My Traveling Companion
My traveling companion is nine years old;he is the child of my first marriage.But I’ve reason to believe we both will be received in
Graceland.
8-14-06
From my first hearing of this song, I was moved by this line. I was in the first year of my own marriage, had not a clue when I’d even have children, let alone that the day would come when I would share the dreams of the single father in this song by Paul Simon. He’s on a quest for acceptance, for a sense of competence and worthiness, and he has his son along for the ride. It’s what he’s supposed to do, create vacation memories for the boy, so that when he grows up, he can tell his friends, his wife, his own kids, “Yeah, Dad took me to Graceland once. It was weird, but kinda cool. I don’t know why we went, but I really loved being on a trip with him, just my father and me.”
That day did come, not once but twice, and the task of making memories became starkly important as I sought to shield my children from the psychic evisceration I was experiencing. So three months into my first divorce, I took them to San Francisco for Spring Break. A year later, it was Disneyland, with a side trip to Yosemite—during which I learned the key to family vacation bliss is letting the children set at least part of the agenda. Who wants to see dumb old waterfalls and cliffs when there’s a great climbing rock just outside the cabin?
In recent years, as I’ve struggled with varying degrees of success to keep my head above water and establish myself in my new/old career of teaching music, the memory-making has fallen off. Some of it is adolescent inertia—“Why do we have to go on a trip? Can’t we just stay home?”—but there’s also been a failure of creativity on my own part. That has had to change this year. With the children spending most of the school year in Idaho Falls, I’ve been trying to make their trips to Oregon more memorable. The inertia is still there, but at least I’m finding ways to get the mountain moving toward Mohammed.
It was Sean who suggested the Grand Canyon to me. Without warning, he brought it up in June, shortly after the two of them arrived to spend two-thirds of the summer with me. I had only seen the canyon with one eye (see previous post), for about an hour, and I loved the idea. Sarah would be returning to Idaho early to take part in a mission trip, so that left the two of us with a ten-day block to fill however we wished. Suddenly a long-neglected dream was within my grasp: showing one of my children the part of the world that most sets my heart to singing.
Sean was wonderfully vague in his hopes for the trip. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon. The rest was my job. I got out the maps, and began working at the shape of this road trip, trying to keep it manageable. Bryce Canyon was an early casualty, and Zion’s place in the itinerary expanded as I realized I’d made a math error and had an extra day to fill. Finally it came time to load the car and hit the road.
Sean has proven a remarkably amiable traveling companion. He’s content most of the time to sit in the passenger seat reading and re-reading a graphic novel we checked out of the library or a Star Wars novel, drawing pictures, writing entries in his own journal, or playing his Gameboy. He only gets cranky when he thinks I’m making too many stops to take pictures.
On the trail, he’s not as easy. He lets me know frequently that he’s tolerating my dream of sharing this beauty with him, but it’s not his dream. Frequently his dream involves returning to camp and having something to eat. At its most basic, it means sitting down right now and guzzling all the remaining Gatorade. Somehow he manages to fight that urge, and to slog along, one foot in front of the other, moaning and groaning as if he’ll collapse at any moment—which he doesn’t, and is amply rewarded when we come around the last corner, and there is the Delicate Arch in all its glory.
Tomorrow my summer with him ends. Tomorrow I leave him in Idaho Falls. He’s looking forward to seeing his little brothers and big sister again, seeing his mother and step-father. He’ll miss me, he tells me, but I know he’ll be fine. Sean, robbed of his short-term memory by the same birth trauma that gave him epilepsy, has the gift of living in the moment. He has absolutely guileless. And if his jokes become repetitive, if he re-reads the same silly lines from the comic book aloud six times in one day, I just have to remember that this is Sean’s nowness at work. That joke will always be funny to him. His love for me will always be as fresh and sincere as it was when, as a toddler, he would race down the aisle to be in my arms for the benediction at Estacada United Methodist Church.
He’s been hugging me especially tightly these last few days. He knows we’re about to part, and that it’s a growing ache in my gut, a tickling in the back of my throat like a choked-off sob, and an extra layer of moisture in my eyes. I’m going to miss my traveling companion. I will have to dream up another road trip for the two of us to take.
Any ideas, Sean?
That day did come, not once but twice, and the task of making memories became starkly important as I sought to shield my children from the psychic evisceration I was experiencing. So three months into my first divorce, I took them to San Francisco for Spring Break. A year later, it was Disneyland, with a side trip to Yosemite—during which I learned the key to family vacation bliss is letting the children set at least part of the agenda. Who wants to see dumb old waterfalls and cliffs when there’s a great climbing rock just outside the cabin?
In recent years, as I’ve struggled with varying degrees of success to keep my head above water and establish myself in my new/old career of teaching music, the memory-making has fallen off. Some of it is adolescent inertia—“Why do we have to go on a trip? Can’t we just stay home?”—but there’s also been a failure of creativity on my own part. That has had to change this year. With the children spending most of the school year in Idaho Falls, I’ve been trying to make their trips to Oregon more memorable. The inertia is still there, but at least I’m finding ways to get the mountain moving toward Mohammed.
It was Sean who suggested the Grand Canyon to me. Without warning, he brought it up in June, shortly after the two of them arrived to spend two-thirds of the summer with me. I had only seen the canyon with one eye (see previous post), for about an hour, and I loved the idea. Sarah would be returning to Idaho early to take part in a mission trip, so that left the two of us with a ten-day block to fill however we wished. Suddenly a long-neglected dream was within my grasp: showing one of my children the part of the world that most sets my heart to singing.
Sean was wonderfully vague in his hopes for the trip. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon. The rest was my job. I got out the maps, and began working at the shape of this road trip, trying to keep it manageable. Bryce Canyon was an early casualty, and Zion’s place in the itinerary expanded as I realized I’d made a math error and had an extra day to fill. Finally it came time to load the car and hit the road.
Sean has proven a remarkably amiable traveling companion. He’s content most of the time to sit in the passenger seat reading and re-reading a graphic novel we checked out of the library or a Star Wars novel, drawing pictures, writing entries in his own journal, or playing his Gameboy. He only gets cranky when he thinks I’m making too many stops to take pictures.
On the trail, he’s not as easy. He lets me know frequently that he’s tolerating my dream of sharing this beauty with him, but it’s not his dream. Frequently his dream involves returning to camp and having something to eat. At its most basic, it means sitting down right now and guzzling all the remaining Gatorade. Somehow he manages to fight that urge, and to slog along, one foot in front of the other, moaning and groaning as if he’ll collapse at any moment—which he doesn’t, and is amply rewarded when we come around the last corner, and there is the Delicate Arch in all its glory.
Tomorrow my summer with him ends. Tomorrow I leave him in Idaho Falls. He’s looking forward to seeing his little brothers and big sister again, seeing his mother and step-father. He’ll miss me, he tells me, but I know he’ll be fine. Sean, robbed of his short-term memory by the same birth trauma that gave him epilepsy, has the gift of living in the moment. He has absolutely guileless. And if his jokes become repetitive, if he re-reads the same silly lines from the comic book aloud six times in one day, I just have to remember that this is Sean’s nowness at work. That joke will always be funny to him. His love for me will always be as fresh and sincere as it was when, as a toddler, he would race down the aisle to be in my arms for the benediction at Estacada United Methodist Church.
He’s been hugging me especially tightly these last few days. He knows we’re about to part, and that it’s a growing ache in my gut, a tickling in the back of my throat like a choked-off sob, and an extra layer of moisture in my eyes. I’m going to miss my traveling companion. I will have to dream up another road trip for the two of us to take.
Any ideas, Sean?
posted by Mark Anderson @ 2:15 PM
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