A Plea for Eros

David. He wasn’t our real uncle but my grandfathers cousin, and in 1962 he was already an old man, probably in his early eighties. Uncle David had always been a part of our lives, and Liv and I were very fond of him. He had left Norway when he was twenty-two to make his fortune in America and ended up outside Chicago, where he had worked as a carpenter. Uncle David was fun. He walked for miles every day, played strenuous games with us, and showed his affection by giving us sudden, fierce hugs, which despite the fact that they were enthusiastic were also decidedly uncomfortable.
    I don’t remember feeling anything but excitement as my sister and I and Uncle David stepped onto the train, and I have no conscious memory of saying good-bye to my parents. Liv and I felt that the trip was to be the adventure of our lives, and we embraced it wholeheartedly. It began well. We were sitting in our big train seats across from Uncle David when suddenly two men, with red bandanas tied over their noses, came running through the car. In hot pursuit behind them came two policemen with guns. Amazed, Liv and I asked Uncle David who those men were. Unruffled, he said, “Probably baggage robbers.” My sister and I were delighted: real robbers.
    Uncle David lived with his unmarried daughter, a schoolteacher, whom we called Aunt Harriet. Their house was dark as I remember it. Maybe the curtains were often pulled or maybe the windows didn’t get much light—I don’t know—but it was an umbral place and it smelled old. The first night of our visit, Aunt Harriet told us to “go upstairs and take your bath now.” Liv and I looked at each other, walked up the stairs, opened the bathroom door, entered the room, and stood staring at the bathtub. We had never taken a bath alone. We had never turned on the water in a bathtub. Our mother filled the bath. She washed our hair, and she warmed towels in the dryer to prevent us from catching a chill. In the winter, my father would often wrap us in those warm towels, lift us up into his arms, and place us in front of a fire. I remember clearly that Liv and I conferred about what we should do. We had been given an order. It never occurred to us to disobey it, nor did it occur to us to ask for help. We did take a bath—in cold, shallow water. It lasted about two minutes.
    During the days that followed, we never left Highwood. When Aunt Harriet went off to work, Uncle David entertained us. A high point of the visit, which I remember with burning clarity, was the afternoon Uncle David beckoned us into his room. As my sister and I watched, he reclined on his bed in a luxurious manner, shoes on the bedspread, and with great ceremony extracted a bank note from his wallet. We leaned forward to look at it. It was a hundred-dollar bill. We had never seen so much money in one place before. “Whenever you need one of these,” he said, “you can come to me.” Liv and I were deeply impressed.
    I’m not sure when I started missing home and longing for my parents, but I suspect it was after only a couple of days. The entire visit couldn’t have lasted more than two weeks. What is interesting to me now is that I didn’t articulate the feeling to myself. I didn’t say, “I want to go home,” or, “I’m homesick.” At the same time, I had a strong sense that Liv and I shared our feelings, whether we spoke of them or not. We stuck together, discussed how different Uncle David’s was from what we were used to, but we didn’t cry or ask that anything be changed. Then I wrote a letter home. I believe that it was a cheerful letter, that I gave a report to my mother and father about our doings in Highwood, but with the letter I sent a drawing of Jesus. The Bible stories I had learned in Sunday school had had a great effect on me, and at seven I was a pious child. God and angels and miracles and the terrible story of the crucifixion inhabited my inner world, and it came into my head to draw a picture of Jesus praying to God, his father, in the garden at Gethsemane before he is taken away and crucified. I worked on it very hard. I thought it was the best, most beautiful drawing I had ever made. Christ was kneeling in prayer, and I think he was wearing a blue robe. I folded it up and sent it off with my news.
    My mother took one look at the drawing and decided to take a train to Chicago. For me, the message of the drawing was entirely unconscious, but my mother read it correctly. It said: “Take this cup