One of the best parts of being a parent comes later on, when your kids are grown, and they come home for a visit. Luckily, for me, I live in a desirable location, from my kids' point of view. Though it's nothing special, my apartment can accommodate quite a few people at a time.
Last night, my oldest son, who is 25 and a first-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Cal Tech, showed up with a bunch of friends. I fed them appetizers and then out on the town they went. After I went to sleep, I heard them come back in groups. It seemed like some came in at around 2, some at 4, and maybe a straggler or two at 6 a.m.
By 8, as I got up to gather my Sunday morning newspapers, I started counting people. Two guys sleeping in the living room. A girl up early doing her (incredibly complex) schoolwork.
As I started making coffee and getting out other foods for breakfast, the remaining kids started emerging from the other bedroom. A guy. Another guy. A girl. Hmmm. Now we are up to seven, with no sign yet of my son.
As I sliced papaya, washed grapes, and got out cereals, oatmeal, tea, milk, juices, pomegranates, apples, grapefruit, wheat toast, cinnamon toast, margarine and jam, I happened to glance out the kitchen window.
So, that's where he ended up: In a sleeping bag on the back porch. He didn't have other options because he was the last one to get home from the clubs. (That's my boy!)
Luckily, after our recent rains, last night marked a return of Indian summer. It was hot enough that I left windows open and had my fan going. It's the kind of night two of my ex-girlfriends would have slept naked, though, come to think of it, that was their preference no matter what the temperature.
I would worry about how cold the bed would feel on their skin when they crawled in, so I made it my habit to lie on their side, and warm the sheets up, before they got in next to me. Like most men, I'm like a power plant -- I exude heat.
But in cold weather, when I sleep alone, I often get cold too. Thus, I'm grateful when one of my little kids wakes up and decides to troop over to Dad's room, and snuggles in next to me. They seem to be sleep walking when they do this. They don't say anything, and within seconds of hitting the bed they are breathing regularly with the rhythms of sleep.
The past few nights have featured a fullish moon, and my dreams have been disturbingly realistic. That's probably why I heard the kids coming home all night, because I was restless, frequently waking from strange dreams.
In these dreams, the main disconcerting factor was it never was clear which woman I was with. Various combinations of former partners, strangers, and recent acquaintances all seemed to be by my side. I, or the character most like me in these vivid dreams, truly felt confused. He didn't know whether he should feel guilty about the couplings he was experiencing, or grateful.
In any event, if real life were as filled with episodes of loving as dream-life, I'd probably have 30 children by now, not only six.
***
Once Peter made his appearance this morning, I cooked eggs and sausages, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices for the crowd. Conversation was lively. These are the brightest of the bright, and I love the way their minds work. They were heavy on variables, formulae, and regression analyses compared to most groups of twenty-somethings, but their political insights were acute and their values, collectively, humanistic and kind.
Sometimes I wonder how we can produce so many wonderful young people, with terrific brains and a balanced set of drives that sends them to the top of their fields without turning them into arrogant, selfish power-mongers, and still end up with a society such as this one.
I had lunch with an old friend who is one the best traveled people I know. He’s been all over the world many times. He noted how small the U.S. has become in the eyes of the rest of the world -- small in the sense of significance, even though most Americans apparently believe they sit at the center of the universe.
Over a quarter century ago, our book "Circle of Poison," sponsored by the Center for Investigative Reporting, showed how U.S. companies exported hazardous technologies to the Third World, where regulations were relatively weak.
Today, in an age of globalization, the irony is that Japanese and European countries are dumping hazardous goods here, because our regulations have been weakened by successive waves of regulatory "reform" and the privatization of health and environmental protections.
No longer is the U.S. any kind of world leader in this regard.
That's why, whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s elections, unless we get leadership from people who recognize how backward this society is becoming in the eyes of the rest of the world, we will be doomed to an increasingly isolated position -- a sort of Wild West, where anything goes, and other, more sophisticated cultures sell us hazardous goods we are simply too lazy or undisciplined to reject at our borders.
Some chickens do come home to roost. Bad things that go around do come around. Irony is alive and well in this global community, though Americans apparently may be the last to know...
* Johnny Cash
p.s. I love that song. And I can recall a specific Sunday morning in London town where this song spoke to me, as only music can, straight to my lonely existential heart...
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