A new beginning

My son graduates from college tomorrow, a day that marks the official end of child-rearing for Marice and me.

We surrendered front-line parental duties some time ago when our daughter and son stopped needing our constant attention and began regarding us with the sort of benign neglect in which young folks interact with their parents.

For us, the disengagement process began when my daughter left for college in 2010 and now ends when her younger brother walks across the stage at UNT tomorrow morning.

We’ll still be Rachel and Ethan’s parents, of course, but those are formal titles with no real power and few responsibilities, except those assigned by the kids and carefully regulated to keep our interference at a minimum.

Nothing tragic about any of this, understand. It’s a process that’s been repeated millions of times before and will continue, I suppose, until the sun is a cinder in a barren sky.

It seems only yesterday that I wiped a smear of jelly off Ethan’s face before he toddled off to the first day of kindergarten at Johnson Elementary School. The last 16 years have passed in a blur, as they do for every parent.

There are plenty of moments in Ethan’s life I’d like to replay, if only the world worked that way.

n  Infant Ethan struggling unsuccessfully to crawl and thwarted by his chubby little arms and legs.

n   Ethan, in a makeshift robe made of one of my white shirts worn backwards, sitting proudly with other day-school graduates as an auditorium full of parents snap photos.

n  Ethan, face radiant with triumph, holding up his trophy after his flag-football team won the rec league championship.

n  Ethan speeding down the sideline to a touchdown after intercepting a pass during one of his 7^th-grade games. Later, the game photographer tells me as I walk in his studio, “Yes, I got it!”

n  Ethan at his bar mitzvah party – dressed in boots, cowboy hat and western shirt – riding the mechanical bull he insisted we rent for the occasion.

n  Ethan, with quiet pride, showing me the team video he was commissioned to make of Carroll High’s boys soccer squad, and my astonishment at how good it really was.

n  Ethan meeting me after a blowout his lacrosse team suffered against Dallas Episcopal and displaying the angry black, blue and green bruises he received playing goalie. “They must have been throwing the ball really hard,” he says laconically. “Bruises usually don’t turn this color for a few days.”

n  Ethan informing me that he was moving out of the Denton apartment he shared with a couple of high school friends because he was bored of “just sitting around and getting stoned all day.” One semester later, he makes the Dean’s List.

And so many more. Life with Ethan has been an interesting ride, and now that I’m coming to the end of an important segment of the journey, I think often of how my son developed from the cheery-faced youngster with a mischievous grin to the solemn, thoughtful young man who drifts in and out of my home today.

When I look at him, I’m reminded of the old saying that “still waters run deep.” He is not who he sometimes appears to be – a feckless 20-something more interested in video games than current affairs, a self-centered, self-satisfied member of his generation.

He is a serious person, this handsome, well-mannered son of mine, a fact reaffirmed this summer as I looked through photographs he and his friends took during a trip to Germany and Switzerland.

Yes, there were the expected number of photos of he and his companions mugging for the camera at tables loaded with steins of good German beer – a great deal of bonhomie recorded for posterity.

But the overwhelming majority of the shots were of examples of magnificent medieval architecture and of exhibits in the many art-filled museums Ethan dragged his friends to. Photo after photo of Ethan standing beside paintings, tapestries and sculptures from institutions across the two countries.

And then there were the photos from Dachau. Ethan’s buddies didn’t want to go to the site of the infamous Nazi death camp. They reasoned it would be too sad, too brutal, too much of a downer, better to find a more pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

But Ethan had just taken a class in the political use of genocide throughout history and so understood the true horror of the place. He insisted on the two-hour train ride.

When I looked at the photos these young men took during the tour – of the appalling barracks (mercifully empty now of the shattered men and women who once inhabited them), the horrific ovens (nightmarish even 72 years after the last hellish ember died), all the stark monuments to unimaginable evil, I felt the sting of tears, which mingled with the pride I felt for my son, who demonstrated the substance of his soul and the depth of his character in taking his friends to that dreadful place.

His plans after graduation are fluid. He’d like to live in Israel for a while, the result of a deeply spiritual Birthright trip he took last summer – and perhaps also because of a girl he met there. There’s always a girl, isn’t there?

I’m against the plan, but of what importance is my opinion in the matter? As I said before, my influence in the direction of my son’s life, never terribly strong, is fading, fading fast.

He still yearns to be a filmmaker, although his ardor is moderated by his understanding of financial realities and the uncertainty of creative success. He loves to travel, to drink good wine, to eat fine food and to live the good life, but he knows such things come with a price tag.

Whatever he does, he’ll make out fine. Whether by design or luck, or both, Marice and I have raised a strong and caring man, a person of substance who understands human nature and human frailties, who recognizes artistic beauty and appreciates artistic creativity. He’s the person I wish I had been at his age, filled with the spirit of adventure and a life of possibilities lying before him.

It will not always be easy, with villains and knaves at every bend in the road ready to derail dreams and detour ambitions. But Ethan, in the words of Faulkner, not only will endure, he will prevail.

Congratulations on your wonderful achievement, my son, love of my life, pride of my life, and may you always enjoy fair winds and following seas.