“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
so began my first pilgrimage,
sophomore year at Elmira’s Academy,
a battered desk from a rummage sale
my pulpit,
Lincoln Street my Paris and London both.
The house was noisy with life.
Mother sang over the clatter of pots,
my sister spun the Doobie Brothers and the Allmans
on our faithful stereo,
my kid siblings bellowed their quarrels to the ceiling.
And Father—steady in his easy chair,
Skipper tucked like a warm shadow,
Happy Days or Soap flashing across the screen
as if Fonzie and the French Revolution
were perfectly matched in importance.
I hunched over the pages,
half believing I, too,
was “recalled to life” by these sentences,
and half wishing Dickens
would explain algebra
with the same vigor he applied to guillotines.
(He never did.)
“It is a far, far better thing that I do,
than I have ever done…”
The words rang out in my teenage skull
like the Doobie Brothers turned up too loud.
Nobility! Sacrifice! Destiny!
But then -
my brother howled about stolen socks,
my sister flipped the record over,
Dad chuckled at a canned joke,
and I realized that sometimes
a quiet corner and a book
were the noblest things a boy could claim.
____________________
Years passed.
Life “recalled to life” me more than once.
I opened the book again,
older now,
on Southern Boulevard.
A different chair,
a different silence -
but the same ink pressing forward,
the same words chasing me across decades.
The house there had its own pulse.
Streetlights hummed through the windows,
neighbors’ cars crunched the gravel,
the scent of grass after mowing
drifted into the evenings.
The kitchen clock ticked loud enough
to remind me of Madame Defarge’s knitting needles.
I would pour myself a sherry,
set the book on the lamp-lit table,
and let Dickens carry me again
to London and Paris.
And here came Bruegger -
the beagle bard of the household,
snuffling at the margins of my reading,
pawing at the rug as if to say:
“You may have Carton, I have the scent of eternity.”
He howled at passing sirens
with all the gravity of a revolutionary,
then promptly begged for table scraps.
If Dickens had known him,
he’d have written Bruegger into the crowd scenes -
faithful, comic relief among the mob.
Some nights he curled at my feet,
snoring through Darnay’s trials,
wagging in his sleep
as if chasing down shadows of guillotines.
Other nights he stationed himself at the window,
a sentinel of Southern Boulevard,
warning off any intruder
with a bark that might have stirred
even the Bastille’s stones.
And still I read -
“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death” -
but now those words carried
a different weight.
Not romance, not thrill,
but a mirror:
responsibility, work,
the quiet guillotine of time.
At fifteen, sacrifice had been a grand gesture;
at forty-five,
it was a dozen small ones -
bills paid, meals cooked,
patience held when no one was looking.
____________________
Lincoln Street and -
my own “two cities.”
One lit by the clamor of youth,
one softened by middle age.
In both, I sat with Dickens,
a companion through dust and ink.
At fifteen,
Carton’s sacrifice was a sermon.
At forty-five,
it was a whisper.
Both true,
both needed.
And Bruegger -
his bark, his sigh, his comic interruptions -
was stitched into those later evenings,
no less a character
than my sister’s records,
my mother’s song,
my father’s chair creaking on Lincoln Street.
____________________
What I learned,
what I contemplated -
that history turns in wheels,
sometimes crushing, sometimes lifting.
That “recalled to life”
is not only Paris,
but the act of remembering two houses
as the only true homes.
One with Skipper curled by Dad’s chair,
the other with Bruegger baying at shadows.
One noisy with youth,
the other steady with age.
Two cities, two houses,
two readings of the same tale,
bound by the same voice of Dickens.
____________________
So I close the volume once more,
hearing Carton’s words as promise:
“It is a far, far better rest that I go to
than I have ever known.”
Not death, not martyrdom -
but the rest that comes
from knowing I have lived in two houses,
read the same story twice,
and carried Dickens with me -
as faithfully as family noise,
as faithfully as Bruegger’s howl,
as faithfully as memory itself.
____________________
And always, above it all,
there lingers A Christmas Carol -
my first and dearest Dickens,
the book that reminds me,
as surely as ghosts rattle chains,
that home and heart are the true treasures.
Scrooge’s joy, Carton’s sacrifice -
two voices in harmony,
teaching me still
that every life may be “recalled to life,”
and that every house,
no matter how noisy or quiet,
can shine with the light of redemption.
GBS
1998
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