When I was around six years old, my grandfather died. His is the first funeral I can remember attending. He was a veteran of World War II, a man who was old enough not to go but enlisted anyway because doing so was right. I understand that he fought bravely and was awarded medals for doing just that. What I remember from his funeral, though, is the American flag draped over his casket. Even then I intuited the power of this symbol.
Today that image and the feelings of pride and wonder that it engendered remain seared in my mind and in my gut, for the feeling was visceral. I recall soldiers removing the flag and folding it carefully, ceremoniously, and presenting it to, I presume, my grandmother. And I recall thinking even as a six-year-old that serving one's country is supremely honorable and courageous. I thought then that I too ought to serve the United States of America as my grandfather had.
Of course time and experience have a way of changing even the best laid plans. I toyed with the idea of enlisting when I was in high school but a girlfriend and college got in the way. I couldn't abide the sacrifice or the commitment. I toyed with enlisting after I graduated college (minus the girlfriend), perhaps attempting to get into Officer Candidate School. Again, I declined to commit, beset with a sort of shiftless existential lassitude. Eventually I entered law school and again contemplated serving my country, this time as a potential member of the JAG Corps. Yet again I lacked the courage of my convictions and failed to live up to the example my grandfather set.
Despite my own failings, I remain to this day awed by those who have and had the courage to serve. Nearly every day I pass by Wood National Cemetery. Familiarity has not dulled the respect and appreciation I feel when I spy row upon row of white headstones marking the graves of those who have served. When I take my son to hockey practice at the Pettit Center I often see men and women from the different ROTC programs in Milwaukee testing their fitness and training. Each time I see them I am grateful they have the strength to follow the courage of their convictions and am proud of their commitment to one day serve this country; this despite the fact that they are strangers to me. And when I see an American flag up close, near enough see the texture of the fabric, I am transported to my grandfather's casket and the symbol draped over it which reminds me that the choice to serve is not made for status or heroism, but instead is made for duty and sacrifice. A choice made, like my grandfather's, because it is right. So I say to everyone who made or will make the choice to serve: thank you.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
A Boy Grows Up
My son is almost eleven; at one of those precarious ages where he straddles two phases in life. In his case, he sits astride childhood and adolescence. I witness the balance almost daily as he does things that are still firmly rooted in the experience of childhood - having an imaginary battle against some villain or foe with a squirt gun in the shower or casting spells gleaned from the Harry Potter books on our morning walks to school with a stick he picked up along the way. Simultaneously he moves toward independence, spurning my every attempt to help him with anything or vehemently insisting the clothes he picked, which perhaps match imperfectly "are fine, Dad."
These periods of transition, however slowly they proceed, are filled with poignance for me. They seem both fraught and filled with possibility, but represent, when completed, irrevocable change that will influence the path he ultimately takes in the world. Knowing they will end fills me with anticipatory nostalgia.
I am, for those who know me, deeply enamored of poetry. Perhaps this is unusual. I can trace it to a similar period of transition in my own life, when I was a freshman in college fully convinced my life would consist of a future in politics, starting with a political science major and being realized on completion of a law degree. However, my freshman year I took a seminar that exposed me to great works in the Western literary canon followed by a survey course in English literature. I fell in love with poetry in those two courses and switched majors to English, taking many courses focusing on or rife with poetry. I found poetic expression to be a powerful means of examining the world and the way we experience it.
But what does poetry have to do with my son's transition from childhood to adolescence? Quite a lot, I think. Many of the best poems and poets capture such periods of transition in ways that other forms of written expression do not. The best poetry penetrates the external realities of such periods and gets to the felt quality of them. In particular, I am thinking of an Emily Dickinson poem:
Being in the middle of my adult years, I appreciate the brief and fleeting nature of the transitions we experience as we mature. Do not get me wrong - I look forward to the maturation of my son. I can think of nothing finer than sitting down for a cup of coffee with him when he is a man or talking excitedly with him about college choices. These too will be wonderful. But still, there is nothing finer than hearing the silly shrill cries of the boy and his classmates as they play "lava monster" on the playground after school.
I think of the fleeting nature of these moments and am drawn to Dickinson's poem. In the past, I have thought "the banquet of abstemiousness" had something of a negative, parsimonious quality. Now I think I may have read it wrong. Instead, the poem refers to the necessary parsimony of life - these moments of transition are loaded with beauty and delight, but are precious few and always fleeting; hence, representing the moments requires exquisite precision, just the way seeing a squirt gun in the shower captures this fleeting moment in my son's life perfectly. To return to Dickinson, "hope is the the thing with feathers," joy is a ten-year-old boy with a squirt gun in the shower, and sorrow is not paying attention to either.
These periods of transition, however slowly they proceed, are filled with poignance for me. They seem both fraught and filled with possibility, but represent, when completed, irrevocable change that will influence the path he ultimately takes in the world. Knowing they will end fills me with anticipatory nostalgia.
I am, for those who know me, deeply enamored of poetry. Perhaps this is unusual. I can trace it to a similar period of transition in my own life, when I was a freshman in college fully convinced my life would consist of a future in politics, starting with a political science major and being realized on completion of a law degree. However, my freshman year I took a seminar that exposed me to great works in the Western literary canon followed by a survey course in English literature. I fell in love with poetry in those two courses and switched majors to English, taking many courses focusing on or rife with poetry. I found poetic expression to be a powerful means of examining the world and the way we experience it.
But what does poetry have to do with my son's transition from childhood to adolescence? Quite a lot, I think. Many of the best poems and poets capture such periods of transition in ways that other forms of written expression do not. The best poetry penetrates the external realities of such periods and gets to the felt quality of them. In particular, I am thinking of an Emily Dickinson poem:
Who never wanted,-- maddest joy
Remains to him unknown;
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine
Within its hope, though yet ungraspedThe idea expressed in this poem seems to grasp perfectly the exquisite states of such periods of transition. When my son passes firmly into adolescence he will not wholly abandon the wondrous and magical qualities of childhood, but they will be irrevocably changed. This is normal and necessary for healthy human development. Something will, however, be lost. Reality will, to a large extent, disenthrall the boy's soul. A razor and shaving cream will replace the squirt gun in the shower. As a parent this prospect is poignant and a bit sad.
Desire's perfect goal,
No nearer, but reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.
Being in the middle of my adult years, I appreciate the brief and fleeting nature of the transitions we experience as we mature. Do not get me wrong - I look forward to the maturation of my son. I can think of nothing finer than sitting down for a cup of coffee with him when he is a man or talking excitedly with him about college choices. These too will be wonderful. But still, there is nothing finer than hearing the silly shrill cries of the boy and his classmates as they play "lava monster" on the playground after school.
I think of the fleeting nature of these moments and am drawn to Dickinson's poem. In the past, I have thought "the banquet of abstemiousness" had something of a negative, parsimonious quality. Now I think I may have read it wrong. Instead, the poem refers to the necessary parsimony of life - these moments of transition are loaded with beauty and delight, but are precious few and always fleeting; hence, representing the moments requires exquisite precision, just the way seeing a squirt gun in the shower captures this fleeting moment in my son's life perfectly. To return to Dickinson, "hope is the the thing with feathers," joy is a ten-year-old boy with a squirt gun in the shower, and sorrow is not paying attention to either.
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