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STATE STREET SCRIBE by Jeff Wing
Jeff is a journalist, raconteur, autodidact, and polysyllable enthusiast. A long-time resident of SB, he takes great delight in chronicling the lesser known facets of this gaudy jewel by the sea. Jeff can be reached at jeffwingg@gmail.com.
Little and Big John’s Epiphany
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he Universe giveth, and the Universe taketh away (to paraphrase). John Ridland, UCSB professor emeritus of English, can say a word or two on the subject, and has. A radiantly written new work that is surely the summation of a beribboned lifetime of poetry and prose, Epitome and Epiphany delicately plumbs the complex depths of an early loss that staggered he and his wife, Muriel. And just as they were beginning a brandnew life at a new academic posting – on bluffs overlooking the sparkling Pacific, no less. What does the universe taketh, exactly? The soul (excuse me)? Hard to pin down, that. The “end” of a life is an emotional and physical hurricane whose category is informed equally by the mechanical, the whimsical, and the personally bearable. A loved one passes. Sometimes out of the show-closing maelstrom comes an unheralded burst of light that requires a brief averting of the eyes. “I remembered another dream,” John says. “I was walking Little John on my shoulder outside in moonlight, and he spoke a real word: ‘Moon.’“ Little John. Over time, John and Muriel Ridland’s separate dream lives would intersect, and around such dreamscape exotica as this: a boy on two legs, walking and speaking and gesturing with unimpeded energy. In John Ridland’s dream this night, the boy – their Little John – had clearly articulated the single word; a heartseizing astonishment that sent dad running back into the house with him, breathless with joy. “In the dream, I
rushed in excitedly to tell his mother the amazing news,” Ridland continues, “and I woke Muriel, shaking her shoulder. Suddenly, I found I had actually shaken her awake, and we were both lying there, awake in the dark, and I was telling her what had happened in the dream. ‘I was crying,’ I explained, beginning to cry in the telling. And Muriel said, “Yes. I heard you.” DREAMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES In 1961, John Ridland and Muriel made the move to Santa Barbara from Upland, in San Bernardino County, John accepting a position as associate professor of English at the vaunted University of California here; UCSB, as it was colloquially known to locals. Muriel’s 35-mile commute to teach at L.A. State College (now California State University in Los Angeles) and a baby on the way decided them; the ocean breezes and beautiful milieu, they imagined, would salve the rigors of late-stage pregnancy and land them in paradise as well. “We’d had two very sociable years in the very welcoming Claremont community,” Ridland says. “But it was a no-brainer: cool South Coast over Inland Empire oven.” John Ridland, professor emeritus of English at UC Santa Barbara – and through the scholarly decades a plauditfestooned poet and translator – looks the role. He is a tall man whom you might describe as stately, but for the set of a mouth that suggests an ongoing, deeply held bemusement. Soft spoken, erudite, a stealth speaker of few words,
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when he arises from a chair and unfolds to his full height, he has something of the static grace of a heron. Muriel is his complement; voluble, immediately open, warm, eloquent, and of an approachable stature. Ridland taught at UCSB for 42 years, retiring in 2005. In 1961, the two were excitedly scribbling out the ad-hoc blueprint of a new life in a new town and summoning the necessary energies. Muriel’s pregnancy, though, was not going to plan. An examination revealed an anomaly that would take John and Muriel’s daughter from them at birth. As it happened, over the course of two stunned days, Muriel’s mother too, would pass, from cancer; having just posted from New Zealand a cheering note of encouragement to Muriel and John over the imminent new arrival, their little girl. “I included Muriel’s mother’s last letter (in the book) for the beautiful note of hope it strikes like an orchestral triangle––hopes that would not be heard again until far into the symphony, and struck from her terminal hospital bed,” John says. “No cause and effect, sheer coincidence – but you notice how the Fates like to work in parcels of three. What we think now is how staggering these days must have been for her father,
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not a man to examine his feelings.” The curious third blow – Muriel’s father had a beloved dog, and the cosmos, in its mathematical majesty, had even seen fit to pluck away its life as these darkling hours passed. John and Muriel put their heads down and moved forward, conceiving again, imagining a stillbright future along this necessary fork in the road. SPECIAL VS ORDINARY Some two years later, John heard Muriel shout his name and ran to the bedroom of their 21-month old, John – Little John, as he had been endearingly nicknamed – to find Muriel bending in a panic over his son, and Little John in a convulsive state. The maddened drive to the hospital and harried care there did nothing to mitigate or explain what was happening, nor would an explanation ever be forthcoming in the remaining four years of Little John’s speechless, not to say joyless, life. Muted “benchmark” warning bells from the medical establishment had long since alerted the Ridlands to the possibility that Little John’s “case” might be one of special needs. His speech, motor skills, and socialization, among other ...continued p.14
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