Accolade
a memory about memory
Gunpowder changes everything. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the practical role of the mounted warrior began to diminish, the philosophical meaning of knighthood began to expand. Once a tactical advantage, using a horse with stirrup and plate armor like a juggernaut in battle, knights took on a more spiritual and cultural position.
Defend the right,
Protect the weak,
and guard the honor of woman.
Why Woman? It’s been argued that, by serving women, their goal was actually to keep women subservient and inferior. Sneaky bastards. We’ll weaken them by dying for them. I knew it all along.
or mabye,
Mother,
Maiden,
Crone.
Women hold the creative power of the universe in their belly. Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. Fairly often, I remind the Little Bird that, even though we only met a little over a year ago, safe in her mother’s tummy, she has been near me most of my life. She was there when her own grandmother took a second stab at turning me into a reader.
In academic terms, we talk about “tapping” a lot. It’s an invitation to join an academic society. A lot of students think it means someone tapped them on the shoulder and whispered, “Hey, do you wanna join Alpha Psi Omega?” That’s not it at all.
The French word “accoler” is the source of the English word “accolade.” One definition is to embrace, or hug. Another is to tap a knight-candidate on the shoulder with the tip of a sword, “I dub thee, Sir Pantheus.”
While my academic accolades are few, I’ve been tapped for other reasons several times. Invested, more than once, with a sword and a spur, I was given a simple charge: “Defend the Right, Protect the weak, Guard the honor of Woman."
I’ve done my best to live up to that vow, although sometimes, it felt more like surviving it.
For a while, I was one of the youngest people ever inducted into the Kappa Alpha Order Irwin Province Court of Honor. They did it because my Uncle (and namesake), my father, grandfather, and my cousin Robert Wingate, Brum Day, Bill Goodman, Leon Lewis, JO Manning, and Jack Geary had all been tapped before me.
At twenty-seven, it’s like they knew I would break young, so the culture of Mississippi began pouring responsibilities on me literally as soon as I left college, so they could milk as much of the Campbell out of me as they could before I snapped.
I didn’t snap like a defective two-by-four. A million fibers of my being snapped inside me; I felt each one before the mast itself gave way.
My family is invested with an old curse. I have Persistant, Chronic Depression. While not all the scientists agree, I’m convinced that Depression is a part of a spectrum that includes Schizophrenia (my brother, Jimmy, had it), bipolar disorder (my cousin, Jim, had it), and Depression. Depression is very similar to Bipolar, except I don’t have highs and lows, I just have lows. They call it the “Eeyor Syndrome.”
“Oh, hullo, Pooh. It might rain today.”
“Oh, hullo, Eeyore. I don’t think it will rain today, the sun is shining.”
“The Sun might be shining, but there’s always a chance for rain.”
Persistent Chronic Depression, like Bipolar and Schizophrenia, means I’m a significant suicide risk. My little friend Katie hung herself from the swing set her father built for her sister. Because she died that way, and I survived, I knew I never could die that way because I knew “survivor’s guilt.” After my birthday this year, it will be forty-nine years since Katie died.
That doesn’t exclude suicide by smoking, drinking, eating too much, and sleeping too little. If Boyd dies with a drink in his hand, nobody will say he committed suicide—even if he really wanted to.
My dear friend Dick Wilson spent his life obsessed with anything involving KA, but he loved music more. Dick had an entire room dedicated to his collection of records, tapes, and CD’s. He paid a guy to build a cabinet to hold it. He also had a baby grand piano.
Dick signed the proclamation inducting me into the Court of Honor. Wearing my double-breasted black suit that doubled as a tuxedo, depending on what shirt I wore with it, I invited a girl whom I insisted be voted as KA Rose, even though she didn’t like me very much. While I was gentle with her, she had little interest in a cigar-smoking, heavy-drinking, swearing, and ugly boy who was rumored to get into fights. She represented us well, though.
For a while, Andrew Lloyd Webber dominated the world’s stages. Shortly after I graduated, a girl came to me in tears. Her life had come apart. Her father was in prison. She needed me. I did what I always did, “This is my sword. I will serve you.”
To congratulate myself on achieving my goals in turning her life around, I suggested that there was a new Andrew Lloyd Webber show in New York that people seemed wild about. Tickets are impossible to get, but I specialize in impossible things—would you like to go? She’d never been to Manhattan.
“Of Course, yes!”
Close to a week before we were supposed to go, she told me she’d reconciled with her boyfriend from high school, and she didn’t feel right about spending two nights with me in a hotel on Times Square.
“Gee. Thanks.”
In New York, I saw Sarah Brightman play Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera.” The seat beside me held my overcoat.
Christine was the second role Brightman originated for Webber before she married him. Before that, she was Jemima, the youngest member of the Jellicle cats.
One of the notable Wilsons, my friend Dick, a former Irwin Province Commander, traditionally held a cocktail party at his home after the court of honor. General Louis Wilson was one of my dad’s best friends and a life Trustee at Millsaps. He’s part of why we have the “Millsaps-Wilson Library.” Though they’re both dead now, there has always been a Wilson in my life. The Little Bird is a Wilson.
Since I kept getting drinks, my KA Rose date kept finding other people to talk to. We arrived in separate cars. Dick had a beautiful piano in his music room. He began playing a song I knew because Paul Hardin had told me about the play when I was a freshman. It was about cats, of all things. Dick began to play on his piano.
Memory
Turn your face to the moonlight
Let your memory lead you
Open up enter in
If you find there
The meaning of what happiness is
Then a new life will begin
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember
The time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory
Live again
So many times, the weight of my memories threatened to destroy me.
“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
“I’ve done questionable things.”
“Also, remarkable things—Revel in your time.”
Do you know who said that? I do.
Twice as bright, but half as long. Defend, protect, guard, the fuel that fed my fire was burning quickly; I could feel the breaking.
Women create life, men give their lives protecting it. That is the way. That is the design. The Knight’s life is not a happy one. Alone, cold in the dark, my sword guards the door from any threat as the rain beats down on my shoulders and bald head.
Defend the right,
Protect the weak,
Guard the honor of woman.
Sunlight through the trees in summer
Endless masquerading
Like a flower as the dawn is breaking
The memory is fading
Touch me
It’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day
Has begun……
