Into “the convulsion of the world”

When my son leaves for college in a few weeks, he’ll travel roughly 25 miles up the road to Denton, a short 35-minute drive from the house he’s lived in all his life.

Why, then, does it seem like an immeasurable gulf is looming between him and his parents?

Ethan is raring to go. Truth is, he was ready for the departure months and months ago. He’s a quiet kid, doesn’t say much around folks he doesn’t completely trust, which for the past several years have included his father and mother. But I look at him and I see someone living on the edge of his seat, itchy to get on with it, to get started on the next phase of his life, to do it now.

I remember the feeling. I was a stranger in my parents’ house for years before I loaded my ’63 Dodge Polaris with everything I cared about and left for college. My parents had pressured me to attend the local community college to save money, so by the time I made my break, I was vibrating with anticipation. I knew when I pulled away from the curb that I’d never be back except for school holidays.

Mindful of that, I’ve tried to put myself in my son’s shoes, to consider things from his perspective, to give him the space to discover himself that my parents unthinkingly never gave me. I’d like to avoid, if I can, instilling in him the deep-seated,  mostly hidden anger I felt when I finally – dear God, finally – got the hell out of West Texas and said “Howdy” to world beyond.

I think I’ve succeeded in that. I’d like to believe that a lifetime as a professional journalist has given me some insight into human nature. But who the hell knows what’s really going on behind my son’s brooding eyes or what the meaning is in the twisted smile he carries on his face most of the time?

Perhaps he really means it when he throws his arm around my shoulders and tells me he loves me. Surely I can’t be fooled about that. Can I? Perhaps he’s only playing a little game with his old man, telling me what I want to hear while he plots his get-away.

Regardless, I hope, as all parents in this situation do, that his mother and I have managed to drill some valuable life lessons through his thick skull. Where could this kid have gotten his stubbornness? I don’t have a clue.

Thankfully, he has a good heart, and he’s a kind and generous person when he occasionally lowers the shield of aloofness and coolness with which he protects himself. He lacks much empathy, it’s true, but what 18-year-old doesn’t? And I wish he weren’t such a slob, although I vaguely remember being a slovenly wretch too at his age. Perhaps he will grow out of it or, more likely, fall for a girl who won’t put up with it.

Lord, I still remember the knot of excitement and anxiety that filled my stomach on the day I left for North Texas State University. I may have leaked a tear or two as I watched Big Spring grow smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror.

Mostly, my gaze was directed straight ahead, into the future, my future, into what Robert Penn Warren called in the closing lines of his great novel, All the King’s Men,  “the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.”

Shortly, when I consign my youngest into the “convulsion of the world,” I’ll have another knot in my stomach, I’m sure. This time it won’t be fueled by excitement and anxiety, but by deep sorrow. I will try to hide that from my son, who will be oblivious, as he should be, to the pain his departure poses for his mother and father.

He will be focused, as I was so many years ago, on the horizon before him, on the history he must write for himself, on the life he must build on his own. Eagerly and without fear, he must confront – as I did and countless other departing sons and daughters have – “the awful responsibility of Time.”

Little boy lost

I lost my little boy last night. In truth, he’s been missing for several years, hidden beneath the gruff exterior of the teenager who has been living in his room and wearing his clothes, the phantom who slips in the back door each day and heads for the middle bedroom, firmly closing the door behind him.

I’ve lived in hope I’d see the little guy again. And every once in a while, I think I catch a glimpse of him, a brief peep from behind the eyes of the stranger as he puts his arms around me at bedtime and says, “Love you, Dad.” Or I think I see the child of my heart in the mischievous grin the stranger flashes me when we share a joke at his mother’s expense. Then the kid disappears again, and I’m left staring at the cypher before me, wondering if I saw him at all.

But now the little boy is really gone. He grew up and graduated from high school last night, and I’m left wondering whether he feels as strange and disjointed at the whole affair as his mother and I do.

It’s not that we didn’t have time to prepare for this particular moment. It’s been approaching us like a runaway freight train for months. And now the train has roared through the station, and we’re left breathless and disoriented.

I still remember, as if it were yesterday, crisp and clear, the startled yelp of pain my 8-day-old son gave at the decisive moment of his bris and my instinctive move to protect him before I remembered where I was.

I think about the 5-year-old who posed for a photo on his first day of kindergarten, jelly smeared on his chin and a goofy grin spread across his face.

I see the youngster coming off the football practice field cradling his right arm, a strained expression of pain etched on his ashen face, telling me, “It hurt really bad, Dad, but I didn’t cry.”

I recall the days and nights he spent shooting and editing the high school soccer team’s season video and the quiet pride in his voice when he asked, “Do you want to take a look at it?”

And I remember the day he told me he didn’t want to play football anymore, that he was afraid of getting hurt again, the memory of his 8^th-grade concussion on the first game of the season still fresh. My stomach knotted and a feeling of loss swept over me – not because I was reliving my own childhood through his, but because I so loved every second I watched him play. “Dad,” he said, understanding the dismay I couldn’t hide, “you always told me I was playing for myself, not for you, and that it would be my decision, not yours. Well, I’ve made it.” How do you answer that with anything other than a fierce hug and a splatter of tears?

I want the little boy back, but I will have to settle, like all parents must, for the young man he has become. That is more than enough, and on this point you will have to trust me, discounting for a moment the blurring power of a father’s love.

He is not without fault, of course. I can see that, even if his mother cannot. But most of my son's failings can be excused on the exuberance of youth, the nearsightedness of inexperience. Asked to provide a message to my graduate for display on the stadium scoreboard screen during last evening’s ceremonies, I offered this: “Be bold and brave. Be kind and loving. Be inspiring and creative. Be the man we know you are.”

He is all those things. And I think of that when the melancholy about the little boy gone almost chokes me and I fear my heart will break.

 

D-Day + 70 years

Seventy years ago today, Allied troops waded ashore at five beaches in the Normandy region of France to begin the brutal work of wresting Western Europe from German tyranny. For American soldiers at Omaha Beach, the operation was a bloody shambles, salvaged only by courage, tenacity – and luck.

When I was in college in the early '70s, I came across a book of World War II artwork – propaganda posters, battlefield drawings made by combat artists from both sides, and the like. It included a long essay by James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, one of the best novels to come out of the war. Jones was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Hawaii, when America entered the war. He heard the explosions from Battleship Row and ran for cover as Japanese planes bombed and strafed Schofield Barracks.

In his essay, he described a visit he made to Omaha Beach decades after the D-Day landings. In the tall coastal grass that covered the bluffs overlooking the beach, he sat where German machine-gun installations had been carefully located to saturate the landing area with machine-gun fire and death.

“It was easy to see what a murderous converging fire could be brought to bear on the beaches from the curving bluff. Especially to an old infantryman. And it was easy to half-close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like. The terror and total confusion, men screaming or sinking silently under the water, tanks sinking as their crews drowned inside, landing craft going up as a direct hit took them, or grating ashore to discharge their live cargo into the already scrambled mess … I sat there … and I fervently thanked God or Whomever that I had not been there.”