Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 20
January 12, 2014
Maybe this year we'll transcend twerk
Despite the reality that “twerking” was the word most often searched for on Google in 2013 – a word that, just for the record, my spell check wants to change to “tweaking” or “twirling” – I am actually a little encouraged by the state of humankind. Note that I said a little. I like Miley Cyrus, but I wish as a world we were more interested in the 2.5 million Syrian refugees and the possible ramifications of that cataclysmic civil war than we are in the young singer.
But here’s why I am ever so slightly optimistic.
Later this year, you will see a spate of stories about the centennial of the start of the First World War. (Okay, maybe not a spate. After all, there is no twerking subplot to the First World War. But you will see a fair number.) It will have been exactly one century since the “war to end all wars” began. As we all know, the war failed to end much of anything – and certainly not war. I’m not an historian (I don’t even play one on TV), but clearly the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second World War, much of the instability in the modern Middle East, and the emergence of the Soviet Union. The war was the Ottoman Empire’s cover for the Armenian Genocide. It gave us flamethrowers, tanks, and poison gas. Undoubtedly, its legacy is far broader than even that. But these are, more or less, what was accomplished by the death of roughly 15 million soldiers on the two sides.
And that all began one hundred years ago this summer.
That also means, just for the record, that we have reached the seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Yup, it was three-quarters of a century ago this September that Germany invaded Poland. We all know the results of that cataclysm, too: The six million Jewish citizens of Europe exterminated in the Holocaust. Perhaps as many sixty million people dead overall. The Cold War. The atomic bomb.
That’s symmetry.
What will occur in the next twelve months to cause historians to look back at 2014 with horror? I couldn’t begin to tell you. My prayer is that they will look back instead at a monumental medical breakthrough. Perhaps someday we will look back at 2014 with wonder and joy.
In any case, later this year expect people far wiser than I to see the parallels between our world and eras past. We will try to learn from the mistakes that our predecessors made. After all, we know the quotes.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner reminded us.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana observed just after the twentieth century dawned.
Yet a tragic part of being human is how impossible it can be to overcome our bad habits. Let’s face it, I still bite my nails. I crunch them like pumpkin seeds.
Moreover, some wars had to be fought. Exhibit A? The Second World War. Once we had allowed madness to rule in Germany and Italy and Japan, we hadn’t a choice.
But sometimes we do learn – and that is why I am encouraged. So far, we have restrained ourselves from detonating an atomic or nuclear bomb outside of a test since 1945. (This past November, we mourned the death of President Kennedy on the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination. Had that President and his administration not handled the Cuban Missile Crisis so deftly a year earlier, just imagine what kind of fiftieth anniversary we would have had in 2012.) So far, we have not invaded Syria. So far, we have not shut down the U.S. government for longer than it can actually handle.
That’s why on occasion I believe that we just might be getting smarter. We’re as flawed as ever and sometimes we have to sit through a lesson twice before we understand its meaning. Two world wars. Two atomic bombs. Two excursions into Iraq. You get the point.
But when we look back on 1914, let’s be sure and remember not simply went wrong, but what we learned.
And as for 2014? At the very least, let’s transcend the twerk.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 12, 2014. Chris’s next novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives on July 8. You can learn more about it here on Goodreads.)
But here’s why I am ever so slightly optimistic.
Later this year, you will see a spate of stories about the centennial of the start of the First World War. (Okay, maybe not a spate. After all, there is no twerking subplot to the First World War. But you will see a fair number.) It will have been exactly one century since the “war to end all wars” began. As we all know, the war failed to end much of anything – and certainly not war. I’m not an historian (I don’t even play one on TV), but clearly the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second World War, much of the instability in the modern Middle East, and the emergence of the Soviet Union. The war was the Ottoman Empire’s cover for the Armenian Genocide. It gave us flamethrowers, tanks, and poison gas. Undoubtedly, its legacy is far broader than even that. But these are, more or less, what was accomplished by the death of roughly 15 million soldiers on the two sides.
And that all began one hundred years ago this summer.
That also means, just for the record, that we have reached the seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Yup, it was three-quarters of a century ago this September that Germany invaded Poland. We all know the results of that cataclysm, too: The six million Jewish citizens of Europe exterminated in the Holocaust. Perhaps as many sixty million people dead overall. The Cold War. The atomic bomb.
That’s symmetry.
What will occur in the next twelve months to cause historians to look back at 2014 with horror? I couldn’t begin to tell you. My prayer is that they will look back instead at a monumental medical breakthrough. Perhaps someday we will look back at 2014 with wonder and joy.
In any case, later this year expect people far wiser than I to see the parallels between our world and eras past. We will try to learn from the mistakes that our predecessors made. After all, we know the quotes.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner reminded us.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana observed just after the twentieth century dawned.
Yet a tragic part of being human is how impossible it can be to overcome our bad habits. Let’s face it, I still bite my nails. I crunch them like pumpkin seeds.
Moreover, some wars had to be fought. Exhibit A? The Second World War. Once we had allowed madness to rule in Germany and Italy and Japan, we hadn’t a choice.
But sometimes we do learn – and that is why I am encouraged. So far, we have restrained ourselves from detonating an atomic or nuclear bomb outside of a test since 1945. (This past November, we mourned the death of President Kennedy on the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination. Had that President and his administration not handled the Cuban Missile Crisis so deftly a year earlier, just imagine what kind of fiftieth anniversary we would have had in 2012.) So far, we have not invaded Syria. So far, we have not shut down the U.S. government for longer than it can actually handle.
That’s why on occasion I believe that we just might be getting smarter. We’re as flawed as ever and sometimes we have to sit through a lesson twice before we understand its meaning. Two world wars. Two atomic bombs. Two excursions into Iraq. You get the point.
But when we look back on 1914, let’s be sure and remember not simply went wrong, but what we learned.
And as for 2014? At the very least, let’s transcend the twerk.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 12, 2014. Chris’s next novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives on July 8. You can learn more about it here on Goodreads.)
January 5, 2014
Filling the bill in Montpelier: The Legislature goes back to work
This past week we officially put 2013 into the history books. Looking back, we all learned to twerk. Kim and Kanye and Kate and William had babies. Alec got mad. So did Reese.
And the real news? Tornadoes, a cataclysmic civil war, and a terrorist attack in Boston. A health care revolution ushered in by a web site fiasco. Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman went to North Korea the way Richard Nixon went to China, although Rodman was not a sitting U.S. President and brought way more tattoos.
Right here in Vermont, a nuclear power plant announced it was shutting down. Finally. We became the fourth state to allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs. And our debate about whether to base F-35s in Burlington sometimes got as loud as a fighter jet engine.
And now it is 2014, and tomorrow the new year really begins. I know, tomorrow is actually January 6th. I realize that it has been 2014 for half a week now. But with Christmas and New Year’s Day falling on Wednesdays this season, the world grew unexpectedly quiescent the past two weeks. Sure, many of us worked – and worked hard. But entire businesses closed their doors for half a month. I have friends who were on furlough or vacation for a mighty impressive 16 days.
But Monday they will be back in their offices and cubicles. And this Tuesday morning the Vermont legislature returns to Montpelier – always a sign for me that it’s time to roll up my own sleeves and get back to work.
The Vermont legislature really is a citizen legislature, and that is one of the big reasons why I applaud their work. I don’t always agree with them and I certainly have my own partisan biases. But everyone who is willing to add state senator or state representative to their schedule – while, more often than not, holding another job – is a seriously good egg. After all, they will be in Montpelier at least four days a week between now and some point in May. Their pay is a whopping $660 per week, plus a lodging and food per diem. No one goes into Vermont politics to get rich.
This year they will be debating (among many other things) health insurance (it really is Sisyphean); banning the use of hand-held electronics while driving; raising the minimum wage; legalizing marijuana; and whether a person must wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. They will have to ascend learning curves on a long litany of issues. They will be away from home for huge chunks of the winter and spring. And they will have to be polite when lesser people would allow their inner snark to rear its mean-spirited face.
So why do it? I asked Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden and the Majority Leader, why he adds state senator to his life as a father, husband, novelist, and English professor at the University of Vermont. I asked him what he gets out of the job. His response?
“Lots of frustration and – occasionally – very deep satisfaction. Someone comes to you because they’re being disadvantaged or hurt by someone else, and you realize there should be a law against that. And the House and the Senate and the Governor agree. And suddenly there is a law against that. It’s a satisfaction deeper than the Marianas Trench.”
Indeed. Sometimes, you can’t just – as Baruth added – watch “the world go spectacularly off the rails.” You need to add public service to your priorities.
And so once more this Tuesday I will watch the Vermont legislature go to work. This planet makes its shares of mistakes, and Vermont is no exception. We are, alas, not exempt from human foibles and frailties. From impressively bad judgment. From spending too many hours watching Honey Boo Boo Child, because it is just so much easier to watch stupid TV than it is to figure out the best way to make sure that Vermonters have health care.
But it’s nice to know that there are people in Montpelier who are willing to make that sort of sacrifice.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 5, 2014. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in paperback in April.)
And the real news? Tornadoes, a cataclysmic civil war, and a terrorist attack in Boston. A health care revolution ushered in by a web site fiasco. Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman went to North Korea the way Richard Nixon went to China, although Rodman was not a sitting U.S. President and brought way more tattoos.
Right here in Vermont, a nuclear power plant announced it was shutting down. Finally. We became the fourth state to allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs. And our debate about whether to base F-35s in Burlington sometimes got as loud as a fighter jet engine.
And now it is 2014, and tomorrow the new year really begins. I know, tomorrow is actually January 6th. I realize that it has been 2014 for half a week now. But with Christmas and New Year’s Day falling on Wednesdays this season, the world grew unexpectedly quiescent the past two weeks. Sure, many of us worked – and worked hard. But entire businesses closed their doors for half a month. I have friends who were on furlough or vacation for a mighty impressive 16 days.
But Monday they will be back in their offices and cubicles. And this Tuesday morning the Vermont legislature returns to Montpelier – always a sign for me that it’s time to roll up my own sleeves and get back to work.
The Vermont legislature really is a citizen legislature, and that is one of the big reasons why I applaud their work. I don’t always agree with them and I certainly have my own partisan biases. But everyone who is willing to add state senator or state representative to their schedule – while, more often than not, holding another job – is a seriously good egg. After all, they will be in Montpelier at least four days a week between now and some point in May. Their pay is a whopping $660 per week, plus a lodging and food per diem. No one goes into Vermont politics to get rich.
This year they will be debating (among many other things) health insurance (it really is Sisyphean); banning the use of hand-held electronics while driving; raising the minimum wage; legalizing marijuana; and whether a person must wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. They will have to ascend learning curves on a long litany of issues. They will be away from home for huge chunks of the winter and spring. And they will have to be polite when lesser people would allow their inner snark to rear its mean-spirited face.
So why do it? I asked Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden and the Majority Leader, why he adds state senator to his life as a father, husband, novelist, and English professor at the University of Vermont. I asked him what he gets out of the job. His response?
“Lots of frustration and – occasionally – very deep satisfaction. Someone comes to you because they’re being disadvantaged or hurt by someone else, and you realize there should be a law against that. And the House and the Senate and the Governor agree. And suddenly there is a law against that. It’s a satisfaction deeper than the Marianas Trench.”
Indeed. Sometimes, you can’t just – as Baruth added – watch “the world go spectacularly off the rails.” You need to add public service to your priorities.
And so once more this Tuesday I will watch the Vermont legislature go to work. This planet makes its shares of mistakes, and Vermont is no exception. We are, alas, not exempt from human foibles and frailties. From impressively bad judgment. From spending too many hours watching Honey Boo Boo Child, because it is just so much easier to watch stupid TV than it is to figure out the best way to make sure that Vermonters have health care.
But it’s nice to know that there are people in Montpelier who are willing to make that sort of sacrifice.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 5, 2014. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives in paperback in April.)
December 29, 2013
New Year's -- the nexus of realism and hope
Over the years, I have made my share of New Year’s resolutions. I have resolved to stop biting my nails, to be more organized, and to answer all the mail I receive. The results? I still bite my nails, my library looks clean but has secret stacks of projects I haven’t dealt with or filed, and there are piles of unanswered letters cascading like the change from a slot machine from three different paper trays and desk organizers. Sometimes I view myself as hopeless. Other times? Merely human – which is, arguably, the same thing as hopeless.
But I love the human desire for betterment. I appreciate the wistfulness of the human urge to – as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote so beautifully at the very end of “The Great Gatsby” – “run faster, stretch out our arms farther.” Sure, we will never get there. Yes, as he said, we will be borne back into the past. But we keep trying.
And so it will be for millions of people this week, as once again the drive for self-improvement swamps all common sense. We will make New Year’s resolutions. Last week I asked readers to share with me some of their resolutions – the ones that, in hindsight, were doomed to fail. Here are a few of their responses.
Nancy Mutell: “Trying to use electronic media less.”
Jackie Ward: “Having recently read a magazine article on how to keep your home ‘guest ready’ in only 15 minutes a day, I was inspired. So, after retirement in December 2011, my 2012 New Year’s Eve Resolution was to do 15 minutes of housework every day in 2012. After all, how hard could this be? I’m now retired for pity sake! When getting ready for bed at the end of New Year’s Day – day one of my resolution year – my husband innocently asked, ‘What did you get done in your 15 minutes today?’ Having done absolutely nothing, my new resolution was to stop reading ridiculous magazine articles.”
Monelle Sturko: “The most ridiculous resolution I have made is to stop saying the ‘F’ word. There are times each year when no other word will do.”
Samuel Chase Armen: “To never end a sentence with a preposition. Let the grammar police know that I am not the man with whom you should mess.”
Leslie Murphy: “I was going to say something ornery about not being too hard on people who can’t follow directions. After eight years of parochial school, that’s a skill I have acquired. But every year I resolve to try and live in the moment. . .even as I imagine how I will live in the moment a day, a week, a month hence. . .”
Pam Truog: “Here’s one I make every year. ‘Never make promises I can’t keep.’”
Of course, January is all about promises we can’t keep. So is February. Come March, there will still be people smoking who had vowed to quit. The gym will be a little less crowded than it was those weeks just after the first. And I know that despite my inevitable vow to eat better, I’ll be tossing a softball-sized dollop of sour cream on a plate of nachos one Sunday night.
But how can we not celebrate the longing for excellence? The craving for betterment? The resolve to step up and buck the headswinds of human fraility? Sure, we are doomed to fail. But just imagine what horrid creatures we’d be if, at least once a year, we didn’t even try.
Happy New Year. May 2104 bring us all peace and wonder and joy.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 29, 2013. Chris’s next novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives on July 8, 2014. You can learn more about it right here on Goodreads.)
But I love the human desire for betterment. I appreciate the wistfulness of the human urge to – as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote so beautifully at the very end of “The Great Gatsby” – “run faster, stretch out our arms farther.” Sure, we will never get there. Yes, as he said, we will be borne back into the past. But we keep trying.
And so it will be for millions of people this week, as once again the drive for self-improvement swamps all common sense. We will make New Year’s resolutions. Last week I asked readers to share with me some of their resolutions – the ones that, in hindsight, were doomed to fail. Here are a few of their responses.
Nancy Mutell: “Trying to use electronic media less.”
Jackie Ward: “Having recently read a magazine article on how to keep your home ‘guest ready’ in only 15 minutes a day, I was inspired. So, after retirement in December 2011, my 2012 New Year’s Eve Resolution was to do 15 minutes of housework every day in 2012. After all, how hard could this be? I’m now retired for pity sake! When getting ready for bed at the end of New Year’s Day – day one of my resolution year – my husband innocently asked, ‘What did you get done in your 15 minutes today?’ Having done absolutely nothing, my new resolution was to stop reading ridiculous magazine articles.”
Monelle Sturko: “The most ridiculous resolution I have made is to stop saying the ‘F’ word. There are times each year when no other word will do.”
Samuel Chase Armen: “To never end a sentence with a preposition. Let the grammar police know that I am not the man with whom you should mess.”
Leslie Murphy: “I was going to say something ornery about not being too hard on people who can’t follow directions. After eight years of parochial school, that’s a skill I have acquired. But every year I resolve to try and live in the moment. . .even as I imagine how I will live in the moment a day, a week, a month hence. . .”
Pam Truog: “Here’s one I make every year. ‘Never make promises I can’t keep.’”
Of course, January is all about promises we can’t keep. So is February. Come March, there will still be people smoking who had vowed to quit. The gym will be a little less crowded than it was those weeks just after the first. And I know that despite my inevitable vow to eat better, I’ll be tossing a softball-sized dollop of sour cream on a plate of nachos one Sunday night.
But how can we not celebrate the longing for excellence? The craving for betterment? The resolve to step up and buck the headswinds of human fraility? Sure, we are doomed to fail. But just imagine what horrid creatures we’d be if, at least once a year, we didn’t even try.
Happy New Year. May 2104 bring us all peace and wonder and joy.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 29, 2013. Chris’s next novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives on July 8, 2014. You can learn more about it right here on Goodreads.)
December 22, 2013
The Christmas Pageant: Locking a Moment in Memory
This Tuesday night, Christmas Eve, my daughter will be home from college and the two of us will be in the community room beneath the sanctuary of the United Church of Lincoln. There are three services, but the first one – the 7 p.m. service – is the one with a nativity. So, the two of us will be among the grownups helping to transform a couple dozen kids into angels, sheep, wise men, and a pair of seriously sleep-deprived parents. I am no expert on stable births, but it can’t be easy. There was no midwife. There was no iPod dock with mom and dad’s carefully selected “Time-To-Give-Birth” playlist. There was no one offering an epidural.
My sense is that by the time the baby was born, Mary was in serious need of sleep while Joseph was craving an I.V. drip filled with Red Bull. After all, the two of them were suddenly expected to entertain the rich and the poor who had come to meet their little newborn, and drop off a bunch of presents since at least three of the guests had missed the baby shower. (You try and get to a baby shower on time when your Garmin is a star.)
Outfitting the kids at the United Church of Lincoln is incredibly easy. Like a lot of churches, we have more trunks of vaguely biblical-looking costumes than the touring company of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” We have more beards than the 2013 World Champion Red Sox. And, of course, we have wings, because you can’t make an angel without wings.
Also, our nativity is pretty casual. You want in, you show up around 6:30 on Christmas Eve and choose human or animal. It was a pretty crowded stable, so it doesn’t matter to us if the front of the church looks like an elementary school mosh pit. And it is never quite the same nativity. Although we hold fast to the basics of the story, there is always a fair amount of ad-libbing, and sometimes we have unexpected cameos: Radio announcers. Santa Claus. Pretend TV personalities. It is without question my favorite moment of the year in the church.
There are a variety of reasons for this. I have now seen a quarter century’s worth of children pass through our faux Bethlehem. Some of the kids who were angels 20 or 25 years ago now have children of their own clamoring for one of the white robes and halos. (In addition to wings, you can’t really be an angel without a gold tinsel halo.) It seems only yesterday that my daughter was a five-year-old with fleece ears or a seven-year-old with what these days we would call a Duck Dynasty beard. One year she was Mary. When you’re a little girl, getting to play Mary is sort of like getting to play Juliet or Fantine or (Dare I say it?) Katniss Everdeen. It’s a terrific role, but a lot of pressure.
And I love the way the service ends with our dimming the sanctuary lights and singing “Silent Night,” the church lit only by candles. Arguably, mixing a few dozen little kids in costumes and lit candles is a recipe for disaster, but Christmas – Christianity itself – is all about faith. Usually Mary holds the Christ candle, from which the rest of our candles are lit. Most days of the year I have the emotional depth of a mollusk, but when we are raising and lowering our candles on Christmas Eve, I am always deeply moved.
I understand why so many churches have nativities: It’s not simply the miracle of the story. It’s not only a recreation of a moment from the gospels. It’s the timelessness of the tradition. The annual reenactment occurs at the same time, the same place, and with the same characters. It’s a ritual that is at once unchanging and yet never identical, linking parents and children and locking the moment in memory.
And now, once more, we can count down the hours.
Merry Christmas.
(The column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 22, 2013. Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published in July.)
My sense is that by the time the baby was born, Mary was in serious need of sleep while Joseph was craving an I.V. drip filled with Red Bull. After all, the two of them were suddenly expected to entertain the rich and the poor who had come to meet their little newborn, and drop off a bunch of presents since at least three of the guests had missed the baby shower. (You try and get to a baby shower on time when your Garmin is a star.)
Outfitting the kids at the United Church of Lincoln is incredibly easy. Like a lot of churches, we have more trunks of vaguely biblical-looking costumes than the touring company of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” We have more beards than the 2013 World Champion Red Sox. And, of course, we have wings, because you can’t make an angel without wings.
Also, our nativity is pretty casual. You want in, you show up around 6:30 on Christmas Eve and choose human or animal. It was a pretty crowded stable, so it doesn’t matter to us if the front of the church looks like an elementary school mosh pit. And it is never quite the same nativity. Although we hold fast to the basics of the story, there is always a fair amount of ad-libbing, and sometimes we have unexpected cameos: Radio announcers. Santa Claus. Pretend TV personalities. It is without question my favorite moment of the year in the church.
There are a variety of reasons for this. I have now seen a quarter century’s worth of children pass through our faux Bethlehem. Some of the kids who were angels 20 or 25 years ago now have children of their own clamoring for one of the white robes and halos. (In addition to wings, you can’t really be an angel without a gold tinsel halo.) It seems only yesterday that my daughter was a five-year-old with fleece ears or a seven-year-old with what these days we would call a Duck Dynasty beard. One year she was Mary. When you’re a little girl, getting to play Mary is sort of like getting to play Juliet or Fantine or (Dare I say it?) Katniss Everdeen. It’s a terrific role, but a lot of pressure.
And I love the way the service ends with our dimming the sanctuary lights and singing “Silent Night,” the church lit only by candles. Arguably, mixing a few dozen little kids in costumes and lit candles is a recipe for disaster, but Christmas – Christianity itself – is all about faith. Usually Mary holds the Christ candle, from which the rest of our candles are lit. Most days of the year I have the emotional depth of a mollusk, but when we are raising and lowering our candles on Christmas Eve, I am always deeply moved.
I understand why so many churches have nativities: It’s not simply the miracle of the story. It’s not only a recreation of a moment from the gospels. It’s the timelessness of the tradition. The annual reenactment occurs at the same time, the same place, and with the same characters. It’s a ritual that is at once unchanging and yet never identical, linking parents and children and locking the moment in memory.
And now, once more, we can count down the hours.
Merry Christmas.
(The column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 22, 2013. Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published in July.)
December 15, 2013
Child's play? Not when you're scared.
“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood,” novelist Tom Robbins wrote in “Still Life with Woodpecker.”
And so when Kayla Lopez was a scared eight-year-old child living in Winooski, she made a decision.
“I just said, ‘Take me,’” Kayla Lopez, now 22, recalls. “I picked up the phone and called a neighbor and asked them to call the police for me. And I said, ‘Take me.’ I put myself in foster care.” She wasn’t crying wolf: She was indeed placed in foster care.
In a perfect world, this would be the end of the story. A child this resourceful would be settled in a home with loving foster parents. Perhaps she would be adopted. Not this time. Over the next four years, Kayla would be sent to ten different foster homes, including one in central Vermont where she says her foster mother would lock her outside on frigid winter days and tell her to play. When her guardian ad litem – her court-appointed advocate – saw what she was enduring, her foster mother lost her license, according to Kayla.
At the age of 12, Kayla was dropped into a group home with older teens, a world where the kids would fight and run away, and she was constantly frightened.
This story sounds like a recipe for disaster. One would think that even a kid as gifted as Kayla would wind up in trouble as an adult: Emotionally scarred at best, but likely on a slippery slope toward drug abuse and jail.
What saved her? At 14, she moved in with her aunt and became a part of that loving family in Richmond. At 15, she began working with a Spectrum Youth and Family Services case manager named Amanda Churchill, and started taking advantage of Vermont’s Youth Development Program (managed by Spectrum in Burlington and St. Albans). Amanda became Kayla’s mentor and guide through the universalities of adolescence and the sometimes labyrinthine specifics of social services.
“Spectrum was life-changing for me. No exaggeration,” Kayla told me. “I wouldn’t have successfully gotten through high school or learned to live independently. I wouldn’t have learned how to apply for a job or a scholarship or a grant. Amanda taught me how to write a resume, to speak publicly, and to network. She made sure I had health insurance. She was doing college prep work with me and SAT practice with me. I felt like I had a family away from my family. Everyone cared about my well-being so much.”
This May, Kayla will graduate from the Community College of Vermont with her Associate Degree. Her plan is to then start at the University of Vermont and major in social work.
“My experience with the foster care system was horrible. I think I can use my experience to help other kids. I think I can use my experience to help fix the system,” she said.
Churchill, now the statewide director for the Youth Development Program, would agree: “Kayla was so shy and quiet and nervous when we met. She was just trying to survive. But she is such a remarkable young woman. She’s incredibly resilient. She has developed tremendously over the last few years. I am in awe of her – especially her positive attitude and her desire to give back to others. She really wants to improve the child welfare system going forward.”
It has never been easy to be a teenager, but these days it might be tougher than ever. And so once more I want to say thank you to the team at Spectrum for being there for a kid like Kayla. Today that once frightened eight-year-old has a future, at least in part because there are adults out there who see the promise in our kids – even the ones who, once upon a time, felt they had no one to call but the police.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 15, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
And so when Kayla Lopez was a scared eight-year-old child living in Winooski, she made a decision.
“I just said, ‘Take me,’” Kayla Lopez, now 22, recalls. “I picked up the phone and called a neighbor and asked them to call the police for me. And I said, ‘Take me.’ I put myself in foster care.” She wasn’t crying wolf: She was indeed placed in foster care.
In a perfect world, this would be the end of the story. A child this resourceful would be settled in a home with loving foster parents. Perhaps she would be adopted. Not this time. Over the next four years, Kayla would be sent to ten different foster homes, including one in central Vermont where she says her foster mother would lock her outside on frigid winter days and tell her to play. When her guardian ad litem – her court-appointed advocate – saw what she was enduring, her foster mother lost her license, according to Kayla.
At the age of 12, Kayla was dropped into a group home with older teens, a world where the kids would fight and run away, and she was constantly frightened.
This story sounds like a recipe for disaster. One would think that even a kid as gifted as Kayla would wind up in trouble as an adult: Emotionally scarred at best, but likely on a slippery slope toward drug abuse and jail.
What saved her? At 14, she moved in with her aunt and became a part of that loving family in Richmond. At 15, she began working with a Spectrum Youth and Family Services case manager named Amanda Churchill, and started taking advantage of Vermont’s Youth Development Program (managed by Spectrum in Burlington and St. Albans). Amanda became Kayla’s mentor and guide through the universalities of adolescence and the sometimes labyrinthine specifics of social services.
“Spectrum was life-changing for me. No exaggeration,” Kayla told me. “I wouldn’t have successfully gotten through high school or learned to live independently. I wouldn’t have learned how to apply for a job or a scholarship or a grant. Amanda taught me how to write a resume, to speak publicly, and to network. She made sure I had health insurance. She was doing college prep work with me and SAT practice with me. I felt like I had a family away from my family. Everyone cared about my well-being so much.”
This May, Kayla will graduate from the Community College of Vermont with her Associate Degree. Her plan is to then start at the University of Vermont and major in social work.
“My experience with the foster care system was horrible. I think I can use my experience to help other kids. I think I can use my experience to help fix the system,” she said.
Churchill, now the statewide director for the Youth Development Program, would agree: “Kayla was so shy and quiet and nervous when we met. She was just trying to survive. But she is such a remarkable young woman. She’s incredibly resilient. She has developed tremendously over the last few years. I am in awe of her – especially her positive attitude and her desire to give back to others. She really wants to improve the child welfare system going forward.”
It has never been easy to be a teenager, but these days it might be tougher than ever. And so once more I want to say thank you to the team at Spectrum for being there for a kid like Kayla. Today that once frightened eight-year-old has a future, at least in part because there are adults out there who see the promise in our kids – even the ones who, once upon a time, felt they had no one to call but the police.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 15, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
December 8, 2013
Congrats to Hattie Brown, 30 years at the Lincoln desk
As this year winds down, I realize I missed a big story: Not health care. Not the government shutdown. Not even the fact that Rome was besieged with poop from migrating birds – birds which, according to a city council spokeswoman, had been eating olives before flying over the Eternal City, “so their mess becomes oily and more dangerous for mopeds.” (That quote is either the definition of “too much information” or the single best thing I have ever written about bird poop.)
I missed this: Back on September 5, Lincoln’s Hattie Brown retired as the Lincoln, Vermont correspondent for the “Addison Independent.” Hattie had been filing her weekly column for thirty years. How impressive is that? I have been writing this column, “Idyll Banter,” for a mere 21 years and 10 months, and already I have been reduced to writing about the gastrointestinal ramifications of olives on birds. Thirty years of columns? Positively staggering.
But Hattie has always impressed me. She is 94 now, which meant that she started writing her column when a lot of people have retired. When my wife and I moved to Lincoln, among the first books I bought was a small history of the village by Richard Reed. In the back was a black and white photograph from perhaps the late 1950s of Hattie and Peg Rood sawing a log with a bow saw the width of a Mini Cooper. The two women are serious Lincoln royalty. Whoever captioned the photo noted that the only man in the image is contentedly smoking a pipe while the two women work.
Hattie has lived in the town since 1927 and taught school as either a full-time or substitute teacher for three and a half decades, many of those years in a one-room schoolhouse in South Lincoln – which, despite having the word “south” in its name, is considerably higher than the village center or the banana belt of Bristol. The growing season in South Lincoln is the Fourth of July weekend. She helped her late husband, Fletcher, run their dairy farm, and the two of them raised their daughter.
And she wrote some absolutely beautiful poetry: Poems that celebrated her faith, her community, and the natural beauty of Vermont.
But when I first think of Hattie, I think of two things: Dowsing. And her wonderful, wry smile – and the humor that lurked there.
Hattie was a tag team dowser with Fletcher. They would move with their L-shaped rods across a field, starting at perpendicular sides of a square, finding the underground veins of water. When I was writing my novel, “Water Witches,” they were invaluable. And while I personally couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Pier with a divining rod, I certainly felt the sticks move in my hands when Hattie placed her hands over mine.
And then there is that grin. After the church here in Lincoln burned to the ground on the night of Good Friday, 1981, she was interviewed by the “Valley Voice.” Always the journalist, she reported on the Sunday school classes and the choir rehearsal and the Maundy Thursday service that had taken place in the building in the week before the fire. Then she added with what I imagine was a gentle nod, her tone unflappable and dry, “Well, at least it went down working.”
As David Wood, the pastor of the church here in Lincoln – the church where Hattie sits every Sunday in the balcony – told me, “She’s learned to enjoy every day – to see every moment as special. Hattie knows how to live.” She is one of those seriously old-time, old-school Vermonters: A sound moral compass and an unfailing sense of irony.
So, congrats to a columnist and Vermonter who is inspirational. Thanks for all your words – even though, I have a feeling, you never, ever paired “bird” with “poop.”
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 8, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.”)
I missed this: Back on September 5, Lincoln’s Hattie Brown retired as the Lincoln, Vermont correspondent for the “Addison Independent.” Hattie had been filing her weekly column for thirty years. How impressive is that? I have been writing this column, “Idyll Banter,” for a mere 21 years and 10 months, and already I have been reduced to writing about the gastrointestinal ramifications of olives on birds. Thirty years of columns? Positively staggering.
But Hattie has always impressed me. She is 94 now, which meant that she started writing her column when a lot of people have retired. When my wife and I moved to Lincoln, among the first books I bought was a small history of the village by Richard Reed. In the back was a black and white photograph from perhaps the late 1950s of Hattie and Peg Rood sawing a log with a bow saw the width of a Mini Cooper. The two women are serious Lincoln royalty. Whoever captioned the photo noted that the only man in the image is contentedly smoking a pipe while the two women work.
Hattie has lived in the town since 1927 and taught school as either a full-time or substitute teacher for three and a half decades, many of those years in a one-room schoolhouse in South Lincoln – which, despite having the word “south” in its name, is considerably higher than the village center or the banana belt of Bristol. The growing season in South Lincoln is the Fourth of July weekend. She helped her late husband, Fletcher, run their dairy farm, and the two of them raised their daughter.
And she wrote some absolutely beautiful poetry: Poems that celebrated her faith, her community, and the natural beauty of Vermont.
But when I first think of Hattie, I think of two things: Dowsing. And her wonderful, wry smile – and the humor that lurked there.
Hattie was a tag team dowser with Fletcher. They would move with their L-shaped rods across a field, starting at perpendicular sides of a square, finding the underground veins of water. When I was writing my novel, “Water Witches,” they were invaluable. And while I personally couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Pier with a divining rod, I certainly felt the sticks move in my hands when Hattie placed her hands over mine.
And then there is that grin. After the church here in Lincoln burned to the ground on the night of Good Friday, 1981, she was interviewed by the “Valley Voice.” Always the journalist, she reported on the Sunday school classes and the choir rehearsal and the Maundy Thursday service that had taken place in the building in the week before the fire. Then she added with what I imagine was a gentle nod, her tone unflappable and dry, “Well, at least it went down working.”
As David Wood, the pastor of the church here in Lincoln – the church where Hattie sits every Sunday in the balcony – told me, “She’s learned to enjoy every day – to see every moment as special. Hattie knows how to live.” She is one of those seriously old-time, old-school Vermonters: A sound moral compass and an unfailing sense of irony.
So, congrats to a columnist and Vermonter who is inspirational. Thanks for all your words – even though, I have a feeling, you never, ever paired “bird” with “poop.”
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 8, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.”)
December 1, 2013
'Tis the season: On Tuesday I'll be dialing for dollars
There is absolutely nothing in the world I like more than calling strangers at their homes over dinner and asking for money. There is just no faster way to make friends and influence people.
And so I might be calling you on Tuesday night – especially if you live in Vermont. I will be dialing for dollars for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter – a.k.a., COTS – volunteering to pick up the phone because the group does more important work in a day than I will do in my lifetime. Also, they have really good snacks. And they’re going to give me a bell. I get to ring the bell whenever some stranger on the other end of the line agrees to make a tax-deductible contribution to the homeless shelter. I’ve volunteered to make calls for the organization three or four times in the past, so I have a pretty good sense of what will happen.
A few people will ask me to spell my name, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or because they have read one of my books and want to see if it really is me.
A few people will honestly – and in great detail – tell me how they are when I ask, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or they are really (and I mean really) lonely.
And a few people will start crying on the phone, because they have given to COTS in the past, but simply cannot afford to make a contribution this year. Maybe they have been laid off at work. Maybe someone in their family has grown ill and the cost of care has decimated their savings. Maybe they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. Make no mistake: It’s rough out there.
How rough? One hundred and forty schoolchildren in Chittenden County were homeless in October. Nearly a thousand people descended upon the COTS daytime shelter last year. One hundred and seventeen families stayed in one emergency shelter or another – and almost always there were more on the waiting list.
I’m not as good as some of the volunteers who will be working with me on Tuesday night, but I’ve been a big fan of COTS for many years and so I am capable of getting pretty passionate. I’ve stayed focused when people have reminded me how much I must hate it when telemarketers call me at my home, and when they’ve asked me for my phone number.
But the thing is, I’m not a robocall. You can talk to me. Likewise, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to scream about socialists or the Tea Party. I’m not even going to try and sell you a calling plan for your cell phone or a crate of Omaha steaks. I am simply going to ask you to do what I do: Be thankful that I have a roof over my head tonight by helping someone who might not.
So, if you hear from me on Tuesday, be gentle. Be kind. And feel free to tell me how you really are when I ask.
* * *
The annual COTS phone-a-thon begins tomorrow night and concludes on December 11. The goal is $175 thousand to help the shelter weather the winter – a nightmare season for the homeless or those flirting with homelessness. In addition, COTS is one of the “Free Press” Giving Season charities this month, along with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the Warmth Program, and Jump (the Joint Urban Ministry Project). Trust me: Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much deeper glow than unwrapping a boxed set of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Blu-ray and DVD.
Finally, if you want to call COTS before we call you, here is the number: (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 1, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
And so I might be calling you on Tuesday night – especially if you live in Vermont. I will be dialing for dollars for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter – a.k.a., COTS – volunteering to pick up the phone because the group does more important work in a day than I will do in my lifetime. Also, they have really good snacks. And they’re going to give me a bell. I get to ring the bell whenever some stranger on the other end of the line agrees to make a tax-deductible contribution to the homeless shelter. I’ve volunteered to make calls for the organization three or four times in the past, so I have a pretty good sense of what will happen.
A few people will ask me to spell my name, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or because they have read one of my books and want to see if it really is me.
A few people will honestly – and in great detail – tell me how they are when I ask, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or they are really (and I mean really) lonely.
And a few people will start crying on the phone, because they have given to COTS in the past, but simply cannot afford to make a contribution this year. Maybe they have been laid off at work. Maybe someone in their family has grown ill and the cost of care has decimated their savings. Maybe they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. Make no mistake: It’s rough out there.
How rough? One hundred and forty schoolchildren in Chittenden County were homeless in October. Nearly a thousand people descended upon the COTS daytime shelter last year. One hundred and seventeen families stayed in one emergency shelter or another – and almost always there were more on the waiting list.
I’m not as good as some of the volunteers who will be working with me on Tuesday night, but I’ve been a big fan of COTS for many years and so I am capable of getting pretty passionate. I’ve stayed focused when people have reminded me how much I must hate it when telemarketers call me at my home, and when they’ve asked me for my phone number.
But the thing is, I’m not a robocall. You can talk to me. Likewise, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to scream about socialists or the Tea Party. I’m not even going to try and sell you a calling plan for your cell phone or a crate of Omaha steaks. I am simply going to ask you to do what I do: Be thankful that I have a roof over my head tonight by helping someone who might not.
So, if you hear from me on Tuesday, be gentle. Be kind. And feel free to tell me how you really are when I ask.
* * *
The annual COTS phone-a-thon begins tomorrow night and concludes on December 11. The goal is $175 thousand to help the shelter weather the winter – a nightmare season for the homeless or those flirting with homelessness. In addition, COTS is one of the “Free Press” Giving Season charities this month, along with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the Warmth Program, and Jump (the Joint Urban Ministry Project). Trust me: Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much deeper glow than unwrapping a boxed set of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Blu-ray and DVD.
Finally, if you want to call COTS before we call you, here is the number: (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 1, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
November 24, 2013
Time for Vermonters to speak up for Silent Cal
As a Vermonter, I try to have Cal Coolidge’s back. I do this because he was a Vermont-born United States President, because we graduated from the same college, and because he endured a horrific personal tragedy that some historians suggest shaped the last four of his five years in office. A month after he was nominated for President in 1924, his sixteen-year-old son died of blood poisoning, the result of a small cut on his toe he got playing tennis. “When he went, the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him,” Coolidge admitted years later in his autobiography. My sense is that I would have disagreed with him on a number of political issues, but I still feel a sense of pride when I am near the Coolidge Homestead in Plymouth.
And so I am writing today because a Vermonter needs to speak up for him. It is, in some ways, a small issue when we look at the carnage in Syria or the cataclysm in the Philippines or the complications that have dogged the launch of the HealthCare.gov web site. But I feel the Vermont-born President was insulted this autumn, and it’s a story that matters to me as a Vermonter – and as an Armenian-American.
Here is the “Reader’s Digest” condensed version. In the midst of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire systematically annihilated 1.5 million of its Armenian citizens, ethnically cleansing its Armenian minority from almost all of what today we call Turkey – and what once was Armenia. Three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed. Many United States citizens and Western Europeans were devastated by the carnage as it was occurring, and a newly organized American group, Near East Relief, jumped in hard to try and save the survivors of the Genocide, scattered now across the Middle East. The group’s humanitarian accomplishments – especially the 135 thousand orphans it cared for and helped to educate – are now legendary. It set the bar high for America’s subsequent efforts to respond to global crises and helped hone the accuracy – and cement the authority – of our nation’s moral compass.
And among the thanks to America from those orphans was a gift of a rug. It was woven by a group of Armenian orphan girls from the orphanage in Ghazir, Syria (now Lebanon) and designed to be worthy of an American President. It was. Four and a half million small knots. In the “Washington Post” this autumn, Philip Kennicott described it as “no mere juvenile effort, but a complicated, richly detailed work that would hold its own even in the largest and most ceremonial rooms.” It’s massive and beautiful. It was presented to President Coolidge on December 4, 1925. In his thank-you note, the President wrote, “The rug has a place of honor in the White House, where it will be a daily symbol of good-will on earth.” A year later, two of the Armenian girls who helped weave the rug went to the White House and met the Coolidges.
So, why today does President Coolidge need us? This autumn, Hagop Martin Deranian wrote a thorough and moving history of the carpet, “President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug.” Next month, the Smithsonian Museum was hoping to bring the book and the rug together for an event. It’s not happening. Why? The White House is refusing to release the rug – which has merely been in storage for the past twenty years. The White House is ignoring the request of 33 Democratic and Republican legislators in the House of Representatives to allow the carpet to be displayed at the Smithsonian. The rationale? The exhibit at the Smithsonian “was not viewed as commensurate with the rug’s historical significance,” said the National Security Council’s Laura Lucas Magnuson. Also, it was going to be too much work to ship it across town to the Smithsonian.
My sense is that the real reason is real politik: We do not want to antagonize Turkey, which, despite all historical evidence, continues to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide – and that’s a shame. After all, the rug is a testimony to American ideals at their very best: to the way, once upon a time, we reached out across the seas in a humanitarian gesture commensurate with both our resources and our ideals. The rug is a reminder of the way, once upon a time, we rallied as a country to save a people.
That’s why I am thinking of Cal Coolidge this morning. If the White House could stand up for the orphans in 1925, it certainly can in 2013.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 24, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
And so I am writing today because a Vermonter needs to speak up for him. It is, in some ways, a small issue when we look at the carnage in Syria or the cataclysm in the Philippines or the complications that have dogged the launch of the HealthCare.gov web site. But I feel the Vermont-born President was insulted this autumn, and it’s a story that matters to me as a Vermonter – and as an Armenian-American.
Here is the “Reader’s Digest” condensed version. In the midst of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire systematically annihilated 1.5 million of its Armenian citizens, ethnically cleansing its Armenian minority from almost all of what today we call Turkey – and what once was Armenia. Three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed. Many United States citizens and Western Europeans were devastated by the carnage as it was occurring, and a newly organized American group, Near East Relief, jumped in hard to try and save the survivors of the Genocide, scattered now across the Middle East. The group’s humanitarian accomplishments – especially the 135 thousand orphans it cared for and helped to educate – are now legendary. It set the bar high for America’s subsequent efforts to respond to global crises and helped hone the accuracy – and cement the authority – of our nation’s moral compass.
And among the thanks to America from those orphans was a gift of a rug. It was woven by a group of Armenian orphan girls from the orphanage in Ghazir, Syria (now Lebanon) and designed to be worthy of an American President. It was. Four and a half million small knots. In the “Washington Post” this autumn, Philip Kennicott described it as “no mere juvenile effort, but a complicated, richly detailed work that would hold its own even in the largest and most ceremonial rooms.” It’s massive and beautiful. It was presented to President Coolidge on December 4, 1925. In his thank-you note, the President wrote, “The rug has a place of honor in the White House, where it will be a daily symbol of good-will on earth.” A year later, two of the Armenian girls who helped weave the rug went to the White House and met the Coolidges.
So, why today does President Coolidge need us? This autumn, Hagop Martin Deranian wrote a thorough and moving history of the carpet, “President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug.” Next month, the Smithsonian Museum was hoping to bring the book and the rug together for an event. It’s not happening. Why? The White House is refusing to release the rug – which has merely been in storage for the past twenty years. The White House is ignoring the request of 33 Democratic and Republican legislators in the House of Representatives to allow the carpet to be displayed at the Smithsonian. The rationale? The exhibit at the Smithsonian “was not viewed as commensurate with the rug’s historical significance,” said the National Security Council’s Laura Lucas Magnuson. Also, it was going to be too much work to ship it across town to the Smithsonian.
My sense is that the real reason is real politik: We do not want to antagonize Turkey, which, despite all historical evidence, continues to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide – and that’s a shame. After all, the rug is a testimony to American ideals at their very best: to the way, once upon a time, we reached out across the seas in a humanitarian gesture commensurate with both our resources and our ideals. The rug is a reminder of the way, once upon a time, we rallied as a country to save a people.
That’s why I am thinking of Cal Coolidge this morning. If the White House could stand up for the orphans in 1925, it certainly can in 2013.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 24, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
November 17, 2013
The gift of Grace turns twenty
We are fast approaching the holiday season, that time of the year when we are all a little kinder and a little more generous, as long as that kindness and generosity doesn’t involve sacrificing a parking space within sight of the shopping mall. It’s that moment on the calendar when we want to be particularly good parents and role models, and teach our children – as Dr. Seuss taught us – that Christmas doesn’t come from a store. It comes from a web site.
I mention this not because Hanukkah and Christmas are nearing (though they are), but because tomorrow, November 18, is another big day for my family. Tomorrow my wife’s and my daughter, Grace Experience, turns 20.
Readers have asked me why Grace appears less often in this column than she did in the past. The Friday before last, for example, a reader stopped me on Church Street and guessed that my daughter must be in high school by now.
Nope. Grace is a junior in college and lives in Manhattan.
She appears less frequently in this column because she is an adult and her life is her own. Also, it was more difficult for her to veto a column 18 years ago when she was a toddler. It was easier for me to exploit her – her diapers, her Barbies, her preschool, her friends – when she couldn’t read.
But I am quite serious about the reality that we all have boundaries and as a columnist I try to respect them. Still, of all the roles in my life, there is none that I have cherished as much as being a dad – and being Grace’s dad. Grace is an only child and our family unit was perfect as a small world of three. My wife and I have always been proud of who Grace is as a person and the decisions she makes with her life.
Now, 20 does not come with new privileges the way that 16, 18, and 21 do. Grace’s world will not be appreciably different tomorrow than it is today. But depending upon how you parse your decades, it is arguably the end of her adolescence or the start of her adulthood. (I’m not sure whether that sentence was more terrifying for me to write or it will be for Grace to read.)
Will Rogers once said that “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” The thing about turning 20 is that suddenly there is a lot less tolerance for bad judgment. We are less forgiving of moronic decisions. We are less understanding of human frailties. And that is precisely how it should be. It’s why we grant greater freedom and additional rights to people as they get older.
But here is why my wife and I have always been so impressed with our daughter: She has a far more exact (and exacting) moral compass than I have and much better judgment. Good Lord, she was putting herself in her time-out chair when she was three.
Consequently, the only rule we have for Grace is this: She needs to text us when she is safely in for the night – even when “night” is a pretty loose term that stretches into the small hours of the morning. We are always happy to be awakened by a text at two in morning with the single word, “Home.”
Will we insist on those texts in a year? In two years?
At some point, my wife and I will need to accept the fact that the only parenting left to us is filling the refrigerator before Grace returns to Vermont for a visit. When that time comes, I will try to take comfort in two things. First, I will remember a quote from Sherman Alexie: “All of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.” Second, I will delude myself into believing that my remarkable daughter is more the result of nurture than nature. I will pat my wife on the back and I will pat myself on the back.
In the meantime? I will simply wish Grace Experience a happy twentieth birthday. Thank you for being the greatest gift in your mother’s and my lives.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
I mention this not because Hanukkah and Christmas are nearing (though they are), but because tomorrow, November 18, is another big day for my family. Tomorrow my wife’s and my daughter, Grace Experience, turns 20.
Readers have asked me why Grace appears less often in this column than she did in the past. The Friday before last, for example, a reader stopped me on Church Street and guessed that my daughter must be in high school by now.
Nope. Grace is a junior in college and lives in Manhattan.
She appears less frequently in this column because she is an adult and her life is her own. Also, it was more difficult for her to veto a column 18 years ago when she was a toddler. It was easier for me to exploit her – her diapers, her Barbies, her preschool, her friends – when she couldn’t read.
But I am quite serious about the reality that we all have boundaries and as a columnist I try to respect them. Still, of all the roles in my life, there is none that I have cherished as much as being a dad – and being Grace’s dad. Grace is an only child and our family unit was perfect as a small world of three. My wife and I have always been proud of who Grace is as a person and the decisions she makes with her life.
Now, 20 does not come with new privileges the way that 16, 18, and 21 do. Grace’s world will not be appreciably different tomorrow than it is today. But depending upon how you parse your decades, it is arguably the end of her adolescence or the start of her adulthood. (I’m not sure whether that sentence was more terrifying for me to write or it will be for Grace to read.)
Will Rogers once said that “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” The thing about turning 20 is that suddenly there is a lot less tolerance for bad judgment. We are less forgiving of moronic decisions. We are less understanding of human frailties. And that is precisely how it should be. It’s why we grant greater freedom and additional rights to people as they get older.
But here is why my wife and I have always been so impressed with our daughter: She has a far more exact (and exacting) moral compass than I have and much better judgment. Good Lord, she was putting herself in her time-out chair when she was three.
Consequently, the only rule we have for Grace is this: She needs to text us when she is safely in for the night – even when “night” is a pretty loose term that stretches into the small hours of the morning. We are always happy to be awakened by a text at two in morning with the single word, “Home.”
Will we insist on those texts in a year? In two years?
At some point, my wife and I will need to accept the fact that the only parenting left to us is filling the refrigerator before Grace returns to Vermont for a visit. When that time comes, I will try to take comfort in two things. First, I will remember a quote from Sherman Alexie: “All of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.” Second, I will delude myself into believing that my remarkable daughter is more the result of nurture than nature. I will pat my wife on the back and I will pat myself on the back.
In the meantime? I will simply wish Grace Experience a happy twentieth birthday. Thank you for being the greatest gift in your mother’s and my lives.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
November 10, 2013
The Sun Was Right for a Flashback to My Dad
Earlier this autumn when I was at the Miami International Airport, I had an unexpected Proustian flashback. When I was in tenth grade, I missed my first three morning classes one day almost every week because I was at the restaurant on the top floor of that airport singing with the Miami Kiwanis Club. For reasons that in hindsight are inexplicable, no one at the high school cared that I was missing so much class time, and no one in the Kiwanis Club cared that I couldn’t sing. I was there as an officer in my high school’s Key Club, the service organization that was affiliated with Kiwanis. I was usually there with one or two other officers, a junior or a senior who was old enough to drive. (I wasn’t.)
Also, just for the record, I wasn’t singing alone: Everyone sang a song or two together to get the weekly Kiwanis breakfast meeting started. We sang songs that were popular when, I am pretty sure, William Howard Taft was President: Ditties such as “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Home Sweet Home.” I was likely to be wearing a polyester leisure suit and a Huckapoo shirt. (Huckapoo was an actual clothing line – not a brand garbled by Honey Boo Boo Child’s mother.) The shirt had images of rain forest birds on it, because this was an era when people believed that a shirt with birds on it was a reasonable fashion statement. Also, clothes made of chemicals were good for you: The more synthetic, the better. No sheep were sheared for my Florida wardrobe.
I mention this because I’ve been blindsided by childhood memories a lot lately. I’ve raced through the Miami International Airport dozens of times since that year I was having breakfast with a Kiwanis Club, and yet never once was I was catapulted back in time to those mornings when I was fifteen years old. Moreover, the airport has changed a lot since the Mesozoic era when I was in high school. Back then, it was actually a little sleepy – at least it is in my memories. Today? Magnificent and modern. It has the wondrous international flavor of flights winging their way to Europe and South America.
What triggered the memory on this visit? I think it was the confluence of a few things. I was arriving there about seven-thirty in the morning, about the same time I would have gotten there for those Kiwanis breakfast meetings. The sun was just right. Second, as the car rounded the massive semi-circle for departures, I happened to glance up at the building that once upon a time housed that restaurant. A lot of the structure is unchanged. Finally, and I think most importantly, this was my first visit back to Miami since my father died. He used to be a groupie at my events at a wonderful store called Books & Books in Coral Gables, and before my appearance we always had dinner together at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse a block from the store. Invariably, I was the only vegetarian in the restaurant. But my father loved the place and usually had a filet the size of a Mini Cooper.
I believe on some level it was walking the streets I associate with both my father’s last years and a part of my distant adolescence that allowed me to see things at the airport I hadn’t seen in decades. A recollection was born. The old songs. The scrambled eggs in buffet trays. The men – and at the time Kiwanis was entirely male – who took justifiable pride in their volunteer work and saw such promise in the high school kids like me they invited to join them.
I hadn’t thought of those mornings in a long time, though back then I had enjoyed those breakfasts immensely. I took pride in my affiliation with Key Club and with Kiwanis, and my parents were fine with the reality that I was missing chemistry and Spanish and something involving numbers
At some point, I assume, these remembrances of things past will stop surprising me. I will stop recalling my father daily. But until then, I am happy to sing along.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 10, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
Also, just for the record, I wasn’t singing alone: Everyone sang a song or two together to get the weekly Kiwanis breakfast meeting started. We sang songs that were popular when, I am pretty sure, William Howard Taft was President: Ditties such as “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Home Sweet Home.” I was likely to be wearing a polyester leisure suit and a Huckapoo shirt. (Huckapoo was an actual clothing line – not a brand garbled by Honey Boo Boo Child’s mother.) The shirt had images of rain forest birds on it, because this was an era when people believed that a shirt with birds on it was a reasonable fashion statement. Also, clothes made of chemicals were good for you: The more synthetic, the better. No sheep were sheared for my Florida wardrobe.
I mention this because I’ve been blindsided by childhood memories a lot lately. I’ve raced through the Miami International Airport dozens of times since that year I was having breakfast with a Kiwanis Club, and yet never once was I was catapulted back in time to those mornings when I was fifteen years old. Moreover, the airport has changed a lot since the Mesozoic era when I was in high school. Back then, it was actually a little sleepy – at least it is in my memories. Today? Magnificent and modern. It has the wondrous international flavor of flights winging their way to Europe and South America.
What triggered the memory on this visit? I think it was the confluence of a few things. I was arriving there about seven-thirty in the morning, about the same time I would have gotten there for those Kiwanis breakfast meetings. The sun was just right. Second, as the car rounded the massive semi-circle for departures, I happened to glance up at the building that once upon a time housed that restaurant. A lot of the structure is unchanged. Finally, and I think most importantly, this was my first visit back to Miami since my father died. He used to be a groupie at my events at a wonderful store called Books & Books in Coral Gables, and before my appearance we always had dinner together at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse a block from the store. Invariably, I was the only vegetarian in the restaurant. But my father loved the place and usually had a filet the size of a Mini Cooper.
I believe on some level it was walking the streets I associate with both my father’s last years and a part of my distant adolescence that allowed me to see things at the airport I hadn’t seen in decades. A recollection was born. The old songs. The scrambled eggs in buffet trays. The men – and at the time Kiwanis was entirely male – who took justifiable pride in their volunteer work and saw such promise in the high school kids like me they invited to join them.
I hadn’t thought of those mornings in a long time, though back then I had enjoyed those breakfasts immensely. I took pride in my affiliation with Key Club and with Kiwanis, and my parents were fine with the reality that I was missing chemistry and Spanish and something involving numbers
At some point, I assume, these remembrances of things past will stop surprising me. I will stop recalling my father daily. But until then, I am happy to sing along.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 10, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
