Good Friday Story

Apologia for Mere Movement

George sat in the front seat of his worn 1953 Rambler station wagon slowly sipping Old-Grandad, car door open, his legs hanging out to the side.  He didn’t want to go home.  The sunlight shining through the palm trees across the street from the parking lot did little to cheer him up.  He did not want to walk through that door and hear – once again – how the money he made as an office clerk was not enough.  He already knew it. Five children and now another one on the way.  It wasn’t as though the road he was following had been his own choice.  In marrying Velda, he had to sign a pledge to convert to Catholicism and raise all of the children resulting from the marriage Catholic.  That meant, of course, that any attempt to limit family size was a crap shoot at best.  If it hadn’t been that he’d spent the first years of marriage away at sea during the war and then another chunk of them gone when Korea came along, who knew how many mouths there might be now.

At the very least, he had to finish the bottle and jettison it before he went home. Alcohol was banned in his house.  It may have been the way that his father and generations of other Housmans had made coping easier in the backwaters of the Chesapeake, but it was a strategy closed off to the California branch of the family. 

When George trudged through the front door of the house from school, his brother Willie was waiting.  His younger sisters Sarah and Mandy were sitting on the floor crying. 

            “They found her in the river,” Willie said, turning his eyes towards the stretch of the Little Wicomico that wandered past the back edge of their house.  “About half a mile down.”

            George squeezed his eyes closed to hold the water back. Two already crying was enough, even if they were girls. “Who found her?” he asked, just to be saying something.  His mother had been missing for the last couple of days, but that was not unusual.  Since her husband’s death six months earlier it wasn’t uncommon for her to go spend a few days with her sister when she needed some time away. George’s older brothers, Pierce and Delbert were there to watch the younger ones; they had gone as far in school as they cared to and now worked when they could.

            “Raleigh Bryant,” Willie said.  “I was over at the fair, when he came looking for me.  I guess he couldn’t find Baylor.” Then he added, “I thought she was tougher than that but I guess she just couldn’t take it.”

            Sarah stood up. “Shut up with that. The stove was on and she was cooking jam. She wouldn’t have done nothing with jam on the stove.”

            “Maybe,” Willie said. “But her pocket was full of rocks.”

Good Friday, George remembered.  He’d promised Velda he’d pick up candy and baskets for the kids.   He got out of the car, tossed the empty bottle in the trash, and lit a Pall Mall.  Even Mickey, his oldest and almost a teenager was so excited about Easter that he wanted to believe in the Easter Bunny once again.  He pictured their smiles as he walked into the house with baskets, jelly beans and chocolate rabbits, then remembered that he would have to keep them hidden until Sunday.  Well, maybe the thought of how happy they would be when they woke up and saw them was enough to sustain him.  And this year they could have an Easter egg hunt.  For the past three years they had lived in apartments or Quonset huts where anything like an Easter egg hunt had been impossible, but for the past eight months, since his discharge from the Navy and move up to Santa Ana, they’d been able to rent a house with an actual backyard. Whether they would be able to continue to pay the rent on it was an open question, but at least for this year, he would be able slip out to the backyard just before dark, hide the eggs, and watch the children all scramble to find them on Sunday morning. That would be special. He took a final drag on the cigarette, tossed it onto the parking lot blacktop and climbed into the car.

Baylor called George to come down to the pier at the back of the yard and help him fold up the nets that he had been using for crabbing.  George could smell the alcohol on his brother’s breath a body length away.  After their mother died, Baylor had moved with his wife and year-old daughter into the Houseman family compound. The family needed a woman in the house and though she helped out, Sarah was still in school during the day. If she could graduate, she’d be the first in the family.

            “Buddy,” Baylor began.  “I’ve found a place for you.  I know you’re too young to get a job like Pierce, Willie and Delbert, but you’re twelve years old and you can earn your keep.  Millie and Leroy Granger said they would take you in.”

            George looked at the ground.  Words wouldn’t come.

            “Come on, Buddy” Baylor said.  “It could be a blessing in disguise.  You’re the damn smartest one in the family and Leroy is on the school board. He’ll make sure you get a education. Just do your chores before school, then help them out on the farm when you get home.  Me, Pierce and Willie are getting by and Delbert – well,  you know with being blind and all – but you might get the chance to make something of yourself. Sound like a plan?”

            George looked out at the water, the same in which he had been baptized and where his family made its living, feeling for the first time the indifferent motion with which it carried everything to the sea.  “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

George drove across town and pulled into the Sees parking lot.  Peanut brittle was Velda’s favorite and even though it was overpriced he figured he might as well dig the whole deeper and pick up some for her as a surprise since they couldn’t really afford the Easter Candy in the first place and it wasn’t like he could put it on lay away. 

            The store, which normally sold chocolate candy in fancy boxes, was taking full advantage of Easter to add to its income.  As he walked through the door, he saw temporary shelves full of candy Easter eggs in every imaginable color and size. Some were in cellophane bags and others already in pre-packaged Easter baskets.  There were chocolate bunnies and crosses, yellow peeps chicks, and cream-filled eggs in tin foil. He grabbed five colored Easter baskets, making sure to get a pink one for Jenny, then piled on a variety of candy and took it up to the counter.

            “Anything else?” asked the clerk.

            “Give me a pound of peanut brittle.”

            “I’m afraid that ship has sailed,” the clerk said. “We sold the last box about two minutes ago. We should have some more coming in about an hour, though. If you want to give me your name, we can set one aside for you.”

            George weighed his options -  wait around and get home late, try to find an excuse to leave the house and pick the candy up, or just look like he didn’t care. Don’t fight the current.  “I’ll just take what I got.”

            He looked back at the clerk, “You take checks, don’t you?”

            “As long as you have a license.”

            George pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out his license.

            “Is that Houseman?” the clerk asked, peering at the small print on the license as George wrote out the check.

            “Housman – no e.”

            “I always hate to ask,” the clerk said. “But you’d be surprised what some people try to pull.”

            “I don’t doubt it,” George said as he picked up the candy. “It takes all kinds.”

            “Hey, George” Ruby waved as she broke away from the rest of the graduating students.  “Let me sign your yearbook. I heard you’re joining the Navy. I better sign it while I got chance.”

            “You’ve got a while.” George grinned handing her his yearbook.  “I don’t report until October.”

            Ruby opened the book to the first page. “Well, look at this. ‘To George, the most dependable student I’ve ever had. Best of luck at college. – Mr. Rodney Shaw, Principal.’ I guess you’re not just the valedictorian, you’re the principal’s pet.”

            “That’s just because he gets me to drive all his messages into Heathsville so he doesn’t have to do it,” George laughed.

            Ruby tilted the year book towards her as she wrote, closed it quickly and looked up at him. “How come you aren’t going to college like Mr. Shaw wrote? Everyone knows you got that scholarship. Why do you want to go into the Navy?”

            “Can’t afford it. The scholarship won’t cover everything. How am I going to pay for food and a place to live? Besides, the war is coming and...you know, it wouldn’t be right for me going off to school.”

            “And...”

            “And I’ve just got to get out of here for a little while.  You know what I mean. Before I settle down like my brothers. Sarah’s up in Washington, DC with her husband, but I’ve never been farther than Richmond County. I’ll just go for four years, see the world a bit and come back.”

            “George,” Ruby’s voice grew quieter. “You know if you leave, you won’t be back.”

            George smiled. “Of course, I will. Hey, you want to hear something funny?”

            “What?”

            “All of my life I’ve been spelling my name wrong?”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Well, when I went to sign up for the Navy, I had to get my birth certificate. Now you know my last name is Houseman, spelled H-o-u-s-e-m-a-n, right?

            “Yeah…”

            “But on my birth certificate it is spelled Housman, without the e. The enlistment office said I had to use the name on my birth certificate.”

            “That’s a stitch. So who are you now?

            George paused a minute, “Damned if I know.”  Then he added, “The strangest thing is that I drove up to Richmond County afterwards and looked at my Grandpa William’s grave. His last name is spelled Housman, too.  My whole family is messed up.”

            Ruby smiled, “Well, whoever you are, George, don’t change. We’ll miss you.” She handed his yearbook back to him and moved back into the crowd of graduates.

           

As George walked out of the store, he spotted a pay phone and started towards it to give Velda a call letting her know he had picked up the candy and was on his way home, then thought better of it. He’d be home in a few minutes anyway.  It was Friday, so that probably meant tuna casserole.  His eyes furrowed as he remembered last week’s meal. 

            The kids had all gathered around the table for dinner when Velda set the hot casserole dish down in the middle. 

            “Tuna casserole again?” Charlie complained with all the indignation a ten year old could muster.

            “You eat what’s served” Velda said, “It’s one of your Dad’s favorites.”

            “Not exactly,” the words slipped out before George realized he was saying them.

            Velda looked at him, “But you like it a lot, don’t you?”

            “To be honest,” George said. “I don’t care for it much.”

            Velda’s expression changed; in her eyes George could see genuine hurt. “You mean I’ve been making this for fifteen years and you never said anything. Why didn’t you tell me if you don’t like it?”

            All George could think of to say was, “You never asked.”

            George unlocked the back of the station wagon and set the baskets and candy down. The check would bounce but there would only be a small charge for that. When he got paid next week, he’d go in with cash to Sees and apologize for the mistake.  There would still plenty of money in the bank…And then it hit him, a growing nausea in his stomach that crept up into his salivary glands as though he would vomit.  The car payment.  He hadn’t made the car payment this month. How could he have forgotten? He sat in the front seat with his hands over his head.  In his twenty years in the Navy, he had been seasick only once, in a storm off of the Aleutians that threaten to sink the destroyer he was on, but now in the front seat of the car, he recognized the feeling. They’d lose the car or the house or both. He couldn’t face Velda. He couldn’t. He sat in the front seat of the car, his hands shaking.  He’d survived Pearl Harbor, but he was drowning now.

            He lifted his head and out of the corner of his eyes saw the distant glow of a Budweiser sign, radiating light to lure in beach goers and partiers even on this bright California afternoon.  It was not the sign that The Saved were looking for on Good Friday,  but it was one George understood. The only life boat in sight.  He headed for the light.

           

The violent shaking knocked George and the others on the USS Case out of their bunks.  Sunday morning but sirens were screaming and everyone scrambling, running up to the deck.  Ships were burning. Men were in the water floating dead or drowning.  The Case had not been hit but it was firing back at the planes rising back up overhead rising from their attack on the carriers.  George looked back to where the USS Shaw was burning and sinking into the water.  It was where the Case had been assigned to come in for dry dock, but at the last minute bumped by the Shaw and pushed further along the harbor. Being booted out had saved it.

The last drop gone, George knew what he had to do.  As the clerk of the three-person business where he worked, George often had to open the office and had the keys in his pocket.  As the de facto bookkeeper of the business, he knew where the payroll checks were kept.  He drove back to the office and unlocked the door. Everyone had already left for the holidays.  The checks, already written, were where he expected them to be.  He carefully pulled his off of the stub and went over to his typewriter.  If anything the twenty years of being stuck behind a typewriter in the Navy had taught him, it was how to navigate a piece of paper.  He slipped the check behind the roller of the Smith Corona and turned the wheel.  Pulling back the arm of the typewriter he moved the check into the exact position where he needed it to be and in front of the sum reading 202.13, he typed a 1.

            The teller at Bank of America was just walking over to lock the door when George trotted up to the bank door.  He sensed that she was disgruntled for having to be the one to stay late, probably the lone Jew sentenced to work all the Christian holidays, but he had brought an empty Easter basket with him and held up his check, pointing back and forth between them.  Shrugging, she opened the door and George explained that he’d been kept late at work and had not had time to go cash his check to buy Easter candy for his children.  He’d only be a minute.  She let him in. Trying to keep his distance and his bourbony breath away from the teller, George quickly filled out the deposit ticket.  It would be sufficient to cover the candy, rent and car payment even after keeping out enough for fare for himself.  He wished her a Happy Easter as he left.

           

George did not want to see his mother in the casket, but Baylor insisted. They had to tell her good-bye. He hung at the back of the line behind Mandy.  When his turn came, he stared at his mother. Her eyes were closed, but she seemed calm with an expression on her tired face that said, at last.  George leaned in to kiss her cheek.  As he did, his lips moved towards her ear.  “Why did you leave?” he whispered. “Why did you leave?”

George drove to the Alpha Beta and parked his car in the middle of the lot where it could be easily found with its Easter baskets visible through the back window.  He debated leaving the keys in the car but he didn’t want it to get stolen, and Velda couldn’t drive anyway.  The sun was lowering in the sky. He could almost hear the Pacific lapping ten miles away.  At home they would already be starting to wonder where he was. 

He checked for his wallet, locked the car and started walking toward the bus station.

Pickled Pigs Feet

I’ve just finished reading Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, possibly the best novel I have read in years.  On the surface it has to do with the lives of various characters connected in some way to music or the music industry. In its larger sense, it is a meditation on identity and existence as creature of time.

Pickled pigs feet. I haven’t thought of those in a number of years but this morning as I was thinking about Egans’s book, they popped into my head.  I think they are one of those foods  like chitlins and scrapple that if you are not raised eating them, you have no desire to try.  They really belong to a different time and place, to a different you.  As a boy I can remember my father bringing home big jars of pickled pig’s feet.  When the jars were opened and a pigs foot was pulled out a sort of gelatinous mass clung to them.  It was not a pretty sight but the vinegary taste and crunchiness as you chewed the meat off of the bone was addictive.  The thought of them still invokes  the ghost of those memories on my tongue.

The pigs feet were a calque of my father’s boyhood like those words that crept into his speech from time to time from a mysterious time and place that I knew little about, somewhere in the tributaries of the Little Wicomico.  Words like “gunny sack” and “doggone”  joined words for food such as hominy, fried green tomatoes, poke and squirrel.  I’ve never tasted squirrel myself and, I don’t think as an adult my father had either - he said it was good but a bit greasy. Egan begins her novel with a quote from Proust to the effect that when we re-enter memories of the past we are trying to recapture something of that self we were at the time and that it is a dangerous journey.  It is certainly true as a scientific fact, that every atom that constitutes my body now is different from the ones that made it up when I was a child. In that sense, you can never go home.  Whatever we were then, is not what we are now.  Even so, in looking at those residues of childhood in our words and foods, we can get some sense of the landscape that formed us.

I don’t know what my father’s childhood was like.  His parents were both dead by the time he was eleven.   But the foods that he liked were a form of transmission. Something that carried over.  When I unexpectedly hear pickled pigs feet come into my mind, I recognize without knowing it that I am a carrier, too.   Words fill my mind of the foods I once ate that I doubt turn up on any of my children’s menus: tongue, oyster stew, Cool Aid, Navy beans, mapeline syrup, liver and onions…   I wonder if when my children search their minds they feel the same;  those forgotten foods of the past bringing to life once more some aspect of the past and of themselves that they have forgotten.  Proust is right, it is dangerous to try to reclaim an Eden that perhaps only exists as such in our minds.  Our lives are composed of many selves.  Even so, those clues about what we were at one time are tantalizing and in some ways still a part of us.  As a matter of fact,  there is a certain item that I would like to add to my shopping list.

First Day of Winter

First Day of Winter

Daylight has peeled pale bracelets

into the bark of the dogwood tree.

My daughter boards a flight to Buffalo

taking her children to their roots for the holidays.

Congress has just passed a bill giving tax cuts

to those who already hold the country’s wealth.

Squirrels scrounge for black walnuts

buried in the corpses of the daylilies.

Outside my window a woman waiting for a bus

paces the sidewalk talking to the sky.

On a highway in rural Mexico

a school bus somersaults killing ten children.

I stare into space after  words

that disappeared from sentence I was about to speak.

In Norwich 600 years ago Juliana held a hazelnut

containing  everything that has been made.

I will never make sense of this life.

Our Connection to The Wizard of Oz

      Anyone who knows anything about our family knows that my mother was born in South Dakota.  Mom’s great-grandfather, Michael Ryman came to Dakota Territory in the early 1880’s and settled near the town of Warner just a few miles south of Aberdeen in Brown  County.  When the Ryman’s arrived, Aberdeen was little more than a train stop.

     I am reading a book by David Laskin called The Children’s Blizzard that tells the true story of one of the most unexpected blizzards in American history.  It took place in 1888 and hit the Dakotas especially hard.  Laskin tells that the family of L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, moved to a farm just a few miles above Aberdeen and Baum lived there in the early 1800s when the Rymans arrived.  For a while Baum tried his hand at a variety of stores in Aberdeen and failed miserably before eventually moving to Chicago where he wrote his famous book.

     Everyone who has ever seen the movie of The Wizard of Oz remembers the line where Dorothy says, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”  The funny thing is that Baum himself had never ever been to Kansas.  The descriptions that he made of Kansas in the book actually were memories that he had written about Brown County in the summer of 1888, “Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the log blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere.”  What he was describing wasn’t Kansas but the neighborhood of our Ryman ancestors.   That is something to think about the next time I watch The Wizard of Oz.

Help Me With This Story

I've been trying to work on this story for a while and it just doesn't seem to want to go anywhere...though it seems like it should.  So in the tradition of crowd sourcing, I am family sourcing. If you have time to read through what I've started (which, granted, isn't much) here is what I'd like help with. (1) Do you think it is worth working on further or do you think I should just cut my losses and try something else. (2) What are your thoughts about the direction the story should take? In other words, what do you think comes next. I'd like your ideas.  I'm also open for any editorial suggestions about what is already here.

Story

John woke, opened his eyes and wondered who he was going to be today.  Light creeping in around the shades revealed that the old wooden clock on the wall was still there and as his eyes created shape from the darkness he recognized everything in the place where it had been when he’d closed his eyes.  The open closet with his clothes on hangers below the wall clock and the book shelves that his son had built for him years ago in the indented space beside it where his eyes rested as he lay in bed were still there.  So, when he turned his head, were the dresser and the dilapidated plant shelf that he brought in for the winter.

The difference was rarely anything he could spot immediately, though for a series of days, he had woken to realize that he was living in a foreign country and, for another stretch of time, that the president of the United States was also the Grandmaster of the KKK. Most of the time, though, it took him awhile to figure out what was different.  One day, he had the constant memory of having taught at a school where records of his employment revealed that he had actually never worked.  Another time in conversation with his wife, he was referring to an episode from his childhood where his parents had taken him to Yosemite, only to have his wife remind him that this memory was from a story he had written and had not actually ever occurred.  Today, was more like that. At first light, there was no crack in the cosmos.

**

John went into the kitchen and grabbed a mug off of the rack of cups on the counter.  It was glossy and black with white letters saying, DRINK ME,” a joke gift from his daughter who’d picked it up in the airport on one of their excursions, Dubai or Florence maybe.

            “This is for you – for first thing in the morning,” she’d said.  It wasn’t because of a reputation for being an early morning grouch. In fact, John was more of an early riser, but at one point he had tried explaining to her his sensations of never waking up the same person. The cup was her faux solution.  “Strong black coffee, first thing, will bring you back to reality.”

            John liked to think of the cup in another way.  He imagined all of the images and ideas in his head swirling around, the rush that seemed to change from day to day, sometimes from moment to moment even on those days when everything seemed outwardly banal.  Despite the amount of writing that his work required of him he could never make the ideas come out in any rational form on the printed page in ways that were not stiff and clichéd. Attempts to verbally explain what he was trying to sort out were even more hopeless.  He felt as though the words pouring out of his mouth were those of a ten-year old.  The command of the bold white letters on the cup’s black background made him fantasize that the swirling black liquid he drank were all those thoughts, and when he took in their deep caffeine there would be not only that easing of the muscles and loosening of mental clouds, but a kind of clarification distilled in his mind by the hot liquid. 

            When John turned back towards the table from filling his coffee cup, a man was sitting at the kitchen table. His hair was gray and straggly, his face nearly round.  The aura he gave off was of a man out of his time.  He was dressed as though ready to play a part in a nineteenth century biopic of the American mid-west, but what he wore was clearly not costume. It was his everyday clothing. John was used to slight shifts in the fabric of his world, but this was unusual.  He knew instantly, though, that this was someone to whom he was related.

            “You got more of that coffee?” the man asked.

 **

            John reached over and grabbed a mug off of the tree.  He opened the top of the Keurig and popped in an innocuous morning blend and pressed the button.  When the brown liquid finished pouring out, he turned back around and handed it to his visitor. “I guess I’m supposed to know who you are.”

            “Henry,” the man said. “Your grandfather. That’s a fast cup of coffee.”

            “My grandfather was Frederick.”

            “Not that one. Three generations back. Henry Mueller.”

            “Oh.” John said, recognizing the name. “Why –“

            “The same reason as you’re here.  I woke up this morning and here I am.  This is the furthest, though.”  Henry’s speech carried with it the definite accent of her person whose first language was German.

            “What are you talking about,” John hedged.

            “You know…it’s never the same.”

            

Second Time Around

As most of you know my daughter Maya is getting married in September - September 9 to be specific. In the spirit of George Santayana admonition, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" she has been thinking about thinking ahead about how going into this marriage will be different different from the first and posted the following blog in her Lilies and Elephants forum.

Learning From My Past, As I Head Into My Future

Yesterday, July 10th, was my former wedding anniversary. Thirteen years ago I walked down the aisle in a ballgown dress with six bridesmaids, seven groomsman, and approximately 200 guests. The wedding was fabulous. Basically my entire family on both sides flew in from out of town, some for whom I know it was a stretch time wise and financially. It meant the world to me, truly. The room was filled with people we'd each known over the past 24 years, many that we hadn't seen in years. It was a grand scale event that I became so wrapped up in planning that, in hindsight, I realized I was more focused on the wedding itself than the next 50 or so years of married life ahead.  But at 24 years old and one of the first of my friends to get married, that's what I did.

I think I knew, or at least had a nagging feeling, walking down the aisle that I was making a mistake. But I'm a dreamer, with my head often in the stars, and I thought I was being unrealistic wanting more than I had - a good-hearted, steady, reliable man who loved me and wanted to spend his life with me. I thought it should be enough. As it turns out, it was not. We were not, as a couple. Had it, no doubt my life would be drastically different than it is today. There are moments when I think about how my life changed course on January 24, 2007, the day we decided to split. But I have no regrets. It was the best decision for us both. I believed it then, and I haven't doubted it a day since.

In part, I think I simply wasn't ready for any of it. Some people know exactly who they are and what they want at 24 years old. I was not one of those people. I didn't realize that at the time, of course - I took the route I always expected I would. College, full time job, grad school, marriage, house, plan for a family. It wasn't until the "plan for a family" part began that I realized how unready for this life I was. It's funny how one day you can wake up and discover "this is really going to be the rest of my life if I do nothing about it right now." You'd think vows such as "for as long as we both shall live" said in front of 200 people including a priest would do that. But for whatever reasons, it didn't. It was the startling realization that I could be someone's mother, that if we had a child he would always be their father, and that we'd be inextricably tied forever in that way, no matter what else happened in our lives, individually and as a couple.  It occurred to me then how little we'd talked about the details, the actual realities instead of the "one day"s. It felt almost like a reverse Truman Show  - like a story that I played a part in, and suddenly it became clear that it was my life. We had moved along the path in front of us. We had never questioned if it was the path we should be following.

Today, I'm just under two months from my wedding (it's two months from this past Sunday, but who's counting). I am almost 38 years old and have lived a lot of life since my last wedding. I know it's given me experience. I believe, or at least hope, it's given me wisdom. Now, my fiance and I talk about the little details, plan for the actualities of the future. Things as minor as interrupting our (very food motivated) dog while she's eating, playfully tugging at her ears and tail to make sure she doesn't mind, in case a future child did the same. We discuss the larger aspects of life and the minutia, having a plan, yet being able to go with the flow (OK the go with the flow is just him, I practically plan out my underwear a week in advance). We thing of the what ifs, even the unlikely ones. We have the difficult discussions now, so that we don't have to confront startling differences we never realized were there when a situation arises. We may not always agree, but we have learned where each other stands, and how to compromise where we must. We dream together, but also confront the facts. I certainly am no expert in relationships. Less so in marriage. But I'd like to think I've learned a bit along the long and especially topsy turvy road to where I am now.

If I could give advice to anyone getting married, or thinking about it, it would be this:

1. Don't ever, ever, ever assume. I don't care if you have to ask 10 different times in 10 different ways to make sure you understand each other - not that you always agree, but that you know where each other stands.

2. Every answer to the above doesn't have to be a yes or no. If you don't know, say it. There are some questions I can answer with much more certainty at 37 than I could have at 27.  It's better for someone to know you haven't made up your mind than to be surprised when you change it - especially about something major.

3. Compromise is incredibly important and it's not always 50/50 in every individual situation. In the end, it should about even out, but don't keep exact score.

4. Sometimes, a topic may be so crucial that you don't feel you can compromise. Pick your battles, but stand your ground when it matters most. Otherwise, there's a high chance of bitterness and resentment down the road.

5. Don't count on anything outside of the two of you to make your marriage happy. If your marriage will only be happy if your life together goes exactly as planned - ideal home, family exactly as you imagined, jobs on the current course, etc - you need to reconsider. Your partner should be enough for the marriage in and of themselves - not as part of a larger plan that comes along with them. Because we know what happens to the best laid plans.

6. Don't count on either of you changing, but understand that everyone does in some ways. Meaning this: love and marry the person for who they are in this moment, not for who you think they could be or who they used to be. At the same time, everyone evolves and grows, or so you hope. Shifts in each of you, with age and experience, are almost inevitable. Allow each other some leeway, especially as the years progress. I personally wouldn't want my spouse at 64 to be acting like they did at 24.

7. Sh*t is going to happen. This basically an absolute given. To you as a person, to you as a couple. The things you never expected to bother you will. Things you expected to worry about for years to come, you'll get used to.  When these things happen, know that you're in good company, and try not to let it discourage you.

As I start dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the details for my next wedding, I can feel a glaring difference between my first wedding and this one. We have a total of two people in our bridal party, one on each side. We're having a 15-ish minute ceremony at the same site as our reception. There will be about 65 guests instead of 200, a good number of whom are between the ages of 1 and 14. We're not doing a shower (bridal, I am showering) or a registry. I personally don't care if everyone - that's not in the actual wedding - shows up in their PJs. What I do care about is that half of the time our discussions about wedding plans dissolve into laughter. that we enjoy cooking dinner together as we discuss our plans, that what we can't wait for most is the opportunity to spend our lives together, whatever that may bring.

Old Fogey's College Advice

Last month, my great-niece Haidyn graduated from high school and will be heading on to college.  She will be the first of her generation in our family to do so.  I know that my parents (her great-grandparents) would be very proud of her.  They were never able to attend college and, in my mother’s case even finish high school.  I know something about how Haidyn must feel because, though it seems common place – even compulsory – now, I was the first person on either side of my family to attend college. It is a bridge that, once you cross over it, you can never go back. The best analogy is that it is something like it must be for men and women who go away to war.  No description of it to others is going to convey what it is like to those who have not been there.  You leave not being the same person who entered.  It changes your world view; you can no longer see things in the same way you once did. 

While advice from a 71 year-old man is about as welcome as dandelions in a suburban lawn, I’d like to offer a bit of it for any family members of Haidyn’s generation that are planning to go college.  The first is: go away to school.  Education is more than only books.  Learning first hand that there are people who see the world differently than you do – who talk a little differently, dress differently, have a different background of experiences, have value systems different from yours – is a part of the education itself.  Simply living in an environment that is different from what you are used to broadens you,  teaches you something.  Seattle doesn’t feel the same as Phoenix.  There is a poem by Wallace Stevens called “Anecdote in A Jar” in which he places a jar on a hill in Tennessee and instantly that jar becomes the central reference point for everything we do. While our house, our home town, our family may always be the emotional center of our universe, it is not the physical center.  Moving that glass to another hill gives you perspective and that is not something that you get by staying home or going to Florida for spring break.

When the time for college came, I urged all of my children to pick a place that was not in their geographic backyard.  Pat was the first one and, in all candor, he would have been very comfortable staying in Buffalo and going to UB.  Instead, he went spent his first year at Syracuse University because at the time he was interested in going into journalism and the school had a good reputation.  It was not the best experience. He had gone to high City Honors in Buffalo where the students were highly motivated. His friends went off to Harvard, Stanford, etc.  They were kids who were bright but worked hard for what they got. What he learned at Syracuse was that the rest of the world was not like this.  They were interested in partying, joining frats and drinking (some things haven’t changed). Having to go to class was a minor annoyance for them.  Their parents paid for their education, so they didn’t care. Despite good classes, Pat learned that Syracuse wasn’t for him.  He also learned that he was more interested in political science and ended up transferring to Buffalo.  Nevertheless, he learned something valuable.

In a somewhat different vein, Maya went to the University of Indiana and, her first reaction was an incredulous “Everyone there is white!”  On the up side, she added that despite their counterparts in New Jersey, school officials and employees at IU were actually friendly.  While she learned that she could probably never live in Indiana, she loved the school, and her education and made long time friendships.

A second piece of advice that I would give is to take some courses that you enjoy.  You may not get the chance again to try out some of the things that colleges and universities give you a chance to do.  I know. For some people that sounds frivolous, like a luxury.  I’ve worked with enough students over my life time that have come from backgrounds where they thought they would never be able to make it to college.  They are seeking an education to get a good job, to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. They feel the imperative to stick to the game plan and pick up skills and a certificate that can be cashed in for a better standard of living.   I respect that.  Not everyone has a choice. But in that case, what people are looking for is training, not education – and that is a whole different ballgame.   Education is expansive, not one directional.  My model here is my son Eli.  Eli was admitted to the architecture program at the University of Maryland. It is extremely competitive and famous for the fact that during the junior and senior years students basically sleep all night in the architecture studio.  Nevertheless, his first couple of years he experimented with classes that appealed to him like calligraphy and Italian.  It’s made him a more interesting and empathetic person and over a decade later, he is doing just fine as an architect with his own firm.   You have your whole life to work, often in ways that give you little time to pursue things that really interest you.  Haidyn, I have no idea what you are  planning to study or what your career plans are, but I say, take advantage of it while you can. Let yourself grow. 

My final wish for each of those of the next generation is that if at all possible, you take a semester abroad – or spend some time living in a foreign country.  It combines both of the first two experiences that I mentioned and adds a deeper third dimension. Each of my children was lucky enough to be able to live for a while in another country prior to having to get out and dive into their job or career:  Pat (Germany), Maura (England), Melissa (Guatemala), Maya (Australia), and Eli (Turkey). Again, it is a fact of life that this is not possible for everyone.  If you are already married and supporting a family, it probably is not a possibility. On the other hand, when Maya took a semester in Australia with IU, aside from plane fare, it cost her no more than she would otherwise have been paying.  She got all of her college credits and even ended up finishing college a semester early. While going away to school is a big step towards allowing your perspective to broaden, you are still to a large extent playing on home field - more or less the same language, same laws, same religious and cultural values.  Staying for some time in another country allows you to be able to shift your prejudicial lenses some. We all have them and, particularly in this era of Trump nativism, it is crucial to be able to get outside and see what the world looks like from another vantage point.  There is no better educator than travel.

Last week my grandson Connor graduated from middle school, Maggie and Owen had their kindergarten graduation, and Daisie, the youngest of all my grandchildren Face Timed with me and said Grandpa for the first time.  Chances are that by the time Daisie is ready for college, I won’t be around any more. Those of us who have been through college have frequently heard that in its origin the word educate means to draw out.  It is not about cramming stuff in, but about bringing yourself out to a larger understanding of the world. I am fortunate that all of my children value education – in the broadest sense of the word, so I know that Connor, Maggie, Owen, Daisie and all of the others will do fine without my advice.  It is comforting to know that. Still, one of the prerogatives of getting older is the freedom to stick your nose in and say it anyway. Education transforms.  I can’t imagine who I would be now, if I’d never had the opportunity for college.

Barn Burning

I’ve said on a number of occasions that I am glad that I keep a journal.  One of my projects over the past few years has been to go back to the entries that I began keeping in the early 1980’s and read forward.  It keeps me honest and prevents me from rewriting my personal history in a way that makes me out to be the hero. (It is amazing what you forget.)

There are some nice surprises, too, and I came across one of those when I was reading in my 1994 journal earlier this week.  I discovered a poem that I had written and forgotten for some reason. Perhaps my sensibilities were different at the time and I thought it was incomplete, but on reading it again I really liked it and decided to resurrect it.

The immediate impetus was that Maya had to do a report on Wiliam Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning” and I had read the story to be able to help her if she had any problems. 

Barn Burning

After years of moving from place to place,

Of constant boils and pinworms from shared beds

Of welfare saying “college is not for you,” “wash dishes”

I understood Abner’s need to put the match to the hay.

Now I live in the white house

Am become one of the columns that is part and support.

It is difficult not to keep glancing out the window to see

If the barn is still standing

Or if perhaps sleep walking I have reverted

And handed it over,

To the flames it deserves.

From an aesthetic point of view, what I like about the poem is that it achieves a sort of simplicity while at the same time, it seems to me, still being to be able to speak to a reader in on terms that s/he can relate to in relationship to their own lives.  It is a middle ground between merely reporting and trying to cram in unneeded material, as I am prone to do. 

More to the point, however, it serves to keep me honest.  After writing the blog about Dad and the military the other day, I’m particularly mindful that, in Faulkner’s famous words, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”  More than ever, I’m convinced that is true.