On the Shoulders of a Giant, a memorial poem.
It is my place of power. I can't go there anymore, haven't been able to for years, but it's still there; the good thing about not believing in stuff is that it doesn't go away. And so I still ride on top of those shoulders and look down on the world knowing I am special and strong and smart.
The only real difference is I don't scoff as much as I used too. I have more empathy for those who didn't start out so high. But just for this moment I'm going back to remember how it was up there back then. Ha! Look at them down there. They don't get how it is about learning and loving, about working and creating, about studying and beauty, about how if you combine them you can do special and amazing things….
I understand now that it is so scary, so hard to believe it's true, can seem like such a big risk to take…. But when you're up here that is not what you're thinking about. You are thinking about heading on up to where no one has ever been. You are just going after that beauty because it's shining so brightly and you really believe, you know that that is the way….
And so later when I climbed down and made my way alone, and found them all banging at me with their big sticks and mean attitudes, taking advantage of any mistake I might make, I didn't forget the way he had shown me. I just kept going after the beauty until they started to fall away, until their sticks couldn't reach me, until it was my job to help them.
And so if there's one thing I learned from that man with the big shoulders way up high, my Dad: it's really true! You can reach the highest summit and conquer the hardest concept once you see, that it's all so beautiful….
Where did that glorious enthusiasm come from? I barely met my grandparents on the Cosgrove side, but it may have been in there somewhere. For my father it was always about his English mother, her grandfather the mayor of Bournemouth, the connection to the Russell family. But sometimes we emphasize the weaker link in attempting to make it stronger…and I wonder…. I wonder about the other side, which he never told me about, indeed barely knew about it seems.
He didn't know about the two Croskery/Coskery/Crosgrove/Cosgrove brothers who emigrated from Northern Ireland in the early 1800s, and who are buried side by side in Westfield, NY; they have the same names, John and Robert! He didn't know about their offspring who fought through Gettysburg to Atlanta. He knew but didn't tell me about their other offspring, the three Cosgrove brothers who founded Green Giant company in Le Suer Minnesota, who lived there for generations in the Mayo house; and the burial site in Mound Cemetery, where lie many Cosgroves, his grandfather among them. The supposedly no good grandfather who left for Seattle with his wife, who worked in a hardware store, and died young. Apparently positive things were not said, and he never met him, but I will say this: the last record a month before his death finds him living with his wife in Seattle. That's good enough for me.
And sometimes it is that weakest link that is salvaged, wherein the energy comes out fresh. And so maybe we should look to the mother, his grandmother, Mary O'Rourke, about whom I know nothing, except: she brought her two sons out of the ruins in Seattle, to Pasadena, where they went to college and…he remembers her living in a small house alone, to a ripe old age, the O'Rourke…. Ha! Sounds like another Irish! And so why didn't you tell me about the Irish, Dad? About the farmers? About Carson Cosgrove who built the Minnesota Valley Cannery, and died in a car accident, at 85? About Ward Cosgrove who took over and conceived of Little Sprout, and the Jolly Green Giant, and invited you to work there one summer? When I think of all the joking and bad singing, the constant Shakespeare refrains, the ebullience that lifted me onto those shoulder's and taught me to love…it just makes so much sense, the Jolly Green Blood.
But then there is also the indefatigable logic. The set of all sets that contain themselves is not a set, and so it all falls apart. The cold logical structures that the simple minded would stand upon, they do not close, they are not consistent…. It's not so much that he taught me to think this way, as that he taught me to follow the beauty, all the way home. And I really don't know where that came from. Was it that tenuous link to the Russell's in England, to Bertrand even? Or to the Croskery's in Ireland, or to Carson? I doubt it. I think it came from the big man himself. The Jolly Green Genius who shuffled off this mortal coil with one final joke on the world, while others were having lunch. Bye Dad, and thanks for the shoulders; they are awesome high!