Groanings Which Cannot Be Uttered

The Less Explained the Better Understood

By Rolley Haggard

One hopes the reader will not think it strange or inexcusable that, while discoursing on the ineffable—something, by definition, incapable of being adequately described—the present writer demonstrates the very elusiveness of the point he himself struggles to articulate.

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I was 12 when my father, a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, was called to a year in Vietnam. My mother, sister, and I moved in with Mom's mom in her turn-of-the-century brick house north of Little Rock. The year was 1965.

In the house was a boarded room. Without being told in so many words, I learned it was not to be talked about. When the attempt was made, eyes would dart to the worn carpet or out the window to the golf course across the road; or else another topic—Lyndon Johnson's beagles or what soup to have with lunch—would be broached. These were sufficient signals for even a boy thought dull and impertinent by some of his schoolteachers to sense nearness to the edge of an invisible, dangerous precipice.

My family had always been indirect. Plain-spokenness, it was felt, jangled the sensibilities beyond what could be reasonably endured. Better to wring from life such peace and happiness as one could, than deal with life's inevitable unpleasantnesses.

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 Rolley Haggard is a feature writer for BreakPoint.