PrinceMyshkin
09-10-2007, 11:59 AM
for Adam
I think of walking with you in Angkor Wat.
Your youth is an ancient city.
I think of the honour of walking beside you.
I call you my "Gentile child,"
though few, I think, will understand
what it means to me, a Jew, to have
a Gentile child and to love him
as the day that no longer fears the night.
We named you Adam, though you were
our second son, as if we knew
you were to be the first of a new race.
We named you Isaiah, after my most gentle uncle,
and Sebastian, after Bach, who knew
that the complex is rooted in the simple.
We named you Shun, which in Japanese
means "Excellent one."
One day I'll walk with you in Angkor Wat.
J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992
When Rafael, my first-born, approached 13 & began asking questions about the Jewish half of his heritage (his mother is not, therefore by Jewish law, neither is he) and showed signs as well of studying me as a role model, I decided to gratify both his interests by taking him on a Bar-Mitzvah surrogate trip to Israel, which became an instant tradition. When Adam, after him, approached 13 his mother informed me that Adam was looking forward to going to Israel with me, as Raf had done. Well, I said, I would take him to Israel if he wanted but I had always thought of him as my "Gentile child" (blonde, non-neurotic...) and it would make as much sense to me to take him to Rome or the Serengeti plains...
It wasn't safe to take him to Israel at that time but sometime later I was in a dentist’s office leafing through a National Geographic that had a spread on the Mayan pyramids, and something began to nag at me, some place I was meant to go with Adam. After a few days, it came to me: Angkor Wat! Unfortunately Cambodia was then in the middle of a civil war so that proved unwise. But out of that came this poem.
I think of walking with you in Angkor Wat.
Your youth is an ancient city.
I think of the honour of walking beside you.
I call you my "Gentile child,"
though few, I think, will understand
what it means to me, a Jew, to have
a Gentile child and to love him
as the day that no longer fears the night.
We named you Adam, though you were
our second son, as if we knew
you were to be the first of a new race.
We named you Isaiah, after my most gentle uncle,
and Sebastian, after Bach, who knew
that the complex is rooted in the simple.
We named you Shun, which in Japanese
means "Excellent one."
One day I'll walk with you in Angkor Wat.
J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992
When Rafael, my first-born, approached 13 & began asking questions about the Jewish half of his heritage (his mother is not, therefore by Jewish law, neither is he) and showed signs as well of studying me as a role model, I decided to gratify both his interests by taking him on a Bar-Mitzvah surrogate trip to Israel, which became an instant tradition. When Adam, after him, approached 13 his mother informed me that Adam was looking forward to going to Israel with me, as Raf had done. Well, I said, I would take him to Israel if he wanted but I had always thought of him as my "Gentile child" (blonde, non-neurotic...) and it would make as much sense to me to take him to Rome or the Serengeti plains...
It wasn't safe to take him to Israel at that time but sometime later I was in a dentist’s office leafing through a National Geographic that had a spread on the Mayan pyramids, and something began to nag at me, some place I was meant to go with Adam. After a few days, it came to me: Angkor Wat! Unfortunately Cambodia was then in the middle of a civil war so that proved unwise. But out of that came this poem.