Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday when they
Were small?
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
-Jerry Bock, Sunrise Sunset
I had just settled into my chair in the waiting area of Star Motors over in Endicott while they changed the oil in Peg's car, flipping open my laptop and shooting off a message to check on Jim. That's how I found out this happened:
JR is now a married man. Just like that.
I knew this was coming, but had it in my head that the event would take place this weekend. So I can't feign surprise or shock. And I've known Anna for what, seven years now? A nice young lady, who obviously thinks my son hangs the moon.
Which is why I'm so surprised at myself, at feeling this, I don't know---sadness?
At the most obvious level, it saddens me that he's, they're (gotta get used to that) half a world away, and P and I weren't there for the occasion. I get it, but the day wasn't what this father pictured from the time that young man was running through the house wearing only his blanket as a cape, proclaiming himself the "Naked Avenger". I assured him I'd have to take time away from law school to find him a new daycare if he insisted on donning that costume for school. Back then I figured he'd go to some SEC university and marry a DG, in a ceremony performed in a crowded old Gothic style Episcopal Church smelly vaguely of incense.
So I guess at one level this feeling involves letting go of old parental fantasies about a son's life, a grown man now who's gone his own way on a path I couldn't have imagined.
And, as with the death of my mother a couple weeks ago, this certainly feels like a milestone in my own life, an end and a beginning. Everything feels a little different this morning. I have a daughter-in-law. Jim now has a Russian no-kidding family, at maybe the most interesting moment in my lifetime for an American to say that. Doors open. Doors close.
Good grief. I sound like a Hallmark card drafted by a mawkish and poorly educated fourth grader.
Although I've seemed myself since yesterday's news, I can tell it's messing with my executive functions in subtle ways. Driving home from the repair place I glided through a stop sign, oblivious. Good thing the crossroads was in a mostly deserted patch of hill country east of here. Later I almost turned left across traffic on a green light. Clearly there's a lot roiling between my ears that seems to be short-circuiting some previously almost unconscious behaviors.
Oddly enough, one benefit of this daze manifested itself on the golf course late yesterday. There was so much white noise up there, like the static of an old TV after they played the national anthem and signed off for the night back in the old days, that the old critical voice couldn't reach me. I shanked a few, but overall played maybe the best nine holes of golf of my entire life. It just felt like a reprieve to concentrate on breathing, the club, and the ball.
But soon I must return my focus to planning this memorial service, and arranging a weekend in Texas that will be filled with Bowmans and another wave of emotions. I still need to make a reservation at the hotel where they're staying, post the link on Facebook for folks who've asked how to donate to the charities in Mom's obit, find a restaurant that will take all of us after the service, and of course draft a eulogy and a homily. For the former, I have a note pad with jottings to myself like "Mom at the piano pounding out Grieg", and "Mom meeting me for supper at the Sizzler across from USC when she was in grad school". Images of these moments drift by at 2 a.m., and I'm afraid when the time comes to draft something my mind will go blank.
I also need to follow-up about a Zoom link for the service. Jim plans to attend remotely. I reckon Anna will be there to hear about the grandmother-in-law she never met, peering over a sea of bald Bowman heads from the camera at the back of the chapel.
Sunrise, sunset.
The circle of life