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.

Little Runaway

Jackson, our six year old, is going through an interesting new phase. After arguing with me (on no one topic in particular), he puts his head down and slumps pathetically into the office, where he finds a piece of paper and pencil and gets to work writing a letter. He then illustrates the letter with a picture that is meant to capture his emotional experience visually.

The one pictured here reads as follows:

"Im sorey theyt i Rohyolises your Rite I live in the Jogol BiY Jackson in im sore tate sremt at uow it MiY fot Biy Jackson" ("I'm sorry that I realize you're right. I live in the jungle. By Jackson. And I'm sorry that I screamed at you. It's my fault. By Jackson"

The picture shows Jackson walking away, complete with a hobo's roll on a stick -- an icon he must have picked up from a cartoon somewhere. There is a cloud directly over his head (and only his head) that is dropping big, heavy raindrops on him. There is a tear in his eye as he waves, frowning. The rest of us, including the family dog, Ally are sticking our tongues out, the spittle suggesting loud "Bronx cheers." (In another, similar picture, a bubble has me saying "Loser" as he walks away.) The sun shines down on what's left of our family, as the young runaway makes his way toward the jungle.

Privately, Jeanette and I laugh about the dramatic nature of our son's gesture. Of course, we don't let him see us laughing. He's expressing some pretty strong feelings here, and even though I do believe -- knowing him as well as I do -- that he's doing it mostly for effect, and in order to deflect attention away from the real issue at hand, i.e. whatever misdemeanor began the exchange, I do also feel he's telling us something real. In many ways Jackson is unique. There's no one else quite like him. I think sometimes he must observe us and how easily rule-following seems to come to us and wonder whether he may not, in fact, have another, much wilder family out there in a jungle somewhere, waiting to take him up their tree and embrace him in their waiting arms, legs and tails.

The Morning Pages

If you're a writer who's blocked, or an actor who hasn't auditioned for anything for a while (I've been both), then I highly recommend the book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. The last time I read the book, it resulted in an unpublished novel -- lost now, unfortunately -- which I really loved, called Porchlight's Travels. My writing career, such as it was, was de-railed by a whole host of realities, most of them happy ones, like marriage and career success and children. Now, years later, I have "picked up" the book again (in quotation marks because I picked it up virtually, by downloading it onto my Kindle). The book is full of great tidbits; I especially like all the inspirational quotations, perfect for tweets and FB status updates. But really the best, most useful aspect of the book is its simplest one, called "the morning pages." I hope I'm not infringing on any copyrights here; I really just want to sing Ms. Cameron's praises for putting down on paper something so obvious. If you're blocked (or even if you're not, eventually), make sure to sit down first thing in the morning, open up your journal and just write. Three pages, at least. And that's it. It's so simple, but I'll tell you something: It works. Those of you who have been tuning in to this blog have noticed it. I started reading the book at the beginning of this year, and my creative output has been, at the risk of overstating it, explosive. I'm coming up with ideas, writing every day, and going on auditions. (More on that later, as it develops.) Try it out if you don't believe me. Find the time in the morning, and see what happens. Then let me know.