Sydney Lea: But-cept

From a half-century ago, I remember wishing my oldest son would continue saying upslide down at least until first grade. I’m sure others celebrate the charms of their children’s speech too. That eldest boy’s little brother, when admonished to behave, would counter, “I am! I am being have!”

As a toddler, my own little brother used but-cept for except. How vivid and poignant my memory of that is. He’s been gone half a century now, but his death remains a shock. I may notice some random person now, who in speaking displays a facial movement that brings him back– then sends him away. If someone were to utter but-cept in my hearing, I can’t imagine what my response might be.

That young man was at one time our parents’ tiny darling. An aneurysm dropped him at 36, though his struggle with drug addiction had already made the last portion of his life a nightmare. He persuaded himself that some nebulous they were after him, even standing guard some nights outside his house, guarding against phantom ill-wishers, certain they were plotting to do him and his wife harm. 

I shudder to remember all that, although I had long since moved much farther away from him than my other siblings. I sometimes berate myself for such distancing, as if my being closer by would have changed something. That’s inane: if I know anything on earth, it’s that addicts won’t look for help until they truly want to stop their ruinous ride. That’s called “hitting bottom.” It’s wrenching when a person, especially a loved one, dies before they get to that place. I mean, my brother was a good-hearted and bright man. He was just cut down before the doorway to recovery opened even a crack.

I’ve lived both a long while and, it can seem, quickly, but I’m lucky enough to delight in grandsons and granddaughters, and not least in their beguiling locutions. My wife and I were a touch sad when a seven-year-old grandson corrected himself from saying, “You two are the best grandparents in the university,” for instance. We can still relish hearing a four-year-old’s hope that we “have a good time with yer chudder,” rather than “with each other.”

As I did in early fatherhood, I sometimes wish those little ones could be locked in place until I’m no longer here. Age like a cage will enclose them in due course, and I’d like them to linger as tots just so that their childish argot would stay unchanged, their language a means to wondrous reference more than to what’s aptly called a sentence. 

No, that’s hyperbolic. If they can skirt the sort of tragic circumstance that led to their great uncle’s premature death, along with other threats–local, global and cosmic– that will inevitably arise, they may also know real joy, as I have known it. There’s astonishing pleasure in so much I witness and recall, even in the least details.

But-cept, granted, I can’t prevent some wistfulness from suffusing it all.

Copyright 2024 Sydney Lea

SYDNEY LEA was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2011-2015. In 2021, he received Vermont’s highest artistic distinction, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. In early 2024, his collection of personal essays, Such Dancing as I Can, was published.