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One Year and Counting

One Year and Counting

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Suzanne left for Africa a year ago today. She packed a large bag and a small bag and slipped out by rail to Philadelpia. (“That was a very emotional goodbye for a trip from Washington to Philadelphia,” another passenger said as they were boarding the train.)

From Philly she went to New York, Belgium and Benin. For the last ten months she’s made her home in a small village on the edge of the Sahel. She teaches school, and this summer is working in a girls’ camp and at a health clinic. She is completely immersed in village life. She loves the people and they love her. She’s the happiest person I know. 

The months that led up to her departure crept by in slow motion, like time does on a roller coaster inching up that first hill. Now we’re on the downward slope. It hardly seems possible that Year One has passed. It now seems entirely possible to make it through Year Two.

Still, I seem to miss her more and more. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays and, ten days ago, a graduation — all without her. The phone keeps us together, a family of the air, and that will have to do.  But now that she’s almost halfway done, I’m allowing myself to dream of a time when we’ll all be together again. Even being on the same continent will do.

Last Day of School

Last Day of School

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Graduation is behind us, so why do I care?

Because it’s a ritual, I guess. Because this is the last day the big yellow bus will come to our corner for two and a half months.

Because Fairfax County Public Schools close for the summer today and when they reopen in September it will be the first time since 1994 that one of my children isn’t enrolled.

This is a good thing, of course, what is supposed to be. But today, just a brief backward look, not of longing or of regret, but of fullness, significance. A nod to time passing. A nod to change.

A Dad, Dancing

A Dad, Dancing

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I’ve learned through the years that dancing is one of the most embarrassing things you can do in front of your adolescent children.

But like so many delightful reversals of age, that all changes. At this point in my life, to see a parent dancing is encouraging and endearing.

Though my father would rather be jitterbugging to Glenn Miller, he recently took his cane out for a spin and bounced along to the Beatles.

So here’s to fathers everywhere, especially fathers dancing.

Graduation Day

Graduation Day

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All you really need is a camera and some tissues. At this point the graduate will take care of everything else. Processing in, taking a seat and, when her name is called, shaking hands and receiving her high school diploma. But to get to this point has been a group effort. It always is.

When I graduated from high school I didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Celia is probably feeling the same way. Milestones don’t mean as much when the years they mark are so few that they  get along fine without them.

But parents of graduates know better. They know that rituals take us from one place to another. They know there are few moments when you can say that one thing has clearly ended and another has clearly begun.

High school graduation is such a moment.

So, hats off to the graduates … and (if I may say so) to their parents, too!

Parentitis

Parentitis

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The condition of senioritis is well documented. Symptoms include poor attendance at school, lack of attention to homework and a marked increase in silliness of all types.

What is far less known or understood is parentitis. This condition afflicts the parents of high school seniors, especially parents of high school seniors who are also youngest children. Mothers and fathers in this predicament find themselves policing the home, chasing kids back to school and enjoying gallows humor of all types.

They would like to enjoy themselves like their high school seniors, but alas they cannot. They are too busy making sure that final projects are completed.

But though time seems to stand still, it actually does not. Graduation day will arrive, and they pray their child will be among those marching in to “Pomp and Circumstance.” And when the tassels have been moved and the diplomas awarded, then their fun will really begin.

Words from One World

Words from One World

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After six months of phone conversations only I received my first real email communication from Suzanne this morning.

“I’m writing to you from the bustling metropolis of Kandi,” she began. And it must seem like a bustling metropolis to her, living in a village without electricity and running water. On the other hand, she intended irony. After all, she’s a child of the suburbs, grew up in the shadow of our nation’s capital, can maneuver a van around the Beltway at rush hour if need be.

Now, she travels on foot, bike, moto or bush taxi.

Seeing her message makes me want to drop everything, hop a jet to Cotonou and bush-taxi myself right up north to Kandi.

I won’t, of course. Not yet, anyway. This is her world now. I write about it only to remark on how the written word brings her new life to us in such a special, immediate way. Words winging their way from one world to another with the stroke of a key.

Eighteen!

Eighteen!

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Today is Celia’s 18th birthday. Today she reaches
the age of majority … as we creak along toward the age of seniority.
Not really, though. A youngest daughter is a marvelous gift,
keeping her parents in fighting trim, bringing them face to face with the
future (whether they want to see it or not).
I went out before daybreak this morning to pick Celia a
rose. I had no trouble finding one; the whole yard was lit up by a full moon
ringed in a pinkish halo of mist. Above the moon was a contrail, a single arched eyebrow — a shooting star pointing up
instead of down.
It’s a lovely day for a birthday.

Celia at two-and-a-half.
Pushing Send

Pushing Send

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No longer the search for the envelope, the stamps, to say nothing of the white-out and carbon paper that preceded them. No longer the rush to the post office to make the last pick-up of the evening.

Now, instead, it’s the multiple save, the last-minute printer malfunction, the inexplicable garbling of text or omission of “o’s” in the preview document.

Now, at the last possible minute of the second-to-last possible day, it’s wondering whether the document should have been saved as a PDF after all.

But finally, after the problems are solved, the tempers calmed, the signatures checked and the credit card number encoded, it’s time to push “Send.”

Miracle of miracles, the Common App is on its way.

A Birthday in Benin

A Birthday in Benin

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We were on the road to Toura when the phone went dead —  not literally, of course, but in our
conversation. Suzanne was telling me about the dust and the mud and the red
soil — and I was walking there with her.


She had warned me her phone was low on charge and not to worry if it went dead. We ought to have stopped talking then. But instead we chatted
minutes longer, then suddenly she was gone — and the great yawning space
between us opened even wider and I willed myself into her small African
village, along the red and rutted road, into her walled concession, past the
guinea fowl that live there too, through her humble door and into her life.

I couldn’t do any of that in real life, of course, but how I wish I could — especially today, her birthday.

Suzanne’s present came four months ago when she landed in Africa. My gift is knowing how very happy she is. 

Photo by Suzanne Capehart


October 22

October 22

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I write this morning of a boy and girl who met in college. The boy called the girl on a campus phone that served an entire wing of a crowded freshman dorm. Would she like to go a dance that weekend?

The girls’ friends who had overheard the call (which wasn’t hard to do) said the boy was nice, and so the girl said yes even though she didn’t know the boy. (It was that kind of time and that kind of school.)

When the boy came to pick up the girl, she was delighted to find that he owned a car and that before the dance they would be going into town for an orangeade. So they had the drink and they went to the dance and they kissed good night in front of the dorm. (Again, it was that kind of time and that kind of school.)

Now if this was a fairy tale, the next line would be “They started talking that night and never stopped.”

But this is not a fairy tale. The girl and boy fell in love, yes, but later they broke up and dated other people and broke up with those people and dated still other people. They moved from the Midwest to the east coast and back again.

They never forgot each other, though, and even before they married, even when they lived hundreds of miles apart, they never forgot the date they went to the dance and sipped the orangeade and learned each others stories. It was October 22.