Having never
been a parent before, there were quite a few surprises in the early years of
raising three boys. Removing an overflowing diaper and a poop-smeared onesy was
a doozy. There were a few times I decided to cut the onesy off with a scissor
and peel it off because I knew, from prior experience, my son could wind up
with mustard colored crap all up his back and in his hair. How needy kids could
be in a restaurant was another rather interesting surprise. We learned about
the child’s penchant to want to do, or say, the same thing over and over and
over again. My God! Luckily my kids never got stuck on one book, which apparently
happens fairly often. They did however have their routines. Heading North on Interstate
87 for our annual Adirondacks Vacation, we would always stop at the same
Wendy’s just north of Albany in Clifton Park. We always, if it’s open, stop at
Donnelly’s Ice Cream, just northwest of Saranac Lake on County Road 86. And once
we got to the house, EVERY day, EVERY day, the boys would want to pile into the
row boat or a flotilla of kayaks and canoes, and paddle to the dam.
The dam was
¾ of a mile away, and there really wasn’t much to it, if you were an adult. If
you were a 3 or 4 year old boy, the concrete structure, the water rushing over
the top and crashing on the rocks and sticks 15 feet below, was impressive. It
was my idea to go to the dam, the first time. Then it was the boys’ idea to go
to the dam the next two hundred and eleven times. We would row over, paddling
around Nick’s Island, (my boys took to naming the islands around the house
after themselves) tie the boats up, climb onto the clean-lined concrete
structure, throw sticks into the water to watch them float down the waterfall,
to go careening down amidst the spray and onto wet rocks below. The first few
trips to the dam, Kira and I would hover over our boys, hanging onto a collar
or hand to make sure they didn’t go the same route as the sticks. But as they
got older, we relaxed. Over the years, I started to wonder, with each trip to
the dam, do my boys not desire novelty? Why don’t they want to do something
NEW? As I rub my eyes, exasperated with the next day’s request, my inner voice
is screaming, “Jesus Christ, another trip to the dam?” Now of course I smile
and would give anything to go back there and take one more trip to the dam with
those little boys.
When the
boys were all under 6 years old, we started going on an annual camping trip
with our friends, The Boyles. The first trip was such a hoot, it became an
annual trip to Hickory Run State Park in the Pocono “Mountains” of Pennsylvania.
One of the highlights of raising our boys, these annual camping trips, when the
boys were in their single digits to early teens, out in the fresh air, roaming
the campground, discovering streams and making little wooden rafts, seemingly
away from the watchful eyes of their parents, was worth the effort. Like our
Adirondacks trips, the camping trip had its patterns and traditions. Every year
we’d book the entire cul-de-sac so that there were no other campers near us.
Elaine Boyle had found a secluded area, shaped like a fish hook that held only
6 campsites. The spot was far from the teeming citronella and Marlboro-infused
masses.
Our meals were
convenient, tasty, and we had plenty of good beer. Often we’d bring chili,
stew, something that could just be put on the campfire, and of course the
staples, hot dogs, hamburgers and steak. After dinner, we’d sit around the fire
and play games and talk. Every camping trip, that first Saturday afternoon, we’d
convoy the cars over to the Boulder Field, this cool geological anomaly, “placed”
there by a massive glacier, some 12,000 years ago. Does it seem like everything
is caused by glaciers or is it just me?
We would hike, hopping boulder to boulder, under a relentless July sun, a
half mile across the Boulder Field and back. The kids always finished faster
than the adults, they’re more nimble and not worried about turning an ankle or
breaking a leg.
After the
Boulder Field, we’d rest, hydrate, and drive the snake of family roadsters to another
trail head. We’d hike in about a mile to a very cold pool of water that you
could swim in, for about 4 seconds. The selling feature of the swimming hole
was not the swimming but the cliff diving, as there were multiple areas in this
ravine where you could jump into the ancient Appalachian pool. Our boys started
on the smaller 7 foot cliff, and aspired to jump off the higher ones. The pool
was a natural amphitheater, and people from all around would come to jump off
the various cliffs. There were always some locals who were really good and
fearless and could do all manner of tricks, flipping, somersaulting, twisting,
and landing, whoosh, in the pool. If these guys put a hat out like the
breakdancers in the city in the 80’s and 90’s, they would have made a fortune. Every
year after watching the show, and jumping off successively higher cliffs, the
boys would swear, “Next year I’m jumping off the highest cliff.”
By the fifth
or sixth year, my desire for novelty was beginning to surface. The trip was always fun but the Bill Murray/Groundhog
Day thing was driving me out of my freaking mind. Driving to the Boulder Field
again, jumping from boulder to boulder in the hot sun, I’m thinking, Is this the fifth or sixth year we’ve done
this? Next year we need to do something new. Let’s go to Acadia National
Park in Maine? Then we go to the waterfall, again. And we’re traipsing down
the trail and I’m thinking, Jesus Christ,
aren’t our kids getting bored doing the same thing every summer?
That night,
our final night at Hickory Run, we’re relaxing around the camp fire, and I broach
the subject, “Next year we should try something new. Let’s go to Acadia
National Park up in Maine.” Lisa Quilty
says, “Yeh, that might be fun. Let’s find some new adventures.” And then the kids, looking as if I suggested
putting down our perfectly healthy dog, chime in. Nick, in an adolescent’s
sing-song voice, “We HAVE to come back to Hickory Run. I mean, we ALWAYS go to
the Boulder Field.”
Brian his
echo, “Yeh, we do this every summer. We have to hike to the waterfall and jump
off the cliffs.”
Declan, “We
HAVE to come back to Hickory Run to check on our camping spot and check for our
initials in the tree, and hike to our stream, and float things over the
waterfall.”
So I
surmised that a new camping spot was a bad idea…
Sadly, the
tradition of our Hickory Run Camping trip came to an end, not because the kids
got bored but because our beloved friend Elaine Boyle, the driving force behind
so much, but especially of our camping trip, passed away suddenly a few years
ago.
Fast forward
a few years….The Spinner family had a blast during Nick’s college search. We
made adventures of each campus visit. We started at University of Rhode Island
during early summer, and we hit New Hampshire, Maryland, Delaware, Penn State…
over the next few months. We started with a, “One Day’s Drive Rule.” Because
there are so many great schools around here, the rule was, we had to be able to
drive it in one day. Well Nick was pretty much settled on a big school and was fairly excited about
some, Delaware, New Hampshire seemed like nice options to him but he wasn’t
gaga over any of them. So when he got into Michigan State and Indiana, he
asked, “Dad, I guess I could see myself going to Delaware, or New Hampshire,
but I’m not feeling it just yet. I got into Michigan State and Indiana. You
said if I got in, we could go visit them. So?”
Nick and I
plan a three day trip to Michigan State in East Lansing, then we’ll cruise over
to Indiana University in Bloomington, before heading home. Early on day two we
are pulling off the highway in East Lansing, I’m getting really excited for
Nick but also for me. Hey, I’ve never been to Michigan State either, a place I
had only heard about on TV and in college football/basketball lore!
As you are heading
into the Midwest, an interesting thing happens to the radio. Right around
western Pennsylvania, Jesus and Blake Shelton take over the dial. Every time I hit the scan, we heard twangin’
songs about beer and trucks and a whole lot of Jesus talk. So I told Nick to
hook up the Iphone to the car radio. I was expecting a Rap vs. Rock battle but Nick
says, “You can choose Dad, I actually like some of your music.” I decide this
should be a teaching moment, to expose him to more cool music. Based on the
fact that he likes Tom Petty, and The Beatles, and that the rolling plains of
the Midwest are whizzing past I say, “Pull up some John Mellencamp, I bet
you’ll like him.” So we hear “Pink Houses” and “Small Town.” As we’re pulling
into East Lansing, you can start to see some of the campus buildings, I hear
the beginnings of a song called, “Key West Intermezzo.” That probably doesn’t mean
much to most of you, some of you will know it, especially by the chorus where
Mellencamp says,
“I saw you
first,
I’m the
first one tonight.
I saw you
first
Don’t that
give me the right
To move
around in your heart
Everyone was
lookin’
But I saw
you first”
This is one
of those songs that tugs at my heartstrings. When Nick was a baby, I would play
music and dance with him in our living room. There were a few tunes that would
get him animated and this was one of them. Must have been the tempo, but for me,
it was the words. It’s a romantic tune about Mellencamp and a girl but in the
ways of music and meaning, I had made the song my own. For me, the song was
connected to Nick’s birth.
As Nick’s
due date neared, Kira and I had discussions about my role in the birthing
process. There’s a bit of old-school in me so I said, “My father wasn’t in the delivery
room when I was born. Christ, he was in a bar waiting for the phone call. And I
turned out okay.” Kira was adamant, “I’m going to need you there. I want you
there. This is your son too.”I parried with a few lame arguments and Kira was having
none of it. When the time came I was there, and like so many things Kira has
MADE me do, I loved it. Here’s where Mellencamp’s song comes in, Nick comes
sliding into the world, they hold him up like so much blue fish, clean the
schmutz off, and swaddle him in the hospital-issue blanket. Because they are
working on Kira, they hand him to ME! I was the first one to hold him. So every
time, over the course of our lives, when I hear, “I saw you first” it means so
much to me. I was the first one to see him, to hold him. Doesn’t seem fair
because Kira did all the hard work. So “Key West Intermezzo” comes on as we
approach East Lansing and I flash back to those memories. And I am thinking
about all of the times, as he was growing up that I would put that song on and
dance with him. And now here we are, 18 years later, driving to visit Michigan
State, looking at COLLEGES! Geez, it had
to be THIS song? I turn my face to
the driver’s side window. I don’t want Nick to see me sad. This is a happy
time! We’re excited! We’re going to see Sparty. Nick’s radar is pretty active, “Dad
are you crying?” I have to come clean.
“Mmmm, Hmmm, pretty much. This is a song….”
Fast forward
to the summer of 2017, our boys are now all teenagers. 2017 was the summer of,
“Remember When.” We couldn’t get around
it, something was looming there all summer long. Departure date. August 15th. We circled it on the
calendar, the day we were to take our oldest boy, Nicholas, to Indiana
University. By all counts: weather, family trips, tasty meals, fun times, it was
a great summer. But August 15th was there, a dark purple cloud in
the sky, for all of us. Dark purple cloud is a bit extreme I suppose because we
were also looking forward to August 15th, excited for Nick’s, our
family’s, next adventures. So, a purple cloud with a rainbow?
My boys are naturally
nostalgic, it’s in their genes, so summer 2017 also became the summer of, “Remember
when we used to do this…” Nick and his high school friends savored every minute
together, every pool party at Rob’s or Mike Murg’s, every trip to the beach or
to play hoops at Community House Park, was cherished with the knowledge that,
next summer things will be different; they’ll be college boys. Some of the boys
in Nick’s crew might be moving; leaving behind their high school days, and
their hometown, which added a bit more urgency to their dwindling days together.
Nick kept
asking questions, “Dad, do you think I will keep in touch with my high school
friends?” He looked for my high school
yearbook. “How do you lose touch with someone?”
As if it didn’t seem possible. Another interesting thing about
parenthood is it makes you relive some of your childhood. I recalled, just like
Nick, as I was graduating from Immaculate Heart of Mary, a school I had
attended with the same neighborhood friends for 8 years, that I became
nostalgic. May 1977, I was wondering the very same things Nick was wondering. I
knew, because many of us were scattering around to high schools all around
Brooklyn and Manhattan, that we might lose touch. So I found my mother’s
yearbook and asked her about the young boys and girls who wrote all those endearing
things in her yearbook. It was heart-wrenching to find out that my mother had
no idea where many of those kids, in those black and white photos, were. It
pained me to think that I might get to the point where I wouldn’t talk to Jimmy
Quinlan, or Bobby Sullivan, or Chrissy Ryan, or Jean Ann Powers, or Carolyn
Leaver…people I had seen every school day for 8 years. So I had to say, “Nick
we do lose touch with people but the friendships that matter will endure.”
Then it’s
early August, it’s a week and a half before Nick leaves for Bloomington and the
preparations are making it very real. The thoughts are flying, and the memories
keep surfacing. The boys are caught up in it too. Nick and Brian and Charlie
and our neighbors, The Jorgensens, talking about, “Remember when we used to go
hang out in the Secret Fort?” “Remember
when we used to play Manhunt and Kick-the-Can?”
Listening to
these conversations was rewarding, powerful, to realize how much our boys loved
their childhood in Middlebury. Brian said to us, “Dane and I were talking about
what a great place this was to grow up in. About how we wouldn’t change a
thing. That we had a great childhood.” Music
to my ears. To see my boys looking back so fondly, on all of these things we’ve
done together…
Having a son
go off to college makes you reflect, on the job you’ve done. Is he ready? Will he succeed? Christ, he loses his wallet and the car
keys three times a week how will he handle a full slate of classes, doing his
laundry, eating right, making good decisions….? You start to think about the
Big Ideas about family. What is my role as a father? What is Kira's role as the mother? And the role of the family unit? I’m thinking about all of these special
times from our lives, the things that the boys really appreciate, the stuff
that they kept talking about that was so special to them, the annual camping
trips and our Boulder Field hikes and Cliff Diving excursions, the picnic
lunches in the secret fort, kick-the-can games…all of those simple things, the
211 trips to the dam in the Adirondacks...I realized then, that my boys were
not allergic to novelty, they were just finding comfort in the traditions, in
the predictability of our lives. And I thought, in this sometimes crazy world,
maybe that’s one of the things kids really need.
We had a
Graduation Dinner/Going Away Party with The Jorgensens; we have been raising
our boys together, Joel and Carrie also have three boys. Nick and Peter are
leaving the nest, Nick to Indiana and Peter to Iowa State. Kira bought sparkling cider for the boys and adult
libations for us. I knew I wanted to say something special to Nick and Peter as
they are readying to leave. And the comments the boys were making all summer about
“remember when we used to” made me realize what we have done for our boys, the
role of the family. What our kids appreciate is the predictability of our love,
they are thankful for the safety, warmth, and caring, that we have been
providing. They didn’t have to worry about anything, not about food, or road
side bombs, or the business cycle. We were very lucky, they were free to be
boys, to fret about school work, the bus ride, sports team tryouts, to just
hang out with friends and play. I remembered a quote from a Greek
Philosopher that I thought would be perfect for a toast. So I found the quote, read it
over and over and readied to say it on the Jorgensen’s deck after dinner, “I now know
what we did as parents, and our job, with Peter and Nick is close to over. Raise
your glasses. Archimedes once said, ‘Give me a firm place to stand, and I will
move the world.’ Well boys, that is what we gave you, a firm place to stand,
now it’s your turn to move the world…”
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