When we came home from a recent weekend in Manhattan, there was no one to greet us at the door. After almost 13 years of a welcoming presence, Susan and I now found the house empty. Phileas J. Fogg, our family cat, long accustomed to arrive in the front hall from wherever he had been in the house, was no longer there.  

A few days before our leaving town, Susan had arranged for Phil to be put to sleep. Gone was the legendary ferocity that had made him attack a long series of medical providers.  Reduced to only a bony shell of his former self, he was dragging himself around the house.  We felt sad to see him in such decline from his former vigor and wanted to save him from further suffering. The visiting vet handled Phil’s demise with much sympathy, easing our pain for the loss of a beloved pet.

So this is the last of my columns about Phil. Through the years I have detailed many of his adventures, and ours, starting in 1991 when he joined us. At that time, our daughter was 11 years old and finally had accumulated enough “cat points” to qualify for receiving a kitten. Dutifully, she signed a contract at that time, agreeing to discharge all the duties of ownership, a responsibility that she graciously ceded to her parents.

In previous columns I wrote about Phil’s various attempts to escape from our house, about his growing older, on his contemplative nature, of his resistance to all efforts to tame him, and other facets of his life with us. From those essays it must have become clear how he influenced us as much as we him. Unsaid, most of the time, was the growing affection that flowed in both directions as we came to appreciate one another more deeply.

In a French film called “Lumière” a daughter says: “My father wants a dog that won’t die.” There is, of course, no such dog, at least yet, nor is there any such cat. The trouble with domestic pets remains that their life span is shorter than ours, so that unless our own lives are cut short when they are with us, we are bound to experience their deaths.

Susan and I are currently in withdrawal. We are changing habits of the last 13 years, many of them provisions to guard against Phil venturing into places where he was not allowed. No longer do we have to close the doors to our living room for fear he would scratch the furniture. Now we can leave open the bathroom doors kept closed to prevent him from slurping water from the toilet. And the entrance to our cellar, formerly his lair, now remains open for easy access.

When we go away we no longer need to make provision for Phil’s feeding and other kinds of care. Neighborhood children or their parents will not be pressed into service to provide for him. Our friend and next door neighbor George will no longer have to don his heavy gardening gloves when asked to look after the house in our absence.

Mind you, I had frequently fantasized about the freedom that would come with the demise of Phil. For years I had chafed at the restrictions on my personal freedom around my own house imposed on us by our resident animal. When would it ever come, I wondered, the day when I would not have to share domestic facilities with that beast?

But now that the day of liberation has arrived, it does not feel as gratifying as I expected. Yes, the house is entirely my preserve now but I must admit missing Phil.  He had become an assuring presence, a kind of cousin who shared our lives and was always there to receive our affection. Yes, I know that political correctness calls on me to affirm Phil’s life as his own and not merely as a being that existed in relation to me. But my mentality still smacks of the old attitudes that see animals as created for our pleasure. Perhaps some evangelist of animal liberation may convert me some day and induce me to renounce this medieval thinking.

Meantime, I have no one to kick around anymore. Though this practice used to alarm purist friends it is what Phil most like about me: I was the one who would gently move him across the rug with my foot to his accompanying appreciative purring.

Nor do I now see him at my office door watching me at work typing my columns at the computer. Susan likes to compare this scene to the classical ones of St. Jerome doing his biblical scholarship as a lion gazes at him. However, my vanity stops short at welcoming any comparison to a saint, even a notoriously crusty one. But our own resident lion was every bit as crusty as St. Jerome’s.

We miss him.

Richard Griffin

Heidi Hofmann White, a reader of this column who lives in Belmont, Massachusetts has sent me a copy of her memoir.  Entitled “At the Edge of the Storm,” it focuses mainly on her growing-up years in Germany during the Second World War. I found it fascinating to read.

Though Mrs. White modestly downplays her privately printed book as “flawed and imperfect,” it gives a vivid picture of what it was like to live in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany under wartime conditions. Her home city Cologne was often bombed by huge fleets of British and American planes that started fires and leveled city blocks.

Now 73, Heidi was a child during this agonizing time when her survival and that of her family was often at risk. An ironic twist on her situation came from her father being strongly anti-Nazi, so that he and his wife and children wanted Germany to lose the war. So, though they could have been killed by allied bombs, they remained sympathetic to the cause of defeating Hitler.

Her father, Josef Hofmann, had been a leader in the Center Party and belonged to the inner circle of Heinrich Brüning, who served as German chancellor in 1930-32. A distinguished journalist, Hofmann was chosen after the war by the American occupying forces to be founding editor of the Aachen newspaper. In this same period he also served in his state’s parliament.

Josef Hofmann himself left behind an unfinished memoir that recounts much of his experience during the war. His daughter asks, however, why he neglected to say much of anything about the fate of the Jews under the Nazis. Since he remained a staunch Catholic, I, for my part, would have wondered about his feelings when Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, pulled the Vatican’s support out from under the Center Party, opening the way for Hitler to assume total control.

In 1954, Heidi was to marry an American, Donald White, whom she had met when he was living in Germany as a Fulbright student preparing for an academic career. After a year’s delay because of immigration problems, she moved to this country to join him. She herself had done advanced linguistic studies in her native land and in France and England. One of her abiding regrets is not having finished her degree at the University of Heidelberg.

Cosmopolitan in spirit, Heidi White dedicates her book to her ten grandchildren, born in five different countries. She loves being American but maintains close contact with family and friends in her native land.

I believe that Heidi White can take justifiable pride in what she has written. She has skillfully shared her life and experience with readers, a life that takes on special meaning against the backdrop of a tumultuous history. Reading it, I felt caught up once more in events that have never lost their fascination for me. That a nation of people with such an advanced culture should have fallen prey to unspeakably evil internal enemies continues to provoke astonishment in me.

Heidi White’s memoir arrived in the same mail with “Generations,” the periodical published by the American Society on Aging. The latest issue is entitled “Listening to Older People’s Stories” and brings out the value of those stories for both those who tell them and those who listen to them.

Of course, I did not need evidence for this value, since many years ago I drafted a memoir of my own. At this time, its fate remains unclear but I have continued to work on my story through the years. To me, this kind of writing is not only therapeutic but also productive of invaluable insights into the meaning of one’s life.

A few weeks ago, a friend who is approaching 90 came for dinner, giving my wife and me an opportunity to hear some of her life story. She held us fascinated, regaling us with what it was like to grow up in Manhattan back in the days of Prohibition and the Depression. At one point I asked my friend if she remembered the Empire State Building being built. She did not remember it under construction but, of course, took due note of the tallest building in the world after its completion.

One of the authors in “Generations” lists several qualities one expects to find in a good autobiography. One is the way it embodies “the truth of the life of the writer.” Another is how it serves as a “second reading of lived experience.” The writer does not simply recount memories, however valued, but puts those memories into a framework that enables us to understand their role in a person’s life.

Heidi White’s memoir succeeds on both these counts plus others. If you yourself have not in some form recounted the story of your own life and times, let me recommend doing so. Unless I am mistaken, you will discover a new way of appreciating yourself and your experience.

Richard Griffin

One of the sweet pleasures of later life is enough leisure to read good books.  And, in my case at least, receiving some newly published ones unsolicited.

That is what happened recently when a reader of this column, Diana Muir of Newton, sent me her splendid “Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England.” From the handsome cover photo to the fascinating chapters within, the book has held my attention with its wealth of fascinating material about this part of the country.

The subtitle will perhaps scare off some potential readers because it makes the book sound too technical. Actually, however, the work comes full of carefully researched information interesting in itself and presented in a pleasing style. The author’s insights into the natural, economic, and cultural history of our region deserve wide circulation.

During the winter of 1990, Diana Muir and her family moved to a site only some twenty yards away from Bullough’s Pond in Newton. They did not come because of this small pond; only gradually did the writer value being close to it. Its history came to serve her as a focus for appreciating the natural beauty and history of our six-state region.

In the preface, the author sums up her chief message: “Reflections in Bullough’s Pond is an inquiry into why the Industrial Revolution happened, why it happened here, and what the implications of the revolution are.” However, Ms. Muir explains that this is not the only story the book delivers. It also tells of other stages in our regional history, both before and after.

The author has done a masterly job in turning a wide range of research findings into an absorbing narrative. The precise knowledge found here amounts to a treasure store of useful and absorbing lore. Using her scholarly tools, Muir explains many phenomena that otherwise might seem odd.

Chapter four of Muir’s book provides a fine example of its riches of information and insight. Entitled “The Politics of Extermination,” this chapter centers on beavers, animals that were practically wiped out here during the 17th century because of the fur trade. Without any regard for the work that these animals do in preserving the land and other living things, New England merchants who sold pelts to businessmen in England simply killed off almost the whole beaver population.

Muir devotes another chapter to shoes, a New England product that Yankee craftsmen found would sell in big numbers. As early as 1783, shoemakers based in Lynn supplied four hundred thousand pairs of shoes for shipment to the American south and elsewhere.

Similarly with ice. From Fresh Pond in Cambridge and other waters, men sawed out blocks of ice in the wintertime and shipped it to places as far away as Calcutta. Discovering how to pack the ice in sawdust to keep it from melting was a crucial to making this possible.

In tracing the economic history of New England, Muir attributes repeated recovery from threats to survival  and prosperity to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of local populations: “The Yankee was the child of Puritanism. The strong work ethic, respect for manual labor, tradition of assuming responsibility, willingness to accept risks, rational approach to life, and a certain independence of mind inculcated by the Puritan heritage combined to produce the culture that produced a revolution.”

But this book is not history detached from concern about the effect of human choices on our environment.  Instead, especially in her concluding pages, the author makes an fervent plea for us to enter upon what she calls the Third Revolution.  A fundamental change in attitudes and policies is required, she says, because of “the pressure of population on limited resources.”

The previous two revolutions were accomplished by different kinds of energy use. The first featured the use of such resources as wood and hay as New England developed in agriculture and commerce. Then came the Industrial Revolution with its discovery of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. The successful leaders of this latter revolution often did nothing to protect the earth from their industrial practices.

Now, given the harmful practices of past generations, we must take a new approach,  Muir says. No longer can we afford to deplete the ozone layer or destroy the topsoil so vital to the flourishing of the earth. There are now too many people for us to rely on automobile use to the extent that we do. “What we cannot do”, she writes, “is to go on commuting to work in Chevy Suburbans.”

I do not here pretend to a scholarly or critical appraisal of this book. Instead my appreciation for it is that of a common reader, one who looks for new knowledge and the stimulation of good writing. These Diana Muir has offered us in abundance and I thank her for these gifts.

Richard Griffin

If there are people who do not enjoy singing Christmas carols, I do not know them.  When these traditional songs ring out at this time of year, everybody responds joyfully. Joining in the singing stirs young and old to feeling better about themselves and the world.

These impressions, admittedly altogether too sweeping for the world at large, flow from an experience that has become a ritual in my neighborhood. Together with other nearby residents, we have been gathering each year, for the last 23, at the home of George and Emily, our next-door neighbors, who host a party in celebration of the season. This event has taken hold among us so that we look forward to it with pleasure and find renewed reason each year to cherish it.

Before we sit down to dinner, Emily is wont to summon us around the piano where she leads us in song. A veteran voice teacher, she knows how to create an atmosphere where even frogs like me venture to sing. We belt out the carols with gusto, repeating the familiar words most of us have known for decades.

While singing myself, I take delight in scanning the faces of my fellow choristers. Just about everybody looks joyful, even those whom I know to have had heavy problems to bear. I take special note of neighbors who do not espouse the Christian faith but who nonetheless will sing about Jesus as the savior of the world. As I would do in their place, they allow themselves to be swept along by the beauty they find in traditions they do not themselves entirely share.

This annual experience is what makes me so upbeat about the singing of carols. All is not right with the world. This Christmas finds us in the usual turmoil and assaults on human dignity take place in just about every large area of our planet, a situation in which I feel no complacency.

But I make no excuse for taking pleasure in the celebration of one small gathering of friends and neighbors. It is a consolation to find ours a peaceable community where we greet one another with not only respect but affection. I like to think us gifted with some of the best that Christmas offers: peace, joy, enlightenment, and compassion.

It is these same gifts that Christmas songs at their best celebrate. The luster of the standard carols resides, not just in their beautiful melodies and evocative lyrics, but in their bearing the message of what Christmas means. Despite the way they are vulgarized in shopping malls and on the radio, “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World,” among many others, retain their power to make the heart peaceful and to rouse one’s spirits. Lesser known carols such as “Masters in This Hall,” set to an old French tune, and “Once In Royal David’s City,” have their distinct charms too and carry forward the same message.

No carol, however, will ever hit me with such force as did “Hodie Christus Natus Est” (Today Christ Is Born) on one memorable occasion. That was Christmas Eve 54 years ago when I was a newcomer seeking acceptance by the Jesuits. Along with other first-year novices I was asleep that long-ago evening, only to be suddenly awakened by the sound of angelic voices singing that Latin hymn. The singers were second-year novices, positioned in a loft above our dormitory from which vantage point they could most plausibly imitate angel choristers.

Recalling this scene amounts to an exercise in nostalgia over the course of five decades, I suppose, but to me its importance lies deeper. The carol in that setting evoked in me the magic of Christmas in its spiritual dimensions. Words and music transported me, for that night at least, into another sphere of human existence, life lived in God’s light.

That kind of experience does not come on demand, nor do I expect to have its like again. But some of it has rubbed off, I like to think. In later life I feel content with the spirituality I learned then and have since developed further. And I now place even greater value on family members (now more than ever an extended family), along with friends and neighbors.

This year I feel happy to celebrate my 75th Christmas with the people whom I regard as gifts given to me. They continue to wear well, I find, as the years proceed in ever more rapid succession. (Would that I may wear well for them.) I treasure Christmases past and hope I can look forward to those still to come.

Meanwhile, Christmas present suffices for me. I want its gifts to take further root in me. Peace, joy, love, compassion – these and others associated with this day seem to me more than ever worth aspiring to.

Richard Griffin