Danny at Thirty

As I washed my hands in the staff restroom of the large, suburban high school where I work as one of six assistant principals, I fixed on my graying mustache, and a memory came to me in a flash.  I was probably about eleven or twelve, and my mother asked if she could draw me.  My mother was an artist, so the request was not an unusual one; she seemed always to be sketching one of us -- my younger brother, our father, or myself.

She liked to do quick pencil sketches.  Her lines were rapid and many, which gave the pictures a kind of unique immediacy.  Of course, my language to describe her work back then was not quite so florid.  I probably thought her drawings were "cool" or "nice."

One night, as we sat in the living room of our dark-blue shingled split level, my mother sipping, I imagine, her ubiquitous gin and tonic, she came up with a new, peculiar idea.

"I'm going to draw you as I would imagine you'll look at age thirty," she proclaimed.

"Thirty?"  It seemed so distant to me.  That would make the year 1993.  Images of flying cars and robot butlers filled my head.

She had me sit in my father's big, mustard-colored easy chair, and she got to work.

"Get your giggles out," she commented, as I customarily got attacks of nervous laughter, set off by the way her eyes darted from my face to the paper, where her fingers became shockingly nimble, revealing a part of her life that fascinated me:  her artist's training.

I realize now that these modeling sessions were a primitive form of meditation for me, as it was necessary to level my breathing, and steady my gaze on a certain point.  Normally, I'd reach a kind of "no-mind" state, akin to being asleep with my eyes open.  On this occasion, however, I imagined what thirty would be like; would I be married?  To Debbie Francis, maybe?  She was my current fascination back then, with sandy blond hair and dimples that made me want to entertain her just to see them appear.  Did we have kids?  Were we rich?  Were we happy?

Ten minutes or so later, she stopped looking up from the paper, continuing to scribble.  "You can move," she said, her eyes still down.

When I started to make my way over to her, she held the sketchbook against her chest, hiding the picture.

"Oh no.  You'll need to wait till I'm done.  Go watch some T.V."

One of my mother's earliest sketches, "Daddy"
from her high school art class

I bounded down the short flight of stairs to the playroom, where my brother was watching something sports-related.  I'll place this memory on a Saturday afternoon, so let's say "Bowling for Dollars," or "ABC's Wide World of Sports."

"Okay," she called a few minutes later.  "Come on up here."

When I returned to her, she had on the self-critical scowl she always wore after completing a new piece of work.

"Well, here it is."

I took the sketchpad from her.  She'd titled it "Danny at 30."  It was my face, but she'd moved my hairline back a bit, given me some laugh lines at the temple-edges of my eyes, and a dark mustache.  I realized some years later that the picture looked a lot like a studio photo of my dad when he was around that age.

"Thirty," I repeated.

"What do you think?" she asked.

I didn't really know what to say, being as her reason for wanting to draw a picture of the Future Me was a mystery.

"It's nice."

She giggled at my response.

I wonder now, twenty-five years past the age she was trying to envision, and forty-five
years after the memory of her creation of "Danny at Thirty," if her motive had anything to do with the fact that a fierce bout with pancreatic cancer would prevent her from ever seeing me at that age.  She died in 1988, a few weeks shy of my 25th birthday, long before I started growing the mustache I now wear as a matter of course.

I wonder, too, making my way down the school hallway back to my office, where that picture is today.

Pre-Election Contemplation: Ruminating Over the U.S. Presidency

My earliest recollections of the world of politics and government are of the Watergate hearings.  They seemed to go on forever, day after day, right into my summer vacation.  My mother sat there, transfixed, smoking, folding laundry, staring at the drama as it unfolded on our Magnavox color TV in the wood paneled playroom.  I was ten years old at the time, just a little younger than my son Jackson is now.  I understood little of what I watched, but I do recall Senator Daniel Inouye, mostly because he had the same name as me, seemed authoritarian and in charge, with his deep voice and gavel, and because he had one arm, which fascinated me.  I also remember seeing Mr. Nixon and thinking he looked like a mean man trying to make faces that would make me think he was nice.  It makes me wonder what Jackson thinks of the candidates he's been seeing so much of during this crazed election summer.

I thought Jimmy Carter seemed like a nice, gentle man, and I could tell he made my parents happy; I knew they'd voted for him, and they were my parents so he must be good.

Ronald Reagan was president in what you could call my "formative years," from age 17 to 25.  Thesee were my most political years, as well, when I was very involved in what I saw as righteous/populist causes, such as divesting funds from South Africa as a way to combat apartheid and supporting the Sandinista regime, who were the champions of the poor in Nicaragua in my mind.

So in Reagan's face I saw the face of the enemy.  He was the actor brought in to play the role of the president by the corporate establishment.

I felt the same way about his Vice President and successor, who continued many of his policies and felt to me like a rich distant uncle who didn't share his wealth with anyone outside his immediate -- dare I say "nucular" -- family.  I could barely watch him speak.

As the son of liberal Democrats, I was happy when Bill Clinton got into the White House, despite the itchy suspicion that he was not far from being the same as some of the folks "across the aisle."

My visceral response to Bill back then in the 1990's was, quite honestly, "Slick."

Then came "W." who I found comical at first, then alarming.  He came to power along with Facebook and You Tube, and all of a sudden anyone could post video compilations of his myriad gaffes and "misspeeches" for all the world to see.  The word:  "Child" or maybe "Puppet," after I became aware of Dick Cheney and who was really running the country.

As I approached middle age in my late 30's and early 40's the world started changing rapidly.  9/11 happened and instilled terror like an injection into the American bloodstream where it flows to this day.  Then, at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Obama happened.  Despite the world-weary cynicism that often grabs hold of people my age, I got caught up in what Obama claimed he was all about:  HOPE.  I recalled countless conversations with the young men and women of color I had the great honor to work with as a teacher throughout the 90's that ended with their always steadfast declarations of "There will never be a black president.  Not in my lifetime."

Their lack of hope broke my heart and the hope I felt, and still feel, by the way, is about the fact that young people of  color, my own children included, can look at Mr. Obama and see themselves as a great leader -- maybe not of an entire nation -- and, more importantly, as a kind, intelligent, funny, loving and consistent man of substance.  I'll always be thankful to Barack Obama for the hope he's given so many previously hopeless people.

And now we have Mr. Trump, whose presence on the political stage gives me a more complex response.  Like many, I started out laughing, but my reaction slowly began to change.  I kept expecting someone to jump out and tell me I'd been "Punk'd."

That person has not yet materialized, and my reaction has moved ever closer toward dread.  On the other side of the fight for the presidency, we have Hillary Clinton.  I am now, in my 50's and heading into the downward slope of my time here, and I will vote for Mrs. Clinton because she is a Democrat and because she is NOT Mr. Trump.

My visceral response to her:  Relieved when she's quiet and contemplative, annoyed when she's loud, and "tough."  She is a politician.  Plain and simple.  For good or ill.

I wonder what my boys will remember about these people, and those yet to come, whose ascendance to power changes the world in which we all live.

Someday I'll ask them.

Written, obviously, shortly before the unthinkable happened...