It was nine o'clock by the time we got home--only six o'clock by our body clocks, but the end of a long day of travel and a long week of...everything. The boys crawled into their PJs and climbed into bed. Thing 2, in his lower bunk, ecstatically embraced all of his stuffed animals and began arranging them around his bed, making sure each one had a blanket and a pillow. Thing 1, up above, just cried. Between tears, he said, "I loved it so much, and it's hard to say goodbye."

When I was ten, I was in a play at our local summer-stock theater, up in the Berkshires (Massachusetts). I had done class plays before, but never anything this serious, this professional. It was a wonderful and overwhelming experience, and when it was all over, after closing night and the final cast party, I lay in my bed and thought about everything I had just been through, and I cried myself to sleep. Because it was so hard to say goodbye.

I look back on myself, and I watch my son cry himself to sleep, and I envy that kind of passionate attachment--that commitment to a person or a place or a thing that you welcome and let in and experience so openly and completely that it hurts you to disengage from it. I envy that...because I don't find myself very capable of it anymore. There are too many walls, too many bad experiences, too much caution and judgment. All well earned, I'm sure, and all perfectly natural. It's hard to be that open through your entire life, and keep your membranes (real and figurative) that transparent and permeable. It would just wreck us. We learn to keep our guard up.

Well...some of us do. My friend Thor was one of the exceptions. Thor was memorialized by friends and family in Washington, DC, last weekend. I had hoped to be there, but I was already scheduled to work in Hawaii that week, and had built a family vacation around my required time there. The logistics became impossible. But I visited his memorial website, once again, and scrolled through some of the pictures uploaded there. Between that website and one on Facebook, there are hundreds of pictures of him--hundreds--with an enormous cast of characters. Always smiling, always exuberant. And there are hundreds of testimonials--hundreds--some short, some long--some from the east, some from the west, some from the north, the south, Kosovo, Afghanistan....

Thor held on tight, and people held on tight to him. And the letting go has been very difficult.

Some friends have sent me photos from the weekend. I see faces of old friends, some hidden behind gray hair, or no hair, or a few distinguished wrinkles. Everyone has sad smiles--middle-aged smiles. "Here we are, together," they say, "after all these years. But one of us is missing. And we know he's just the first."

Promises were made, I'm sure: we'll keep in touch; we won't let each other slip away. And maybe we won't, and maybe we will. A year can go by the way days went by when we first knew each other.

Maybe that's why my son can cry himself to sleep after a week in paradise, seeing and hearing and tasting and experiencing brand new and exciting things. Because a week, for him, is still Serious Time. A summer can be a whole, separate life.

Whereas, for me, summer comes, and I say, "it was hot last week, wasn't it?" And then it's fall.

I'm home now, and tired. The afternoon sun is streaming through the windows. The door bursts open and voices erupt from the garage. My boys are home from school.

Keep the door open. Batter my heart.

Can We?

Young Mike is not as young as he used to be. He's pushing 30. He may have even hit that decade marker already--I don't know. When he came to my company, it was either his first or his second Real Job after college. He started as an editorial assistant and grew with the company, finally snagging the job he had always wanted, as Art Director. Management didn't come easily to him, even though he wanted it. He was, after all, young--and not in the way people have always been young.

Young is a brand in itself now. It's almost a profession. It comes with certain signs and signifiers that are hard to get rid of. Young today is Simpsons young--Daily Show young. There is an entire and all-encompassing culture of snarkiness and cynicism and that was mother's milk to him. Ironic detachment wasn't just a way of dealing with the world; it was, and is, the way. And that makes it difficult to move from labor to management--from wage slave to motivator and leader. He has had to learn on the job, and he has grown up nicely. But he's still Young Mike, and he's still pretty snarky and cynical and ironic. He may, now, be willing to move beyond that point when he has to accomplish something at work, but it's still his opening position and, clearly, where he lives most comfortably.

And yet...

And yet I hear that Young Mike is campaigning actively for Barack Obama. I moved away from the Home Office over a year ago, so I don't know what goes on, day to day. But I hear things. And I heard that Young Mike was in it to win it--that he was giving up his time and energy for the campaign, though in what ways and to what extent, I don't know. What I do know is that he is not shy about it. His "away from the desk" message on AOL Instant Messenger is "Yes We Can."

There's been a lot of talk about how Obama could win not only the nomination but the presidency if he can tap into the untapped energy of The Disenfranchised Young. He's doing it already, and they may ride him all the way to the White House. But I wonder how long a President Obama will want The Young in his car. Next February, after the inaugural balls are over and the hard work begins, does Obama say to his supporters, in essence, "Thanks for the help; we'll take it from here"? Or does he say to them, "It's just beginning. Now yes we can has to become yes we will. Now you need to keep the pressure on Congress, and on business, and say yes you'd damn well better. Because I can't do it without you"?

After 9/11/01, we were ready to be asked for a sacrifice. We looked to our president and waited for him to call upon us. And he said, "Go shopping." And, sadly, we complied, and settled down, and forgot, for the most part, how we had felt on that day after The Day.

People are comparing Obama to Kennedy--mostly because of youth and charisma. But I wonder if the comparison will continue. I wonder if a President Obama will be willing to challenge the cynicism and solipsisim and lazy selfishness of us all, and say (in his own idiom), "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Because it's time. And there is much to be done. And we've simply got to stop thinking that there's somebody else whose job it is to do it.

Funny, He Doesn't Look Manchurian

Fasten your seat belts, children. It's going to be a bumpy ride from now till election day. The craziness begins:

Barack Obama is the new man, of course. His mixed race is a symbol of that....But maybe it's not so simple....I don't know how Barack Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later,(mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black communist intellectual.

Oh, just go read it. It gets battier and scarier, the deeper into it you read.

Etymology Can Be Fun!

Who says philology and large breasts can't co-exist peacefully?



Many thanks to Living in Syn, who really needs to get out more.

Love: Prove It!

Dedicated as we are to the pursuit of knowledge through rigorous, scientific testing (especially if we, ourselves, don't have to perform said testing), we are proud to present (several days late, but with a really sweet card):

LOVE IN THE LABORATORY

Herewith, a short sample:

HYPOTHESIS #1. “All we need is love.”

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We chose an experimental male subject that had been engaged in a long-term, healthy, loving relationship for many years. The subject was removed from his native environment, stripped naked, and dropped onto a barren patch of Arctic tundra without food, protection from the elements, or means of communication. The subject was afforded only ‘love’, in the form of a parcel of romantic letters written by his sweetheart.