True Ancestor

50

Tomorrow I turn 50.

I have very little to say on the subject. I find myself, unexpectedly, stunned and sad.

But I have learned a few things.

Instead of some emotional treatise, I'll offer here 50 things I've learned during this blink of an eye that may be helpful to you. They're in no particular order -- just the order in which they occur to me. Some will be platitudes; that doesn't mean I haven't experienced them to be useful and true. Some will be controversial and may generate more than the usual share of whacko, hate-filled, anonymous comments: oh, well. To commence:

1. Eating peanut butter with a spoon is good for you. It's gotta be. Somehow.
2. Sandals are for people with pretty toes.
3. 99 per cent of all political argument is a waste of time.
4. The other 1 per cent is a draw.
5. Anyone who calls you a name with "-ist" at the end had a very unhappy childhood.
6. Cultivate humility: get married.
7. Cultivate patience: have kids.
8. Cultivate compassion: volunteer more.
9. Cultivate a sense of humor: take advice from your mother.
10. If light is both wave and particle, no point in dusting.
11. Baseless hatred is evil.
12. Hating the Cubs is not baseless.
13. Cultivate understanding: live for at least three months in a place where your native tongue is not the official language.
14. Write an ethical will. Good practice for making yourself understood.
15. Men: wear a tie as seldom as possible.
16. Women: re: pantyhose: see #15.
17. Your religion is healthy for you in direct and inverse proportion to the amount of time you spend trying to force that religion on other people.
18. Not forgiving is toxic. When in doubt -- and even if not -- forgive.
19. And if you can't forgive, make a voodoo doll of the person you can't forgive. Then give it little shoulder massages and micro-manicures. You won't believe the results.
20. You can't go home again, but you can refinance.
21. Your parents had no idea what they were doing. 
22. Neither do you.
23. The difference between parental calamity and parental calm: genetics, and #6 and 7 above.
24. Ballroom dancing looks corny and uptight, but it sure is fun.
25. The last piece of cake contains more calories than the rest of the cake combined.
26. Don't eat after 7PM. If you need calories, switch to alcohol.
27. There is an omnipotent and unforgiving presence that rules your life.
28. Fortunately, your mother-in-law lives in Arizona and doesn't know how to "friend" on Facebook.
29. A teenager is like a dog with a cell phone.
30. It's probably better they're "sexting" than smelling each others' butts.
31. "Don't ask, don't tell" is crappy policy in the White House or any house.
32. Stay in touch with old friends. They're the ones who know what you're like underneath.
33. Your loyalty to your college football team is deeply boring. Nobody cares.
34. If you don't spend as much time listening to your friends as talking, you ain't no friend.
35. It's good to fast all day, at least one day a year; if for no other reason than you realize how much more you eat than you need.
36. Freaking out about big birthdays is a waste of time.
37. Think of what you'd like people to say about you at your funeral.
38. Then pay someone to say it, because #37 is never gonna happen.
39. Figure out how much energy you're wasting in your home.
40. Then look at the rest of your life. Odds are, they're proportional
41. If you want to learn about yourself, and aren't afraid, ask a teenager who knows you well to imitate you.
42. Get help for the following afflictions: gout, self-loathing, kleptomania, sleep apnea, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or being a Yankee fan.
43. Never be afraid to start something new.
44. A good alias helps.
45. Everything is impermanent, except your extra weight and my neighbor's toupee.
46. If you're doing forgiveness right, you've forgiven before the deed.
47. Which means it's too late to forgive me for this list.
48. If you've read this far, all the advice in the world won't save you.
49. Please forgive me.
50. Good job. See how far you've come?

Happy Happy --

T.A.

On calling the President a Liar

It may be of no consequence that Representative Joe Wilson (R - SC) called President Obama a liar on national (no -- global) TV last night, during Obama's speech on health care. But my blood ran cold when he did.

Events like this indicate that we're approaching some kind of crossroads. Either that, or our political processes and our pomp are evolving before our eyes: as this Newsweek post points out, such interruptions would be considered child's play in Britain's House of Commons, where the Prime Minister has to face sometimes angry, confrontational questions in weekly sessions. Perhaps we're moving in this direction.

Or perhaps we're coming apart at the seams. Decorum exists for a reason: it projects confidence and stability at the helm of government, no matter how fractious and internecine the conflict behind closed doors. But when an elected Representative calls his own leader a liar, on television, in front of millions of viewers -- something leaders of both parties acknowledged was way out of bounds -- then the system seems in danger of cannibalizing itself.

I would have been astonished no matter who called the President a liar, and no matter who the president happened to be. But because Barack Obama is an African American man, in a room populated mostly by white men, it seemed to me that a little bit of mob mentality spilled over the decorous bounds inside of which presidential speeches have always been safely held. The fact that Joe Wilson hails from South Carolina added to the chill in my blood.

I don't consider rough politics out of bounds. I don't consider Barack Obama beyond reproach. I don't consider all Republicans bad people (I vote for them sometimes). But moments like this disturb me deeply. It makes me wonder anew whether the animus against Barack Obama is heightened because many cannot stomach the thought of a black man being president. And it reminds me that, when times get tough, civility is one of the first things out the window.

Two nights ago, I was at a ballgame with my son and my parents (see post below). We were two rows behind the visitors dugout. To our right, a man was hurling the most vile invective you could imagine at Eric Patterson of the Oakland A's; Patterson was perched on the top step of the dugout and could clearly hear what the man was saying. The man was white; Patterson is African American. No racial epithets were hurled, but everything else was. I wondered: what made it OK for one man to talk to another man that way? Did the fan purchase a civility pass with the price of his ticket? I also couldn't help wondering: did he really, really need to scream at a black man, and figure this was both a safe and impressive way to do it? (And then I wondered: could his girlfriend -- or the woman to whom he so referred -- really have been impressed?)

Behind us and to our left, two young women (who were white) yelled obscenities at the opposing team throughout the game. There were some breaks, during which they drank beer, but generally, it got worse as the game went on. Finally, when a member of the A's was retired and the woman right behind my 14-year-old-son yelled, "YEAH! SUCK IT, BITCH!", I turned to her and said, "Look: I'm only here for another inning or two. I'd love it if, just for that brief moment, you could spare my son having to have obscenities screamed in his ear. Would that be OK with you?"

She just glared at me. I felt that if she'd had a knife on her, she'd have stuck it in my neck right then and there. My son heard her turn to her friend and say, "Why should I give a #@!!* about this guy and his $%#&in' kid?"

I see signs all around me that people are pissed off and paranoid, self-righteous and self-absorbed. Two nights ago, I saw it in miniature, at a ballgame. Last night, I saw it broadcast to millions around the world. It may have always been this way, but I don't think so.

I'm not above it. I'm surrounded by it, and it scares me.

--T.A.

14

Probably my best times with Gabe occur when we're in the car. There's something about the "parallel play" aspect of it that makes it easier for him to actually enter into a conversation with his father (something that I remember dreading when I was 14). Gabe likes to roll the window down, and if I'm not paying attention, he'll stick his head out like a dog. He'll scroll through an astonishing repertoire of noises, whistles and imitations he can produce, almost like a parrot. He'll listen to the comedy channel on satellite radio. He'll make fun of me. And maybe, just maybe, he'll talk.  On the way to the dreadful White Sox-Oakland game yesterday, he was doing his homework, but on the way home, after dropping off my parents (who met us at the ballpark) we had nothing but time. And we talked.

Gabe was impressed by watching my aged and revered parents navigate the long march up the steps from our seats to the concourse, but he was saddened, too, by how hard it is for them to do these things that for him are very simple. He started asking questions about my family, about my dad's upbringing, about my dad's dad. I mentioned that I'd never met my paternal grandfather -- he died long before I was born -- but I told him what I knew of his qualities, including that he wasn't very emotionally expressive.

Gabe asked what that meant. I said that it meant he didn't really enjoy talking about his feelings, or expressing himself emotionally. Gabe said, "I'm like that, too," and then it struck me: he really is a Gottlieb.

Gabe said he'd never seen a picture of my dad "in his prime," and I said I would get the old photo albums and show him some shots. We have one old brochure from my father's summer camp; in it, there's a picture of my father, at about age 10, holding up a fish he has just caught. The resemblance to Gabe is astonishing (my dad, not the fish.)

One of the good things about being around extended family is that, when young, you're in closer and more regular contact with the stages of life. You see how people change. You see generations come and go. Just when you're getting used to being the center of the universe -- you're a first cousin once removed, or (God willing) an uncle. A huge fuss is made over the baby, and suddenly, you're not so cute and so young.

On the eve of high school, Gabe is a much more centered person than I was at that age (and probably than I am today). He does not get pressured into doing stupid things. He goes out of his way not to be hurtful, but he has a quick wit and a sharp tongue in reserve, and it seems as though his classmates respect him. He's a pretty good athlete, but he doesn't hang his self-esteem on that. He's very perceptive. He's thoughtful. He's funny as hell. And, for a 14-year-old, he's disciplined.

In some respects, I am already letting go of him. He is watching me for clues, but most of his guideposts are well beyond me, on the horizon: he is determined to be more competent, more even-keeled, more accomplished and more wealthy than he considers me to be. He doesn't say so; I just know.

Leaving the ballgame last night, he helped my father up the stairs, until my father insisted he could handle it himself. When we got outside the park, I asked for a wheelchair to take my dad from the gate to our car. About 100 yards short of the car, my dad got out of the wheelchair and walked the rest of the way. Gabe asked why my dad did that, as he was clearly exhausted.

I told Gabe that my dad has lived into his 90s because he is still engaged in the world, and because he is an optimist. He is still interested: in sports, in playing bridge, in the environment, in real estate; he still decries the idiocy of war, which deprived him of his only and dearly beloved sibling more than half a century ago. He wants to do as much as he can, every day, even if it's a little less than he could do the day before.

I also told Gabe that watching my dad has been a great lesson for me: you spend far more than half your life in physical decline -- and that's if you're lucky. If you let that get to you, the decline is (or feels) steeper, and the color leaches out of your life. My father has stayed as mentally and physically engaged in life as his mind and body have allowed. What a great thing for a son and grandson to be able to witness.

Gabe's dreams are changing; he may talk to his sisters and his mom about them; I'm not sure. He doesn't talk to me about them. That makes me a little sad, but I'm pretty sure I understand.

What I am sure of is that he is living proof of how love and evolution are somehow twinned. The love that created him, that surrounds him, that's within him, has made him a better human being than I can ever hope to be.

And that makes me happy.

--T.A.

A new respect for the German language -- on the 70th anniversary of the "Blitzkrieg"

Thanks to my indefatigable polymath of a sister, I survived an intense five-week course in the study of reading German for research purposes, with pride and some knowledge intact. This course was necessary a) because I'm required by the Divinity School to pass reading exams in French and German, and b) because some of the scholarship I want to be able to explore is written in German.

(Before we go further, I'll answer two of the questions I've gotten most often. One is, "Wie geht's?," or some other German greeting people like to hurl at me, and to which I might or might not be able to respond. This is because learning to read a language and learning to speak it are related but distinctly separate skills -- a little ice skating and skiing: the former is an orderly progression that picks up speed as you gain competence, the other is a combination of skill, experience, luck and mad improvisation.

The other questions I get asked a lot are, "Why don't you just find an English translation of the German? Or use translation software?" The answer is, you don't want to rely on anyone else's experience or perspective to understand something when you can at least try to understand it yourself. Besides, with most translation software, you'll wind up sounding like Borat.)

Even though I have a German last name, and Austrian-Jewish ancestry, I was never at all interested in learning German. In fact, I admit to having been a little repulsed by the sound of it. I associated spoken German with old newsreel footage of Hitler, in one of his apoplectic-xenophobic fits, spewing spittle and hatred and arousing mobs to murderous frenzy. German was his weapon: it was guttural and harsh, sinister and surgical, undeniably angry. Even Rilke or Goethe, read in German, sounded to me like the narration of someone bearing a grudge.

The truth is, German is an incredibly precise and pristine language, and a very beautifully constructed one. It isn't simple, but it can express a whole range of emotions and relationships in a few words, or in subtle shifts of tense, that English can't match. We have to prattle on for about three sentences about some things for which German needs perhaps a single word. English has become a universal language partly because, aside from the spelling, there isn't much to learn, really: we don't use the subjunctive much, we don't have too many irregular verbs, we don't have formal relationships that require the use of an archaic pronoun. We say what we mean, which, usually, isn't much, or isn't very complicated.

Not so in German. I get the feeling that Kant would not have been Kant without German. That Moses Mendelssohn wouldn't have been a sturdy bridge across which Judaism could begin to pass into modernity. That the Enlightenment would've been little more than a really good salon. And -- sadly -- that the word "Blitzkrieg" would never have menaced the modern world that Germany helped create.

Seventy years ago today, Germany marched into Poland. Even today, the sight of umlauts, or classic German script, or even just ß, the Eszett (a sort of double "s"), makes me start looking over my shoulder and checking my coat for sudden armbands. And even today, the sound of the language -- which never menaced me in my lifetime, nor any of my family, all of whom had been stateside for at least half a century by the time German tanks roared into Poland -- even today it makes my forehead break out in little beads of sweat.

But the German language (as my sister explains -- see the link above) has great insights into human nature embedded in it. Take the word Geist, for example. As Annie says:

"In some contexts, it will be translated into English as “spirit;” in others, as “mind” or “intellect.”  But in German, it encompasses both.  They are not two different things.  We need at least two words to approximate the German word — poorly.  What does that mean?  It means, I think, that in English we think of mind as a tool, mechanism, or process that assembles or manipulates parts of ideas, while spirit is sort of featureless and above all that.  Mind is a factory, if an advanced one; spirit is a mist.  But in German, you think with your spirit.  Ideas are not something you assemble, they’re something you apprehend."

German's wondrous insights -- its tenses and declensions, its insights into human nature -- are indicative of how thought and language are double-helixed together, and together shape minds. Like any great strength, it can be greatly misapplied.

My father, knowing I spend most of my days studying religion, or religious scholarship, likes to goad me by saying that religion is the cause of most of the world's suffering. I try to tell him that mankind is the cause of most of the world's suffering. Religion's just an instrument. It's the old "Guns don't kill people -- people kill people" argument, I suppose. (I spin it a different way to my dad: I tell him that blaming religion for the world's ills is like blaming Abner Doubleday for steroid use). The same idea can be applied to the German language. It helped fuel a kind of nationalism that came very close to destroying the world (certainly the Jewish world, but also all of Europe); but from the 17th the early 20th century, the German language itself helped seed the exponential growth in science, philosophy, poetry, opera, and literature.

The word Geist says it all: in German, you think with an entity that is both Spirit and Mind. When you see the German language in calligraphy, you can practically feel its beauty; sense its feeling/thinking spirit.

May the beauty of Geist, the word and the idea, help the German language, and the rest of us, leap clear of the depths toward which the powerful can propel us.

--T.A.

Scholarrhea

As I struggle through learning the technical aspects of reading German -- the third language I've studied in the past 12 months -- it occurs to me that I'm fast reaching that point where the brain becomes so crowded with information that it actually knows less than it did before the acquisition of all that data.

To know something means -- well, wait: before I tell you what the word "know" means, I have to tell you that I went through three stages in my mind while preparing to write the definition: First, I figured I know what it means, so I began to fashion my own definition.

Then, my scholarly etiquette kicked in, and I remembered that I am not a definitive source on the meaning of the verb "to know," so I began to stand up and reach for my Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Finally, I realized I have access to numerous online dictionaries, so I went to the one that was top of mind, and retrieved these definitions, among others:

1.        to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty.

2.	to have established or fixed in the mind or memory: to know a poem by heart; Do you know the way to the park from here?

3.	to be cognizant or aware of: I know it.

4.	be acquainted with (a thing, place, person, etc.), as by sight, experience, or report: to know the mayor.

5.	to understand from experience or attainment (usually fol. by how before an infinitive): to know how to make gingerbread.

6.	to be able to distinguish, as one from another: to know right from wrong.

7.	Archaic. to have sexual intercourse with.

In order to retrieve this info, I didn't need to know anything, other than how to perform a very basic search (knowing how to spell the word "dictionary" helped). Having performed that basic task, I was provided with a wealth of information. I don't have to know it. I merely have to know how to get at it.

French was easier for me, because I had studied it (three decades ago) and I was able to dust off some dim memories: verb conjugation learned in language labs and from large textbooks with cracked spins and notes from girls scribbled in the margins. German, though, with its case system and its detachable prefixes and suffixes, its penchant for stringing words together to form new words, meant that learning vocabulary was going to be virtually impossible for my aging brain.

However, for the reading exam at the University of Chicago Divinity School, I'm told I'll be allowed to use an online dictionary. What a bonanza! All I have to do is be able to copy a word from the test into the online dictionary, and it will provide me with not only the definition of the word itself, but (perhaps) some variations of the word that may have very different meanings. This means I don't really have to learn the vocabulary, so much as I have to learn the rules of the grammatical road.

Welcome to the new knowledge.

Now that the Internet has become the most ubiquitous, most omnipotent research tool of all time, scholars (just to name one field of endeavor) are able to dig up much more information with much less work; they can access rare documents in far-flung libraries, all the scholarly research on those documents, footnotes and all; they can more easily create new interpretations, new articles, new online journals, new conferences; in short, they can bury us under heaps of new information, if not knowledge, as they forge their careers from the privacy of their darkened offices, between classes, before office hours, during exam periods, or while still in their robe and slippers at home.

Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but maybe not. The historian Y. H. Yerushalmi noted this in Zakhor, his great book on Jewish history and Jewish memory. Yerushalmi wrote, "the notion that everything in the past is worth knowing 'for its own sake' is a mythology of modern historians." And yet, there's hope: "Western man's discovery of history is not a mere interest in the past, which always existed,  but a new awareness, a perception of a fluid temporal dimension from which nothing is exempt."

Perhaps nothing is exempt because everything is available. And by everything being available, its value, and its meaning, have been radically altered.

If I pursue a PhD in the History of Judaism, at my relatively advanced age, I'll have to contend with a quantum shift in the nature of knowledge: everything is available, so everything is up for grabs. Everything is accessible, which makes everything open to interpretation. Radical interpretation is becoming conventional. Truly knowing something, in an area as subjective as the humanities, is not nearly as valuable as interpreting something in a new way.

The result, which Yerushalmi laments in his book, is that the profusion of scholarly texts (especially in the area of Jewish history) raises everything up for inspection but may actually obscure meaning, instead of enhancing it. "Delving into increasingly circumscribed yet complex areas of study," Yerushalmi wrote, "the contemporary Jewish historian often accomplishes prodigies of scholarship even as, concomitantly, he is inable to remove himself thereby from the 'large' issues that only the whole can pose with any urgency -- the uniqueness of Jewish historical experience (if not in a metaphysical than at least in an emporical sense); what was once called the "mystery" of Jewish survival through the ages; the relationship between Jews and Judaism (is all of history "Jewish"?); the value of Jewish history itself, not for the scholar, but for the Jewish people."

This is one small corner of the academy that is suffering, I fear, from the Scholarrhea virus: it spreads the inability to truly digest knowledge; the virus is spread through profuse explusion of information, and it has so far resisted all attempts at cure or vaccination.

--T.A.

Buddhism and Judaism: More related thank you think (or, Moses and Buddha: Separated at Birth)?

Digging around in online bibliographies and the references in the backs of yellowing texts on comparative religion, I came upon a 40-year-old treasure (to me, anyway): Judaism and the Gentile Faiths, by Joseph P. Schultz. This is the kind of book that helps me understand not just "Comparative Religion" but "Religion": the meaning of the search for meaning, and how cross-fertilized our traditions, our spirits, and our religious ideas may really be.

The author takes a look at Judaism with a comparative lens, and finds intriguing connections -- not only theological, but possibly historical -- between Judaism and Eastern traditions, most notably Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Some fun facts:

• The flowering of classical traditions in Judaism and Confucianism happened contemporaneously -- in or around the 5th century BCE. Inscriptions on a synagogue built in Kaifeng in 1163 CE showed that Jews may have arrived there during the Han dynasty (as far back as 206 BCE). 
• In the first century CE, Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean basin. The ruling class developed a taste for the finer things, including silk, which helped develop the trade route between Europe and China. Jews may have migrated along this route, especially after the collapse of the Jewish State and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
• Arab geographers noted the presence of Jews in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). It was there, according to Schultz, not only with indigenous religions, but also "along with Islam, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity." 
• Judaism, and especially the Rabbinic tradition, includes some philosophical statements that are remarkably consistent with Eastern philosophy:
  
  • "Everything is in the hands of Heaven but the fear of Heaven" (Berakhot 33b) is very consistent with Confucianism, both in thought and in terminology.
  • The Confucian li (among other things, 'correct conduct') and Judaism's halakhah (law or way) have many striking similarities.
  • Confucius: "What you do not want done to yourself do not do to others." Hillel: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."
• Jewish contact with India may have cross-pollinated Vedanta with Kabbalah.
  
  • The articulation by Aaron of Starosselje (a disciple of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad) of the diversity of the world from the human vantage point, and the unity of the world from the Divine, are very similar to the Vedanta philosophy of Maya (illusion), and especially the school of Ramanuja, who held, according to Schultz, that "God can only be known through the medium of Scripture."
• Jewish and Buddhist ideas of death and rebirth bear some similarities, too. This may go back beyond Vedanta, even to similarities in the biographies of Moses and the Buddha: born to or raised by royal families, they took radical steps to break free from their physical and theological confinements -- Moses by plunging into the world, the Buddha by retreating from it -- or the other way around, depending on how you look at it. 

Of course, there's this one gigantic difference: "a central Buddhist thesis," says Schultz, is that "what we have been in life will condition our life after death," whereas in rabbinic Judaism "God's permanent and constant direction of human affairs is everywhere assumed." In other words, in Eastern traditions, reality as we know it does not presuppose our alienation from and attempts at reunion with an omniscient and personal Creator. But it does operate according to laws and dynamics that both Eastern and Western traditions recognize and adhere to.

So what, right?

In Judaism, history is part of the moment -- this moment, every moment. History is the unfolding of a redemption. Events are foretold in prophecy and in history, moving toward an ultimate in-gathering. In, say, Mahayana Buddhism, this moment is This Moment. Every moment simply is, and does not bear with it the lengthening, crushing train of historical precedent.

So . . . is morality grounded in history, and a reality established by God? Or is morality merely one strand of dharmakhaya -- the ultimate reality that underlies everything? Is history our struggle to return to proto-awareness, or to finally arrive at it? Did medieval Jewish philosophers, as Schultz says, "purchase God's purity at the expense of His living reality" . . . or did they preserve the essence of Judaism in a time of upheaval, assimilation and persecution?

Stay tuned.

--T.A.

16

Twenty years ago this weekend, I said goodbye to my first wife. We both cried; we were both relieved. She walked me the block and a half from our apartment to the Amtrak station in Springfield, Massachusetts. ('Here's your hat, what's your hurry?', was the feeling I had as she escorted me out of town.) I had one suitcase of belongings and about $200. Mere months from turning 30, I was broke, depressed, jobless and emasculated.

Twenty years on, I am none of those things. OK, maybe a little emasculated, but that comes with the territory.

The One True Wife and I celebrated 16 years of marriage last weekend. You can't pause long in life to congratulate one another, but a successful second marriage for each of us was worthy of some celebration. We'd (mostly) raised two daughters from the Wife's first marriage; had and (partly) raised a son who is a "joint production"; survived my joining her brothers in their real estate business, and a move from Denver back to Chicago and the sometimes smothering bosom of her family; weathered multiple and sometimes painful job changes on the part of the Wife, and my own perilous journey back to being a student; and through it all managed to remain close and even become closer.

Right now is a challenging and transitional time. The One True Wife has a fairly demanding part-time job; she has recently seen Oldest Daughter graduate college and begin adult life in another town; she has struggled with some health issues that have, thankfully, been merely painful but not life-threatening; we have both been busy and not terribly good at finding ways to surmount the routine and have fun.

But that's life, right?  It's all challenging, it's all transitional. All relationships are confrontations, collaborations against solipsism, alliances in combat, diplomatic relations between different planets. Marriages are the closest and most mystifying of all partnerships: the twinning of strangers, the merging of galaxies. The alchemical conversion of an emotional attachment into a business arrangement, or vice versa.

The Wife and I are rediscovering our individual interests and ambitions, and working to indulge and pursue those, while at the same time taking care of the house, and each other, and remembering to have fun. I remember standing outside the synagogue with my brother, the morning of our wedding, and telling him that I had no idea what I was doing.

I still don't. But I also have no regrets. When the train pulled out of Springfield, my life as an adult, and as a blessed human being, was just beginning.

--T.A.

20

Oldest Daughter (left) and Middle Daughter, preparing to see the Art Institute's new Modern wing.

Middle Daughter turns 20 today.She is one of those rare individuals whose child-self shines through her adult self. As a child, she was dreamy, distracted, funny, very loving, resolutely happy. As an adult, she is still all those things. To have known her for 17 years is to have watched her grow lovely translucent layers -- a sweet onion of a human being.

Middle Daughter is perceptive -- so perceptive, it seems, that it's sometimes painful to her. She sees her own foibles and everyone else's, too: she can forgive others very easily, but not herself. As a child of divorce, she learned to mediate between worlds before she even understood that that's what she was doing. Never one to be forced into taking sides, she simply interpreted one "side" to the other, moving between parental realms with a diplomat's tact and a ballerina's grace.

Middle Daughter has a restlessness, a hint of reckless abandon about her. You sense that at any moment, she could throw everything over and be living in a DP camp in Zimbabwe, giving tetanus shots and reading stories to refugee children. Or traveling across India with someone she just met. And even as you interpreted this seismic life-shift to curious friends and judgmental relatives, she'd suddenly be back in college, double-majoring in economics and social work, earning all A's and still managing to follow Phish or Dave Matthews across the country.

Last night the extended family came to our house to fete Middle Daughter. It was a scene of hilarity and mayhem. On a beautiful, breezy summer night, Middle Daughter was surrounded with love (and repeatedly startled by the whoosh-BOOM of Gabe's potato cannon firing instant hash-browns into the office park behind our back yard), partially hidden behind a brown-glass forest of beer bottles, as the 20-something cousins (with only a little help from the elders) polished off all the Leinenkugel the state of Wisconsin had brewed in the past week.

Sadly, my aged and revered parents, who spent the weekend with us, were unable to stay for the party. My mother did a gainer with a half-twist off the back step of our patio, landing firmly on her rump -- the only place on her with enough padding to forestall serious damage. A little shook up but fortunately not seriously hurt, she and the Old Man returned to my sister's city abode yesterday afternoon. This morning, I asked the Old Lady whether she shouldn't go see a doctor. "Well, I'm a little sore," she said, "but what are they gonna do: put my ass in a sling?" Her sense of humor has suffered no fractures. Nor, thank God, has any other part of her.

Middle Daughter was kind of enough to duck out of the festivities last night and call my mom, see how she was, and tell her she was missed at the party.

In toasting her, I told Middle Daughter that she and Oldest Daughter were tied for "second most important woman in my life." What else cold I say? The One True Wife gifted me not just with Gabe, but with two remarkable girls -- as different as could be, as close as any siblings -- two people who taught me to parent, called me on my bullshit, forgave me my moods, are remarkable big sisters, and who know how to party.

Middle Daughter is bursting with potential, intelligence, love, wit, wisdom. Middle Daughter is mercurial, whimsical, philosophical. Middle Daughter is 20. Time -- and so much else -- is on her side.

Happy birthday, dear Middle Daughter -- and many more.

--T.A.

When Father's Day Actually Means Something

Oldest Daughter and Gabe. Photo: Youngest Daughter. Driver: One True Wife.

I put no store (if you'll pardon the pun) by Hallmark holidays. But yesterday was the kind of Father's Day that really did remind me what an honor it is to be a father and a stepfather.

We convened for an early cup of coffee with dear friend and faithful reader Starry and members of her husband's family, who were in from various far-flung locations to spend time with the husband's father. The One True Wife and I were eager to catch up with Starry but we were soon folded into this large and friendly group, featuring Milo, one of the cutest children I've ever seen. And to be named after the hero of The Phantom Tollbooth! What a cool role model.

A few lazy and generally unproductive hours followed. I was given wonderfully stylish shirts by Oldest Daughter, who knows I never buy myself anything stylish, and who wished me a "Happy Not-Father's Day." Then my aged and revered parents came to spend part of the afternoon and have an early dinner. Oldest Niece came by, as well -- a gorgeous and hysterically funny young woman who will be attending a new business school program this Fall at the University of Tel Aviv.

I'm very lucky to be born into a wonderful family, and wound by matrimony into another: the One True Wife's entire clan, which lives within a 20-square-mile radius and loves nothing better than spending time together. If I need refuge from this cozy clannishness, I have my own family of five siblings, and parents who are wonderfully physically and mentally sound at their age (they just celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary). Part of what makes being a father special is being able to still be a son. And to be a son in front of one's children. And having fatherhood both magnified by and diminished to proper perspective in the web of two large families.

At dinner, we regaled each other with myth and legend from those families; Gabe read from a hilarious family biography he had written as part of a school project. To be able to see ourselves through his eyes revealed a lot -- mostly, how observant and articulate he can be when he's not watching TV.

After a delicious dinner of fish tacos and fruit salad, I drove the parents to rendez-vous with my sister #3, while the rest of the family did the dishes (my customary chore, from which I received a blessed reprieve). Then the children and I adjourned to the local driving range -- even Middle Daughter, who finds swinging clubs at round objects to be a very strange activity. Much hilarity ensued.

Then we stopped at Dairy Queen, and ended the evening (along with the Wife) at the fabulous basement theater of my sister-in-law and her husband, where we sat in electric massage chairs, ate ice cream and watched Slumdog Millionaire.

The world is a vast and remarkable place. And so is the Family.

--T.A.

Getting Beat

Gabe is now faster than me. His hands and feet are bigger than mine. We are both a little stunned by this development.

He is better than me at everything physical that we both love to do: running, throwing, hitting, imitating people; his upper braces are off and his lower braces come off next week. He's a good writer, too. For a school project, he was bluntly funny about the poor quality of teachers: "If you put all my teachers in a group and threw a rock in their direction," he wrote, "you'd probably hit a bad teacher."

At a little over 5 feet 4 inches, and still shy of his 14th birthday, he's taller than I was on the eve of my 16th birthday. He seems totally at ease in the world, with enough humor and self-deprecation to survive the sudden handsomeness that adolescence has bestowed, and despite the approaching kingship of being an 8th-grader in a middle school. He's a good athlete, but not a stellar one. A fine student, but not a competitive one. His ease extends in all directions.

I could be wrong about this ease of his. But I doubt it. It's just possible that he's a straightforward, confident kid, living his life. May he stay straightforward and confident, long after I'm gone.

 

We are both a little sad that I can't compete with him anymore; our athletic arcs intersected only briefly. But there is nothing as exhilarating as that sadness. Gabe is a kid who makes me glad just to be around to watch him grow up.

--T.A.