Our Song

Everyone is coping with a variety of difficult problems during this pandemic as we try to adapt and perdure. One of my family's main issues right now involves my youngest child, who is 21.

Her college just announced that students cannot come back to live on campus this fall and that all classes will have to be remote, due to the virus.

She was upset when this news arrived early yesterday morning. She went for a long walk. She is a senior and was looking forward to living with friends as she completes her studies. She has worked hard to get to this moment and now it is eluding her.

This is a girl who was fully ready to go to school by the age of three. She'd watched her big brothers go off each day and she was impatient for her turn to come. She'd established her own creative look by then, including mismatched socks and colorful clothes, and she had the first of many backpacks ready to go. One more thing: She was clearly not the type who would suffer separation anxiety when her Mom or I dropped her off.

She's an October baby, so we held her back one year from when she could have started kindergarten. Thus she's always been a year older than most of her classmates. One of the comments her teachers have made consistently over the 18 years or so she's been in school is how mature she is.

She thrived at school, earned top grades, made good friends, played a mean defense on her soccer team, and developed a strong social conscience about the unfairness and injustices she saw around her. She is a fighter.

She grew into a brilliant, beautiful, kind young woman with an independent streak. When she was 16,  I told her "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen!" like any father would. She answered, "What's sweet about being sixteen? The meanest creatures on the planet are 16-year-old girls."

Also, at that age, she was invited to go away to an exclusive boarding school with a focus on the arts, and she happily did so. There, she explored a variety of media besides her favorites, painting and drawing, and also learned something about herself.

Two years later, when it came time to apply to college, she was accepted by most of the top colleges out here on the west coast, but was adamant that she wanted to move to another part of the country and experience life away from the Bay Area Bubble.

She had a wide choice of options back east, too, but zeroed in on a small, private school where she thought the student culture would best suit her personality. The rest of us had limited influence on her decision. Truth is, we've had very little influence on her decisions all the way along.

Of course, any person's senior year in college is supposed to be one of those magical transition times, the last act of your formal schooling that started in kindergarten or earlier. Sure, grad school looms, but that's a completely different chapter. Graduating from undergraduate college is a huge moment for almost all of us.

But Covid-19 may have  stolen that moment from  my daughter, and I feel sad for her. Like all parents, I want the best for my kids, and when disappointments arrive, it's tough on them and also on me. Trying to think about what she might do next, I came up yesterday with a plan. Maybe she could rent a house somewhere on the east coast with her friends so they can complete their senior year together?

There is one more thing I want to say about this: As a father, I am very angry that my daughter is having to go through this, and mine is not an inchoate, vague type of anger at the universe. It is very specific and it is directed at one cruel man.

As the rest of us cope with our disappointments, the President lashes out at ghosts and phantoms as he contemplates losing an election three months from now. I use sports metaphors a lot, because they help me sort out how to interpret this crazy world. Trump's suggestion that the election be delayed due to Covid-19 reminds me of a soccer coach suggesting that the second half of a game be postponed when his team is down 0-3.

Who does that sort of thing?

"Sore loser" doesn't even begin to do the job. I've been a consistent critic of the Democrats who purport to represent an alternative to Trump but their shortcomings pale in comparison to this man as he skulks around, blasting imaginary enemies on Twitter and shamelessly race-baiting in the hope he can one again bring out the worst in his base and get re-elected.

Thanks to a Vanity Fair writer,  we now know that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, led a task force that developed a national plan to fight the pandemic early in the spring, when it could have mattered, only to abandon it when the parts of the country most affected initially appeared to be under Democratic political leadership.

That is a crime against humanity. It's the action of a despot who considers a person's political affiliation a reason to assign them to disease and death as long as "your" team remains relatively safe. Of course that strategy backfired, as the main parts of the U.S. now suffering from Covid-19 are under Republican control.

Ever hear of a boomerang? Trump's cruel calculus is now rebounding on his own base. We can only hope they abandon him and help all of our families rid this nation of the worst political scourge in our history.

I truly hope every person, regardless of our bullshit differences, stays safe from this awful illness. We know enough now to say that many deaths could have been avoided with decent  political leadership. But we don't have decent political leadership and their blood is on Trump's hands.

The rest of us are still alive. So this song is for you, to you and yours:

You may be young or you may be old.

You may be hot or you may be cold.

You may be religious or maybe you're not.

You may be of Buddhist, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Hindu, Parsi, or something else.

You may be straight, gay, bi, trans or prefer not to say.

You may be black, white, latino, asian or any other race or a mixture of races.

You may be disabled or you be abled for now.

You may have been born here or somewhere else, perhaps distant from here.

You may be rich or you may be poor.

Maybe your eyes are blue or brown or green or black or hazel or gray or may be nobody can say. I like your eyes the way that they are.

Your hair may be black, yellow, brown, red, gray or white or you may not have any hair at all. That's all okay.

Maybe you like to read books or maybe you like to watch movies or work with wood or maybe you like to smoke or drink or take drugs. Maybe you prefer rock n roll, or country or jazz or the blues or classical music.

Maybe you think you are pretty or maybe not. I think you are pretty.

Maybe you'll call me when I need you to or maybe you won't. That's the way love goes.

Maybe you like to walk. Maybe you like to run.

Maybe you put your right sock on first or maybe it's your left.

Maybe you lie awake at night and dream of a better world or maybe not.

Maybe you are a cynic or maybe you are the hopeless type like me.

Maybe you play the flute. Maybe the harmonica. Maybe the drums. Maybe no instrument at all.

Maybe when you pass a stranger on the street you avert your eyes or maybe you look that person in the eye, and recognize him  as your equal.

Maybe you stood up when you should have or maybe you just stayed seated.

Maybe you regret what you've done in your life or maybe you regret what you haven't done.

Maybe you have a daughter like mine or maybe you don't. No matter this or a thousand other things, because we are here together now and there's still time.

Otherwise, you've seen a picture of me without you.

Just don't give up.


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