Ken McAlpine's Blog: The Hesitant Blogger - Posts Tagged "children"
Find happiness where you can
Tucked within the protected confines of Nantucket Sound, Quohog Beach is a beach for young children. As if attempting to make things pleasant for its primary patrons, everything about Quohog Beach is small, from its wee crescent of sand to the pint-size jetty jutting like a blunt thumb into the Sound.
At the moment we are consumed with the beach. We scour the sand, buckets swinging, poking through a tangle of seaweed, broken bits of whelk and moon snail, searching beneath a cloudless blue July sky for pieces of horseshoe crab. These prehistoric creatures once littered Cape Cod in such numbers that they were ground up and used as fertilizer by farmers. From what we observe on the sand their numbers haven’t decreased much, though each crab appears to have been placed atop a firecracker and then scattered by a schizophrenic wind.
No matter. Our plan remains straightforward. We will piece together a horseshoe crab, whole and complete. Cullen and Graham raptly pluck cracker-thin crab bits, placing them gently in their bucket. I follow their example, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I understand the odds. I glance at other parents, flat on their backs in the hot sun.
At six, Cullen runs things. He waves a magisterial hand at his four-year-old brother.
“If we don’t get enough pieces to put together the crab now,” he decrees, “we’ll get the rest later.”
“Uh-huh,” grunts Graham, possibly because he mildly resents being bossed around, possibly because he is sorely bent to one side under the weight of a bucket spilling over with pretty much everything he could pick up.
Cullen strides over to his brother’s bucket, peers in and scowls.
“Crabs aren’t made out of beer cans!”
I wish the beer can was full. My head has been cocked to the sand for two hours. The back of my neck feels like it’s been kicked by a Clydesdale.
Perhaps I slip into sudsy daydream. Cullen looks at us both and harrumphs.
“Am I going to have to do this all by myself?”
We collect jigsaw pieces for another thirty minutes. Not thirty-one minutes, not thirty-two. Any parent of small children understands exactitude. I can’t go a minute longer. I find an excuse called lunch.
The three of us walk up the path to the cottage where we are staying for the week, buckets bumping.
“I think we have the pieces we need,” says Cullen.
“Right,” says Graham.
He is too young for sarcasm.
We march through the front door and continue, as quickly as possible, on through the kitchen, where Kathy is fixing everyone lunch. We are not quick enough.
“You’d better wash whatever that is off their hands,” says Kathy.
I stand in the bathroom, watching Cullen turn a white hand towel black. I may be less attentive the second son around. Eating lunch I notice Graham has something shiny and snail-like on his index finger. I say a silent prayer and he answers it by licking it off.
That night Kathy and I lay in bed. Our sliding screen door opens to the porch. Occasionally a puff of wind brings a smell that makes me wonder if Stephen King is cooking something just outside. Beneath the stars dark shells lay methodically sorted, according to what I don’t know.
“Phew,” I say.
“Maybe you could put them in the yard,” Kathy says, but I know she doesn’t really mean it because she’s smiling as if we’re lying downwind from a potpourri factory.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Another six months and it’ll be a wrap.”
“Anything is possible,” my beautiful bride says to me, and I know why I married her.
The following morning we redirect slightly.
“I want to crab,” says Graham.
Cullen gives a magisterial nod.
“Let’s,” he says.
We have become fascinated with crabbing because frankly nothing, with the possible exception of King Henry VIII, eats with more gusto than crabs do. Also live crabs do more interesting things than dead ones. The small jetty pronging off Quohog Beach is loaded with crabs. We know this because on this, the fourth day of our vacation, we have already been crabbing roughly two thousand times.
We retrieve our buckets from the porch. Before we go, Cullen crouches to arrange a few promising horseshoe pieces.
“Hmmm,” he says, moving the pieces in circles like a centrifugal chess master.
“Hmmm,” says his brother, who at this juncture in time still admires him greatly.
Cullen finishes placing the bits in their proper places. There is something resembling a horseshoe crab body, but there are still great gaps occupied by cedar composite decking.
“There,” says Cullen.
What I see resembles a horse dropping after the Kentucky Derby field has run through it.
Cullen looks to Graham.
“Just a few more pieces,” he says.
“Hmmmm,” says Graham.
Small children wake well before the most conscientious rooster and even earlier on vacation. The world is gray. The light isn’t even up yet. The air is still damp with sea. The beach is empty.
We each carry our own bucket, chicken bits and string inside. I step gingerly along the jetty. The enormous rocks, sectioned in some distant quarry, are liberally colonized by barnacles that jab at the soles of my feet.
Cullen and Graham walk as if strolling across shag carpet. When I reach the end of the jetty Cullen is already crouched, peering into his chosen crevice.
“Breakfast time,” says Cullen, “but not for us.”
Graham is flat on his stomach, his face and the majority of his torso in his crevice of choice.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“I dropped my string.”
After I retrieve it, I tie a chicken piece to each string. The boys accept their strings, solemnly lowering the sacrificial chicken into the dark rift. I spread out the newspaper I brought, and put the remaining chicken pieces on it. Past experience has shown us we’ll quickly need room in our buckets for crabs.
When I finish I squat and watch our sons. They peer into the dark, brows furrowed.
“Come awwwwwwwn,” says Cullen.
Graham’s string jerks.
“Whaaaaaat!” he shrieks. “Caught one! Caught one!”
I have coached them thoroughly in the craft of crabbing. Wait for the crab to latch firmly to the chicken. Bring the string up slowly so the crab doesn’t know it’s being reeled in.
Graham stands straight up. The crab swings to and fro in front of his belly button, a dark pendulum oblivious to its change in circumstance. One claw affixed to the chicken bit, the other claw greedily spoons meat into its wet maw.
Reaching behind the crab, I pinch its body between my thumb and forefinger and pry it, with considerable force, from the now shredded chicken wing. I put it in Graham’s bucket where it makes a mad scrabbling.
“I was careful,” says Graham proudly.
Cullen pretends to ignore all this. His string is limp.
“I caught a crab,” says Graham, who is not yet schooled in subterfuge either.
“You pick up beer cans,” says Cullen.
Just when I start believing that the crabs in Cullen’s crevice have evolved into something wiser, they start leaping at his string as if they’ve suddenly realized they’re aboard the Titanic. They rise from their dark places furiously stuffing down chicken bits, exhibiting not a whiff of self-preservation.
There’s always opportunity for imparting parental wisdom.
“Crabs are called crustaceans,” I say. “Even though their shells are hard, you still need to be really careful. If you break off their claws they won’t be able to eat.”
“If their claw breaks off, a new one grows on,” says Cullen.
“It does?”
“I dropped my string,” says Graham.
The crabs now pour from the jetty like a locust horde, striking wantonly at the chicken bits and each other with harsh clicks. There is a parable here, the downfall wrought by selfishness and greed, but the boys are too young for that. Crabs are also distantly related to insects, but I keep this to myself too because I’m afraid Cullen will correct me.
In short order all three buckets are brimming with clacking crabs.
“We need to empty the buckets,” I say.
“I’ll do it,” says Cullen.
“Pour them out in the water,” I tell him. “You don’t want them cracking their shells on the rocks. You’ll have to lean out a little. Take one bucket at a time, and be careful.”
Perhaps I should be reported to Childhood Protective Services, but the water here is only a few feet deep and I want our boys to stretch.
Cullen inches carefully down the side of the jetty feet first, crab-like himself. When they are young, they follow your directions to the letter. He settles easily on a broad rock washed with a thin skein of surge. The spilling crabs make a sound like a fistful of rocks flung into the water.
I know what to look for next. I grab Graham before he can slide down.
“Your job is to get the buckets when Cullen passes them up,” I say.
His solemn nod assures me this is responsibility enough. But something in his eyes tells me he’s solemn for a different reason.
He looks toward the beach.
“We’re not going to find enough horseshoe crab pieces,” he says.
“We might,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he says.
I want them to believe anything is possible, but I want them to prepare for disappointment too.
“We might not find enough pieces,” I say and I feel something stick in my throat.
We return to crabbing. Cullen stays where he is, but Graham wordlessly moves close to me, sharing my crevice. It is quiet. I hear his small breaths. I feel the butterfly press of his hand on my thigh.
The sun breaks through the dawn clouds, striking the water in three gauzy silver shafts. Together we breathe.
Sometimes life’s pieces fit together in ways you don’t expect.
At the moment we are consumed with the beach. We scour the sand, buckets swinging, poking through a tangle of seaweed, broken bits of whelk and moon snail, searching beneath a cloudless blue July sky for pieces of horseshoe crab. These prehistoric creatures once littered Cape Cod in such numbers that they were ground up and used as fertilizer by farmers. From what we observe on the sand their numbers haven’t decreased much, though each crab appears to have been placed atop a firecracker and then scattered by a schizophrenic wind.
No matter. Our plan remains straightforward. We will piece together a horseshoe crab, whole and complete. Cullen and Graham raptly pluck cracker-thin crab bits, placing them gently in their bucket. I follow their example, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I understand the odds. I glance at other parents, flat on their backs in the hot sun.
At six, Cullen runs things. He waves a magisterial hand at his four-year-old brother.
“If we don’t get enough pieces to put together the crab now,” he decrees, “we’ll get the rest later.”
“Uh-huh,” grunts Graham, possibly because he mildly resents being bossed around, possibly because he is sorely bent to one side under the weight of a bucket spilling over with pretty much everything he could pick up.
Cullen strides over to his brother’s bucket, peers in and scowls.
“Crabs aren’t made out of beer cans!”
I wish the beer can was full. My head has been cocked to the sand for two hours. The back of my neck feels like it’s been kicked by a Clydesdale.
Perhaps I slip into sudsy daydream. Cullen looks at us both and harrumphs.
“Am I going to have to do this all by myself?”
We collect jigsaw pieces for another thirty minutes. Not thirty-one minutes, not thirty-two. Any parent of small children understands exactitude. I can’t go a minute longer. I find an excuse called lunch.
The three of us walk up the path to the cottage where we are staying for the week, buckets bumping.
“I think we have the pieces we need,” says Cullen.
“Right,” says Graham.
He is too young for sarcasm.
We march through the front door and continue, as quickly as possible, on through the kitchen, where Kathy is fixing everyone lunch. We are not quick enough.
“You’d better wash whatever that is off their hands,” says Kathy.
I stand in the bathroom, watching Cullen turn a white hand towel black. I may be less attentive the second son around. Eating lunch I notice Graham has something shiny and snail-like on his index finger. I say a silent prayer and he answers it by licking it off.
That night Kathy and I lay in bed. Our sliding screen door opens to the porch. Occasionally a puff of wind brings a smell that makes me wonder if Stephen King is cooking something just outside. Beneath the stars dark shells lay methodically sorted, according to what I don’t know.
“Phew,” I say.
“Maybe you could put them in the yard,” Kathy says, but I know she doesn’t really mean it because she’s smiling as if we’re lying downwind from a potpourri factory.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Another six months and it’ll be a wrap.”
“Anything is possible,” my beautiful bride says to me, and I know why I married her.
The following morning we redirect slightly.
“I want to crab,” says Graham.
Cullen gives a magisterial nod.
“Let’s,” he says.
We have become fascinated with crabbing because frankly nothing, with the possible exception of King Henry VIII, eats with more gusto than crabs do. Also live crabs do more interesting things than dead ones. The small jetty pronging off Quohog Beach is loaded with crabs. We know this because on this, the fourth day of our vacation, we have already been crabbing roughly two thousand times.
We retrieve our buckets from the porch. Before we go, Cullen crouches to arrange a few promising horseshoe pieces.
“Hmmm,” he says, moving the pieces in circles like a centrifugal chess master.
“Hmmm,” says his brother, who at this juncture in time still admires him greatly.
Cullen finishes placing the bits in their proper places. There is something resembling a horseshoe crab body, but there are still great gaps occupied by cedar composite decking.
“There,” says Cullen.
What I see resembles a horse dropping after the Kentucky Derby field has run through it.
Cullen looks to Graham.
“Just a few more pieces,” he says.
“Hmmmm,” says Graham.
Small children wake well before the most conscientious rooster and even earlier on vacation. The world is gray. The light isn’t even up yet. The air is still damp with sea. The beach is empty.
We each carry our own bucket, chicken bits and string inside. I step gingerly along the jetty. The enormous rocks, sectioned in some distant quarry, are liberally colonized by barnacles that jab at the soles of my feet.
Cullen and Graham walk as if strolling across shag carpet. When I reach the end of the jetty Cullen is already crouched, peering into his chosen crevice.
“Breakfast time,” says Cullen, “but not for us.”
Graham is flat on his stomach, his face and the majority of his torso in his crevice of choice.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“I dropped my string.”
After I retrieve it, I tie a chicken piece to each string. The boys accept their strings, solemnly lowering the sacrificial chicken into the dark rift. I spread out the newspaper I brought, and put the remaining chicken pieces on it. Past experience has shown us we’ll quickly need room in our buckets for crabs.
When I finish I squat and watch our sons. They peer into the dark, brows furrowed.
“Come awwwwwwwn,” says Cullen.
Graham’s string jerks.
“Whaaaaaat!” he shrieks. “Caught one! Caught one!”
I have coached them thoroughly in the craft of crabbing. Wait for the crab to latch firmly to the chicken. Bring the string up slowly so the crab doesn’t know it’s being reeled in.
Graham stands straight up. The crab swings to and fro in front of his belly button, a dark pendulum oblivious to its change in circumstance. One claw affixed to the chicken bit, the other claw greedily spoons meat into its wet maw.
Reaching behind the crab, I pinch its body between my thumb and forefinger and pry it, with considerable force, from the now shredded chicken wing. I put it in Graham’s bucket where it makes a mad scrabbling.
“I was careful,” says Graham proudly.
Cullen pretends to ignore all this. His string is limp.
“I caught a crab,” says Graham, who is not yet schooled in subterfuge either.
“You pick up beer cans,” says Cullen.
Just when I start believing that the crabs in Cullen’s crevice have evolved into something wiser, they start leaping at his string as if they’ve suddenly realized they’re aboard the Titanic. They rise from their dark places furiously stuffing down chicken bits, exhibiting not a whiff of self-preservation.
There’s always opportunity for imparting parental wisdom.
“Crabs are called crustaceans,” I say. “Even though their shells are hard, you still need to be really careful. If you break off their claws they won’t be able to eat.”
“If their claw breaks off, a new one grows on,” says Cullen.
“It does?”
“I dropped my string,” says Graham.
The crabs now pour from the jetty like a locust horde, striking wantonly at the chicken bits and each other with harsh clicks. There is a parable here, the downfall wrought by selfishness and greed, but the boys are too young for that. Crabs are also distantly related to insects, but I keep this to myself too because I’m afraid Cullen will correct me.
In short order all three buckets are brimming with clacking crabs.
“We need to empty the buckets,” I say.
“I’ll do it,” says Cullen.
“Pour them out in the water,” I tell him. “You don’t want them cracking their shells on the rocks. You’ll have to lean out a little. Take one bucket at a time, and be careful.”
Perhaps I should be reported to Childhood Protective Services, but the water here is only a few feet deep and I want our boys to stretch.
Cullen inches carefully down the side of the jetty feet first, crab-like himself. When they are young, they follow your directions to the letter. He settles easily on a broad rock washed with a thin skein of surge. The spilling crabs make a sound like a fistful of rocks flung into the water.
I know what to look for next. I grab Graham before he can slide down.
“Your job is to get the buckets when Cullen passes them up,” I say.
His solemn nod assures me this is responsibility enough. But something in his eyes tells me he’s solemn for a different reason.
He looks toward the beach.
“We’re not going to find enough horseshoe crab pieces,” he says.
“We might,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he says.
I want them to believe anything is possible, but I want them to prepare for disappointment too.
“We might not find enough pieces,” I say and I feel something stick in my throat.
We return to crabbing. Cullen stays where he is, but Graham wordlessly moves close to me, sharing my crevice. It is quiet. I hear his small breaths. I feel the butterfly press of his hand on my thigh.
The sun breaks through the dawn clouds, striking the water in three gauzy silver shafts. Together we breathe.
Sometimes life’s pieces fit together in ways you don’t expect.
Try
As parents, we all walk the often gray line between “yes” and “no”. I wrote this essay with those “yes” and “no” decisions in mind…
Try
He looks at the jetty, his hand in mine.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“You can do it,” I say, though the truth is I don’t know. The boulder-size rocks must look like the side of a building to a four-year-old. Very carefully he climbs up the side of the jetty. I climb just below him, one hand out to catch him if he slips, though I’m not sure if I can grab him before he hurts himself. When he reaches the top his smile tells me I made the right decision.
He stands at the water’s edge, peering out to the wood platform anchored seventy yards off the beach. Older kids are jumping off it, laying on their backs in the sun.
“I don’t know if I can make it,” he says.
Seventy yards must look like the horizon to a six-year-old.
“I’ll swim with you,” I say.
We stop three times on the way out. I tread water. His small hands press down on my shoulder. But he is smiling wide again.
He balances the surfboard on his head; eight-year-old arms are too short to tuck the board under an arm. The waves are small; they crumble softly without a sound, but I know they look small to me because I am grown.
He has been asking me to teach him how to surf for weeks, but here at the water’s edge he has his doubts.
“You’ll stay close to me?”
“Right beside you.”
I swim out with him. He stands on the first wave, wobbling, feet planted wide. He falls just short of the beach. I swim in as fast as I can. By the time I reach him he is already paddling awkwardly toward me. The smile is beyond words.
They are the biggest waves of the winter. They march toward shore, lumbering giants. The handful of surfers in the water bob far out to sea, farther out than we have ever seen them. When the waves break they throw forward with sledgehammer force and the sound is like not-very-distant thunder. Mist wafts through the parking lot, the aftermath of the thunder. More than a few surfers stay in the parking lot, leaning against their cars.
We change into our wetsuits. My mouth is dry and there is a lump in my throat.
He changes faster. These days he does everything faster. He fastens his zipper and turns to go. He is fifteen. He will not ask me to stay close to him. I think about telling him to be careful, but he is already running for the water. I am a little frightened, for him and for me, but the way he runs tells me I have, on occasion, done the right thing.
Try
He looks at the jetty, his hand in mine.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“You can do it,” I say, though the truth is I don’t know. The boulder-size rocks must look like the side of a building to a four-year-old. Very carefully he climbs up the side of the jetty. I climb just below him, one hand out to catch him if he slips, though I’m not sure if I can grab him before he hurts himself. When he reaches the top his smile tells me I made the right decision.
He stands at the water’s edge, peering out to the wood platform anchored seventy yards off the beach. Older kids are jumping off it, laying on their backs in the sun.
“I don’t know if I can make it,” he says.
Seventy yards must look like the horizon to a six-year-old.
“I’ll swim with you,” I say.
We stop three times on the way out. I tread water. His small hands press down on my shoulder. But he is smiling wide again.
He balances the surfboard on his head; eight-year-old arms are too short to tuck the board under an arm. The waves are small; they crumble softly without a sound, but I know they look small to me because I am grown.
He has been asking me to teach him how to surf for weeks, but here at the water’s edge he has his doubts.
“You’ll stay close to me?”
“Right beside you.”
I swim out with him. He stands on the first wave, wobbling, feet planted wide. He falls just short of the beach. I swim in as fast as I can. By the time I reach him he is already paddling awkwardly toward me. The smile is beyond words.
They are the biggest waves of the winter. They march toward shore, lumbering giants. The handful of surfers in the water bob far out to sea, farther out than we have ever seen them. When the waves break they throw forward with sledgehammer force and the sound is like not-very-distant thunder. Mist wafts through the parking lot, the aftermath of the thunder. More than a few surfers stay in the parking lot, leaning against their cars.
We change into our wetsuits. My mouth is dry and there is a lump in my throat.
He changes faster. These days he does everything faster. He fastens his zipper and turns to go. He is fifteen. He will not ask me to stay close to him. I think about telling him to be careful, but he is already running for the water. I am a little frightened, for him and for me, but the way he runs tells me I have, on occasion, done the right thing.
A Lion of Literature – and Life
It is a pity to be so superficial, especially regarding a literary icon, but one of the things I remember most about my first encounter with Ray Bradbury was the man’s hair. The first time I saw him speak was in Oxnard some 25 year ago. He was electric. The crowd was transfixed, bewitched, beguiled and stunned. He laughed. He shouted. He raised his hands to the fluorescent lighting. His passions ran far and wide, although apparently they did not include a comb. His snow white hair ran in every direction too, as if, immediately before arriving, he had flunked an electrical re-wiring final. He may have actually been electric.
Bradbury, who sadly (but maybe not for him – new and greater adventures await!) passed away this past June at 91, is back in the news again, which is definitely a good thing because the author of, most famously, “Fahrenheit 451”, reminds us of how we might live.
He is in the news because Ventura filmmaker and artist Michael O’Kelly has made the documentary film called “Live Forever – The Ray Bradbury Odyssey”. The full-length feature film covers Bradbury’s remarkable creative career and, equally exciting, offers a personal look at a charming, witty and wholly unique man. O’Kelly, a personal friend of Bradbury’s, made the film for all the right reasons. “I wanted to make a film that would inspire other people, especially kids, to read and write,” he told a reporter. “The message is if you don’t read and write, it’s very hard to think. If you can’t think clearly, it’s hard to find who you are and how you fit into the world.” I should also mention that the November 11th screening at the Century 10 Theater in downtown Ventura is a pre-release benefit for, among other good causes, local libraries. Ray Bradbury loved libraries. I can already see him waving his hands (tickets are available at the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau, 420 East Santa Clara Street or from www.venturafilmsociety.com).
Ray Bradbury waved his hands a lot. I know this because I saw him speak numerous times. He slowed down as he grew old, but in his younger days, standing somewhere in the vicinity of the speaker’s dais (the rest of him didn’t stay still either), he exhorted and waved his hands about as if conducting some madcap symphony only he could hear. On one unforgettable occasion he waved his hands right in my face, dispensing advice that became one of the pillars of my own life.
But this column is about a greater man. Ray Bradbury was the author of “Fahrenheit 451”, yes. He also (take a deep breath) wrote “The Martian Chronicles” and “The Illustrated Man”, penned episodes for “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, co-wrote the screenplay for the film “Moby Dick”, wrote plays, headed the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles, consulted on the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and the original exhibit housed in Epcot’s Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World and read poetry every day. The man had creative ADHD and forty-eight hours in his day.
I provide this resume because I am hoping you might pass this column on to your kids, or maybe read it to them – or if you don’t have kids, find some -- and there’s a chance they don’t know who Ray Bradbury is, in the same way young people don’t know the Beatles or how to ride in a car and look at the scenery. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just that nowadays things move very, very fast – faster, possibly, than even Ray Bradbury could have imagined – and in that rapid passing, priceless things dissipate in the vapor trail.
Ray Bradbury wrote lots of great stories, and if they haven’t already, your kids should read some of them. His mind, like his hair, went everywhere. What if? Why? Why the hell not? A keen observation, a twist and a turn, and stories leapt from his mind to the page. Once, infuriated by a fashion shoot he saw in Harper’s Bazaar in which emaciated runway models posed and postured in front of poor natives in a Puerto Rican backstreet, he whipped off “Sun and Shadow”, the story of an old Puerto Rican who ruins a Bazaar photographer’s afternoon by sidling into every picture and dropping his pants. How fun is that?
But Ray Bradbury also dispensed an equal amount of wonderful advice. About writing, yes, but just as often, about life. For Bradbury the two were inextricably intertwined. Self-consciousness, he said, is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. Read poetry every day of your life (If your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him, he fetchingly wrote). Run. Seize your time. Stuff your senses with it, touch it, smell it, taste it. That we are alive is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it is awarded us.
Wise counsel, every word, and Bradbury had tons more, making it difficult to pick a favorite, but not for me.
Be a child of one’s time.
When your kids start reading Ray Bradbury, perhaps they should start with this. It’s taken from one of my favorite Bradbury books, called “Zen in the Art of Writing”; no surprise now, a book of writing advice that seamlessly transfers to life.
By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor… When the circus pulls in at five of a dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by.
Ray Bradbury got up and bolted. He plunged smack dab into the wellspring of life. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him away from the podium, hopping about like a flea at the gates of a boarding kennel.
It was after that first talk-cum-jitterbug that Ray Bradbury waved his hands in my face. I was a young reporter for a weekly newspaper in Ventura, sent to cover Bradbury’s talk. With an ink stain blossoming in one pant pocket where a pen had exploded and a shirt I had obviously ironed by hand I was lucky just to get in. Compounding my luck, someone in charge of the event took pity on me. When the talk was over and Bradbury finished speaking with the knot of admirers who rushed the stage, this kind man signaled to him.
And then Ray Bradbury was moving through the crowd to talk to me, and my heart was doing back flips while my tongue affixed itself gummily to the roof of my mouth. When Bradbury’s eyes found me he didn’t look right through me, he looked right into me. In the last instant before he pulled up barely a nose length away, I remember thinking, ‘What does this man have to teach me?’, a queer thought in retrospect as I would later find out that Bradbury was likely thinking the same thing. He was curious about everyone, even dumbstruck reporters who would never ever appear in a fashion shoot in Harper’s Bazaar.
Since it was clear I was not going to speak, he did.
“Well young man, obviously you’re a writer.” I think he glanced at my pocket, but I’m not sure. “Good for you.”
I knew I should ask him what his next project was – a short story, a new book, lunch with Ronald Reagan -- I was a newspaper reporter after all, a slave to breaking news. But I also knew how long he had been pinned against the stage by his admirers and I saw how his eyes, though kind, went to the exit. There was something else in his eyes too. In that nervous instant I couldn’t quite grasp it, although I know what it is now
“If you had one word of advice, what would it be?”
His eyes left the exit. They fixed on mine and he smiled at me as if we had just both received the first one-way ticket to Mars.
“One word?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Follow your dreams with delightful passion,” he said, waving his hands, “like a child,” and then he was gone, his hair nearly dusting both sides of the door jamb.
On November 11th I will stand in line to see “Live Forever – The Ray Bradbury Odyssey”, my heart racing. I will seize it, breath it, stuff my senses with it, embrace it with passion.
Chronologically I am not so young anymore. But thanks in part to Ray Bradbury, the calendar no longer matters to me.
Bradbury, who sadly (but maybe not for him – new and greater adventures await!) passed away this past June at 91, is back in the news again, which is definitely a good thing because the author of, most famously, “Fahrenheit 451”, reminds us of how we might live.
He is in the news because Ventura filmmaker and artist Michael O’Kelly has made the documentary film called “Live Forever – The Ray Bradbury Odyssey”. The full-length feature film covers Bradbury’s remarkable creative career and, equally exciting, offers a personal look at a charming, witty and wholly unique man. O’Kelly, a personal friend of Bradbury’s, made the film for all the right reasons. “I wanted to make a film that would inspire other people, especially kids, to read and write,” he told a reporter. “The message is if you don’t read and write, it’s very hard to think. If you can’t think clearly, it’s hard to find who you are and how you fit into the world.” I should also mention that the November 11th screening at the Century 10 Theater in downtown Ventura is a pre-release benefit for, among other good causes, local libraries. Ray Bradbury loved libraries. I can already see him waving his hands (tickets are available at the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau, 420 East Santa Clara Street or from www.venturafilmsociety.com).
Ray Bradbury waved his hands a lot. I know this because I saw him speak numerous times. He slowed down as he grew old, but in his younger days, standing somewhere in the vicinity of the speaker’s dais (the rest of him didn’t stay still either), he exhorted and waved his hands about as if conducting some madcap symphony only he could hear. On one unforgettable occasion he waved his hands right in my face, dispensing advice that became one of the pillars of my own life.
But this column is about a greater man. Ray Bradbury was the author of “Fahrenheit 451”, yes. He also (take a deep breath) wrote “The Martian Chronicles” and “The Illustrated Man”, penned episodes for “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, co-wrote the screenplay for the film “Moby Dick”, wrote plays, headed the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles, consulted on the American Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and the original exhibit housed in Epcot’s Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World and read poetry every day. The man had creative ADHD and forty-eight hours in his day.
I provide this resume because I am hoping you might pass this column on to your kids, or maybe read it to them – or if you don’t have kids, find some -- and there’s a chance they don’t know who Ray Bradbury is, in the same way young people don’t know the Beatles or how to ride in a car and look at the scenery. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just that nowadays things move very, very fast – faster, possibly, than even Ray Bradbury could have imagined – and in that rapid passing, priceless things dissipate in the vapor trail.
Ray Bradbury wrote lots of great stories, and if they haven’t already, your kids should read some of them. His mind, like his hair, went everywhere. What if? Why? Why the hell not? A keen observation, a twist and a turn, and stories leapt from his mind to the page. Once, infuriated by a fashion shoot he saw in Harper’s Bazaar in which emaciated runway models posed and postured in front of poor natives in a Puerto Rican backstreet, he whipped off “Sun and Shadow”, the story of an old Puerto Rican who ruins a Bazaar photographer’s afternoon by sidling into every picture and dropping his pants. How fun is that?
But Ray Bradbury also dispensed an equal amount of wonderful advice. About writing, yes, but just as often, about life. For Bradbury the two were inextricably intertwined. Self-consciousness, he said, is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. Read poetry every day of your life (If your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him, he fetchingly wrote). Run. Seize your time. Stuff your senses with it, touch it, smell it, taste it. That we are alive is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it is awarded us.
Wise counsel, every word, and Bradbury had tons more, making it difficult to pick a favorite, but not for me.
Be a child of one’s time.
When your kids start reading Ray Bradbury, perhaps they should start with this. It’s taken from one of my favorite Bradbury books, called “Zen in the Art of Writing”; no surprise now, a book of writing advice that seamlessly transfers to life.
By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor… When the circus pulls in at five of a dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by.
Ray Bradbury got up and bolted. He plunged smack dab into the wellspring of life. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him away from the podium, hopping about like a flea at the gates of a boarding kennel.
It was after that first talk-cum-jitterbug that Ray Bradbury waved his hands in my face. I was a young reporter for a weekly newspaper in Ventura, sent to cover Bradbury’s talk. With an ink stain blossoming in one pant pocket where a pen had exploded and a shirt I had obviously ironed by hand I was lucky just to get in. Compounding my luck, someone in charge of the event took pity on me. When the talk was over and Bradbury finished speaking with the knot of admirers who rushed the stage, this kind man signaled to him.
And then Ray Bradbury was moving through the crowd to talk to me, and my heart was doing back flips while my tongue affixed itself gummily to the roof of my mouth. When Bradbury’s eyes found me he didn’t look right through me, he looked right into me. In the last instant before he pulled up barely a nose length away, I remember thinking, ‘What does this man have to teach me?’, a queer thought in retrospect as I would later find out that Bradbury was likely thinking the same thing. He was curious about everyone, even dumbstruck reporters who would never ever appear in a fashion shoot in Harper’s Bazaar.
Since it was clear I was not going to speak, he did.
“Well young man, obviously you’re a writer.” I think he glanced at my pocket, but I’m not sure. “Good for you.”
I knew I should ask him what his next project was – a short story, a new book, lunch with Ronald Reagan -- I was a newspaper reporter after all, a slave to breaking news. But I also knew how long he had been pinned against the stage by his admirers and I saw how his eyes, though kind, went to the exit. There was something else in his eyes too. In that nervous instant I couldn’t quite grasp it, although I know what it is now
“If you had one word of advice, what would it be?”
His eyes left the exit. They fixed on mine and he smiled at me as if we had just both received the first one-way ticket to Mars.
“One word?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Follow your dreams with delightful passion,” he said, waving his hands, “like a child,” and then he was gone, his hair nearly dusting both sides of the door jamb.
On November 11th I will stand in line to see “Live Forever – The Ray Bradbury Odyssey”, my heart racing. I will seize it, breath it, stuff my senses with it, embrace it with passion.
Chronologically I am not so young anymore. But thanks in part to Ray Bradbury, the calendar no longer matters to me.
Handprints No Longer Small
Hi Wonderful Readers:
I write a weekly column out here in Southern California (kcet.org/westiseden). With kids growing up and graduation on the doorstoop, I wrote this column -- perhaps something any parent could have written.
HANDPRINTS NO LONGER SMALL
In these graduating times, cause for celebration and remembering: smeary handprints won't forever stay messy or small.
We are driving to preschool. Puffy white clouds roll about in a Southern California sky. He is two weeks into his first year at preschool.
"Oh man," he says. "I want to go to preschool forever."
Today is his last day of preschool. We hold hands briefly before he breaks away to do a little spinning dance. When he finishes, he regards me.
"Do you know why I like preschool, Dad?"
I can think of countless answers, but I know he already has one.
"Why?"
"Because they don't make me take a nap."
Today is his first day of kindergarten. Before going off to her teaching job, his lovely mother has picked out a handsome outfit and packed a yummy lunch. She's also taped a sweet note and a Dennis the Menace cartoon to his Winnie the Pooh backpack. In the cartoon Dennis is on the swings at the playground. Leaning over his shoulder he says to another boy, I just play part-time. My real job is going to kindergarten.
When I wake him, he looks bigger.
"Are you getting bigger?" I ask. "I told you not to get bigger."
He hops out of bed.
"I forgot," he says.
He is in second grade. Sometimes we still walk to school holding hands, but more often he is very busy bending to examine curious items and pocket pretty much all of them so that we may find them in the washing machine later.
We are not holding hands when he regards me somberly.
"Dad? Can I go to a close college so I can stay with you guys?"
Today is his last day of elementary school. They hold a Maypole dance; everyone performing an intricate over and under dance of ribbons and laughter that was impossible five years ago. I walk home with a neighbor whose daughter was also part of the Maypole graduation. This neighbor, he is always joking. Today he is not joking. Today he looks at me and says, "You know how you never think about things ending? But it all comes to an end. There's a last time they'll ride on your knee but you don't know it then. A lot of things happen like that."
Today is the first day of middle school. During middle school he has decided he will bike to school with his friends, but on the first day I drive him. We pass his elementary school on the way. In the gauzy early morning sunshine kids play on the playground.
He is silent for a moment and then he says, "Look at all the little kids."
As we near the middle school the sidewalks are packed with students. Some of the girls don't look like middle schoolers at all. He is sitting in the backseat. When I glance in the rear view mirror he is bug-eyed.
Today is the first day of high school. When I drop him off at school he looks back for only the required second. I work at home, my office walls plastered with mementos. Very unprofessional, but they are far more important to me than work. On this day when I get home a small handprint outlined with a few messily glued seashells catches my eye. Beneath the hand print is a poem many parents know. It speaks of frustration and smeared handprints on the furniture and walls and fingers that won't stay either messy or small. The words of the poem are fading away.
I stand there far longer than I should.
In thirty eight school days he graduates. Not that any high school senior -- here in Ventura or across the country -- is counting. Last night while he was upstairs in the shower his beautiful mother turned to me. Her hands were shaking just a little. I knew this because she was holding a plate and I was trying to figure if I would have time to snatch it out of the air.
"Remember how he always liked to be held?" she asked. "I miss that closeness."
We both smiled half smiles.
Today at school he heard from the college he wants to go to. Regarding phone conversations or texts, he does not prattle on. Between classes he sent a text.
I got in.
The college is close to us, but we know he will not be staying with us.
I write a weekly column out here in Southern California (kcet.org/westiseden). With kids growing up and graduation on the doorstoop, I wrote this column -- perhaps something any parent could have written.
HANDPRINTS NO LONGER SMALL
In these graduating times, cause for celebration and remembering: smeary handprints won't forever stay messy or small.
We are driving to preschool. Puffy white clouds roll about in a Southern California sky. He is two weeks into his first year at preschool.
"Oh man," he says. "I want to go to preschool forever."
Today is his last day of preschool. We hold hands briefly before he breaks away to do a little spinning dance. When he finishes, he regards me.
"Do you know why I like preschool, Dad?"
I can think of countless answers, but I know he already has one.
"Why?"
"Because they don't make me take a nap."
Today is his first day of kindergarten. Before going off to her teaching job, his lovely mother has picked out a handsome outfit and packed a yummy lunch. She's also taped a sweet note and a Dennis the Menace cartoon to his Winnie the Pooh backpack. In the cartoon Dennis is on the swings at the playground. Leaning over his shoulder he says to another boy, I just play part-time. My real job is going to kindergarten.
When I wake him, he looks bigger.
"Are you getting bigger?" I ask. "I told you not to get bigger."
He hops out of bed.
"I forgot," he says.
He is in second grade. Sometimes we still walk to school holding hands, but more often he is very busy bending to examine curious items and pocket pretty much all of them so that we may find them in the washing machine later.
We are not holding hands when he regards me somberly.
"Dad? Can I go to a close college so I can stay with you guys?"
Today is his last day of elementary school. They hold a Maypole dance; everyone performing an intricate over and under dance of ribbons and laughter that was impossible five years ago. I walk home with a neighbor whose daughter was also part of the Maypole graduation. This neighbor, he is always joking. Today he is not joking. Today he looks at me and says, "You know how you never think about things ending? But it all comes to an end. There's a last time they'll ride on your knee but you don't know it then. A lot of things happen like that."
Today is the first day of middle school. During middle school he has decided he will bike to school with his friends, but on the first day I drive him. We pass his elementary school on the way. In the gauzy early morning sunshine kids play on the playground.
He is silent for a moment and then he says, "Look at all the little kids."
As we near the middle school the sidewalks are packed with students. Some of the girls don't look like middle schoolers at all. He is sitting in the backseat. When I glance in the rear view mirror he is bug-eyed.
Today is the first day of high school. When I drop him off at school he looks back for only the required second. I work at home, my office walls plastered with mementos. Very unprofessional, but they are far more important to me than work. On this day when I get home a small handprint outlined with a few messily glued seashells catches my eye. Beneath the hand print is a poem many parents know. It speaks of frustration and smeared handprints on the furniture and walls and fingers that won't stay either messy or small. The words of the poem are fading away.
I stand there far longer than I should.
In thirty eight school days he graduates. Not that any high school senior -- here in Ventura or across the country -- is counting. Last night while he was upstairs in the shower his beautiful mother turned to me. Her hands were shaking just a little. I knew this because she was holding a plate and I was trying to figure if I would have time to snatch it out of the air.
"Remember how he always liked to be held?" she asked. "I miss that closeness."
We both smiled half smiles.
Today at school he heard from the college he wants to go to. Regarding phone conversations or texts, he does not prattle on. Between classes he sent a text.
I got in.
The college is close to us, but we know he will not be staying with us.
Letting Go: Saying Goodbye to Your No-Longer Child
You can see it in their faces. All around us friends are letting go. We are of that age.
Our parents let us go and now here we are.
I see the sadness in their eyes and in their upbeat voices. Parents letting go of their sons’ and daughters’ lives – and let’s be wholly honest about our selfishness here -- a part of their lives. Our no-longer-children, off to college, military service, jobs and apartments. Some form of first steps. Leaving behind quiet, not-quite empty rooms.
So much behind us all; so much ahead for them.
Today we dropped our son Graham off at college.
We packed our van last night; which was a breeze because our son travels like a Bedouin. In went the beach cruiser and two surfboards. All his clothes, in two duffel bags. Odds and ends in grocery bags. Sheets and comforter still in the package. Hangers. A California flag.
We left home at 7:15 in the morning. Just before we left I went upstairs. Graham was standing in the middle of his room. He had his back to me. Anyone else and I might say they were indulging in a moment’s goodbye, and maybe he was, but our son is also far more organized than his parents and it could have been he was looking around just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
I stood quietly watching him, because that’s what parents do.
“Got everything?” I asked.
Maybe he knew I was standing there, maybe he didn’t. He didn’t say, because that’s what teenagers do.
“I think so,” he said.
Strangely, his mother and I were in the car first. When you marry, you have no real idea what kind of parent you have married. I have since learned that I married a woman born to be a mother. It has changed everything for our sons. But it doesn’t make this moment easy for her.
She is in the back seat.
We watch the house.
“He’s not ready. He doesn’t want to leave,” Kathy says. I can see her in the rear view mirror. It really isn’t a complete smile. She pauses, and then says, “Does he have his linens?”
On the drive we make small talk. It’s actually pretty easy. My wife is a school teacher. She is always grading papers everywhere, including the car. She brought papers, but she doesn’t grade them. When I glance in the rear view mirror, she is looking at the front seat.
Sometimes the act of letting go is far greater than the act of hanging on. Eckhart Tolle said this. Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual author. The only reason I know this is because I just looked it up. I have been around long enough to know Mr. Tolle isn’t the first to weigh in on departure. But his thought is as apt as any and a friend sent it to me, probably with this moment in mind.
When we arrive at the dorm, parents and their offspring mill about in the parking lot, hatches and trunks throw open to the sky. From these enclaves pour many things. There are laundry bins with wheels to transport these things to the rooms. In front of us a mother and father unload their daughter’s dorm items. They have filled three bins. Other items are strewn about the grass. The father is already sweating. Our Bedouin gets everything in one bin. I carry his two surfboards. If college sometimes seems like summer camp to parents, it’s because we don’t have to attend their classes. You try your hand at Synthetic Biosystems and Nanosystems Design.
Up in his room, Graham unpacks. Kathy makes his bed, although she hasn’t done this in several years. Graham methodically goes about filling drawers. Kathy helps him unpack too, hanging his shirts on the hangers. Dorm rooms are still small. There’s no room for me where they work. I stand watching mother and son, feeling profoundly useless. Through the wall, I hear a small voice say, “Is this your bed?” and I wonder how it is for the little brother now left with his own room. Sometimes, pretty good.
Looking for something to do, I pick up a flier up off Graham’s desk. The flier contains instructions for various things. First your parents instruct you. Then your peers and teachers. Then maybe a boss. The hope is that one day we will be comfortable and right with our own instructions. These current instructions are good. “If you don’t know where your classes are ask. People are nice and they like to help.” “Keep making friends all year.” “Laundry rooms are most crowded on Sundays and least crowded on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during the day.”
Done with slowly hanging up clothes, Kathy picks up a random informational sheet.
“It’s interesting,” I say because the silence suddenly seems to weigh a little more.
His mother gives me another smile with something missing.
“I know,” she says. “I hope we can take one and read it on the way home,” and I know that even she doesn’t care much about the best time to do laundry. What she wants is just a piece of his life, any small piece.
As Graham puts the last things away, my wife looks at me.
“He’s not four anymore,” she says and I know where things are going and there is no helping it because happiness is sadness and a half smile is near to crying.
His mother looks around the room. She takes her son’s two pair of shoes out of their boxes and puts them under the bed.
Graham smiles at her. It is a smile you don’t always see all the time when they are around all the time.
“Thanks Mom, but I was honestly going to keep the shoes in the boxes,” he says, and he does just that.
The room is growing thick with something.
Kathy runs her hand over the comforter.
“Oh. I didn’t iron it.”
We stand quiet.
“You can hang out, if you want,” Graham says, but we know we can’t. Not here.
There is a time when the child can become the parent.
“Well,” says Graham, “I can help you guys take the stuff back to the car.”
We have forgotten to take pictures and so we do. Mother and son sit together on the bed, but the sunlight pouring through the window throws them both into shadow so they stand and turn so that their backs are to the room and our son puts his arm around his mother and she puts her arm around him and suddenly she is crying and I have to turn and look out the window but I am not admiring the view.
I take the pictures.
My wife looks at me accusingly.
“You took too long,” she says. “I wasn’t emotional. There wasn’t an emotional thought in my head.”
She cries some more and she is smiling a little too. She wipes her eyes.
“How am I going to get out of here, if I can’t stop blubbering?” she asks.
Graham walks to the window and looks eight stories down.
“It’s not that big a jump,” he says.
We take the stairs. Graham walks with us back to the car. We pass other families moving in. I don’t really see them, except to notice that they have the same look on their faces.
Beside the car, Kathy says, “Can I come back tomorrow?”
She is kidding. She is feeling better, although only a little.
Graham says, “I’ll be here.”
We drive through campus. We pass the soccer stadium and say we’re going to come up for a soccer game. We pass the basketball stadium and Kathy says she’d love to see a basketball game. Like many, this college hosts events featuring folks of global renown; musicians, politicians, authors, world leaders. We’ll come up to see some of them, we say, and maybe take our son out to dinner.
“He doesn’t have to come if he’s busy,” Kathy says, and then we are passing out the main entrance and we are on the freeway on our way home.
We make small talk and then my wife tells me why she started crying.
“When I put my arm around him, he was so big. He isn’t a little boy anymore.”
There is something hollow in both of us but we’ll make do. College is a gift and we all know we are very lucky to have it.
We drive. Outside a beautiful morning passes by, as mornings, afternoons and nights do, until suddenly you are shocked to be where you are.
Kathy types out a text.
“Graham?” I ask.
She gives me a little smile.
“Yes.”
“What did you say?” I ask.
“Miss me yet?”
Her phone chimes.
“What did he say?” I ask.
She looks at me.
“Always,” she sighs.
The house is empty, but it isn’t empty at all.
Writing this now, I think, A page has turned.
I can’t wait to read what happens next.
Our parents let us go and now here we are.
I see the sadness in their eyes and in their upbeat voices. Parents letting go of their sons’ and daughters’ lives – and let’s be wholly honest about our selfishness here -- a part of their lives. Our no-longer-children, off to college, military service, jobs and apartments. Some form of first steps. Leaving behind quiet, not-quite empty rooms.
So much behind us all; so much ahead for them.
Today we dropped our son Graham off at college.
We packed our van last night; which was a breeze because our son travels like a Bedouin. In went the beach cruiser and two surfboards. All his clothes, in two duffel bags. Odds and ends in grocery bags. Sheets and comforter still in the package. Hangers. A California flag.
We left home at 7:15 in the morning. Just before we left I went upstairs. Graham was standing in the middle of his room. He had his back to me. Anyone else and I might say they were indulging in a moment’s goodbye, and maybe he was, but our son is also far more organized than his parents and it could have been he was looking around just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
I stood quietly watching him, because that’s what parents do.
“Got everything?” I asked.
Maybe he knew I was standing there, maybe he didn’t. He didn’t say, because that’s what teenagers do.
“I think so,” he said.
Strangely, his mother and I were in the car first. When you marry, you have no real idea what kind of parent you have married. I have since learned that I married a woman born to be a mother. It has changed everything for our sons. But it doesn’t make this moment easy for her.
She is in the back seat.
We watch the house.
“He’s not ready. He doesn’t want to leave,” Kathy says. I can see her in the rear view mirror. It really isn’t a complete smile. She pauses, and then says, “Does he have his linens?”
On the drive we make small talk. It’s actually pretty easy. My wife is a school teacher. She is always grading papers everywhere, including the car. She brought papers, but she doesn’t grade them. When I glance in the rear view mirror, she is looking at the front seat.
Sometimes the act of letting go is far greater than the act of hanging on. Eckhart Tolle said this. Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual author. The only reason I know this is because I just looked it up. I have been around long enough to know Mr. Tolle isn’t the first to weigh in on departure. But his thought is as apt as any and a friend sent it to me, probably with this moment in mind.
When we arrive at the dorm, parents and their offspring mill about in the parking lot, hatches and trunks throw open to the sky. From these enclaves pour many things. There are laundry bins with wheels to transport these things to the rooms. In front of us a mother and father unload their daughter’s dorm items. They have filled three bins. Other items are strewn about the grass. The father is already sweating. Our Bedouin gets everything in one bin. I carry his two surfboards. If college sometimes seems like summer camp to parents, it’s because we don’t have to attend their classes. You try your hand at Synthetic Biosystems and Nanosystems Design.
Up in his room, Graham unpacks. Kathy makes his bed, although she hasn’t done this in several years. Graham methodically goes about filling drawers. Kathy helps him unpack too, hanging his shirts on the hangers. Dorm rooms are still small. There’s no room for me where they work. I stand watching mother and son, feeling profoundly useless. Through the wall, I hear a small voice say, “Is this your bed?” and I wonder how it is for the little brother now left with his own room. Sometimes, pretty good.
Looking for something to do, I pick up a flier up off Graham’s desk. The flier contains instructions for various things. First your parents instruct you. Then your peers and teachers. Then maybe a boss. The hope is that one day we will be comfortable and right with our own instructions. These current instructions are good. “If you don’t know where your classes are ask. People are nice and they like to help.” “Keep making friends all year.” “Laundry rooms are most crowded on Sundays and least crowded on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during the day.”
Done with slowly hanging up clothes, Kathy picks up a random informational sheet.
“It’s interesting,” I say because the silence suddenly seems to weigh a little more.
His mother gives me another smile with something missing.
“I know,” she says. “I hope we can take one and read it on the way home,” and I know that even she doesn’t care much about the best time to do laundry. What she wants is just a piece of his life, any small piece.
As Graham puts the last things away, my wife looks at me.
“He’s not four anymore,” she says and I know where things are going and there is no helping it because happiness is sadness and a half smile is near to crying.
His mother looks around the room. She takes her son’s two pair of shoes out of their boxes and puts them under the bed.
Graham smiles at her. It is a smile you don’t always see all the time when they are around all the time.
“Thanks Mom, but I was honestly going to keep the shoes in the boxes,” he says, and he does just that.
The room is growing thick with something.
Kathy runs her hand over the comforter.
“Oh. I didn’t iron it.”
We stand quiet.
“You can hang out, if you want,” Graham says, but we know we can’t. Not here.
There is a time when the child can become the parent.
“Well,” says Graham, “I can help you guys take the stuff back to the car.”
We have forgotten to take pictures and so we do. Mother and son sit together on the bed, but the sunlight pouring through the window throws them both into shadow so they stand and turn so that their backs are to the room and our son puts his arm around his mother and she puts her arm around him and suddenly she is crying and I have to turn and look out the window but I am not admiring the view.
I take the pictures.
My wife looks at me accusingly.
“You took too long,” she says. “I wasn’t emotional. There wasn’t an emotional thought in my head.”
She cries some more and she is smiling a little too. She wipes her eyes.
“How am I going to get out of here, if I can’t stop blubbering?” she asks.
Graham walks to the window and looks eight stories down.
“It’s not that big a jump,” he says.
We take the stairs. Graham walks with us back to the car. We pass other families moving in. I don’t really see them, except to notice that they have the same look on their faces.
Beside the car, Kathy says, “Can I come back tomorrow?”
She is kidding. She is feeling better, although only a little.
Graham says, “I’ll be here.”
We drive through campus. We pass the soccer stadium and say we’re going to come up for a soccer game. We pass the basketball stadium and Kathy says she’d love to see a basketball game. Like many, this college hosts events featuring folks of global renown; musicians, politicians, authors, world leaders. We’ll come up to see some of them, we say, and maybe take our son out to dinner.
“He doesn’t have to come if he’s busy,” Kathy says, and then we are passing out the main entrance and we are on the freeway on our way home.
We make small talk and then my wife tells me why she started crying.
“When I put my arm around him, he was so big. He isn’t a little boy anymore.”
There is something hollow in both of us but we’ll make do. College is a gift and we all know we are very lucky to have it.
We drive. Outside a beautiful morning passes by, as mornings, afternoons and nights do, until suddenly you are shocked to be where you are.
Kathy types out a text.
“Graham?” I ask.
She gives me a little smile.
“Yes.”
“What did you say?” I ask.
“Miss me yet?”
Her phone chimes.
“What did he say?” I ask.
She looks at me.
“Always,” she sighs.
The house is empty, but it isn’t empty at all.
Writing this now, I think, A page has turned.
I can’t wait to read what happens next.
