality of both.
A family is a family with or without the blessing of a religious creed. With or without the legal shelter of governmental system.
For family is really a simple entity of love and nurture and survival.
Family is what is in the heart of mankind and in the eye of the Inclusive God.
The Refectory Manager
posted by The Refectory Manager | 7:30 PM
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