Seek and Hide

The kabbalists say that God is hiding in plain sight everywhere we’re not looking. In swamps and war zones and the faces of children. Presumably God wants to be found but also sometimes just feels like playing hard to get. Does not want it to be a walk in the park, hence the seeking. Just to keep things interesting. My great-granddaughter Madelyn knows all about this game. She likes to play what she calls Seek and Hide. In the life of every baby, first comes peek-a-boo, then comes Seek and Hide. Both games are existential exercises. They begin in subterfuge and end in acknowledgment. I’m here! You’re here! God’s in the closet! Let’s party! Madelyn’s game involves waiting for Frank to look for her curled up in a ball under the coffee table and screeching with delight when he succeeds in finding her. She’s willing to be the one who seeks, but she much prefers being the one who hides and gets found. To imagine that someone is really looking for you and will not be satisfied until he finds you is a deep joy, an essential game, possibly the game of life. To be left alone crouching in the dark is our great fear.

Photo by Alex He on Unsplash

There was a time in my twenties when I was living alone on 86th street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. This was fully four blocks from where I grew up and where my parents continued to live. Still, I liked to think that I was separate, self-contained, an adult. My plan was to take New York by storm.  I bought an epically ugly orange rug in Macy’s to decorate my studio apartment and dribbled away my days in an office on 49th street. The job at G. Schirmer, the music publisher, was deadly and included wandering around Saks during my lunch hour gaping at merchandise that I couldn’t afford. But the real killer was what to do on the weekends. No matter how late I slept on Sunday, the day still stretched out empty before me like a lunar landscape. My usual strategy was to walk down to the newsstand on Broadway to buy the Sunday Times, then back up to Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam. There I could order lox and eggs, spread out the paper, work the crossword in ink and maybe if I was lucky kill an hour. Over on 83rd and Broadway, my mother and father would be deep in their own puzzle. Up until the day I moved out, the puzzle was a shared family ritual. As the youngest and least accomplished puzzler, I got first crack at it, a deeply loving gesture I will always cherish, a valentine.  

I could have gone backwards into that familiarity, but I was determined to make some sort of life for myself. Only a few weeks before, they had talked me into going out to the Island with them to visit some cousins whom, they claimed, really wanted to see me. There were five of us in my Uncle Jerry’s Buick en route to Port Washington. All afternoon as the August sun came down on the Throgs Neck, they ate pretzels and drank highballs in the backyard. They talked about insurance. They talked about in-laws, varicose veins. No one said a word to me. Uncle Jerry, a sour person whose children were afraid of him, was on his third scotch and soda when I went inside and found the half-bath where I cried until I could no longer breathe, my nose stuffed and my throat sore. It was my uncle who found me in there, not my mother or father. Maybe it was the scotch that made him fleetingly empathic. I always thought he had gone looking for me, but it could be he just needed to pee. Or it could be that he was drawn to my sadness through the armor of his starched posturing, that something broke through and touched him. 

Never stop looking for each other. Look for me and try to find me in my laughter and my tears. Please keep looking if you don’t see me at first. I’m probably under the coffee table praying to be found.

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Many Voices will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In January, seventysomething is delighted to offer artwork, prose, and poetry by Rosemary Starace. All subscribers are now welcome to read Many Voices posts. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support seventysomething, have access to the archives, and become a contributor to Many Voices. Your ideas are always welcome.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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