The Great Leap
These are the stories of Peter K. Wensleydale, an aging American male person coming to the realization that there is no such thing.
“What’s this supposed to be?” Ambassador Quenton Adkins asked, as he
read from the sheet of paper Peter had just handed him.
The year was 1974, late in the ’73’74 winter. Peter K. Wensleydale and
Ambassador Adkins were meeting alone in the Ambassador’s office on the
third floor of the American Embassy in Gazinga, as they had done on a
daily basis in the year or so since Peter had joined the Embassy staff
as Administrative Officer. The agenda for this meeting was unlike any
other that had preceded it, however, and as a result, Peter was more
than just a little uncomfortable. And Ambassador Adkins was making no
effort to alleviate Peter’s discomfort.
Peter had not looked forward to this session one bit, and now, standing
on the plush carpet, facing his boss glaring at him from behind the
huge, government-issue mahogany desk, Peter could tell it was not going
to unfold any more pleasantly than he had anticipated.
“It’s a letter of resignation, sir,” Peter replied, adding, as gingerly
as if he were handling a stick of dynamite, “mine.”
From his expression and tone of voice, it was apparent Ambassador Adkins
was not pleased, in large part because Peter had clearly caught the man
by surprise, and Ambassador Adkins did not like surprises.
“I can see that,” he growled. “What I’m asking is, what’s the meaning of
it?”
The meaning of it was that, after seven years as a US Foreign Service
Officer, Peter was quitting. And, truth to tell, Peter K. Wensleydale
was every bit as surprised by that as Ambassador Quenton Adkins seemed
to be. Not that Peter didn’t want to quit, mind you. Resigning his
commission, Peter has now come to realize, albeit thirty-plus years
later, was an action he had been wanting to take for some time; but
until the circumstances surrounding this encounter, he never thought of
it as something he could do. Of course, as an administrative officer, he
had processed the paperwork of others who had done it, so he knew it
could be done, but he did not think that he could do it.
Peter had been raised to meet the expectations of others, or better
said, to meet what he perceived to be the expectations of others. Thus,
although he never did so consciously, Peter made decisions based not on
what he wanted to do, but on what he thought other people wanted him to
do. Clearly, this is a crippling, not to say insane, way to live, but,
for all Peter knew, it was all there was. Of course, no one ever
actually said as much to him, but it must have been the mold they used,
for it was who he had become.
A particularly complicating symptom of this condition is an inability to
respond in the negative to any sentence which begins with the words
“Will you” or “Would you”. An absurd example will make the point: When
Peter and Anna arrived at their first overseas post, his new boss, by
way of introducing them to the local diplomatic community, invited the
Wensleydales to a bridge party. Thus, she said to Peter, “Would you and
your wife like to …?” Naturally, Peter immediately accepted; never mind
that he didn’t know how to play bridge!
Quitting can be a way of saying ‘no’ (or ‘no more’), and so Peter didn’t
think he could do it. At least, not until one fateful evening not long
before this meeting with Ambassador Adkins. Outside, it had been cold
and dark, two adjectives which perfectly describe Gazinga’s long
winters. Peter had just come home from work to the comfortable house he
and Anna rented in a residential neighborhood a few minutes’ drive from
the Embassy. It had not been a happy day, and as was his custom then, he
chose to soak it off in a hot bathtub, a cigarette in one hand, and a
very large, very dry double martini on the rocks in the other. Anna had
perched herself on the edge of the tub, there to watch him dissolve into
the water. By then, they had been married about ten years, during which
time they had become each other’s best friend.
“What’d he do today?” Anna asked, for she could tell.
“Nothing,” Peter lied.
Peter used to lie about himself a lot, about his problems and his needs;
sometimes to others, but mostly to himself. Not big lies, you
understand, just stupid lies, and too often well enough that even he
believed them. Of course, he was not unique. In those days, and perhaps
still, men did not easily admit to having needs, much less problems, and
certainly not to the women to whom they had sworn to be perfect, at
least not without a lot of preliminary, painful backing and forthing. It
was, quite simply, not something men knew how to do. Their fathers
didn’t do it, so they had no models, and their mothers didn’t teach
them. Also, and this is a condition Peter did not even realize to be a
“board certified, government approved” syndrome until not too long ago,
when, while preparing lunch one day in the Wensleydale’s home in the
Maine woods, Peter happened to hear himself being perfectly described by
a panel of Ph.d’s on one of the daytime television talk shows, described
so precisely that as he listened to it, he sank to the floor in tears,
tears which were the happy expression of surprised relief at the
realization that not only was his “condition” normal, but it was
decipherable and repairable; to wit, Peter was a so-called ACOA, the
adult child of alcohol-dependent parents, which meant, cutting quickly
to the chase, that he felt personally responsible for the health,
happiness, and general wellbeing of everyone and everything on the
planet, that if anything was wrong anywhere it was his fault, if not for
having caused it, then for not having fixed it yet, and therefore the
very last thing he could ever do was admit to having needs or unresolved
problems himself.
Anyway, eventually, under pressure, Peter agreed to talk, although, true
to type, he cushioned his reply with “Okay, but it’s no big deal,” which
in ACOA-talk means, “Although it might appear the sky is collapsing, I
can have it back up and in place before I return to work in the morning,
so there is no need for you to worry, the eternal peace and sublime
harmony of your life remain safe and assured in my hands.”
“The Ambassador is in an uproar,” Peter finally explained.
“What is it now?” Anna asked, listening attentively. By now, these
stories had become a form of entertainment between them, particularly as
English-language television was not available in Gazinga.
“It’s about your Brit,” Peter said, “Mrs. what’s-her-name, the woman you
had here for tea the other day.”
Over the preceding week, there had been visiting Gazinga, giving public
lectures and such, a gentle, very practical looking, elderly English
woman who enjoyed a solid reputation as a psychic healer. By
coincidence, she was personally known to the Wensleydale’s landlady, a
lovely person who is fascinated by anything supernatural (the day the
Wensleydales met her, while they were looking at her house with an idea
of renting it, she exuberantly announced that, the previous night, Peter
and Anna and their two Persian cats had appeared to her in a dream,
which she took to be unmistakable evidence that they were destined to be
her tenants, as in fact it did evolve) and as Anna too had a healthy
interest in the so-called occult, a social visit at the Wensleydale’s
was arranged for the British healer.
“What about her?” Anna asked.
Peter replied, “Apparently, yesterday evening, Ambassador Adkins and the
Soviet ambassador were guests at the same cocktail party, during which
the Russian made some crack about American diplomats consulting English
psychics.”
“He was talking about you,” Anna said, as much a statement as a
question, adding, “and my tea party. How could the Russians know about
that, Peter? There wasn’t anyone here.”
“The man’s probably KGB,” Peter said, only half joking. “Anyway, at this
morning’s staff meeting, Ambassador Adkins went through the roof, and he
hasn’t come down since. First, of course, he wanted to know which of us
it was. Looking around the room, I could see that no one else had any
idea what he was talking about, so I had no choice but to own up. At
that, he lit into me for putting him in ‘an untenable position’. Then he
announced to all present that from that moment forward, no one on his
staff, and no member of their families, was to entertain, consult,
visit, meet, or in any other way, intentionally or accidentally, consort
with psychics, spiritualists, or anyone of that kind, anywhere anytime
under any conditions. He didn’t approve of such people, he said, and he
wouldn’t tolerate it. Period.”
“You’re kidding,” Anna observed; but she knew he wasn’t.
Later, at dinner, through dinner, and after dinner, they talked about
it. In the years since, when others have asked Peter why he resigned
from the diplomatic service, he has recalled this event. But it is
important to understand that it was not this incident alone which
prompted his decision, although it was certainly an important element in
the equation, and definitely of the last straw variety.
“Honestly, Anna, I don’t know what to do about this,” Peter finally
admitted. “If it were just this incident, or just this ambassador, I’d
hold my breath. But we’ve seen stuff like this before, and what if
there’s another like him at our next post? I don’t want to spend the
rest of my life endlessly wishing I were somewhere else.”
“Why don’t you quit?” Anna asked, simply.
“I suppose I could,” he replied, “but, what for? Again, we might just be
trading one problem post for another.”
“Not transfer,” she said. “Quit.”
“Quit?” Peter repeated. “You mean, quit the Foreign Service? Resign?”
Anna nodded.
“I can’t resign,” Peter said, immediately.
“Why not?” she asked, simply. “You joined, you can quit.”
By then, they had moved into the living room. Peter was seated in a
large, stuffed chair, and Anna was on a couch across from him. This was
the first time in their conversations about his work that the word quit
had genuinely taken on the meaning of resign, and for a long moment,
Peter said nothing. In a way, it was as if Anna had spoken to him in a
language he did not quite understand.
“Resign?” he repeated, finally, as much to himself as to her. Again, she
nodded. There was no denying the logic of it. He had joined, so why
couldn’t he quit. Still, the Foreign Service hadn’t been just a whim. It
was about following in his father’s footsteps, fulfilling the promise of
his education, making a career commitment. All very serious stuff.
Peter thought out loud, “What would we do?”
“Who knows,” Anna replied. “We’re both college graduates, intelligent,
healthy, hard working. And besides, you’ve made a lot of good contacts
the last few years. We’ll find something.”
All true enough. Peter had done well in college and graduate school, and
as a naval officer, and now in the Foreign Service. Why not somewhere
else, too?
For a long time, they sat there, not speaking, letting sink in all that
had been said, and all that hadn’t needed saying. For his part, Peter
could hardly believe what he was thinking; but there was no getting
around it, he was thinking it.
After a bit, Peter noticed he was crying, that there were tears running
down his cheeks. (For the record, a lot of Mediterranean blood flows in
Peter’s veins, so he cries easily.) These were tears of joy, joy arising
from somewhere deep within, an awareness that he was about to take the
great leap. Of course, that evening in that living room, neither Peter
nor Anna fully appreciated, or even understood, all the implications of
the decision they were in the process of making. Certainly, as far as
Peter was concerned at the time, he thought that, at most, he was
considering going from his present job to another different, but similar
job in another different, but similar Washington bureaucracy. At no
conscious level did he then realize or even suspect that a much larger
ship than that was getting underway, and that, in fact, he and Anna were
embarking on a spiritual quest which would, in a matter of a few months,
take them far beyond the boundaries of Washington, DC, real and
metaphorical, deep into the Maine woods, where they would clear land
themselves, build a house, and craft a homestead, from which over the
next three decades, they would be transported into realms and realities,
depths and heights of conciousness, whose dimensions, and even whose
existence, neither had ever imagined in their wildest dreams or
fantasies.
Finally, Peter rose from his chair, walked across the room, and sat down
next to Anna on the couch. “Enough’s enough,” he affirmed. “I’m
submitting my resignation.”
“And that, Mr. Ambassador,” Peter said to the man to whom he is and will
remain eternally grateful for having been the last straw, “is the
meaning of it.”
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep, and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven.” Genesis 28:16-17
“A Continuing Fiction” is fiction.
Any resemblance to anyone or anything anywhere is coincidental.
Copyright © by The Laughing Cat
For copyright © information, please click here.