“Kill them with kindness.”
“Did you get enough to eat?”
“Blow your nose, you’ll get more out of it.” (In response to people blowing the car horn.)
“You’re using up all the hot water.”
“Bless your heart.”
“Stop it. You’re gorgeous.”
“If you sneeze twice, it means you’ll be receiving a letter in the mail.” (Actually, this is a fact.)
“If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it.”
“Worrying isn’t going to change anything.”
“You can’t always get what you want” (with this Mom donning Mick Jagger accent)
“What Lola wants Lola gets.”
“I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”
“Be yourself.”
First Person: The Old Man and the Sea
May 12, 2013
For many of us, Mother’s Day is a time to reflect on all the unsung work fathers do with little thought to their needs, allergies and nap schedule. Hence, Mother’s Day is the ideal Father’s Day, and, as we know, the word “hence” doesn’t kid around.
It’s probably too late to return the Mother’s Day card and gift, so go ahead and hand it over to her. But it’s also not too late to plan your special Father’s Day gift.
Take a moment today to ask: what does your father deserve? Of course, he deserves many things, but pick just one. And none of these homemade cards or gifts. None of this spending quality time together, either.
Think material things. Think wonderfully expensive material things.
Think boat.
You know he wants one. You’ve seen him watching all those fishing shows—Deadliest Catch, Deadliest Tuna, Deadliest River Monster, Deadliest Perch. You saw his list of dream boat names—Comp Time, Second Mortgage, Bankruptcy II. Do you remember that night you caught him on his computer scanning 4,000 listings on Boat Trader? Remember how fast he shut down his computer after you busted him?
“A father isn’t a father until he has owned a boat.” Hemingway said that. Not Ernest, just some dude named Frank Hemingway. The point is your father will never be complete until he’s the captain of his ship—and can remember what day the recyclables go out.
Let me tell you a little story about a man who owned three boats, one bigger and more expensive than the next. His last boat—a 28-foot Cobalt, was harbored at Mears Marina in Eastport (now that man drives there, stands outside the locked fence, and gazes at his old empty slip—which, on the page, sounds a tad pathetic).
Many years ago in the Time Before College Tuitions, the man bought the white bow rider with a blue hull and Volvo inboard. Oh, she was yar. Oh, she hated starting. Oh, that first day at Mears, when the new boat owner did not secure her properly. Oh, the phone call two weeks later from the adjacent sailboat owner who presented an estimate of damages.
The man eventually took his boat out to sea. Above him, postcard blue Annapolis skies, and knifing around him, 52,000 sailboats, and below him, nine inches of water. Did he run aground a time or two on the mighty bay? That, he did. Did he wish he had taken a course on boating safety? He did.
But, by God, he was a boat owner—the captain of his ship and soul. Every day on the water was Freedom. Every day on the water was Father’s Day. Every day at the boat mechanic’s was Father’s Pay Day.
You know how this story ends.
His children got older, and family boating trips became forced-marched outings. The man went out on his boat less and less. He never truly got over his fear of approaching sailboats and propeller-ending shallows. He tried fishing, but there were no river monsters or tuna. One day, he sold his 28-foot Cobalt for THOUSANDS less than he paid for it, and this from a man who NEVER uses all caps.
Man and boat weren’t right for each other, or maybe their timing was just off.
So, today on Father’s Day, better to give your father a funny card or some WD-40.
That’s good on boats, I hear.
For all the boys who wouldn’t grow up
May 24, 2015
“Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”
Sometimes a person tells you something so profound, so come-to-Jesus, that you swirl it around in your brain like mouthwash.
Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who when not singing “What a long, strange trip it’s been,” also said, “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”
He was talking about (I think) stepping up to take care of our children, our communities, our earth.
He was talking about us, the kids. Us, the grown-ups. Us, the kids/grown-ups.
This past Monday the man quoting Garcia’s line to the graduates of University of Baltimore’s Law School was Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who was not, to my knowledge, a member of the Dead (a straw poll of family members attending the graduation believed but were not positive they voted for Mr. Frosh. It was a hot day in Baltimore, so forgive their civic memories).
Brian Frosh was speaking in the context of Freddie Gray when he laid Garcia on us; we can’t wait for the grown-ups to show up because, as pathetic as it may be, we’re the grown-ups. Or the kids. Or both.
Many of us don’t set the bar very high when it comes to graduation speakers. While their intentions and messages are sincere, the speeches make you want to scurry back into the womb and dream of a massive do-over. All this talk of finding your way, taking risk, making mistakes, learning from your mistakes, finding your passion, following your dreams, changing your dreams, changing your sheets—all that insufferable journeying, learning and changing. It was much easier being womb-based—working and living out of the home, so to speak.
But Frosh’s speech kept me upright and in the real world. And there was a law professor who had the grown-up job of eulogizing a law student who died in a car accident three weeks before graduation. There are, she said, eulogy credentials and resume credentials—which are more meaningful and important? The things we say about ourselves on our resumes or things said about us in eulogies?
(Have you read your resume lately? Has there ever been a piece of writing that says so very little about you? Has there ever been a more heartless, calculated—and necessary—document created in your name and by your own hand? The truth, of course, is all between the lines.)
In eulogizing their classmate who couldn’t be with them, this graduation speaker quoted not from Jerry Garcia but from J. M. Barrie, whose own strange trip led to “Peter Pan” and this:
“Pan, who and what art thou?” Hook cried huskily.
“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture. “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
At this point, dear grown-ups, this boy almost lost it, as I was reminded again how ceremony can be so grounding, spellbinding and communal. It takes growing up a bit to see and feel this.
All this past week