A Million Years with You (41 page)

Sali will appear in this novel for the first time, but as a spirit. In the earlier novels she was known only by the stories people told about her. It will also be the first time a tiger appears in any significant manner. Mostly in the earlier novels you just hear them roaring or see their footprints in the snow.

Ever since I finished
The Animal Wife
, the second of those novels, I've looked forward to writing the third. For most of the day I'll live once again on the Paleolithic steppe. It won't be my last book, or I hope it won't, but everything I've always cared about will be in it, from the pristine Kalahari and the windswept Arctic tundra to the wolves and caribou, also known as reindeer, that I watched on Baffin Island, the lions I knew in the Kalahari, the elephants I knew in Etosha and in Portland, the bears and deer I know in New Hampshire, and the tigers I knew at the Hawthorn Corporation, except that in the novel these will be large Siberian tigers like the one my gran and I would visit in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. I believe it will bring me full circle.

16

W
HEN I LOOK
at the Wapack Range, I think of my father. One day when I was in my forties, I sat with him in the kitchen in New Hampshire, looking out the window at the autumn leaves. He was in his eighties, and had always been fascinated by trees. That morning in the kitchen, he wondered aloud if the shift in weight of all the leaves in the Northern Hemisphere, up in the trees for half the year, down on the ground for the other half, could influence the speed of the earth's rotation.

The Wapack Range was thick with trees whose leaves would soon be falling. That was a lot of leaves, just in that one place. Many tons of them would be, on average, about thirty feet closer to the earth's center of gravity. Wouldn't a worldwide shift of so much weight make a difference to the planet, changing, however slightly, the length of nights and days? My dad mentioned a law of physics which I now know is called the conservation of angular momentum and is the effect a skater achieves when she brings in her arms to spin more quickly. This would persist in any similar situation, no matter how imperceptible the increased speed might be.

That day in the kitchen, we spoke of the time when the Northern Hemisphere was tropical, when the leaves would not have fallen all at once. We wondered what the world was like all those millions of years ago. Would the days have gone by a bit more slowly, at least while the Southern Hemisphere was tipped toward the sun? We wished we could go back in time to see what those hills looked like then. We spoke of climbing the hills together. That took us back through time, if not far enough, so I reminded my dad of walking through the juniper when he told me to stop whining. To please him, I had promised to do so, and I meant to keep that promise. I couldn't always do it, but I tried.

So I thanked him for the fact that some people thought I was tough. One such person was Sy Montgomery, who in the dedication of her book about snow leopards,
Ghost of the Mountain
, wrote the following: “To Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, strong as a snow leopard, tough as Genghis Khan.” The book was published after my father's death, but I wish he could have seen it. This comment was because of him, and I know he would have liked it. But perhaps he didn't need more proof of what I'd learned from him, because that day in the kitchen, thinking of the hills and their antiquity, he spoke the most beautiful words I ever heard. “I'd like to spend a million years with you,” he said.

I might be marginally as tough as Genghis Khan, but not all the time. I was moved so deeply that my eyes filled with tears, and I still cry when I think of what he said. I would have liked to spend a million years with him, but because his health was failing we both knew we might not have much longer together.

And we didn't. When he was ninety-one, he was taken by ambulance to the Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. It was Election Day, and at that moment I was near our home in Virginia, standing in front of a polling place, holding a political sign for Jimmy Carter. Suddenly Steve and Stephanie drove up to tell me that my dad was in critical condition in the hospital. I dropped the sign, got in the car, and Steve rushed us to the airport, where Stephanie and I clawed our way onto the next plane to Boston. After a nightmarish struggle to get her and her wheelchair out of the plane and both of us into a taxi, we joined my mother at my father's bedside. He wasn't conscious. We held his hands. News of the election blared from a television in another room. But in my father's room, we sat in silence while his life slipped from him quietly and slowly, like the life of a tree.

 

After that, his phrase became my lodestar of love and also of sadness. Unlike a million years with him, the forty-odd years we'd spent together didn't seem enough. But that day in the kitchen, he had added a few words that made everything right. After all, it was he who first told me that our bodies contain molecules that could have been in dinosaurs, and that after we die, those molecules would go to other life forms. So after he said he'd like to live a million years with me, he added, “Who knows? Maybe we've done that already.” That seemed altogether likely, and I expect the process will continue. The thought gives me great peace.

 

When I look at my flourishing climbing rose which is at least seventy years old, or at a certain maple tree beside our house, I think of my mother. She planted the rose, so the associated memory is of her wearing stylish, wide-legged slacks and digging a hole with a trowel. But the maple tree conjures the memory of her with three elephants. It springs from a big party we gave to celebrate the publication of an important book by the wildlife biologist Richard Estes,
The Behavior Guide to African Mammals
.

In honor of the subject matter, I arranged for three elephants to be at the party. Actually, they were Asian elephants, not African elephants, but they were the best I could manage. Their arrival was spectacular. The guests could not believe their eyes when they saw elephants passing by a window in New Hampshire, and everyone, including my mother, went outside to meet them. One of the guests took photos, most of which show a big crowd of us milling around together, all excited and talking. But one photo shows my mother way off to the side, alone, with the elephants standing calmly beside her. They are reaching the tips of their trunks toward her. Knowing nothing of the photographer, my mother is offering them twigs with leaves. These enormous creatures could have pushed her down and taken all the leaves they wanted. Instead, they are accepting them carefully.

 

For her one hundredth birthday, also in Peterborough, we gave an even bigger party. My mom was much loved, so people came from all over the United States and also from other countries. This time I arranged for there to be a lion and a tiger. The tiger was a big teenager who jerked his handler around like a dog on a leash, but the lion was an infant. Several little girls were at that party and couldn't get enough of the baby lion, whom they carried around like a doll, grabbing him from one another. This upset him. Whenever the girls would put him down he'd try his best to toddle away from them.

Then someone handed him to my mother. He was tense and exhausted as she reached out for him—fur bristling, eyes darting, tiny teeth bared—but she cradled him gently. He looked up at her, sighed with relief, and at once fell fast asleep.

His was a normal reaction to my mother. As has been said, she took care of every animal and every person who came into her life. No one was too young or too old, too rich or too poor, too famous or too obscure, for her to treat any differently than she treated the little lion. Multiple children were named for her—a Ju/wa girl was named Norna (the !Kung language doesn't have an
l
), an Ambo girl was named Lorna Hameva, my mother's first cousin once removed was named Lorna Grant, and the daughter of one of my mom's admirers, a scientist from Holland, was named Norna, perhaps because of the Ju/wa connection.

 

I used to think my mom was too obliging. Nobody hesitated to phone her while she was trying to write
The !Kung of Nyae Nyae
, or to drop in for a cup of coffee and a chat. In the evenings, groups of people would drop in for a drink, in which case the conversation would go on so long that she would cook dinner for them. Despite her endless phone calls and streams of visitors, she managed to publish a series of papers in the anthropological journal
Africa
, but it took her twenty years to finish
The !Kung of Nyae Nyae
for the Harvard University Press. The only time I ever heard of her getting really angry was because of this. My dad also thought she was too obliging and once suggested that she hire someone else to write her book. He was trying to be helpful, but she was enraged. I didn't see this, but a friend of ours was there and well remembers that to his surprise, she uncharacteristically exploded. So I'm glad it wasn't me who made that suggestion, because during those years I also criticized her for being too available. This didn't mean I didn't phone or visit her myself whenever I felt like it, but she was my mom, not those other people's.

Her friends would compare us. Sympathetically, they'd say she was a hard act to follow. But I didn't think so. I'd read F. Fraser Darling's
A Herd of Red Deer
, and from it learned about female leadership. Darling points out that male leadership involves authority and domination, but female leadership does not, or not often, and not among red deer. Their large herds are composed of females and young and are led by a mature hind, whose entire attention, while the herd is on the move, is focused on getting everybody to the next place safely.

I saw such a herd in Scotland on the Isle of Mull, stronghold of the McLean clan. My mom was a McLean, her very Scottish family came from the Isle of Mull, and we had gone there to see its castle. The man who lived in the castle was head of the clan and was known as the McLean. (He was so taken with my mom that he too came to visit her in Cambridge.)

On that island I saw two hinds protecting their herd, whose members, no doubt, were their younger relatives. They'd be on a hill, about to cross a valley from which they couldn't see very far, so the first hind would lead the herd across the valley and up the next hill while the second hind stayed in place and kept watch. When the first hind reached the top of the hill, she'd wait until all the deer, including the second hind, caught up to her. Thus there was never a time when one of the hinds couldn't see approaching danger. Darling compares their behavior to that of a teacher taking children across a street. The teacher is in charge, of course, but she isn't trying to be the alpha female and she isn't dominating the children. She is using her authority, to be sure, but in a concerned manner and only to protect them.

When I was in my early twenties, I had an interesting experience that spoke of my mother's protection. I was staying at her house, which, as has been said, was near Harvard's Peabody Museum, and one afternoon I was in the basement of the museum working on something related to the Kalahari, but I can't remember what. I lost track of time, so I didn't realize that the museum was closing until the lights went out. I found myself in pitch darkness, and at first I was shocked. Then I was frightened, very frightened. As far as I was concerned, the museum was full of terrors, which began with the stuffed tiger that I'd seen with my gran but had advanced to a collection of mummified human corpses which I knew were in large drawers in the basement. I'd seen them too.

I wasn't safe. I wasn't at all safe. The darkness was absolute, but somehow I groped my way toward the door. It was locked. I thought my hair would turn white and I'd gibber streams of nonsense. I groped my way toward the stairs, and suddenly heard slow, heavy footsteps. A mummy had climbed out of its box and was coming for me. I groped my way up the stairs and into the hallway, where I found the front door. It was unlocked. I burst out into the night and ran all the way to my parents' house.

My mom was standing on the front steps, her head forward, her feet slightly apart, her arms slightly away from her sides, looking in my direction as if she'd just heard an explosion. I ran up to her. She said she had suddenly become terrified for me. She suddenly knew that something horrible was happening to me. And she had come outdoors to look for me.

Well, that's all that happened. I wasn't, of course, in any danger, and the footsteps would have been those of the janitor who was closing the building. But from the experience, my mom and I learned that there is after all such a thing as extrasensory perception. And I seemed to have learned something from majoring in English—the idea of gibbering came from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I must have been forced to read it, and some of it must have stuck.

But the event also says something about my mom's attunement, which was profound. I think of the red deer in Scotland. The leader didn't need to look to know that her herd had caught up to her. When all were present, she just plunged forward.

The attunement enabled my mother's leadership. When I was fifteen, I remember, I was about to go out. My mom was near the front door, and she looked at me. “You're so pretty,” she said. “And that sweater looks nice on you. If you brushed your hair the effect would be perfect.” Isn't that better than “You're a mess. Can't you even brush your hair?” which would have sent me right out the door. Instead, I brightened.
Wow! I'm pretty and I have a nice sweater!
And I ran upstairs for a hairbrush.

I strongly felt that she was our most important link to the Ju/wasi, as she was always with them, making cocoa for them in the evenings, never pressing them for information, admiring their children, giving gifts, remembering everybody's name and everything they told her. She even found favor among anthropologists, although these are an aggressive lot, especially toward people like us who dared to work in their field without graduate degrees in their subject. But when my mom published her findings despite her lack of academic credentials, very few of them attacked her. The anthropologist Alan Barnard described her as “one of the most sensitive, meticulous, and unpretentious ethnographers of all time.”
¹