‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’

Dear graduates in our towns and villages hereabouts:

When my older grandson was about to be born, my son and daughter-in-law asked family and friends to send the boy — they knew beforehand — their favorite childhood story so that, when they were read to him, he could incorporate their values as a source of strength for the future.

I did not buy a book but wrote a story called “Grandfather Dream for Gus.” A name had not yet been assigned to the child and, because he was slated to be born in August, in utero we called him “Gus.”

On the cover of my storybook is a photo of myself (at my brother John’s graduation from grammar school) along with my father and grandfather, so the Sullivan-to-be — little Gus — would be aware of five generations of Sullivans: himself; his father (my son); his grandfather (me); my father; and my grandfather. I was hoping the historical continuity of our family could offer help should things go awry.

Gus is a fine young man today with a deep sense of purpose, headed to New Zealand in September for a semester abroad to study the marine life of the waters down under. He’s a scholar in the making, which brings joy to an old man who vowed to be a scholar for life at the age the boy is now. Had he incorporated something of me?

For many years, I’ve wondered what other grandparents hope their grandkids will incorporate of them. When Pablo Picasso’s son Claude was departing after a visit with his father, the painter would hold back a piece of the boy’s clothing such as a necktie or pair of pajamas.

Speaking of this ritual, the boy’s mother, Françoise Gilot, says in her memoir, “Pablo hoped by this method that some of Claude’s youth would enter into his own body. It was a metaphorical way of appropriating someone else’s substances, and in that way … prolong his own life.” Incorporation flipped on its head: a father borrowing from his son!

I “teach” a course at the Voorheesville Public Library called “Writing Personal History for Family, Friends, and Posterity.” It’s the second time around; last time, for five years the “students” brought in every two weeks pieces of memory-generated literature they wanted the world to see.

The new cohort — seven adults ranging from their 40s to 90s — also bring in every two weeks a dream-story that as a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather they wrote for the Gus in their life.

Several weeks ago, one of the students brought in a story about the year his sister, Rosie, was entering first grade and he, not wanting to stay home, got dressed and went along. But he was too young so the teachers told him, “Don’t come back.”

The written text of the story includes a photo of the author and his sister on their first day heading to first grade. They are dressed in sharp but simple new clothes carrying now-hip-retro school bags. You look and are drawn into their life.

The memoir student said he read the story to Rosie over the phone and she broke down in tears. What a treasure awaits his son and granddaughter and all the people in Rosie’s life who now have the dreams of ancestors to incorporate into their lives; as Prospero says in “The Tempest,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

“Among the Lapps,” the great ethnologist J. G. Frazer points out, “when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear.” That’s why I’m named Dennis after my grandfather.

Beloved children’s stories have been handed down for generations across the globe as collectively-shared dreams, though sometimes they appear as a portent or omen.

Consider the case of “The Wonderful Story of Henny-Penny” which we know in the States as “The Story of Chicken Little.” My version comes from Joseph Cundall’s artfully-illustrated “A Treasury of Pleasure Books for Young Children,” which came out in 1850.

The story begins with a hen, Henny-Penny, who was picking peas in the farmyard when all of a sudden a pea fell on her head with a thump so hard she thought a cloud had fallen from the sky.

Thunderstruck, if you will, by this freak of nature, she decides to report the incident to the king thinking it a matter of national security — and off she heads to the palace.

On the way, she runs into a rooster she tells about the “clouds” falling on her — she’s now using the plural, and why Chicken Little says “the sky” is falling.

The rooster tells Henny-Penny he’d love to come along to bring the news to the king.  

A ways down the road, they come upon a duck, a goose, and a turkey one after the other to whom Henny-Penny tells her story and they all join the brigade.

A little farther down the road, the five see a fox who, when he hears the story, says he’d be delighted to show them the way: “Come with me,” he says, “and I will show you the road to the king’s house.” They were delighted with the offer.

But soon they saw the fox was a trickster as he ushered them into his hole where he and his kids ate them up.

There are untold news stories on TV these days, and in the papers, and on social media about the number of young people suffering from loneliness, disabling anxiety, and depression, severe enough in some cases to require daily doses of drugs to help them fashion a morrow.

Some of the news stories imply the young sufferers are too weak to handle life’s load — in effect blaming the victim — “They just don’t got the goods.”

But what historical continuity do they have that offers succor during distressing times? Their purpose-in-life is blurred.

They live in a world filled with tornados and hurricanes blowing America’s heartland apart — The New York Times says expect 26 hotter days next year —  and are deeply rent by the ideological civil war going on; add Russia’s imperialistic blowing apart Ukrainian children to satisfy the whim of Rasputin; and then Israel’s leveling of Gaza producing millions of forsaken nomads hoping to find a rock to lay their head upon to sleep without a bomb whizzing by.

The dreams we’ve created for the Gusses in our lives are now collective nightmares; they offer the strength of a whittled-down tooth pick.

America, your sky is falling, as a rabid fox is ushering your people into a hole so he and his kin can eat them up. Or is that too Henny-Penny?

This time of year, schools all over the country will grace their commencement ceremony with the familiar song: Gaudeamus igitur; Juvenes dum sumus; Gaudeamus igitur; Juvenes dum sumus. In English it means: Let us celebrate the flower of our youth, let us live out the dreams we’re made for.

The final verse goes: Pereat tristitia; Pereant osores; Pereat diabolus; Quivis Antibacchius; Atque irrisores. The English is: As we go along on our journey, let us not give into sadness; let us resist the lies of haters; let us dismiss the devils who envy and mock our democratic ideals as the great majority of us strive to insure that the dreams of all are fulfilled.

That deserves a gaudeamus. And a big one at that.