Prelude to a sandwich

I recently read The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. Toward the beginning of this emotional bull-ride of a book a terminal character who never had children of her own, but lead a full and influential life, makes a statement that stuck in my brain like one of those popcorn hulls that works deep into the gum at the base of a molar. During an interview to confirm facts for her own obituary, the character says, “the only legacy is genetic material” (p.38).

It's slightly more complicated than this.

I found the scene utterly fantastic, but those six words unforgettable. While I finished the book the image of the woman and her words kept coming back in my head. By the time I’d completed the book that early scene had melted away entirely, leaving just the line scrolling through many a quiet thought like update tickers on CNN...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material. Once outside the context of scene and story, the statement took on a life of its own in my head. And pointed me in an unexpected direction.


As a tongue bothers at embedded popcorn, my brain worked at the statement for days, tumbling meaning, and considering it from any angle I could think of. Initially, I found such a distillation of life sad but wonderfully natural, along the lines of the fierce scenes in nature documentaries where predator captures prey; disturbing, but beautiful as nature’s design. After a day or two of on-again, off-again consideration braided among interactions with my children, appreciation for the hard simplicity of the statement began to wane and ‘comically reductive’ became my interpretation of choice. I could not accept the statement, no matter how I tried to see it. It's simply too insulting to any person who has ever earnestly interacted with another human being. Anybody who’s witnessed learned mannerisms in a child that exactly matches those exhibited by a close adult knows genetic material cannot be the extent of legacy. A piece of the double-helix does not make a little girl crinkle her nose and rub her hands together vigorously when she’s excited; she learned that from her mother. Conversely, watching the slow, layered process of a child heeding endless small lessons—deduced from observation or directly taught—then employing what she has learned in order to not be like her parent may be the genetic antibody, and if you doubt that consider the countless parental laments along the lines of “I think there was a mix-up at the hospital.” I’m certain that my daughter, Mufus, possesses the force of will necessary to not only be as different from me as possible, but to actually alter her DNA. So, because I'm sure it takes some time to harness such a talent (I've seen X-Men), when she starts to get really proficient at re-mapping her sequences she'll be in middle school, when girls can't get enough of their fathers. Around that time, I plan to be a "relative" only in the legal sense, ie. I'm listed on her birth certificate, and ride out being a non-relative until she likes me again. College, maybe? When I first realized Mufus' special, um, talent for willfulness may present a problem, I raised the issue of mutating children and how they affect parental burden to a lawyer at a dinner party. He gave me the name of a colleague who specializes in the field.  
A ring-side seat to the bout between child-trying-to-be-their-parents and child-trying-to-avoid-becoming-their-parents is the finest perk of early parenthood (I doubt I’ll be so happy with the tickets when puberty rears its ugly mug, but who knows) and genetic material certainly plays a part in the back-and-forth, but so do an unknowable number of factors contributed by an unknowable number of people. I’m thrilled that lots and lots of people have legacy equity in my children, not just the genetic contributors. And, that conclusion put a halt to the six-word ticker line in my brain.  
As for the unexpected direction I wrote of earlier, that looney off-shoot of thought came somewhere in the middle of my consideration of the six words. I thought about what, beyond younger homo sapiens, might be an ideal legacy, and that caused me to consider…
John Montague, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, and his chef, circa 1762, for another time.