Forgive me for bursting with the joy of a new father, even though my youngest son was born 21 years ago this summer.
We are celebrating a literary birth, a remarkable and unprecedented accomplishment, within our little family.
The gentle, almost pixie-like, Robert Ebsen, our Friday essayist under the heading “Our Own Mr. Rogers,” has just published his first book.
Aptly titled “My Passions (My First Book of Essays),” Mr. Ebsen has assembled 78 of the extraordinarily clever essays he has coquettishly crafted for our newspaper into a single volume.
Mr. Ebsen is God’s idea of an ideal creature. He lives exhaustively, appreciates and is fascinated by all around him. Awaken him from a sound sleep at 3 in the morning, and he will tell you, rapid-fire, without a breath, the 75 most interesting encounters he had yesterday.
That is what he writes about, and that is why he is such a compelling author because he is a non-stop, perpetually digging thinker.
To authentically inherit the mantle of television’s schoolchild, perfect-pitch Mr. Rogers, one is required to possess a tireless, ardently curious mind that churns out questions, stunning discoveries and self-effacing satisfaction as prolifically as public speakers produce prepositions.
Ebsen Day or Columbus Day?
If Mr. Ebsen had been born in the 15th century, so overwhelming is his innate sense of curiosity that he, not that Columbus fella, would have discovered America.
His vacuum-like aerobic mind works so relentlessly that the retired educator would wear out a fit teenager in the first half-mile.
Mr. Ebsen lives in our general neighborhood. But he didn’t have to.
I can imagine him in the wilds of Maine, on the edge of a North Carolina forest, waterskiing along the Columbia River, or even residing in Wasilla. Not only satisfaction, but genuine fulfillment is Mr. Ebsen’s on-purpose lot in life.
Wherever God had decided to place Mr. Ebsen’s family, our essayist would have been as genuinely content as he is living in suburbia, he and his wife of many years, having raised a superb family. In a little less than four months, they will celebrate the marriage of their younger daughter.
He chooses, every day, to be richly satisfied, to be gloriously content with whatever degree of winds blow his way.
The late Mr. Rogers should have known Mr. Ebsen. Not only are their appearances roughly similar, so are their soft-flowing demeanors.
Both have managed to uncork the exquisite secret of living their lives in the lowest key while attaining the greatest yield.
Would you recognize Robert Ebsen on the street? Maybe. Picture this:
Physically, think of a gentle man as simple as a bucolic creek three inches deep, but turbulently powered by a mind as complex, as driven, as Einstein’s.
A model for those persons whom you love, Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com
