The Other End of the String

Bitter Buffaloes tells true stories, even if not strictly factual ones. Cave lector.

When I was young, I got along much better with adults than with kids my age. This was true from the very outset, as far back as I can remember. Perhaps part of the reason is that my grandmother lived with us from when I was about 1 and a half until I was seven. We spent a lot of time together; she treated me as a fully capable person, didn't talk to me like a child, and taught me so much about how to talk about what we think and feel. My father doesn't much like children, so treated me as though I were a very short adult. (He loves babies and then loses interest until they can competently discuss the intricacies of the Siege of Bastogne.) I think I got used to that kind of no-nonsense adult-like relationship and found the things my contemporaries nattered on about to be banal, trite, and, well, childish.

Perhaps because of this, I frequently made friends with my adult neighbors. I have many crystalline memories of spending time in kitchens talking with my friends' parents as my friends watched The Land Before Time, of watching a youngish neighbor do woodwork in his garage as he talked with me about how it helped him get out of his head.

This week, I've been feeling alone in some things and I remembered an elderly man I made friends with when I was four. He lived several doors down and I remember hearing my parents speak about how his wife had just passed away. I think I remember my mom making some food to take over to him.

My parents, perhaps because they knew I wouldn't listen, repeatedly asked me not to talk with strangers. I was quite introverted with other children, but would walk up to adults and say things like, "You seem awfully unhappy." This led to some awkward conversations for my parents.

When I heard that Mr. Siegler's wife had died, I felt a pull to him, to get a sense of what it was like, to learn how he would process it. So when, a few days later, I saw him sitting on his front stoop, eating an apple and keeping his own company, I opened his gate and walked up to him.

"I'm sorry about Mrs. Siegler."

"Oh, I am too, Owen. I am too." He paused for a little while, looking at the sky. It had just stopped raining and his yard was covered with wet leaves. "Would you like an apple?" I took the apple and sat down next to him. Cars drove by with that buzziness that radiates from brick roads.

"Are you sad?"

Mr. Siegler was a slight man with long, delicate fingers. He was more likely to give a gruff head nod to you than to stop and chat. We both took a bite from our respective apples.

"You know, you're the first person to ask me that. Yes, I think I am." He smiled ever so slightly. "Let me tell you about my son in Seattle...."

For the next few weeks, I would stop by when I saw Mr. Siegler sitting on his stoop, always on the steps themselves rather than in a chair on the porch. One day, I asked him why he didn't sit in one of the chairs. "Oh. That's where Ann and I would sit together."

I remember being confused by this and asked him what he meant by that. For a moment, he furrowed his brow in what I now recognize as him trying to decide whether it was worth trying to explain a complex emotion to a four-year-old.

"Sitting up there without her makes her absence much more obvious. It makes me miss her all the more."

"So you feel alone?"

"I am alone, but what it makes me feel is lonely."

"I don't understand, Mr. Siegler."

"Hand me the end of your string, would you?"

Earlier that day, I'd "found" a ball of string in my parents' basement and claimed it as my own. I'd been walking around with it, measuring the length of things with the string, experimenting by holding an end of the string and throwing the ball (and being surprised that it went much farther when I tossed it versus when I threw it hard).

I pulled the string from where I'd tucked it in and placed the end of the string in his palm. He wrapped his fingers into a fist, the string escaping it from one end like a too-thin tail. He exhaled deeply, as though he was letting go of something heavy or preparing himself for something difficult.

"It's important for you to know there's a difference between solitude and loneliness. All of us are alone, Owen. It's part of being a human – no matter how many people we surround ourselves with...."

He pulled the string gently. "Feel that?"

I nodded.

"There's a string separating us, but we are still connected. You, over there. Me, here. Pull on the string."

I pulled. It didn't give; his hand held in place. Then he opened his hand and tied the string to a post on the railing to his stoop.

"Pull on the string."

I pulled. The string tensed and held.

"Same result, if your eyes are closed. But it matters what's on the other end of the string."