This kid won an early haircut battle with his parents but didn’t realize—or hadn’t yet figured out—trims aren’t capitulation. The result was frazzled in an unintentionally unkempt way. The blue with ivory bowling shirt said album-cover chic and with the bass strapped over his shoulder, he might’ve pulled off a newsboy. That’s not easy. He stood high and towards the back so I couldn’t see his feet for the front-row sax players, but I warmed to him, so choose to believe his shoes were two-toned. All in all, pretty cool for high school.
My wife and I were at a dinner for our son and the rest of his graduating senior class. The event ambitiously had “Feast” in the title. A stretch, but the taco buffet was pretty good. There were quick speeches from the class president and other student officials, variously nervous and overly confident. A slide show wrapped it up. Each kid got 20 seconds of projected collage photo memories accompanied with a selected theme song, MLB-at-bat approach style. When it ended, that was it; lights on and done. I wasn’t alone looking around to see what’s next when soon-to-be-graduates started mingling with the crowd.
Before the slide show the upper school jazz band played a few songs, which I hope the cooler kids called “numbers.” Back in the early- to mid-1990s, my sister started that jazz band. She and a couple of other members of the proper upper-school orchestra identified something hep in one of the faculty and cajoled a sponsorship. The incunabular version had three or four members, but this latest iteration required tiered standing. I think there were 15 of them, none of whom knew of my sister’s, or more importantly my, part in getting them up there in front of people.
Trumpet players don’t arise ex nihilo. There’s a process. It’s loud and honky and lasts four to six months and in my sister’s case, took place in the bedroom right next to mine. Ours was an ancient house that had been converted to tiny apartments and back again so flow was cut off with unnecessary walls and doors popped up where no one sane would’ve put them. One of those doors was a glass pane number. People say, “French doors,” never “French door.” If a singular French door exists, that was what we had joining our rooms, curtained in and covered with a dresser on my side. That’s a long way of telling that the loud honks produced by a novice trumpet player were technically sins of the next room over, but because of pre-WWI architectural adventuring, a flimsy transparency away. If anyone suffered for those kids’ art, it was me.
That raggedy redheaded bassist was the first soloist. When he was just another member of the ensemble, he moved around. With attention centered on him he stiffened, but played well. I don’t know enough about playing bass to say whether what he played was complicated or not, but it impressed me. When he got to what was questionably the end of his part we held applause to be sure he wasn’t giving a final flourish after a beat pause. The band conductor jumped in and posed. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say he “dabbed” at the bassist, but the silly dab you see on social media is done arms pointing up and out with head down. He pointed at the soloist while grinning diabolically and nodding as he scanned the audience. We took his direction and clapped, but if he had left well enough alone, we would’ve applauded.
The next was a piano player. Then a sax. Seven or eight of them had a moment to shine and it’s jazz so you always have to give a breath in case what seems like the end is a pause. Every time the band director jumped in and picked off the applause with his devil dab. Nobody got their due. Nobody got a thrill. The player played, dab, clapping.
Many nontransparent walls away was the classroom where I first encountered Milton’s Areopagitica. The line that impressed 30-plus years ago and sticks with me still is the one about the “wayfaring Christian.” You have to have the knowledge of sin to do good. If the only option is to do the right thing, you aren’t really doing the right thing. I remember Mr. Hames hammering that into us. He cut a comical figure for a guy committed to teaching valuable truths. He did it though. I have a vivid memory of that lesson and neither his flapping jowls nor his effeminate drawl diminished the message.
Milton echoed Ockham and Duns Scotus and, I’m told, Aristotle. I come across the idea often that morality’s only served if there’s a choice to do otherwise. Over the years, I’ve tossed that idea around and seen how that idea applies otherwhere. You can’t be fearless and brave, for instance. I remember seeing parallels watching a documentary about competition hot pepper-eating, which isn’t astonishingly a real deal with a tour, sponsorships, and all the trappings. Contestants were sweating and forcing down upward ratcheting heat, but there was this one English guy eating the most Carolina-like peppers you can imagine as if they were watermelon. For whatever reason—genetic oddity, radioactive spider—he didn’t perceive spiciness. He won everything in name, but he wasn’t in the game. He didn’t overcome any challenge or rise to any occasion, so interest in competition moved to second place. Rightfully, no one cared about first anymore. When an outcome’s decided, there’s nothing to be proud of. There in the gym, we were directed to clap and those kids were robbed.
There are group of parents that got ahold of everybody’s email. Sponsorships must still be cajolable because they act as if they have the school’s blessing. They probably do. I don’t care to look into it. They’re mostly harmless, sending reminders of important dates and donut sale fundraisers, money to go somewhere I’ve never pinned down. One of those groups sent me a sign-up sheet to provide snacks for play rehearsals. These are teenagers with cars and the ability to plan for future events. I’m not proud that my 18-year-old can arrange for his own juice box because I take that developmental step for granted. But they won’t step back.
One of these officious groups is of and for the parents of senior class members. We got an email informing us that we’ll all be writing letters to our graduates. Our assignment is to have them completed and submitted by the senior breakfast where they’ll be given out on our behalf. You have to do it whether you want to or not because yours can’t be the only one whose bastard parents didn’t step up with an on-demand catharsis.
I’d been planning such a letter, unbidden, for months and fretted over the content, but in a sense that’s secondary. What matters is the spark. “I have something considered to say to you,” the existence of the letter says. I want it set down, etched as best we can. There’s more precision in the letter because its words and advice are not bent to serve a stage or phase in development. It’s not modulated to accommodate youth. These written words will be what they are when I give them what they are if you look back 30-plus years from now. Whatever my son’s becoming, a part of him is mature and I speak to that adult worthy of the respect at 18 I’d give him at 50. That’s what my letter means. The spark animates.
Who the hell do these busybodies think they are to impose themselves, act as intermediary between my wife and me and the man we’ve nurtured?
We’ll send pablum as assigned. My kid, and probably the rest, will see the breakfast letter for the cliché the officiant emailers preordained. Interception. Dab, clap.
He’ll see the real letter—our extracurricular letter—later, and understand.