Party, Party

The huge coach bus to Quebec City left school at 6:30 sharp, or at least I think it did. I left about five mintues before, not wanting to be one of the last remaining geeky parent with nothing better to do than hang out on Meeting Street at dawn. The kids on board the bus were half awake or half asleep, whichever, armed with abundant stores of food and candy, American dollars, cell phones and who knows--who really wants to know--what else? Sophie brough a blanket and her bear, her childhood insecurity blanket. The kids appeared to be a great group, nothing bizarre or grungy or salacious on the surface. For the next four days the kids will wander the streets of the old city in groups of two or three or more, hiking up and down the steep streets on tours and on their own, absorbing history. Several "Madames" will direct and recdirect them. One mother told her daughter, the one who is always being disciplined at school, as she climbed on the bus: "don't be the story..." A funny thing to say, but her daughter evidently has ideas of her own.

I hope my own daughter is strong enough among her peers to do the same, to enjoy herself, behave, not become the story. Yesterday she finished her school year with a a bang, a final exam grade of 104 in math, the only dimple in a nearly flawless record of achievement during this time of change. There will be many A's on the report card, I expect. The trip will be a just reward. And then the kids return, only to turn around and head for Block Island for three more days of fun together. Bon voyage!

Birthday

That day has come again. One more life cycle, another turn. When it stops, the good news is that I will not know about it. Time is insidious. How we measure it, the marking on the twine, the sand through the glass, the encircled number on the monthly calendar. I never understood those people who wanted to ignore their birthdays; why not a party, presents, friends? Today, I join them in not wishing to indulge in the celebration and more, in not wishing to remind myself that I have more yesterdays than tomorrows. The rainy grey nor'easter that has blanketed and buffeted Providence all week is allegedly passing through, but it is here in overcast force today. Sophie wished me a happy birthday this morning, the first words from my only daughter's lips. What more can a father ask for, really? All else is silent, alone, even lonely. I will be feeling young again,I usually do, but today is not that day. Today I feel my age, fifty-five, and counting.

Hang in There

The notion that is Time for Change becomes less of an idle pursuit and more deadly serious every month. Here it is, nearly June, nine months into the best of plans, with disaster only another personal loan or the sale of the house away. Here we are, an academic year, the gestation period of a human child hence, yet without any visible, constructive change.

We remain a house divided into three parts, like Gaul. Only we are vulnerable, more and more at risk. We had a plan that took some net worth and has, even though it seemed sound a year ago, managed to piss it away. Why does hindsight always reveal a better way? Why do things not work out "miraculously" for the better, just once in a while?

For me, the year and plan begin to feel like a colossal failure, to smell. How could I do this to my family, manage to squander opportunity and jeopardize the things I count important? My marriage, my daughter's education and security, my future doing something that gives us some financial stability while affording me some self-respect and job satisfaction? At the moment, it feels as though I have the magic, Midas touch, turning all to shit, not gold. If I am feeling sorry for myself, and I must, I do not project or reveal it to those around me, except Sally, who has an insight into my desperation and paralysis.

I am surrounded by successful people. They all seem to fit into this world, finding a pathway that I can never seem to discover. Why is this my perrenial issue? Why do so many others glide through a lifetime without such borderline panic and despondency? They have teflon on their frictionless bodies Is is merely a simple matter of a genetic imbalance in the lithium content of my blood? It is all around me in my family, even schizophrenia and suicide.

Is there some way to moderate the constant depression that surely must lie at the bottom of these troubles? Why should the sale of a house, the finding of a job, the payment of mounting bills, the enjoyment of one's family and friends be allowed hegemony over having a happy life? Instead, they dominate my gloomy mood, like the rains and the grays of the low pressure systems of this dark, wet New England spring. These insidious matters color everything, exerting dominance in a resolution-starved vaccuum. The sun will come out tomorrow, sings Annie. Tomorrow will be another day, I have always to remember.

The Music

I've got the music in me, can't you see? It is my own. We're different, you and I. Our voices weave, just as things do in nature, sinuous threads of varied texture, color and strength. Our thoughts intermingle for the better; without the mix, we each would be much less. It is not zero sum, but a positive sum, greater than the parts themselves. I've got the music in me, if only you could listen.

A crush of competing matters demand urgent resolution. There is Little Compton by the sea, needing to be opened and prepared to rent. And there is an impossible consulting job, with an impossible boss and impossible demands that I must do on my terms, or not at all. And there is the house in South Salem which needs attention if it is ever to sell. And then there is the matter of Sophie's school finals, of Sally's broken toes, and the dogs. And long-term work. They tend to mute the music, to take the color out of the sky and woods and buildings, the dazzle from the surfaces of the sea.

I've got the music in me, I cannot forget. It is here, there and demanding recognition. It is indomitable, a life force that will not allow mockery and depression and the exigencies of daily life to arrogate dominion. The music wil out. I've got it in me. Why do I say this, because I need to remind myself of its existence. I am easily overwhelmed, not always responding to stress with an equal show of valor.

Serendipity?

I was rumaging around on the NPR attic of old programs, seeking the name of a singer they had profiled, an inteview that had only semi-permeated my consciousness. When they played "Oyaya" by Angelique Kidjo, I realized she is someone we had been listening to in New York for several years, but I couldn't remember her name. So I was looking and found her, and also the name Josh White popped up, as a profile of another singer on the program four years ago.

Josh White was a black blues singer I heard as a third former at Kent. He was provocative, a black man singing about sex to white women, irreverant at a highly Episcopalian boarding school. So much so that the Headmaster stalked out of the performance in a fit of pique. Josh White perched himself on a stool at center stage with an acoustic guitar. All that I remember is the chorus to only one song, "Goddam his eyes." So I was interested to learn about how important he was as a musician, having sung for Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt at The White House, even.

While listening, I thought about who else I know who might appreciate that evening with Josh White, and I sent my friend Stuart in Philadelphia the internet link. He has a very good memory of those days, and remembered that evening clearly. As I listened to the interview, I suddenly realized that I was hearing a familiar voice. Indeed, it was Patrick Hickox, another third form classmate. He was asking about that song and it turned out that White said that he only sang it when he did not like the audience. I guess, then, that he did not have much admiraton for a boarding school audience filled with rich white kids in their school uniforms. While I was listening to Patrick, Stu emailed me back to say that another couple, related to him by marriage were also taped speaking in the interview. He said it was eerie to hear their voices, long since dead and gone.

And so I am left wondering about intelligent design and serendipity. Why was I listening to that old interview, and how did I happen to catch something in the caller-in's voice that I knew was Patrick? How odd it was that I had ever even heard Josh White at all. And all so wonderful.

Dedication Prognostication

It is going to be wet and cold and raw tomorrow, the day for dedicating the new boathouse at Kent School. I can tell you that I would prefer not to go there tomorrow. What a disappointment that it not be a pretty spring afternoon there.

I am trying to understand why I, why others, will attend the ceremony. There are no races to watch, nothing else to do, except shake hands with some familiar old faces, or the aging resemblances of them. We won't know one another all that well in most cases, but we intersect every couple of years for similar events--a race, a dedication, a ground-breaking ceremony--and we begin to appreciate seeing ourselves over time. The bond may be the school, the college or the sport and others who have shared in it. It is a shared experience being in the same location in close proximity, both time and space, through the same events. The intimacy of a broadly shared experience.

The common experience bonds us, for we often are quite different people, and this is what surprises me. Our politics may be radically different. On economic circumstances are often dramatically different, for many of these people come out of great wealth and still have it. Maybe that is a comfort to me, having significantly less to cling to and unemployed. Maybe it is the survival of the status quo ante? It is complicated.

At these events we talk, we ask questions, shift focus to the immediate event or person hoving into view, "Is that old so-and-so?" "I can't believe that's. . ." "He looks like he never changed," this said to someone with more shine than hair on his pate, more girth, or, rarely, less. The conversations are seldom very deep, more often short. We turn, we move, we circulate, and swing back to a few who we have made a connection to on this trip. You need to avoid finding yourself alone at a table, or sitting with someone completely arbitrarily. I usually do both, that is, meet new people and secure a place with familiar old friends.

And after a few hours, you go away, feeling emotionally charged by this group of strangers, having sung a hymn or shared a prayer in this beautiful place where you have spent so many hours in youth. The youth quotient has something in it, too. We are reliving our youth in these experiences, there's a yearning, a wistfulness in the air. These events are for the introspective, for those who find some comfort in looking back. Those who are afraid on their demise may not indulge in going back. They set their sails and always look ahead. I like to look back at my wake, to see the true course where I headed by knowing where I've been. If something is coming after me, I want a glimpse before I'm caught unaware. I want a good look all the way around me, not just straight ahead. There is satisfaction in taking the whole picture in, while we can. Looking around us, in others, we may catch glimpses of ourselves, our futures in the snapshots of our elders.

Depression

You know those quickie tests you come across in the paper or the internet, ten questions that will tell you whether you are depressed or not, etcetera? I am still amused by Anne Lamott's self-description as being a "clinically sensitive" person. others have twenty questions, all weaving a matrix, a psychological profile that spell y-o-u.

I always score so well on those tests; a test I can still do well on! Hallelujah! I mean, with my scores, I come close to being a National Merit Finalist. Ewww! Don't care much for that word, "final." If only my GREs could have been as strong, or my IQ. I'd be an Einstein. Maybe, were I so smart, I'd accept the results as red flags instead of leaving them to flap futilely in the wind. They are a warning that I register and deny. I mistrust these tests and the results. I think, in my denial, that these queries are just another scam, a bunko connivance to make us see more doctors, or to take some pharmaceutical companies' new wonder pill, some Quantum Leap, an Equal Epiphany and such. As if the pills could take the pain away?

As though, this hypersensitivity is something to regulate or moderate, to turn one's being into pure and simple blandness? Is it not preferable to be strong, to take the challenge on the chin and maintain the ups, the downs of self and personality? (Are these not the vicissitudes Lanneau once spoke about?) Is this me, playing with fire? Am I in mortal peril, laughing through my tears? Is simple awareness that there is another, darker side of self something to deny, to anaestheticize? At what point do we cross the line, fall off the cliff, the spin poised between balance and vertigo, function and breakdown, survival and self-extinction? Am I a dinosaur?

GP's Day

Well, wasn't that terrific fun! Grandparent's Day at school. A development office event, fine for some, but do I have reservations? You bet I do. It is fraught with potential disasters, with deep confidences and fears. The first thought in my mind right now would be my wife's criticism: you worry too much. It is over now, history, but the jury is still out, undecided.

All that being said, first, the invitations were sent directly to the grandparents by the school, not via the parents. That by itself is fraught with potential problems, as in which grandparents get invited in the case of divorced parents and all that. Some kids have recently lost their grandparents, and they have "friends" come instead, but the wound is fresh and they are inexperienced with death. And then there is the next issue: the kids absolutely want no part of it, they are mortified at the prospect of being associate with old people, which is just too bad, as they need to learn to appreciate what they've got and learn to be gracious hosts. Next comes the problem of a grandparent or grandparents navigating the streets of Providence, parking, let alone partaking of the school experience with their grandchild. Between my father and his ladyfriend, they are nearly one driver. He navigates; she steers the wheel. When I called, it turned out that my father had no intention of seeing or talking with me about today; he was organized, coming, independent of me, like it or not. I had been agonizing all week long about the logistics of getting Sophie to school on time, picking them up and delvering them home, four extra legs driving, with a longer drive ahead tonight. The problem was instantly solved; a different sort of worry began.

And so after waiting for half an hour or more for the GPs to show at eight o'clock, I walked home and made a few calls to see if they were still at home, if they had changed their minds about coming afterall, or slept through. There is no way to contacat them as they are going to join the cellular age at this point in their lives. It is just overload for them. I felt the way I did on my first Mother's Day weekend at Kent School in the eighth grade, sitting on the North Dorm wall with the new boys, waiting for my mother's white, Oldsmobile F-85 station wagon with the California licence plates still on it to roll into school. I don't know anymore if she was the last mom to come in, but after and hour or two and a hundred cars or more, she finally appeared and it was all, or mostly forgotten. But that empty, lonesome feeling remains to this day, like when you are waiting for your friend to meet you on the train or at the clock in the center of Grand Central Station, and you miss them. I suspected last night that my cautions were all in vain when I spoke to Dad about leaving earlier than he had planned in order to avoid the rush hour traffic and to find a spece where parking is limited and difficult. He was not actively listening with focus or intent. I might as well have said nothing at all. I only hoped for the best, knowing how terrorized my daughter was about the descent of the grandfather into her school world. When they arrived, an hour or so late, they missed the Headmaster's and the Middle School teacher's, the development office's addresses. Later on, I will hear the story from Sophie's perspective.

I wince for the pains caused by appearance and tardiness. So I err in the opposite direction, presenting my preppy, scrubbed self earlier than most. I like being early; I hate being late. When left to my own devices, I am invariably where I need to be with time to spare. With Sally and Sophie, I am usually barely on time. Some aspects of life are so much harder by threes, but that's an entirely different subject than GPs.

Big picture, it is unimportant that my father looked more like a homeless vagabond than the WASP, prepschooled Princeton professor he once was, in his filty, dandruff-littered sweater, the same pair of courdouroy pants he has been wearing for two weeks straight, or that Mary in her raincoat appeared wild-eyed, looking either crazed or daffy or both, and relatively unkempt, as if she were going out to pick up the early morning newspaper. It is, in the end, unimiportant that they missed the first third or half of the morning's event, leaving the granddaughter perplexed and the son concerned for their whereabout and wellfare. What is important is that they came at all. Think about how challenged they were just to come and get back home? It was a colossal effort on their part.

But these are not things I excuse for myself. I do not allow tardiness or personal hygiene. I am not careless about considering others; I do not wish to be the cause of hurt and pain, unless provoked. The GPs may have come, they may have made some effort, but they still managed to blow it. They were sour with me, but who am I, but the unforgiving, critical son? From my view, I have to wonder why they bothered to come at all? They brought their bitter, spiteful selves; did they show show this facet to the rest of those they met, or would others have picked up on it that fast? After all, I am, in Anne Lamott's words "clinically sensitive" perhaps as the result of exactly this kind of behavior pattern. Did they embarass Sophie for real, for being their true selves? Underneath the normal, chronic dose of embarassmnet of most adolescents, there may be valid reasons to just wish you don't ever have to be associated with these people at all. The balance between pride and blood and family and terminal mortification may be a fine one, and her feeling might be, and I'd have to say it has proven so for me, there is more pain involved in these events than than the whole trip is worth.

In These Old Shoes?

"In these shoes, no. . ." so the song goes. My old, frayed shirts, jackets, trousers are vintage friends. They know me. They tell me when I am fat or thin. They're soft, cotton and come to think of it, most of them came from a Thrift Shop here or there; a single dry cleaning might cost more than I had to pay for them, used. Just like my clothes, my car is very nice, but dinged and twenty years and 200,000 miles along the road. I don't need to drive the big, new car. I probably cannot afford one, anyway.

So I am watching the train disappear, far along the track, caboose long out of reach, like the things I cannot buy. As we mature and grow more experienced, our priorities shift, our perspectives on what we require, need, want, they always change, evolving for the better, I suspect. Our expectations must change with reality or we will risk eternal frustration, at least in my case this is true. We are local creatures and we are influenced by what we see around us. Lavish to one is normal to another; shallow to one set of eyes is not always superficial to another person's. These are judgments we often make in haste, wrongly, the trend towards political correctness. I am sure that our moral compass can and does shift, and north may not always be north, south south or east the opposite of west. We live in a shaded, shifty world, do we not?

Maybe we are not as materially motivated as we were once or some of us remain today? I don't need or want to be "stroked." If I were, I'd probably bristle like a hedgehog, or else melt, seduced by something so unfamiliar as praise. Margie said this morning that she hoped she would never go to a "spa" in her lifetime. She reviled the word itself, having no use for it, spitting it out. I found myself thinking, well, maybe she would melt, if she ever did go to one, but she would never yield to such a self-indulgence. Yet, she will drive the hugest of SUVs all over the countryside, sucking fossil fuel at a colossal rate and spewing hyrdrocarbons into the air with complete abandon. She will go out and buy expensive Icelandic ponies and Llamas for the thousand acre farmstead in Vermont, without so much as blinking or pondering why she needs all of that. We are all blind to our faults, at least most of us are. She says Pound Ridge is being "New Canaanized," that she feels self-conscious about mowing her lawn in affluent suburbia, that she feels as though she should do it in the dark of night, hiding. Pound Ridge was only marginally different from Pound Ridge to begin with: it has a bare minimum of stores. I told her that she ought to move to Vermont. She said she welcomes an extra month of spring and fall, and green, and but for that, shw might.

On the other hand, modern luxury is not what it once was. Across the board, my forebears lives were far more luxurious, their huge patriarchal homes, one for summer and annother for winter, all maintanined by handfuls or more of servants. There were chauffeurs and cooks and country clubs and box seats at the symphony; private boarding schools and Ivy League universities, oceanliners and long trips abroad, clothes from the best stores and on and on. I think these people were less soft, however, than most wealthy people today. Or maybe not? I think of my grandmother as coddled, and of Pattie J, the same. The picture is quite confusing, not consistent. They shared a different set of self-indulgences, but they wrote letters instead of telephoning, they ate their dinners at home, much less going out.

I think luxury may boil down to having choice to do one thing or another. It is not about subsistance, shelter or food to eat. Do we order Chinese take-out or make a caesar salad? Wine or beer? Juice or bottled water? It is my decision to wear worn shoes or buy new ones, as opposed to having nothing on my feet or scraps of rotting leather. Do I elect to spend money for medical insurance or do I cross my fingers and hope all is for the best, as I have done on several ocassions? For a year and a half, I cringed every week when Sophie rode a horse, uninsured. but she was, ironically, riding a horse--not exactly a necessity, if you ask me. Choice or no choice? There are too many times when we have driven down the interstate on tires too bald for my ease of mind, even today. We have always eaten well, never hungry, though the roast beef or the frenched rack of lamb chops remain as if in a safe behind the glass in the butcher's shop, except for maybe once or twice a year.

I am comfortable in these old shoes, mostly. I don't want new ones. Maybe one more time to Peal at Brooks Brothers. One more pair of them, for life. I'd only wear them in dry, warm weather. I'd care for them on Sunday eveninga, polishing them in small circles, buff them, then polish them a second coat and shine. I can smell the polish now, but it is a minor fantasy I can live with, just smiling at the thought. There are so many other things I'd like to see and do before that! I'd like to be a grandfather, one day, too. That would be a whole lot better than old shoes, or even new ones. I'd like to sail my little boat. I'd like to not be seasick, too. In these old shoes, too.

The Old Man

Friday is Grandfather's Day at school. Sophie is mortified thinking that her grandfather will turn up looking grubby, like a homeless person. And I can feel her pain; I felt it only a week ago, when he spoke with John Nash after a lecture, where Nobel schizophrenic Nash looked professorial and his erstwhile colleague at Princeton snd MIT, my Dad, appeared like some vagrant, like you might expect Nash to look like, unshaven, dirty courduroy trousers and a heavey Irish sweater on a warm, spring day. I've become used to this; for Sophie, adolescent that she is and at a new school it is more difficult. More of a challenge, just getting Dad here and back presents a logistical hurdle and I am unsure of how to deal with it. I need to drive to New York in the evening, after two round trips to Little Compton from Providence in my ancient diesel, and up to Kent and back in the morning. I think it is signficant to try to make it all happen. Poor Dad. Well, I am hoping that Sophie will transcend her selfconsciousness and have a good experience. That is what is most important.

Alumni

"Going back, going back to Nassau Hall..." Yes, I went back, driving from Providence to Westchester, then on to Princeton in the morning in time for the morning races. It was kind of cold, standing in the rain and mud. Fortunately, there was no wind and the water was flat calm, really quite lovely conditions for the oarsmen, just not worth a bean for the spectators. Only the Steward's Enclosure at Henley Royal Regatta makes watching crew races interesting, anyway.

Four of us came back to the boathouse for the dedication of the Spirit of 72 shell. The women's varsity crew row this new, state-of-the-art Resolute eight oared shell, and the boat we helped to Christen is neither virgin nor vanquished, if that makes any sense. The women have not lost in it all spring and are ranked number one in the country going into the sprints two weeks from now. The crews around the years 1971-2-3-4 have donated enough money to endow the rowing program with a new shell every three years. And the crew that has the most need of a new one will get the new boat, whether it is lightweight, heavyweight, women's or men's. It is a novel concept from a novel time, the early 1970s, when coeducation began in earnest at Princeton the women's crew began. Princeton was at the forefront regarding lightweight crew as well. It is a modern idea for the traditional men's sport. "Well rowed," as they say along the banks of the Thames.

We four, veterans of two to four years practice together, times two hours, times six days a week for most of the academic year, know one another well and not at all. It is so bizarre. When you go into competition together, whether it is to make the first boat or on a 500 meter piece, or when racing against other boats on the Harlem, or the Charles, or the Schuykyll Rivers, or on the ergometer, you share an intense experience. It must be akin to going into war, but I haven't done that. A fairly intense bonding occured. No one was killed or wounded, although many egos were dashed and abused. I know so much about each one of these guys from my position as coxswain, coaxing, coaching them. I used to know about how much they'd wish to hear from me and how far I could go sharpening their bladework, pushing them for a bigger puddle. We had some very good, fast crews. And we defeated almost everyone we raced against those years. Yet I do not know what they do, the names of all their wives or children, or how they feel about life, politics or things in general. But I like seeing them. They are great guys to have known, spent all that time with then, and now.

Next week I go from college to school, with the dedication of the new boathouse at Kent. Who will choose to return? You can only guess. The absences remain the most surprising. Who does not come back, who among us does not reflect on a time and place that were most generous to us? I have never quite understood whether it is a sentimentality that shows a backward or a forward looking person, someone who is busy with a full life, or making busy with an emptier one? Is a kind of wistful mourning, or a celebration? I am going back, as I often have, because these things are unique. You never know what you miss, for one thing. And your presence, in whatever way, whatever shape or form you are now in, ancient and decrepit, or filled with vim and vigor in sprit or in body is so special. People ought, I think, to hunger for such events, though not all do. People ought to enrich each other's lives through coming back, going back and mingling. Even a slight smile of recognition, a hello. We live in disengaged, surperficial times. Are these old acquaintances n'er forgotten just to wilt and rot upon the vine, or are they the rarest fruits of human connection that we must cherish, worship and enobile with our presences?