There and Back Again

Because of the Rings of Power, we listened to the Hobbit audiobook. I am fortunate that my sons are in that brief moment of wonder when they can speak their dreams, and hobgoblins are real and not part of Emerson’s foolish consistency. My sons love the silly details of the story, the dwarves washing dishes, and the songs of Trolls about how to best season a hobbit. 

It was great to head back to the original text since the Industry now makes shows deep on footnotes. Marvel, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones have run out of their major characters and plots and are left with what feels like stray parts written on napkins.

We need more songs.

What is also great about the Hobbit is that the main character is a reluctant fifty-year-old with unused skills. This isn’t the X-Men with mutant teenagers nor Harry Potter with self absorb tweens. Rather this is about a guy who worries about the buttons on his coat or whether it is tea time. 

Our fifties can still be times of adventure, even if it feels like the buttons are tighter.

The difference is that we have already made it through the prologue. We have the wisdom of stories past, and while the demons ahead are new, the courage we face them with is tested.

After the Hobbit, David wants to read the Fellowship of the Ring himself. He is half the size of the ideal reader, and I tried to explain to him that one does not simply wander into Tolkien. But this is the journey he wants to start, the burden he wants to carry.

There is a long road ahead of him before he gets to his fifties. He will make his own songs. 

Metamorphosis

The World Cup is imminent, and the planet dreams. Without the certainty of actual results, the imagination can hope that this is the year that balls bounce off of the post the right way, that the crosses are clean, that goaltenders are walls, and that refs can see Argentine handballs. Hope is alive.

Once these men were boys and they must have dreamed as well. Certainly, they wouldn’t be here without all the work, the sprained ankles, the play in the rain, the camps, and the coaches; but they also needed the belief that it could happen, that they could wear the jersey. And more than likely their families dreamt that too.

My oldest son refused soccer, and so it was up to my David to try. He is an awkward child, the kind that is a little too much into Stephen King. He tips over when he runs, yet he runs slower than everybody else. He has a distinct lack of awareness that leads to wrong shoes on the wrong feet and shirts worn backwards.

I still had hopes for soccer, because the beauty of the sport is that it is a great place to hide. Soccer is the sport of the subjunctive, where things almost happen. You are almost on sides, you almost make the right pass. At the highest level, teams spend most of their time almost scoring until it seems, one accidentally does.

Unlike baseball where you can’t escape the batters box or the mound, or basketball where you actually have to catch and dribble, in soccer you can survive by just pretending that you are well-intentioned. Run around, be kind to your opponents, and tell jokes on the sidelines is a great way to go through life. On good days you might get orange slices.

David’s team was fine with him out there, which is the luxury of being particularly good. The school has an athletic narrative to it. At last year's graduation, speech after speech talked about their victories over Town School, a place equally obsessed. It isn’t that I think they shouldn’t celebrate their victories, life is short enough that you should celebrate every one you can. It is that I hoped that graduation would have higher themes like social justice, or surviving a pandemic. But the truth is that pandemics feel random and there is less nobility in making it through than in the world of sports where winners are deserving of hard work even if they don’t want to admit to the chance of bouncing balls.

David’s team was well beyond luck. It was a shock for me to see this group that when I previously watch them they were either hitting themselves with sticks or rummaging through Pokemon cards, turned into a German machine. They were suddenly taller and blonder than their opponents. The baby fat was gone, and they had lean muscles of gazelles or cheetahs depending upon the position. They crushed the first team so badly they had to take a couple of boys off the pitch, and with David out there it was if they were three down. Still they scored. They were faster and could see angles that the other kids couldn’t.

David sees a different kind of angle. As part of his speech therapy, he gets homework, and occasionally I test him on other subjects. Right now he is crushing fractions which is something his older brother hasn’t even started. In reading his decoding skills are also above grade level. He completely decoded the word “metamorphosis” on his own. He is a Messi around phonemes, except there aren't the crowds to cheer him on as he breaks through the tricky “ph” digraph in the middle of the word. One cheers reading silently as if it were tennis or golf.

Perhaps I should try them because he hated soccer. After a mound of occupational therapy, he is starting to get the awareness of which shoe goes on which foot, but he is also gaining awareness that he just isn’t that good at soccer. He knows he is different.

A question for fathers is how much of Pinocchio's Geppetto should they be. How much should they try to carve to make their boy ordinary? With speech and OT, I was definitely pushing and soccer seemed like the next step toward sanding off some of the weird bits. He just needs to kick the ball, and so I pleaded:

Kick the ball, and there are pizza parties or ice cream after games.

Kick the ball, and your classmates will think you are part of their team.

Kick the ball, and girls will find you much more attractive in High School.

Kick the ball, and during interviews, you can share how they kicked the ball as well.

Kick the ball, and be healthy.

Kick the ball, and grow stronger.

Kick the ball.

He still refused, and then became disruptive during practices. He had to make jokes, because if soccer mattered then he didn’t.

So we stopped.

The dreams of the World Cup had become of him just being on the pitch. Then that, too, faded.

Our children aren’t made of wood. David is wonderful in his messy brilliance. He dreams of kingdoms of werewolf spiders, and planets of multiple copies of David running around. He dreams of kings that die and Palaces of Crystal. (Which I should have pointed out is a soccer team). He makes up his own math problems and writes his own books. He braved sleep-away camp and summer of headgear. He is mostly successful in climbing trees, and after we teach him about ropes and harnesses that should improve.

He will find his group, and if he is like his father then perhaps he will play Dungeons and Dragons with them. He will listen to music that I won’t understand.

Because children aren’t the only ones that need to grow. I certainly need to learn from him and change. If only there was a word for that…

-Arthur

Clouds

When we left to drive to the San Francisco airport to head up to Four Winds Westward Ho, it was still dark. David had become nervous; the reality that the camp was going from website videos to actual tents was seeking in. My wife and I were frightened. David is a bright kid with a dark sense of humor, but his taking care of himself skills are not well honed.

Once aloft, above the bay, it was dawn. The clouds were so low that the tops of radio towers and mountains rose out of them. It was as if there were a forested archipelago floating in a pink sea. Our house was somewhere underneath, fading behind, and the warnings of life vests under seats or putting on your own mask before someone else ignored them.

I think of Four Winds like that moment. That David will remember the wonderful peaks and not so much the challenges underneath.

I know that it takes much to pull off these pink clouds. From large things like buses breaking down to small ones like the number of bandaids he came back with, there is no way the week was perfectly smooth. You do incredible work. Thank you.

I know that when David returns, he will be more self-sufficient; the number of clean underwear that came back made us realize that he needs to learn a daily rotation.

He will know more about the lyrics of the songs and the rigging of boats.

But it won’t be as magical as the first. He was memorized by the hypnotist and thrilled that he made soap and lip balm. I just hoped he used the latter.

I also hope his newly founded independence will last into the school year, though I want to apologize that airport security wasn’t the best place to practice them.

You do wonders.

I wanted to wish you the best as you prepare for the 95 anniversary. I can only imagine the generations coming back and talking about their peaks, their moments when they were so young, their parents equally nervous, and their time by the sea. 

I hope David joins them for the centennial and laughs about how he didn’t realize that pillows went into pillowcases.

Memory clouds. The future remains a dawn aloft.

Long hot summer. Not a drop of rain…

Our summer house in Woods Hole is old in every sense - the warped wooden floor, the uncomfortable mattresses, the district lack of many electric outlets. Perhaps this is on purpose because it forces you outside to take advantage of the wooden porch, the rolling lawn with perfect trees for climbing or hammocks, and the small beach next to a stone pier with sea life both rich and interesting enough that three different scientific research organizations a quarter of a mile away study it.

Or perhaps my family has been historically cheap. 

For a hundred and fifty years, we have clung to the place. One generation after another has stayed there. A lifetime is going from making sea castles on the beach to sitting in the large green Adirondack chairs and watching your grandchildren playing capture the flag where you did with a cocktail in your hand. 

A hundred and fifty years is a long time. Our time next to the small cool cove predates the iPhone, penicillin, and the forward pass. Abraham Lincoln had uttered the phrase "the mystic chords of memory" only a few years earlier than our arrival. 

And like any place for that long a time, not all of the memories are pleasant. There are, of course, minor accidents - a big wheel driven into a rose bush, the slip and slide taken from soft grass to the tennis court. 

But there are the larger ones. My grandfather had a heart attack in the kitchen when he was carrying in groceries, and that was it. The summer before, he was lifting rowboats out of the water, and now a bag with perhaps Eggo waffles, hamburger meat, and orange juice was too much. 

The nearby episcopal church has a few of our tombstones. And the portraits of the departed are strung through the house. They are placed up high on the wall and look down upon us. Each generation is less impressed with the next. 

We were ending our three-week stay, and it hadn't rained. The effect is like being a lobster - each day slightly more dehydrated than the last, each night another lump in the mattress - that you are being broiled unaware. Nostalgia is memory mixed with humidity.

I knew it was important that Louise got a break of a few days away. The universal opinion of in-laws is that the place is half mad. There is a wide world of vacations; why have a Sisyphus summer? She was back from Nantucket, and we had one last set of cousins to entertain. Our boys were exhausted, too, having taken classes from bird watching to archery (and thankfully not at the same time). 

I was on a phone call, and my jaw and my ear started to hurt. Minor aches are part of the scenery. With so many details, like both my sons and my father wanting me to troubleshoot their iPads, I wasn't really in a time where I could be sick. 

The disease thought otherwise. 

Summer tightened. 

That night I could hardly sleep with the pain. 

It was uncomfortable enough that I thought a dentist could give just a little something for the airplane the next day. The jaw was tight enough that he couldn't x-ray. A year-round resident, he gave what most do to tourists - well wishes and thanks for staying on the cape. The only thing missing was the t-shirt. 

I started having a hard time swallowing. And then it was speaking. 

My father called his great friend, Dr. Schindler, who said I needed medical treatment immediately. So Louise and I went off to get it. 

The medical system in America operates at two speeds fast and slow. Neither is much fun. There is a dullness of  the waiting in a room where Wheel of Fortune is being close captioned, and two car salesmen talk about their quotas. Children do get seen first, and if during the triage process they hear the words "sore throat," you will wait a long time. 

Fast medicine is fear. When I was finally admitted to a room, a twenty-ish man bounced in and said, "I am Matt, and I am a doctor" (in a few years, when the heavy eyes of E.R. work arrive, he won't need the second part). He immediately got someone very senior, who immediately sent me to cat scan, and the results were back. Quick. Quick Quick. 

The toggle between slow and fast is the difference between "sore throat" and "the swelling hasn't yet blocked his airway." Hope that you get to stick to slow. 

Fast medicine is the skill of avoiding downside scenarios. Not being able to breathe is one of those. Fast medicine is machines that beep and sirens that flash. Flood the system with some combination of antibiotics, steroids, and morphine since the two days when the lab results come back to find out what it might be are the two days you don't have. 

Fast medicine, to quote the movie "Jaws," is knowing when you need a bigger boat. The hospital I was at didn't have an E.N.T. in case of intubation, so I needed to be transferred to the bigger one at Hyannis. Speilberg's mythical shark was filmed only a few miles away. 

I arrived by ambulance in the middle of the night, and we waited gradually letting things creep back to slow. It took a few days of streaming Apple T.V., drinking from an iv, and sampling a rainbow of pills at the I.C.U. 

My extended family waited back at the summer house. And in between games of pickleball they speculated what I had ( maybe a wisdom tooth, Ludwig's something) with the same insight that they have when picking teams for the women's World Cup soccer pool or the lawn Olympics they play against each other. My mom and her sister looked after my boys. Life at the house still had a cool breeze.

There still isn't a clear diagnosis. Soft tissue infection is what is written. There is a whole round of tests ahead, and I will, for now, enjoy the leisurely pace of waiting rooms while trying to guess answers to Wheel of Fortune. 

I am grateful that my portrait is not up on the house just yet. That while my ancestors had much better facial hair, that I got the antibiotics. That my wife was my champion. That my boys are at a magical age where every tree can seem like a fortress, every cousin a hero. That not every conversation is about Star Wars. And mostly that those who look up to you matter way more than those that look down. 

When they are older, the boys will feel the pull to return to the place. Their children could play at the shore. The flickers of the past holding to their feet, like the dried summer grass of a month without rain.

Chapel Note

I went by the front of Grace, and there on the door was the word David. I first thought that this must have been for Mr. Forbes, and how remarkable he must have been to have founded such a place, but when I looked at the rest of the names on the door, I realized that it was a happy coincidence just like how the street in front of the western entrance shares a name with the current head.

But since my own David believes that world is full of magic, I like to believe that there is some purpose where the stern of the school has Forbes in its wake, and the bow (or nave) points towards Jones. That we were given long ago a strong tiller to point us forward and also a horizon to achieve.

I know that Kate, among others, are working towards a portrait of a graduate as a way of orienting the school. For me, at the center is this duality of progress and tradition. The school is like its latest addition, the learning commons, a modern touch that promotes the best of an older architecture. It reminded me of the glass pyramid in front the Louvre or for that matter putting a bridge across a golden gate, where if done well we could put new context while keeping immortal beauty.

I know that there is talk about whether you need to raise pointy kids or well rounded, and perhaps by the time Edward is in eighth grade there will be other polygons to aspire to. But what I hope the school keeps is the wonderful, Episcopal values that Burns talked about at chapel today. Honoring those behind the scenes and raising up a life of charitable service is a much needed philosophy in a world that has so many sharp edges.

The truth is that there are going to be so many different kinds of Cathedral graduates. 

Some are going to be financially successful. Some aren’t.

Some will make varsity as a sophomore. Some will try to get out exercise by taking theatre.

Some will paint. More than most places, some will sing.

But what I hope is that boys realize is that while the world is so much bigger than them, that they give back to make it a better place. That they were given a wonderful past and that they owe others a wonderful future.

Thanks so much for a great chapel this morning.

Keep pointing us towards that horizon.

The Pandemic Begins

With my boys at 5 and 6 I am spending quite a bit of time with them these days. The youngest, David, has declared his new favorite superhero is called Naked Flash, and he runs around in the nude all day long while abandoning the sensible pajamas everyone else in the world is wearing. Naked Flash has a secret identity, called James and loves the movie, Cats. Naked Flash has no interest in learning the letters of the alphabet or shapes. Naked Flash seems to immune to most bribes except cookies, which I have explained might not help him be the kind of naked that people think is heroic. Naked Flash is thinking about adding the power of invisibility.

Naked Flash is very much do for a haircut, but Naked Flash’s mom is very worried about my skills with a new set of clippers even though I have watched two YouTube videos on the subject.

It has gotten to the point where she accidentally tried to schedule a zoom meeting with me since we were on different floors. Naked Flash was not invited to the meeting, and we have tried to explain to him that really Naked Fash should not show up in any of our zoom meetings. In particular Cathedral now has zoom chapel services, and even though he is as god intended him to be that there is only so much showing that should accompany telling.

Naked Flash’s brother, Edward, has decided to spend the time working on his evil genius skills. His role model is either Lex Luther or Braianc and during our nightly reads is very disapponted that Superman always seems to win. The best I can do is to explain to him that if you want to grow up to be an evil genius you really have to study. Evil underachievers can never build secret volcano hideouts nor are they rays going be deadly but just kind of annoying like when Naked Flash decides to sing Mr. Mistoffelees instead of going to bed.

So my personal Lex Luthor has taken to his kindergarten studies and is actively working on math, mindfulness, and sight words. The school has been fantastic in how it has been able to rally over tough times. Today the last word Edward was given after “tug” was “chug”, which perhaps is hitting the parent community a bit much these days.

I do hope all are managing the closures well and that there is the occasional bit of magic in all of the madness.

Sometimes

Our son, David, said that yesterday was his happiest day ever because he went to two different schools. In the morning at preschool he mashed potatoes for his preschool’s Thanksgiving feast that happens today, and in the afternoon he went for his screening at the Cathedral school.

Those screenings haven’t historically gone well for our family. Our oldest has a deep spidey sense that he was being examined and when he left he was quiet for most of the morning. As for mine, I cried when Mark Gamble slammed my fingers and, as legend has it, never recovered. During the screenings the parents wait the same way that fathers did years ago for childbirths and make whatever nervous conversations they can about happier places like summer camps and spas. Meanwhile their kids are being asked to stand on one leg, which I am convinced is a better measure of sobriety than whether a boy will be able to handle 8th grade algebra. It is a long hour and a half.

But David, much like San Francisco weather, has only two states - happy or tired. He thought his time at Cathedral was fantastic and loved the legos and the carpet time. After we took the bus home he wanted to play Cathedral in the living room. In particular he wanted to play what he called “Mr. Burns and Mr. Wilkes” where Mr. Burns was in charge of everything and then would have to battle Mr. Wilkes. Perhaps departing from his experience, Mr. Burns had fire power and Mr. Wilkes had earth power and I wished I asked him what Mrs. Jeurgens could do. Whatever David’s version of the school lacked in accuracy, I do believe it had a keen Irish social satire sense of the red team vs. the gold.

This morning he woke up and wanted to go back to Cathedral since it has the best legos in the world. We tried to explain that he has a Thanksgiving feast to go to with all his friends. That he has much to be thankful for and the mash potatoes were going to be delicious.

He still insisted about going to Cathedral.

Finally his brother stepped in to soothe him. He told David, “Cathedral isn’t always great. Sometimes you have to learn things."