These Four Walls

The most common narrative in literature is the hero returning home.  

But not all homes are equal.  We get more from that first house than anywhere else.  The memory of that first bedroom, the curve of the living room couch, the light behind a certain fixture.

 

Singer/songwriter/hero Bruce Springsteen said all his songs come out of that place.  "My deepest motivation comes out of the house that I grew up in and the circumstance that were set up there."  He said it's a place "you carry with you forever, no matter where you go or what you become." 

In a new book Michelle Obama said "Everything that I think about and do, is shaped around the life that I lived in that little apartment.” 

So what will our children remember?

The impact of these four walls scrapes at me as they run off, realizing the walls that we built are those that will define them.  Our house, the place we designed with the photos we picked, the drapes she chose, the books we stacked, are the ones of their childhood memories.  

Springsteen and Mrs. Obama describe the memory fragments: the smell of the kitchen, the light at the end of a father's cigarette, the sound of a sibling on the other side of a thin wall.

Parenting expert Wendy Mogel tries to assure parents not to mistake "a snapshot taken today with the epic movie of your child's life."  But how do we know what will stick and what will fade?  Will they remember the time I got up and made breakfast or the time I slept in?  Will they recall the time I yelled when I was right or the time I was just having a bad day?

A few weeks ago on Spring Break in a darkened and hip restaurant in South Beach my middle child started to cry without provocation.  It was just the three of us, me, the college-bound eldest and the middle.

She explained the burst of emotion came from the knowledge that with travel, summer, camp and jobs, it was coming to an end.

"This is the last week we'll be in the house together," she said.  "As brother and sister."

And then the day came, their last breakfast around that kitchen island, the scene of so many morning comments, passed forks in silence, shared muffins, stolen last pieces of French toast.  The only fireworks were in my heart as he gnawed at a bagel and she measured out gluten-free granola into her yogurt. On their first day of school there were pictures and new backpacks, sharpened pencils and juice boxes.  Today there was no fanfare, just two adults looking for their car keys, going in separate directions to different schools. 

It will never be like this again I thought, and she articulated.  So much of what has occupied our minds in that home over the past 18 years has been about what they are seeing. No longer are they learning this lesson or that, those days are past, either they saw it or they didn't.  They remembered it or not.  There is still much to learn, but it's too late to change the arc.

Last week the middle child needed to go to the National Archives for a school project.  We drove through rush hour to get in line with the Spring Breakers and when they all ran to see the Declaration of Independence, we viewed some obscure document, took notes and finished.

With time still left in our morning I grabbed her hand as we ran across Constitution Avenue to the National Gallery of Art.  Somewhere below the gallery, between the section that houses the old masters and the moderns is a gift shop, a waterfall and a little cafe.

I hadn't been there in years and so a few wrong turns around a series of 15th century European sculptures until we emerged at the gleaming underground.  There wasn't much food yet and so she got water and I got coffee and we sat for just a moment.  There were mostly old people eating sandwiches out of brown bags, others who worked at the gift shop setting up their stalls.  And next to us a man and women dressed for work drinking coffee and eating Tootsie Pops?

We listened to the conversation, the clack of shoes on the floor, the workers making lunch for the tourists.  And I told her that she won't remember this day, but I hope she will one day know the complete pleasure of having 15 minutes with your daughter and sharing an espresso.

"I always remember this stuff," she assured me. "I have a good memory for this kind of thing."

The Symmetry of Birthdays

I’ve always liked the symmetry of our birthdays.

As if we planned it.  This year my dad turns 78, I turn 48 and my son 18.

Every year something rises to the fore, the growing child, the aging parent, the next stage.

Forty eight it turns out, is not the year I inch closer to AARP, it’s the year he leaves home.  Everything takes on the tinge of this event that is still several months away, but still there.

It reminds me of the scene in When Harry Met Sally as she weeps about turning 40.

“And I’m gonna be 40” she says, amid hysterics.

“When?” Harry asks.

“Someday.”

“In eight years,” he deadpans.

“But it’s there.  It’s just sitting there.  Like this big dead end.”

I don’t yet know what I am feeling about this next phase, but I keep watching for it, around the corners of our daily life.  A recent New York Times piece gave me the green light to feel something.  The article about empty nest dads articulates some of what is coming as our first born speeds down the runway toward college.

“The empty-nest transition is harder on fathers than conventional wisdom might have us believe. Men’s experience of this life passage has changed dramatically from what they might have felt — or admitted feeling — 40 years ago.”

I agree with the sentiment, but why was this article written by a woman?  Is no man capable of explaining why a child leaving home is deadening?  Terrifying?  Sad.

According to her there is a happy reason for all this unhappiness:  

“Fathers occupy a more central place in family life than they once did: Since the 1960s, fathers have more than doubled the number of hours they spend on housework and now do about a third of household chores, according to the Pew Research Center.”

So that’s it, the extra run of laundry, the additional sock repaired brought us closer to our children?  I think not.  Dads are parents too.  Actually, dads are people too.  It’s less about the chores that we complete and more about the hole that exists in our days and the redefinition of a role we acquired the day these children scream into our lives.

It’s all about the clock.

I have heard more men talk with sadness about how their weeks have been defined by their child’s soccer schedule, a joint commute to school/work or the shared sporting event.  The first big hit comes when they get their driver’s license, a couple years before they leave and our time with them is carved into even smaller pieces.  If we are not their driver, their coach, their ticket purveyor, who are we?

“Men’s identity is now invested in a more intimate, hands-on fatherhood; fathers see themselves not just as breadwinners but as caregivers and confidants, and feel deeply attached to kids they have changed and bathed and driven.”

A driver’s license is a license to stay away. They no longer rely on us to pick them up from school, the haircut, tennis practice is now something to be shared with friends. The household rhythm is off, the empty seat at the table, the un-dented couch cushion.  But what will be a year from now?  A therapist might call this anticipatory anxiety.  No shit.  

As we age our birthdays become less about us and more about things outside ourselves, the age of a parent, the number of candles on our child’s cake, the lines on a face, the distance between visits.  This birthday is not about who I am today, but of what’s next.  

Until now there was a crude road map for what to expect when you’re expecting, schooling, skinned knees, grit, grade school, high school. 

But not now. 

What is life like on the other side of that door?  The door they’re about to walk out of?

The End of Summers

"Only kids get summer vacation?" one of our children marveled years ago when they realized our jobs extended beyond June.  

Now I can tell them that summer vacation exists, even in adulthood.

When my children were barely seven years old my wife proposed sending them away to camp, I was not a fan.  After all, I had done the math.

If we followed her sleep-away camp scheme, we’d lose almost a full year of growing-up time.

A seven-year camp lifespan times seven weeks, that's 49 weeks of no kids.

"We only have them for 18 years," I pleaded.  "Why give away a year of it?"

I soon learned we were not giving them away as much as bribing someone to take them to a land of lakes, mosquitoes, bunks and friendship.

Once the inevitable happened and I lost the argument I told myself there was value for the children in shipping them off.  What I failed to grasp was the value for the adults.

With the children staggered in age we only lost one the first year, then another, and soon we were staring down the barrel of seven weeks of undiluted childlessness.  

A thought scarier than sending them in the first place.

There was trepidation as we packed everyone off with last minute checklists, snacks for the flight, runs to the local airports, final day tantrums, misplaced articles of clothing and then -- all was quiet.

Walking through the door that first evening I was transported to my grandparents' home, a place where lights remained off in the mostly empty rooms, un-dented couch cushions, entire carpeted rooms with nary a footprint.  

On the dining room table sat two glasses of wine, a  bowl of vegetables, two lonely plates and a piece of tin foil that housed two sad little pieces of grilled fish.

What was this minimalist, vegetarian spread?

"I didn't want to waste a serving piece," my wife said.  "It's only us."

There would be no more meals at home.  

This was our introduction to the joys of adult summer vacations.  We discovered a world of late liquid dinners, trips to the beach and middle-of-the-week movies.  We reveled in the guilty pleasure of completing long-delayed projects or reading a book.  And we were not alone.  Friends who rarely left the confines of Montgomery County were suddenly never home, everybody wanted to stretch.

Even the interruption of visiting day brought new joy as the heart actually grew fonder over the missing month.

That was 6 years ago.  

Now we are on the other side.

This year we got barely two weeks of kid-free time.  Summer jobs, high school sports, teen tours and college visits overlap for short periods.  Our endless summer was reduced to one night in Naples Maine, before rushing to pick up another child in another city. 

The trumpet blew at this year's camp visiting day, signalling the end.  The sound kicks off a Pavlovian reaction of tears, hugs and clinging children.  This year the tears were ours. Summers are coming to an end. 

In a Foreign Land: Homeland

In a Foreign Land: Homeland: The interactive map on the seatback in front of me is an education.  Flying to Israel from Istanbul the city names illuminate as we pass o...

Homeland Part II--Good Borders Make Good Neighbors

Sometimes a neighborhood turns bad.  Sometimes it always was.  

There is much to contrast between Israel and Turkey.  But their mutual complaint is about their "tough neighborhood," they say with a roll of their eyes.  

The Israelis love their neighborhood, just not their neighbors.  Every street corner, every road and hillside has a Biblical antecedent.  On a visit to an Army base the driver explains the area is called Herodion, where King Herod stopped on his rush from Jerusalem to Masada.  His Mother's carriage overturned and he feared she was dead.  To show his gratitude that she survived he built a town to commemorate it.  It ultimately became his burial plot.

At the last minute our visit with the soldiers is altered by the recent kidnappings.  We switch to a bullet-proof minivan because you don't know what it will be like down the next block.  We stand on a hilltop with soldiers pointing out the Palestinian and Israeli overlapping neighborhoods.

The soldiers, men and women, explain their day.  In Washington people show off their wall of fame, photos of politicians they've met for a moment.  The man (boy) in charge of this base shows us a picture of two Israeli F-15 Jet Fighters flying over Auschwitz. "We are not just the protectors of this land, we are protecting the Jewish people," he tells my children.

The flight from Israel to Turkey is only 90 minutes, but when you land at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport the two worlds collide. Woman in Burqas mingle with tourists in shorts and tanks waiting at the Burger King. The expensive jewelry stores glisten, the Hermes scarves stack neatly.

But baggage claim brings it all together as our luggage from Tel Aviv rests on the turnstile alongside flights from Baghdad and Najaf.

Turkey shares a border with Syria, Iraq and Iran.  Israel's border partners are well-known, but no less volatile.  When you ask about the contrast and concerns they all say with resignation, "This is the Middle East."

But how they deal with the internal and external threats is illustrative:

• In Israel my kids notice the doorman at the King David Hotel wears a taser on her belt
• In Turkey, thousands of daily visitors to the Blue Mosque, their most traveled tourist destination, has no security, no metal detector, no bag check.  The only thing strictly enforced is the dress code.
• At Ben Gurion airport they ask you numerous questions about why you were in Israel. The usual stuff like "were your bags with you all the time" preceded questions like, "what Jewish holidays do you celebrate?"
• There were 4 security check points before we got to our gate on Turkish Airlines, including one at the front door, where we sent our suitcases through an x-ray machine before we were even let into the air conditioning.

Turkey is a sprawling country across two continents, and their worries are not about Israel, but the influences of their fellow Muslims.  It is a fiercely proud place whose bright red flag with a crescent and star flies from every hilltop.

It is a land of earthquakes, carpets and kilims, where 90% of the people are Muslim, but Burqa's are officially banned on constitutional grounds of the "secularity of the state."

In Israel all the Army bases are Kosher and celebrate Shabbat.

When people emigrated to Turkey in the early-20th century they were told to pray wherever they could, a Mosque, a synagogue or a church, as they were all houses of god.  That is no longer the case.  A city of 15 million people has 3,000 Mosques, 250 churches and "only 2 or 3 working synagogues," according to our guide.

Both countries are divided, some reaching for the future with others pulling it into the past. Israel is a place rooted in its history, but has embraced a future that gave way to a start-up nation of businesses and board appointments.  Modern Turks wrestle with their progress as well, more worried about whether their neighbors will quash it.

While countries can't move, people can.

France is in the midst of a record migration of Jews to Israel, who have had enough of their neighborhood and are getting out.  

“I love France, and this is my country, but I am disgusted now...In Israel there is an army that will protect us. Here, I can no longer see a future for my children," one French Jew told the New York Times before leaving home.

Homeland

The interactive map on the seatback in front of me is an education.  Flying to Israel from Istanbul the city names illuminate as we pass over or near them.

It is a history lesson, geography quiz and newscast: Allepo, Hommes, Damascus, Baghdad.  Tripoli looks so close to Beirut.  As you approach Tel Aviv the Bible comes alive, Beersheba, Nazareth, and then reminders of the wars, Aqaba, Suez.

Jerusalem is hopping at 11:30 on a Saturday night, old and young, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs walk past the Nike store, the World Cup blares from every restaurant.

Crowds of young people stare into televisions big and small watching France vs Honduras.

On the first day Yad Vashem is swarming with tourists.  The last time we were here the kids were too young to go.  Now they tell us about all they learned from their secular schools and how they didn't focus on the Jews.  "A lot of what Hitler wanted to do was about the purity of the Germans, killing the Jews was only part of it."

The soldiers who sit next to us with their Uzi's tilted across the table take on new meaning.  They are only 18 months older than my son who is disappointed about eating his hamburger without cheese, since we are at a Kosher restaurant.

The King David Hotel and the Old City don't disappoint, they look as we remember or as the postcards remind us.  It's hot in the market at Machane Yehuda, vendors screaming, a woman sneezing on the basket of cheeries fondled by every passerby.

The kids ask why the Falafel tastes so good, and the hummus?  There are no answers, like the mystery of New York bagels, I tell them.

You hear about the three young boys who were kidnapped from the settlements, but still the tourists shop, the markets open, the buses run, the flags fly.

 

More Than a Day at the Races

We were running late. 

The traffic from JFK was solid the whole way. Before getting to Belmont we had to find a Howard Johnsons in Queens, which housed our tickets.  But these golden tickets only got us through the front door, if we could reach it. 

Stewing in the back of a steamy cab we dug into the racing sheets.

“Hey dad, look, there’s a horse in the next race from Maryland,” he said.

“That’s a sign,” I told him.

I had prepared a day of teaching my son how to handicap based on facts, but it turned into a day of patience, luck, intuition and inevitably betting on losers.

Seven minutes to post time.

Looking out the cab window nothing but cars and people, the grandstand half a mile ahead on the other side of the track. 

“And look at this,” he said, “the horse’s name is Ben’s Cat.”

The blood drained from my face.  My hands sweaty. 

My son has a friend named Ben Catt.

“That’s our horse.”

We leapt from the car and ran.  Past the people in pastels, the broken bourbon bottles and cigar butts. 

“Dad, you run ahead, I can’t bet anyways.”

I pulled out my phone and with three minutes to go I could see the security team waving their wands over every whale belt, horse pin, and powder green hat.

My son and I had made a deal, we’d bet every race, ten bucks a horse.

“You need limits,” I told him.  “Never dig into your pocket for more money.”

I pull out the cash, sprint up the escalator to the window where I place my bet with a minute to post time, as Josh falls in behind me, the winning ticket in my hand.

“Did you bet the ten bucks?” he asked.

“I bet the whole thing,” I said, doing the calculations on what it would mean to our $100 if he won.

We settled in the back, and they were off.  

“So how much do we win?” he asked after the horses crossed the finish line.

“For coming in fourth?  Not much,” I told him.

Facebook is awash in endings, graduations, leaving home.  I don’t care what Webster says about commencements, they are not beginnings. For parents they are only endings.

But when our oldest was born we won the birthday lotto as the calendar gods made him miss the Kindergarten deadline.  So while many of his friends are high school graduates heading off to beach week, he is just a rising senior.

Under the gauze of his final year in our house, lots of things become "once in a lifetime" opportunities, including the possibility of a triple crown winner.

So we flew to New York, and managed the traffic and ran to the race and placed the bets, and survived the disappointing horses.  We cheered our hearts out for Chromey, as the locals call her. 

And we got stuck on the train platform for three hours and missed our flight home and made friends with some Arkansans and walked through Manhattan until we found a place to eat and watch the end of the Rangers game deep into double overtime.  And the next morning we were back at the airport and then home again 24 hours after we placed our initial bet on Ben’s Cat. 

We were wrong about the horses.  But right about the opportunity.