"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
Tomorrow’s the 26th anniversary of the day I became a dad. Let me tell you, I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’, and there are many moments when I wonder how far, except in years, I’ve come since then.
Another way of looking at October 10 is that it’s Eamon’s birthday — the climax of the events that transformed me from non-dad to dad. So hey, Eamon: Happy birthday! (O tanjobi omedeto gozaimasu!).
Kate and I have just finished Week One of our Empty Nest era. Kate said today that sometimes when she hears the front door open and close here, she finds herself thinking it might be Thom. The other day, when it got to be 4 o’clock, she had the impulse to call home from school and check in with him.
Me, every once in a while — just looking at Thom’s car or his room or sometimes out of nowhere at all — I’ll have a sudden "he’s not here" moment that fits right in with other times I’ve really missed people; it’s like a blow to the solar plexus that comes with no real weight behind it; I can feel my breath catch for an instant, just enough to get my attention and register the sensation. Then it’s back to picking up my underwear or taking out the coffee grounds to the compost.
So. That’s our first week. We talked to Thom tonight. What was his take?
Beyond details like classes (there’s a heavy emphasis on grammar, of all things, in his Journalism 101 class), how he managed his meal-plan points for the first week (he bought a pack of Nutter Butters at one point because "every once in a while, you just need to have some peanut buttery goodness"), and the fact the floor he’s living on is fairly tolerant of a wide selection of musical tastes and volumes, he offered this summary: "I’m making a bomb-ass transition to college." (For the uninitiated, that is a good thing.)
So: a little perspective on our parental drama. (And, I can’t help thinking: Man, am I glad I’m keeping track of what my kid’s doing in Oregon, as opposed, say, to al Anbar Province).
I’m writing from Berkeley again this evening. Kate and Thom and I pretty much finished the chores we wanted to get done up in Eugene by late in the afternoon. Then we all went and had pizza. And then Kate and I drove south along I-5, stopping in Medford overnight.
But the chores: Nothing complicated, really. Thom wanted to find a chair that would fit into his deluxe living space beneath his loft bed. For extra points, it would be great if we could come up with a stand or table of some kind for Thom’s retro audio setup — think turntable and vinyl and old-school receiver and speakers. And it would be good if we could find the stuff for less than a fortune.
Thom’s become something of a habitué of the local thrift stores, so we decided to go that route looking for the room furniture. First stop, on Friday, was a Goodwill in Springfield. Nothing doing, furniture-wise, though I did find a tie that features bottles of Tabasco sauce along with images of unshelled peanuts and pistachios. There’s just something off about it, which is why it’s appealing in a way that will make me keep it for some years and never wear it.
Back to the chair: One of our other chores was seeing whether we could get Thom’s cellphone (or its battery) replaced. While we were waiting on the results of the battery test, we decided to drive out to Target on the west side of Eugene to pick up a few necessities (detergent, etc.) that we hadn’t rounded up before. On the way out West 11th Avenue, we passed a St. Vincent de Paul’s store with a ton of furniture out in front. I turned around and we went in to shop.
There was one kind of nice brown plush swivel armchair on the front lot (the swivel feature was really what made it), but Thom decided to keep looking inside the store. They had some nice chairs that had been sold already. Then out in back we encountered what Thom called the most beautiful chair he had ever seen (a statement not necessarily an indictment of the kind of upbringing he had): a magenta chartreuse recliner. The Chair.
I went inside and asked how much it was. The woman at the counter said, “Everything out back there inside the yellow caution tape is a dollar.” The Chair was in the designated one-buck zone. And it turned out to fit pretty well in Thom’s room, too; and more than that, just the fun of finding it seemed to make the rest of the moving-in experience come together.
It is a cool chair.
The first (and for now, only) order of business today: John, happy birthday. It’s nice to welcome a new member to the 50-plus division of the family.
The new room — in Tingle Hall in the Hamilton residence complex at the U of O. Thom checks out his half of the space and charts his plan of attack. To me, it seemed like he got everything taken care of in about an hour.
Thirty-one years ago this month, John and Lydell and I all moved into our rooms in Wilkins Hall at Illinois State (our one-time home was recently in the news — it just got renovated). Thirty years ago, so my memory isn’t as clear. But: It seemed like we had a little more room. Or maybe not: I think it didn’t matter too much to me when I got there what the room and the food and my roommate and hall neighbors were like. I was just kind of happy to be going to school. My semi-wide-eyed pleasure with the new experience didn’t last long, and I fell into bad school habits and traded new roommates at the first opportunity. But in ways that I couldn’t have imagined, moving into that room started me on the path that led me here to Oregon right now.
We’re camped out in a Best Western in Springfield, Oregon. How unwoodsy.
Tom — Tom is spending the first night at his dorm on the University of Oregon campus a few miles away, and in a couple days we’re driving south and just leaving him here. He told us as we got close to Eugene on the drive up from Berkeley (we left home just before 6 this morning and were up here early in the afternoon) that he was nervous about the experience: living away from home for the first time, taking on all the university stuff, having an unknown roommate in a tiny room. You know: everything.
When we got here, I looked at the rush of activity, the new kids moving into the dorms en masse, all strangers to each other, and I thought — hey, this would be intimidating. While we hauled his stuff up to his room from the van, I was struck by how similar this was to first steps toward separation with Tom and Eamon both: first time leaving them with a babysitter; first time leaving them at childcare; first day of school; first trip away from home without us. At the same moment you want nothing more than to help your kids grow into this world, you think, do I really need to let go? So here we are: First day of college.
How did things play out when we had our feet on the ground? Tom just took charge, setting up his room, talking to his roommate and other guys on his floor. Kate and I went off to run an errand. When we got back, Tom was pretty much settled in. He had plans for the evening — a meeting at the dorm, then who knows. He went his way, and Kate and I went and had pizza and a beer.
More reflection on this later. I got an hour’s sleep before we left home this morning. Time for bed.
Just filling out a student aid application (late!) for our son, Tom, who is about to go off to the University of Oregon. One of the questions: “Is the student male? (Most male students must register with the Selective Service to get federal aid.)”
OK: I’m not going to take on the subject of Selective Service right now. But: Just the guys have to sign up? Come on. There’s talk about reinstating the draft, something I have mixed feelings about. But one of the conditions I think would be basic if we come to that is conscripting both women and men. (Among other conditions: allow for alternative national service — such as undergoing disaster relief training so that we’d have a ready, nonmilitary force to respond to situations such as we have in the hurricane zone right now).
But even short of a draft, girls ought to be registered at their 18th birthdays the same as the boys.
In 1921, September 3 fell on a Saturday. On that day:
A son, Stephen Daniel, is born to the Rev. Sjur and Otilia (Sieverson) Brekke in Warren, Minnesota, the seat of Marshall County. I’d love to know what the Rev. Brekke’s sermon was the next day to his congregation at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Alvarado, 11 miles west of Warren.
Elsewhere:
Henry Bellmon, future governor and U.S. senator from Oklahoma, is born near Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
St. Johnsville, New York, police officer David Bennett Hill is struck by a hit-and-run driver and killed.
Photographer Ruth Orkin born in Boston.
The Cincinnati Reds beat the visiting Chicago Cubs, 4-0, at Crosley Field (so what’s new?). The White Sox fall to the St. Louis Browns, 5-0, at Comiskey Park. The game marks the final appearance of Browns pitcher Joe DeBerry, 24, just a year after making his big-league debut.
Florence M. Foos, 19, marries Fred D. Erni in Bison, Kansas. They had been married nearly 65 years when she died on April 3, 1986.
The population of the world: Roughly 1.86 billion (today: 6.46 billion). Of the United States: 105 million (today: 297 million). Of Marshall County, Minnesota: 19,443 (2000 census: 10,155).
Film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle drives from Los Angeles to San Francisco to party with friends. By the end of the Labor Day weekend, he’d be a suspect in a murder case — a scandal that all but ended his career.
The September 3 Saturday Evening Post features an article called “The Uses of Calamity” by journalist and early press critic Will Irwin (I haven’t found the text).
In Binghamton, New York, Erma Mae Bryan, 24, marries Herman Otto Wunderlich, 42, who had refused to wed until his mother had passed away.
In the September 3 issue of the British medical journal, The Lancet, Dr. R.W. Burkitt notes that powdered rhubarb has proven effective in treating acute dysentery.
Robert Staughton Lynd marries Helen Merrill. Their son, Staughton Lynd, becomes a noted conscientious objector.
In the 16th Davis Cup tennis tournament, the United States defeats Japan, 5-0.
Ernest Hemingway married Hadley Richardson (it didn’t last).
The Arkansas City (Kansas) Daily Traveler reports: “John Peters, for fifteen years a resident of the little town of Ashton, in Sumner county, west of here, has located in Arkansas City and will in the future make his home in the best city in Kansas. … He has purchased the grocery store of A. L. Bendure, located at 426 North A Street, and he will take charge of the business there next Monday morning.”
Lightning strikes the Lower Coverdale, New Brunswick, Methodist Church.
Heading back, watching the night unfold, watching the towns approach, slide past,
right-angle layouts, the bright stitching of main streets against invisible landscape.
I can guess the names of the bigger towns: Rockford. DeKalb. Galesburg. Iowa City. Cedar Rapids. All maybes. Nothing big enough to suggest Des Moines or Omaha. Then the smaller towns. Some I’ve passed through, others are just names I’ve picked up along the way. Dyersville. Grinnell. Ottumwa. Story City. Stanhope. Storm Lake. Then across the invisible Missouri: Grand Island. McCook. Hastings. Ogallala.
But most without any names that I know, though I’d love to learn them. All down there somewhere in that thinning web of settlements as we move west, each town throwing its main-drag strands of light into the dark. Island universes in uncounted numbers.
[Translation: United Flight 385, Chicago to Oakland. Took off 8:45 p.m. CDT, landed 10:45 p.m. PDT.]
The weekend’s major activity was a trip up to the Sierra foothillls, near Grass Valley, to go to a memorial for our former neighbor Bret Tilson, who died of cancer at age 68 earlier this month. I think the main reason we went was to see his wife, Christine, who went through a rough couple of years with Bret sick. Although they lived next door for 13 years — they moved in about six months after we did — I never felt I got to know Bret very well. He avoided crowds, partly because he was sort of shy and partly because he had suffered profound hearing loss and just couldn’t understand what people were saying when they all started talking at once.
His work — he was involved in advanced mathematics research most of his adult life — also might have made him something of a recluse. Christine’s sister said that once, in a show of interest in Bret’s work, she asked him if he could explain the work he was doing. “He looked at me, and didn’t say anything. He looked at me and looked at me and looked at me, and finally he said, ‘I don’t think so.’ ” He wasn’t putting her on. The dissertation for his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley was titled, “Group-Complexity and p-Length of Finite Semigroups.” With another mathematician, he’d been working on another paper that had been published and presented over the past several years, “Categories as Algebras, II.” An advanced math illiterate, the very first sentence in the abstract throws me: “A theory of the semidirect product of categories and the derived category of a category morphism is presented.”
So, yes, he was kind of a stranger to us, though extremely friendly whenever we had a talk over the back fence or commiserated about computer problems. But really, we got to know him better yesterday than we had in all the years he was next door. Just one thing that astonished me: His parents were killed in a plane crash when he was 18 and had just finished his first year at MIT. He had three much younger brothers — age 4, 6 and 8, I think — and he somehow managed to keep them all together and more or less raise them by himself with help from various relatives. Maybe people always rise to the occasion — but hey, no they don’t; a pretty amazing feat for an 18-year-old.