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No Buffer

No Buffer

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The rain was unexpected. It drenched our seat cushions, fell through my open car window. The last few days were such perfection I had almost forgotten there could be clouds and showers. But they were in the wings all along, waiting to come again.

This weekend we celebrated Father’s Day and had a “bon voyage” dinner for Suzanne. With these events behind us there is nothing to buffer us from the departure itself. Our next big family gathering is more than two years away.

But these are rainy day thoughts. In general, I try not to think like this. I tell myself that our family is becoming international and virtual. It’s expanding, not contracting. Most of all, I remind myself that this is what happens, what I always told our children they should do: grow up and make their own way in the world.

Perhaps I didn’t mean for them to take the “world” part so literally. But there you have it.

Last Day, First Day

Last Day, First Day

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Last day of school, first day of summer. The weight of the world would slip from my shoulders. Time stood still, and days were warm and without purpose. There would be cool shady mornings and long lighted evenings. There would be watermelon and iced tea and potato salad;  filmy cotton dresses and new Keds that I’d get dirty right away.

And later, when the children were young, there was their joy to witness, the shaving cream fights at the bus stop on the last day (see above), the creek wading and romps in the woods, the road trips to Kentucky and Indiana and Montana and Maine. Summer was a time to put the world aside. Now the world pushes its way into every season.

One daughter packs for Africa, another is about to be a senior in college, the youngest a senior in high school. Time didn’t stand still after all.

Grasping the Moment

Grasping the Moment

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There was a last-minute offer to grill, a request for chicken, zucchini and tomatoes, all of which I gladly supplied. And then there was transporting the grill, the real thing, the Weber, with its bag of charcoal.

The real grill takes time to heat up so there were games of catch with Copper, plenty of ins and outs through the backdoor. People appeared on the deck, talked on their phones and then vanished back inside. Earlier we had sifted through an album, found a black and white photo of Tom from his long-hair days. This was passed around and admired. We opened some hard cider, marveling at its tang and effervescence.

Two more friends appeared, and now it was an impromptu party. I bounced on the trampoline, listening to songs I’d just bought: “Teach Your Children Well,” “September,” “Your Song,” “Morning has Broken.”

My troubles left me alone for this blissful, golden evening. The late light glancing the trunks of the oaks, the hydrangea blooming, voices from inside, laughing. People, young people, talking about music and jokes and places we don’t know and never care to find out. Someone could have pulled out a guitar, strummed a few chords, and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe next time. It was life renewing itself. And I was pulled along by it, glad for the ride.

Sleight of Hand

Sleight of Hand

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A month from today Suzanne flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin her Peace Corps assignment. We’ve known about this for months, but now that we’re down to the final weeks it’s becoming more and more a reality. The map of Africa isn’t the only thing swinging into high relief these days. So is the map of parenthood, the map of life even, if that isn’t too melodramatic.

Children are supposed to leave their parents, start lives of their own. This is the natural order of things. I always believed this when I was the child, and I believed it as a parent, too — when my kids were young.  Now I’m having to put my money where my mouth is.

To stave off nervousness I’m concentrating not on how I’ll feel when Suzanne takes off and am trying to imagine how she’ll feel. It’s a parental sleight-of-hand that many of us do unconsciously all the time. It’s why we can smile through our tears.

I remember exactly the way I felt when I walked on the tarmac toward the plane that would fly me to Europe for two months backpacking with friends. I had just turned 20 and my whole life — and Europe! — were ahead of me. I felt like I was bouncing off the pavement. I was floating. That’s the feeling I’ll be trying to conjure up as Suzanne strides toward her future.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary!

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What started 60 years ago was not just a marriage; it was a family, a way of life. It was jumping in an old Chevy and driving across the country. Finally running away to California to start all over again — then realizing that Kentucky was where they wanted to be all along.

Mom and Dad married on May 24, 1952. Another of countless post-war weddings. A few years after the war, of course, but the soldier had to get his degree and start his career. And so the marriage began, and it has endured.

The family that flowed from that union has never felt like any other family. (Does any family, ever?) There were the businesses, the magazines, the museum, the houses with garages full of boxes that would become family rooms (but never did). There were the four children and the trips across the country in station wagons. Look at this country, they told us kids, see how big it is. There has always been a certain jauntiness, a sense that you didn’t have to be what circumstances dictated. Dreaming was encouraged. Escape was required.

So today we celebrate this union, these people, still here, still dreaming and planning. How lucky I am to have them as parents.  Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Question and Answer

Question and Answer

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“What do you want for your birthday?” my daughters ask me.

“Family harmony,” I say, “world peace.”

I don’t say “what we have right now.” What we have sitting around this table, eating dinner at 10 o’clock. (Sometimes it takes that long to get everyone together.)

Give me a month of these conversations, of talking about what color to paint the kitchen and how much our floors creak. Of how much we love San Francisco and what our neighbors will think of our new siding. Of gun control and abortion. Of where we want to live when we grow up … or retire.

And, just to be really greedy, bottle these voices for me. These voices I could pick out of a billion, they are so clear to me, and so dear.

That’s what I’d like for my birthday.

And you say I’m hard to shop for.

The Library Place

The Library Place

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The book group met at my house last night. Two people sat on our sagging blue couch, the other two in the faded wing chairs, the ones that belonged to Tom’s parents so many years ago. I pulled the rocking chair over to the far end of the coffee table, which gave me an unaccustomed vantage point — staring straight at the built-in bookshelves, our pride and joy.

I think about the part books have played in the life of our home, the schoolbooks and novels, the histories and poetry, our old college books and now our children’s, too.

And then there’s the “library place,” the shelf of a hutch so named because it’s where we put library books that need to be returned. In the enchanting shorthand of family conversation, the library place has become a repository for anything that needs to be protected or preserved: retainers, driver’s licenses, a pile of  downy parakeet feathers.

It still serves as family safe — a spot once meant for books that now holds other precious cargo.

I can’t find a picture of the library place. This shot of my bedside table will have to do. There’s always danger of an avalanche.

For Ellen

For Ellen

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We grew up nine years apart with two brothers in between, and — we like to joke — in two separate families, our memories, mindsets and approaches to life are so different from one another’s.

But we are no more divergent than many siblings are. And in many ways, the important ways, we are alike.  When I need her, she’s there. She is like a best friend, only so much more.

Today is Ellen’s birthday, and as good a time as any to tell her how much she means to me.

Ellen and her three beautiful daughters.

The Same Path

The Same Path

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On a walk through the meadow the other day it dawned on me that my path was made possible not only by my treks but also by Tom’s. A trail is born of frequent footfall, and the two of us, though separately more often than we’d like, give the Folkstone routes a pounding.

It is a strange sort of togetherness that I celebrate here, then, that of walking the same trail at different times. But that is often the way of marriage, both in a practical sense (you watch the kids now and I’ll do the same for you later) and an emotional one. We come to terms with life in our own time, but we share in the great labors of child rearing and home creating. We are stronger because we’re together — and because we’re together, we don’t have to stride in lockstep.

Today, Tom and I celebrate 25 years of walking the same path — and it is still a grand adventure.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day

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On Saturday, I sat in a small church and listened to 1 Corinthians 13. This bible verse was read not at a wedding but at a funeral. Perhaps because of this context — or because it had been a while since I heard these words — they surprised me with their depth and power. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I reprint them here:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.