How will Atticus, my son of nearly three, see his past at my age, more than a half-century hence? At his fingertips he’ll have countless digital photographs and videos chronicling his life. Hundreds are already burned onto hard drives and into his brain: the boy loves to sit on my lap and watch them. The Early Years in umpteen million crystalline colors, viewed again and again.
My early years are chronicled in precious few aged snapshots, incongruous on a computer screen. In some, poignancy emerges from ethereal haze:
The photographer’s ghostly shadow, dead mother hovering over faded sons, their youth fading like film undeveloping.
Still, I’m grateful to see us then. But how did we feel in the moment? File can’t be found.
In the end, no matter how many megapixels fill up a memory drive, they don’t record what’s lost. Maybe at my age Atticus will vividly relive the past by logging into an emotion capture program. You’ve got mail old feelings! That’s the killer science-fiction ap I yearn for. But using it might be too intense to bear.
Unlike past wars, the Iraq war is an abstraction. We rarely glimpse the unspeakable suffering. Most of the media have lost interest. Some stalwarts remain, chronicling events beyond our comprehension. As much as I hate this war, I’ve never let what happens there penetrate my comfortable life here. Until now.
Reality intruded last night when Suzame, my wife, showed me this photograph: Read More
Happy Father’s Day. From my youngest son, two months shy of three, comes a gift. “I’ll draw a picture for Dad,” Atticus tells his mother, Suzame. He conjures up Everyman confronting the wonders and perplexities of the world. Our little oracle comments on life like I never did at his age. Take this recent gem: “Mommy, don’t flush my poopy down the potty. You’ll stop it up.” A few minutes later: “Thanks for plunging it way.” Almost makes me wish potty training wasn’t nearing an end.
Stooping to a new low, the Clintons tried today to undermine my family’s support for Barack Obama. They dispatched Chelsea to enlist our little boy, Atticus, in a duplicitous campaign to persuade us to switch our allegiance.
While Atticus and his mother, Suzame, waited for friends outside the entrance to the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Chelsea swooped upon them from a white SUV.
Unfortunately Atticus, who is nearly 3, was too stunned to remember the chant he’s been forced to practice for hours on end: “Yes we can! Yes we can!”
In truth, by all reports, Chelsea was genuinely friendly and laid back. As she said goodbye to Atticus by name, he waved and announced: “I’m going to see the dinosaurs.” To which Chelsea replied, “I wish I was seeing the dinosaurs, too. That sounds like more fun.”
A familiar formula: too little sleep plus a frenetic start to the day equals foul mood.
My black cloud lifted in two stages.
Stage one: spotting one of our little boy’s books in the bathroom, propped against the wall directly across from the toilet. Suzame bought it for Atticus, and this was the first time I’d seen the title: Little Monkey’s BIG Peeing Circus.
Stage two: interviewing David Sill, 68, about his father, Jesse Sill, a legendary Portland newsreel cameraman who was among the first to film the Pendleton Round-Up, starting in 1915. (I’m co-authoring a book about the world-famous rodeo.) Reveling in memories about their life together, David said: “I had a great dad, best as you can get, or close to it. He really spent time with me.”Â
As I drove home shortly before noon, the sun found a crack in the low clouds over the hills of Forest Park. Among the brooding evergreens, hardwoods showed off their newborn leaves, glittering in shades of sage as if proclaiming, “We’ve returned!”
