Madonna in Gingham

Madonna in Gingham

last leg home last night, a red-eye from Atlanta in a boxcar with wings, teeming with families from lands where Zika thrives.

several families, too, in garb I associate with the Amish: men in grey trousers and bland plaid shirts; their women in ankle length gingham, hair pulled back in tight buns and capped with white lace kepis.

or am I mistaken? how do the shunners of cars and tractors, and drivers of teams along Rte 30 justify travel in Boeing 757's?

regardless, by all appearances they are a fecund lot. One of these women, buxom, and 22 at the oldest, carried a six month old of indeterminate gender, and led a tender 3 year old boy in a straw cowboy hat. The boy was carrying a steaming dinner in a bulging McDonald's sack. His father carried the middle child of this sequence, and I have little doubt the mother carried a fourth, yet out of sight.

Long of leg and weak of bladder, I had selected the aisle seat, but when the mother looked at me with those weary eyes--eyes the color of the pale blue gingham that draped her, and a complexion matched only by Raphael's Madonna--and asked if I would take the window seat--what could I do? She took the aisle, and the little boy--himself sprung from Raphael's brush--sat between us.

As the plane climbed among the stars, the boy's tiny fingers worked through a bag of french fries. Gastric juices flooded my mouth. The father, in the middle seat before him, passed some lurid colored iced beverage back and forth with his wife.

By the time the plane had swung round toward its destination, the boy had fallen asleep, his head in the crook of my arm. The infant issued a few subdued squeals and thrust out its arms and legs--and then--judging by the odor no less dense and permeating than the french fries--released its bowels--then sank into slumber.

Save for the two plangent voiced swains seated behind me, who laughed and bragged the entire flight about their prowess at golf and women, the cabin fell silent.

Sleep impossible, I pulled out the yellowed edition of Tortilla Flat. I had read Steinbeck's little masterpiece when young, and recalled many of the vivid passages. But only now did I hear its lilting voice, and understand the pathos that underpinned its gentle wit.

It was fitting, then, to read the passage about the fertile but husbandless Senora Teresina Cortez.

Teresina's body "...was one of those perfect retorts for the distillation of children," Her house was full of "...creepers, crawlers, tumblers, shriekers, cat-killers, fallers-out-of-trees; and each one of these charges could be trusted to be ravenous every two hours." And each one, the issue of a different father.

A study in contrast, then, in all visible respects--Teresina and our blue eyed Madonna. But what hidden commonalities did they share?

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