A Frightened Boy, His Dad, and the Night Sky; Summer, 1982

I just traveled back to a night from about thirty-seven years ago. At least, I can see it projected like a movie onto the dense trees behind my house. The air smells exactly the same as it did that night; it's the kind of wonderfully cool evening air that carries a spectre of fall and floats through the door like an unnoticed arrival to a formal Victorian party; the kind of cool that can only feel the way it does after weeks of intense heat.

As I said, the night was the mirror image of this one. I was about a week away from heading to high school for the first time and I was nervous and very reluctant. I never said anything, because I was that kind of a kid; somehow I always reacted to fears by turning inward, concentrating like someone trying to untangle  twine. And though I had two approachable, caring parents, it never occurred to me to go to them. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was just my teenage thinking locked onto the rails of some rusty, individualistic instinct.

And while I wouldn't have openly talked about my fears, I would routinely seek out the comfort of company, especially the company of my dad, when I felt troubled. He had a way of making me feel I was standing on solid ground when I felt a quake coming.

This night -- decades ago but still tonight -- found my dad and me lying on the deck of our swimming pool in our suburban neighborhood, hands behind our heads, looking up at the stars. We'd do this from time to time, talking or not talking...just being there. Just feeling the moment. ("Don't think about the next thing you want to do; think of now and take care of business," he would always say to me when I, for instance, rushed through cutting the lawn.)

When we talked, it was usually because he'd throw philosophical puzzles at me (some of them repeats). He was well-aware they were repeats, by the way; he just liked them enough to run them at me again.

One of his favorites: He'd have me look at the moon and he'd say, "You see the moon? It's Truth."

He'd never explain. He'd just let the idea hang there like the great white orb itself: bright against the black of Everything Else. I could almost feel the synapses connecting and creeping like ivy across my brain.

This night, with the lovely chill on me, and the fear of a new experience creeping up my spine, I was hoping for one of the old ones; one of his comfortable, familiar repeats, but he asked me a new question. Just as he asked it, I remember smelling someone's fire -- a marshmallow-toasting pit or a bonfire in the neighborhood.

"What do you think about U.F.Os?" he asked. "You think they are up there?"

"You mean space ships? Flying saucers?" I giggled a little.

"What's U.F.O. stand for?" he asked.

"Unidentified flying objects?" I ventured.

"So, what's not to believe in? Don't you think they see things up there they can't identify? The government has tons of cases of pilots seeing things up there they can't identify."

"So...like, starships?" (If you are a long time reader, you know I grew up on Star Trek.)

"Or...anything unidentified that flies. Bottom line, if you go by the definition, U.F.Os are real. Period. There are things that have been seen flying around up there that are unidentified. Keep looking long enough and you will see something."

Impending, scary newness was obscured for me at that moment. School didn't exist; or, at least, it just didn't matter much in the vast stretches of a lifetime. As we looked at the sky, I was somehow aware of the span from that day to this one, thirty-seven years later. I was aware that some day -- today -- he'd be gone, but that he would always be with me, because of the seeds he planted in the fields of my mind.

But my dad didn't plant trees; he planted beanstalks.

His U.F.O question still resonates with my like a over-wordy koan. Of course he was right, but what it means that he was right is still more of a setting off point for other explorations than an answer to be captured.

They say one forgets the face of his lost loved ones. Sometimes I think it might be true, but, from one musician to another, a voice is never lost. I can still hear my dad's voice; I can hear his tone harmonized by the cars hissing by on the street in front of our house and the leaves moving above the pool. It's a chord of memory. Tonight, I hear my dad again, in my heart, in my ears and in my head, and I look at the stars and I swear I see things moving around up there.

I just can't identify them...I hope I never will.

Goodnight, Dad.

Cornered

Once, a bully chased me around the neighborhood. He was older and he was bigger than I was.

It was twilight and I needed to get home when the streetlights came on. Somehow that worried me just as much as what he might do to me.

I was carrying a plastic "briefcase" that my dad had given me. I think it was full of toys and probably drawings of Star Trek scenes. It never occurred to me, as I was running and crying, to drop it -- which is good, because, thinking I had evaded the bully, I hid up against a friend's house under a pine tree. It would either be a great hiding spot or it was "a corner."

It was a corner.

Kites, Cardigans and Good Ol' F.U.

My great uncle sported a "high-and-tight" haircut and a buttoned-up collar. He was a product of Fork Union Military Academy -- which he always referred to as "good ol' F.U." I think he went to F.U. because he had been more of a behavior issue than because he had been the "military type" as a young man; he had a quick wit and a hearty smile; he was a bit impish. Family legend has it that he was stronger than the average ox, having once lifted a car off of a little girl's leg in the 1950's -- back when squat-lifting a car by its bumper was a pure-metal job three-times more miraculous than it would be today.

As kids, my sister and I would spend Friday nights at the house he shared with my grandmother in South Philadelphia; Mom worked late and Dad, for many years, had a steady gig at the legendary nightclub, Palumbo's, in town. These visits consisted of a meatball-sandwich dinner (on the greatest Italian bread in the history of the world), before my dad left for work, and, then, of all the TV we wanted and all of the M&Ms and ice cream we could cram into our maws. My sister and I would draw (and draw and draw...) and play invented games and watch ridiculous nineteen-eighties shows like the unintentionally surreal Dukes of Hazzard.

The Sweating Anomaly

I had the strangest experience today.

I was standing in a Wawa -- it's a convenience store in this neck of the world; there are so many of them in my state that you tend, while driving, to say, "Mah -- that one's on the wrong side of the road; I'll wait for the next Wawa." There's always a next Wawa; always, and hard upon the last. I don't doubt that they're connected by underground tunnels hung with oil lanterns.

Anyway, I was standing (leaning, really) in one of these ubiquitous Wawas, waiting for the young woman behind the counter to grudgingly slap together the sandwiches that I had ordered as part of dinner -- the unhealthy composition of which more or less negates any good thing I have ever done as a father or husband -- for the family. (My, I'm feeling parenthetical today.)

It's been near one-hundred degrees for a few days 'round here. Sweating people trudged wetly in and out, buying sports drinks, chips, cookies, cigarettes, beef-jerky, milk, bread and queso dips of various hues. The tired plastic bags in their tired hands were loaded with little packages of death-hastening treats. And they didn't care, because life is busy and it is hot and they just want something nice in the midst of a day that sucked fat ostrich eggs.


Leave me alone, each face said, in weary silence. Just leave me the hell alone! What more do you want from me? It's been a long, hot day. My children are chittering little dung beetles and my spouse is a soul-eating extraterrestrial. I NEED this brownie and I am going to wash it down with this ice-cold Coke and when I'm done, I might lick sugar cubes until the entire box is gone and my wrists drip with stickiness! So, BACK OFF!"


Really. That's what they wordlessly said.

My Son, the Drunken Cowboy Bandit

We walked into a darkish gymnasium last night to see the displays created by my fourth-grade son's "Lego Club." Small groups had created really cute images from various countries, out of Legos. The displays were surrounded by foods that reflected each culture. (Though, I'm not sure why chicken nuggets were chosen to represent Egypt. Still, they were tasty.)

I'm also not sure why there was a DJ playing tunes. But, okay...

We did our rounds and saw some really cute creations. My son's group made an Irish castle, complete with a little Lego couple smooching in the back. (Don't they call it "snogging" in Ireland...or is that worse than smooching? I seem to remember Joyce referring to "snogging" in Portrait...)

Anyhoo, my little guys thought it was pretty cool: free treats; lots of kids running around; music playing. My younger son (second grade) started, at one point, to "dance." It was more of a jolly spasm: his arms would start to flop and then he would bounce. Once he really got into it, he started pointing his fingers at the ceiling like a cowboy bandit alternately shooting six guns at the moon during a campfire drunk.

River and Pond

We accept stuff all the time; we just sit back and take a "that's the way it is" attitude.

Gradgrind and Bounderby

I hate that. I also hate the fact that in order to break away from that "that's the way it is" situation, we wind up having to be less like salmon swimming upstream than like goldfish trying to swim up into a full-blasting fire hose.

But "that's the way it is" doesn't mean "the way it is" is okay. It might be insurmountable, but that doesn't make it right.

For instance, we all have to work. "That's the way it is." We all get subjected to grueling days of hard work and job-related stress. Lunch just ain't free. That's all there is to it.

But there is something really wrong about this.

Last night, my eight-year-old son was having a hard time with his allergies. He's got them pretty bad. He was coughing and sneezing in bed. He also doesn't like when his brother, in the bunk below him, falls asleep first. It makes him feel lonely . . .

The Path to Awesomeness

Last night, after a day of Easter visits and of seldom-matched gluttony, even for my family, my older son (ten) was in an uncharacteristically euphoric place. He's a happy kid -- don't get me wrong. But, during the car-ride, on the way home, he was simply brimming with enthusiasm for the day we had just spent:

"Wasn't that a great day? That was an awesome day -- what a great night, too. Don't you guys think that was a great night? And, man, isn't this a great town that Uncle Matt and Aunt Bean live in? Look -- they have a bank and a car store and pizza places and there a Walgreens...and a church. Everything is, like, right here -- you could walk to anything you wanted in, like, five minutes...and..."

And on he went, spurred on by me. I was having a blast pointing out even more things to him: "And look -- a place for Chinese food. And there is a liquor store in case you ever want to get drunk (laughs from the kids -- sidelong glance from the wife)... and a doughnut shop and..."

...and the kids got more and more rev'ed up about the neighborhood as we went, ridint the Hawiian wave of post-holiday joy.

[For the record, that particular liquor store has up, on  its marquee, maybe my favorite home-grown advertisement of all time: "COLDEST BEER ALLOWED BY LAW."]

Anyway, I wondered about this extreme good mood -- what had made it such a good night and day for my boy?

A writer named Gretchen Rubin, author of a book called The Happiness Project -- a book that I haven't read but that my wife has told me a lot about -- maintains that in order to achieve happiness, we should do many things, once of which being: Remember what made us happy as children. Those things probably still apply, if in an altered or slightly updated form.

A Taxing Day and Night

Tax night. I have a top-drawer post in the works that was meant for today, but I was subjected to a day of such hideous complexion that I think I will postpone it.

I kid you not when I say my day contained in incident of literal insanity (no, not me), a viscious attack on my character as an educator and a three-hour test proctoring session that is the first in a series of five of these sessions, culminating in one on this coming Saturday. And at the end of this glorious day, tax night -- a trip to the accountant's. Huzzah!

But the office is a feast for the eyes. It is an set in a old, tumbledown house on a muddy, deeply-pocked lot that faces a highway split by a dirty grey wall. From the front door, there is a dazzling neon view of a dilapidated motel complex frequented by ladies of the evening and their randy clientele. (I know this, because I used to play in a club next to said complex and the aforementioned pleasure professionals would frequently attempt to peddle their wares to the band. The club was such a classy establishment that, once, when the lead singer of the band and I went outside to stop a man from kicking his prostrate girlfriend repeatedly in the face in the parking lot, the man defended himself, as we grabbed him, slurring: "Dudes -- it's okay. She's my girlfriend." Really.)

The Chain

Yesterday I was off, so I had the chance to drive my boys to school. On the way in, my ten year old mentioned a problem he was having. I won't plaster it on the Internet, because I respect the little guy's privacy as much as anyone else's, but we talked a little and he seemed okay -- he even changed the subject on his own.

When I got home, my wife informed me he had been talking about it to her, earlier. She told me he had been visibly upset. It was a bigger problem than I had thought. Had I blown the chance to help him on his way in?

I was on familiar ground -- in that place of knowing my boy has to fight some of his own battles, but wanting to save him from pain.

To use an American football metaphor, I don't feel the urge to carry the ball for him, like a lot of parents do; I just  want to be his blocker -- to knock away opponents so he can score touchdowns. But sometimes, even that is too much. He needs to build his own character. He needs to take some hits.

That's easy to say.

The Chump (Who is Not Me)

Once upon a time, there was a fellow (not me, you understand) who went food-shopping because his wife (not mine, you understand), who usually did the food shopping, was recuperating from knee surgery. He wasn't used to food shopping, this fellow who is absolutely not me, but he had done it before -- back in the days before kids. He (this other fellow) went into this adventure feeling pretty confident.

And he did okay, this non-Chrissian chap, in general. Sure, he got non-fat creamer instead of half-and-half. And he did get regular cheese instead of 2%. Small errors, on the whole. On the opposite end, he managed to find (after some significant searching and a silent [but energetic] imagining that he was Indiana Jones exploring the Temple of the Frozen Menace) crumbled bleu cheese; an accomplishment of which he was exceedingly proud, and after which, in silent celebration, he stood heroically for a moment, next to his shopping cart, and ran an hand iconically across the brim of his imaginary fedora.

Finally -- a reason to use this painting!

Yes, this stalwart shopping-hero did okay.

The Father of the Man

One night, we were watching old family videos. One section of footage, originally shot on an old 8mm camera on a hot summer day in Philadelphia, circa 1968, would bring me to tears.

There was me, just learning to walk, in dark shorts, white shoes and a striped shirt, face surrounded by a reddish-brown, curly mop of hair. The sunlight in my tiny heart -- as in the hearts of all babies -- was more than a match for the light that shone off of the car fenders and windows of the row-homes.

My mother helped me to stand, holding my hands high as I faced away from her, and when I mustered the courage, I would waddle away, about six steps, into the waiting arms of my uncle, and then turn for the return journey.