MY FATHER'S FAVORITE BOOK
by Beth Tally
It’s uncanny sometimes how something can bring back a memory. I’m talking about a memory buried so deeply for years in the recesses of the mind that only a powerful trigger can conjure it up. Back in late March or early April, I had such an incident.
We were in Georgetown on Grand Exuma Island in the Bahamas. Actually, we had been there for several weeks at the southern end of a months-long cruise on our sailboat “Up Jinks.” It had been enough time in one place to establish some of the routines that constancy initiates. One of these routines was to go to Forbes Enterprises in the middle of town to get on the internet. At least twice a week, we would bundle up our computer, carefully load it into the dinghy and ride over to the community dock on Lake Victoria. From there, it was a short walk to Forbes.
Inevitably, we’d have to wait for a hook-up. Wintertime in Georgetown is always quite crowded with cruisers. Just like us, they rely on the internet to communicate with family and friends back home. Forbes was one of the few places you could go to get online.
This particular day, I was waiting my turn, sitting in a folding chair, chatting with some of the other people in the building. For some reason, my eyes drifted over to a stack of books that rested on the sill of a window looking out onto Lake Victoria. They were school texts for the most part, maybe those of one of the Forbes children who frequently came in and out during the day. The one on top, however, was not a textbook. It was definitely a storybook and, even though I hadn’t seen it or thought about it for more forty years, I recognized it instantly. There, in the window at Forbes, on the cover of this book, stood the Little Prince on Asteroid B-612.
I felt like Harry Potter transporting through a portal and landing in the hallway of my childhood home at 3 Lakecrest Drive in Greenville, SC. That’s where the bookcase was, where resting on the third shelf from the bottom was our well worn copy of “The Little Prince.”
“The Little Prince,” Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s whimsical fable about understanding what’s truly important in life, was my father’s favorite book. Probably before I could understand a single word he said, he was reading it to me. As a child, I was captivated by its peculiar illustrations – the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant, the baobabs, the prince raking out his volcanoes. It would be years before I could see beyond the pictures and the words to understand the message.
Dad has been gone over eleven years now. In all that time, I don’t think I’ve properly sorted through the stages of grief in losing him. There are still boxes in storage filled with his writings, personal artifacts and memorabilia. I haven’t had the heart to go through them. But, today I did something that I think may get me going – I reread “The Little Prince.”
I was struck with the parallels between the points of the story and what my father believed important. Dad always instilled in us that we should never judge others, especially on their physical appearance.
I have serious reasons to believe that the planet the little prince came from is Asteroid B-612. This asteroid has been sighted only once by telescope, in 1909 by a Turkish astronomer, who had then made a formal demonstration of his discovery at an International Astronomical Congress. But no one had believed him on account of the way he was dressed. Grown-ups are like that.
Fortunately for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator ordered his people, on pain of death, to wear European clothes. The astronomer repeated his demonstration in 1920, wearing a very elegant suit. And this time everyone believed him.
We moved into the house at 3 Lakecrest when I was in the first grade. Dad took a special interest in landscaping the yard. This was especially true of the azaleas. He spent hours gathering cuttings, dipping them in Root-Tone and planting them in tin cans. They stayed nestled beside the front porch steps, protected from the elements, until they were grown enough to transplant in the yard. He would carefully dig out roots and then diligently turn the soil to make receptive beds for his new charges. It was his contribution to environmentalism.
And, in fact, on the little prince’s planet there were – as on all planets – good plants and bad plants. The good plants come from good seeds, and the bad plants from bad seeds. But the seeds are invisible. They sleep in the secrecy of the ground until one of them decides to wake up. Then it stretches and begins to sprout, quite timidly at first, a charming, harmless little twig reaching toward the sun. If it’s a radish seed, or a rosebush seed, you can let it sprout all it likes. But if it’s the seed of a bad plant, you must pull the plant up right away, as soon as you can recognize it. As it happens, there were terrible seeds on the little prince’s planet….baobab seeds. The planet’s soil was infested with them. Now if you attend to a baobab too late, you can never get rid of it again. It overgrows the whole planet. Its roots pierce right through. And if the planet is too small, and if there are too many baobabs, they make it burst into pieces.
“It’s a question of discipline,” the little prince told me later on. ‘When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. You must be sure you pull up the baobabs regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the rosebushes, which they closely resemble when they’re very young. It’s very tedious work, but very easy.”
Dad had pretty good perceptions about people as well. To his way of thinking, those who were too greedy, too vain, too preoccupied and too serious were going to fail sooner or later. I couldn’t help but think that some of that insight must have come directly from the Little Prince’s visits to Asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329 and 330.
The first one was inhabited by a king. Wearing purple and ermine, he was sitting on a simple yet majestic throne.
“Ah! Here’s a subject!” the king exclaimed when he caught sight of the little prince.
And the little prince wondered, ‘How can he know who I am if he’s never seen me before?’ He didn’t realize that for kings, the world is extremely simplified: All men are subjects.
……later in the same chapter
“Exactly. One must command from each what each can perform,” the king went on. “Authority is based first of all upon reason. If you command your subjects to jump in the ocean, there will be a revolution. I am entitled to command obedience because my orders are reasonable.”
On Asteroid 326 -
The second planet was inhabited by a very vain man. “Ah! A visit from an admirer!” he exclaimed when he caught sight of the little prince, still at some distance. To vain men, other people are admirers.
“Hello,” said the little prince. “That’s a funny hat you’re wearing.”
“It’s for answering acclamations,” the very vain man replied. “Unfortunately, no one ever comes this way.”
“Is that so?” said the little prince, who did not understand what the vain man was talking about.
“Clap your hands,” directed the man.
The little prince clapped his hands, and the very vain man tipped his hat in modest acknowledgment
And he continued clapping. The very vain man continued tipping his hat in acknowledgment. .
……later in the same chapter
But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise.
On Asteroid 327 –
The next planet was inhabited by a drunkard.
“What are you doing there?” he asked the drunkard.
“Drinking,” replied the drunkard, with a gloomy expression.
“Why are you drinking?” the little prince asked.
“To forget,” replied the drunkard.
“To forget what?” inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
“To forget that I’m ashamed,” confessed the drunkard, hanging his head.
“What are you ashamed of?” inquired the little prince, who wanted to help.
“Of drinking!” concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into silence for good.
Dad had an amazing aura about him. He was a magnet to people, young and old. Like all of us, he had his shortcomings, but until the day he died, he truly sought to listen to and learn from others. This was particularly so with his children and grandchildren. It was as if a piece of his heart was planted in each of us. He invested his time in us.
And he went back to the fox.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye,” said the fox. “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
“Anything essential is invisible to the eyes,” the little prince repeated, in order to remember.
“It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It’s the time I spent on my rose….,” the little prince repeated, in order to remember.
“People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said. “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose…”
“I’m responsible for my rose….,” the little prince repeated, in order to remember.
When I think back on Dad, my memory of him is so vivid it’s almost like he’s still alive. I can hear him chuckling. I can remember the way he used to push his fingers together and press them against his mouth when he was thinking. I can see his penetrating blue eyes looking over the half-frames of his glasses and I can hear the notes of “Turnip Greens” rolling off of the piano in our living room. Very much like the Little Prince, he dropped out of the sky and landed on the desert of my life to show me what matters. His presence is still with me.
“At night, you’ll look up at the stars. It’s too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It’s better that way. My star will be …. one of the stars for you. So you’ll like looking at all of them. They’ll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you.” He laughed again.
“Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh!”
“That’ll be my present. Just that…it’ll be the same as the water.”
“What do you mean?”
“People have stars, but they aren’t the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they’re nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they’re problems. For my businessman, they are gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you’ll have stars like nobody else.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that laugh.”
And he laughed again.
“And when you’re consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it…And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky.”
Yes, Dad, I know you’re up there. You and the little prince forever together.
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