it starts with someone singing from leonard bernstein's "the mass" in the rectory of st. paul's, where miracles happen.
it is my father's birthday today and we are avoiding tvs. i've taken the day off, to talk to some high school students. my old teacher asked, and he pulls no punches and i couldn't say no.
the bean and i go to kohl's, first. they're having a sale, and he needs shoes. no baby vans in stock, sadly, so he has to go the frat boy route and get baby new balances. woe.
anyway, there's a fire truck outside when we leave, idling in front of the grocery store and stocking up. the bean's all kinds of fascinated so we wander over and the driver puts him behind the wheel and i realize i am about four seconds away from crying so i mumble something like "thank you for your service" and run away before there is some sort of scene.
it's like that all day, really, a series of near misses.
carter asked me to come in and talk to his u.s. 2 kids, his current events class. juniors and seniors. when i was thinking about what i'd say i realized with a start that these kids were in fifth, sixth grade when everything tilted. they don't know the world any other way.
four years ago i was still grieving. i stood in front of a group of kids who looked just as young if more frightened, still, and talked about that grief. about the things i saw and the things i smelled and the eerie sight of soldiers on georgetown street corners with m-16s.
now it's five, and the grief becomes anger. so i talk to them, about how years of foreign policy failures led up to that day, about a defense and state department locked into a cold war framework they were unable to break free from, to see another way. that that very framework is why, iraq.
i talk about iraq and puppet governments and how we put hussein into power, about oil and politics and how many of those who sought to be martyrs were saudi.
someone brings up ishmael and isaiah and we talk about that, too, because why not? i talk about abu ghraib and gitmo and this, i say, this is america? is this your america because it is not mine.
someone says well of course you disagree with the president you are a democrat and i say listen, kid, black and white are passe and these days there's nothing on earth that isn't grayscale. listen kids, because i was where you are once and the trick is to question everything you believe because you either become more sure or you change your mind and i won't tell you which way i hope it turns out, but i will tell you i'll respect you a lot more if you can stand up to questioning. if you can defend what you say and what you think you know with something more than "daddy told me so."
this is your world to make, i say, your generation will inherit the country that is being made now so start asking those questions early and demand a proper inheritance. bobby k says history is a relentless master, i tell them. those who hold fast will be swept aside and we are seeing that, right now, in ideologies long dead and in policies overused and it's time to demand more, of our country, of our government. of each other.
and maybe it's silly and idealistic and stupid and maybe it was just an excuse for them not to finish the next chapter's reading. i don't know.
except at the one-act auditions a kid came up to me after and said maybe i had a point, about some things. he wasn't sure, and he still didn't like my selection of plays but maybe there was something to be said for digging deeper.
so who knows. maybe there's hope.
or maybe it's just kind of late on a day i wanted mostly to spend in bed. maybe it's somewhere in between. maybe somewhere a handful of ghosts born on a day i can't ever forget are loosening their hold, just a little, finding a more comfortably detached orbit.
hope springs.
happy sixtieth, old man.
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