Our Sons Leave Home
St Louis, MO
March 19, 2019
The last couple weeks we reflected how quickly our sons have grown.
We acknowledged that one is now a legal adult. He can refuse to abide his parents’ restrictive regulations and, like a feisty 19th century European colony, shed the shackles (and support) of the Mother country…and try to find his rightful place in the community of nations.
Were he to do so, he might go forth to become a dignified self-sufficient cosmopolitan, welcome in the finest restaurants and fanciest galas, a Canada or Australia among the denizens of decent society.
Or, he may strut about with a contented smirk, like Thailand or Argentina – a good looking, intriguing, extravagant rake from a Henry Fielding novel, who can access the best clubs only by sneaking in…but who wouldn’t be tossed out if he did. Like Brazil, such a man’s promise lies in the future, and always will.
Of course, he could also cut a trail to woebegone dereliction, resentment, and crime…a ruffian in the Algeria or Zimbabwe mold, who would join high society only by wantonly threatening or crashing it, like Billy Ray Valentine rampaging the town club in Trading Places, or most recent governors of Illinois doing a perp walk in Springfield.
Like most 18 year-olds intoxicated by the spirit of independence, ours will sometimes wield his new adult credentials to flaunt our old house rules.
He from time to time insists he need now adhere only to his own edicts. He is periodically dumb enough to hurl at his parents the “threat” to discover where the path of premature freedom might lead…but smart enough not to actually find out.
That being said, I don’t think he minds authority. He simply doesn’t like other people telling him what to do.
I understand completely, because I feel the same way. And the world is now an epidemic of busy-bodies wanting to boss each other around.
But our son is 18. He will soon turn 21…at which point he will, as the saying goes, be stunned how much his parents have learned in only three years.
But that’s normal. Nature moves in cycles.
As The Byrds sang in Ecclesiasties, to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Winter melts into Spring, day dissolves into night, bear follows bull. From dust was man formed…and to dust he shall return.
Children grow, rebel, thrive, and die. Societies do the same, as Neil Howe and William Strauss described twenty years ago in The Fourth Turning, their fascinating study of generational cycles, tendencies, and characteristics.
History does not necessarily repeat but, as Mark Twain ostensibly observed, it does often rhyme.
Some cyclical stanzas bring relief in the manner of a cool summer breeze, or the sublime oboe surmounting the opening chords of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds.
Others rattle senses and nerves with the intense chaos of second-graders stumbling upon a pile of discarded cymbals, fiddles, and drums.
If Howe and Strauss are correct in their projection for our current wave in the tide of time, school is out…and the kids are itching to make noise.
Looking around, I don’t doubt it.
In recent years, what GK Chesterton called “the modern and morbid habit of sacrificing the normal to the abnormal” has cast off any remaining inhibitions by which it may once have been harnessed, and began galloping at full speed, virgins of western tradition held captive in the saddle, toward the mouth of absurdity’s volcano.
All are now expected to not only “tolerate”, but to reflexively accept, believe, and promote activities, ideas, or agendas that before last Tuesday even the most deranged half-wit would have taken for granted as insane.
As the battle lines of the “cold civil war” continually shift, those unexpectedly finding themselves behind the Front are hauled before the Cultural Tribunal, and expected to dispense ritual apologies at the bar of their moral overlords.
Meanwhile, a quick glance at this weekend’s Wall Street Journal revealed that meddling and mayhem are running amok across the globe. Protests are on the rise, bombs continue to fall, and we still can’t decide if eggs are good for us or if coffee is bad.
How can one possibly escape the lunacy and hysteria of the Present?
By heading to the Past!
Our younger son, with his eighth grade class, did just that.
Ten days ago David landed in Madrid, explored for a day the capital of Castile, including Santiago Bernabéu and Puerta del Sol, then proceeded to Salamanca for a week of study at its historic university…home to philosophers of the Late Scholastic period, scholars and scientists who helped compose or conduct the tone, tenor, and tune of western civilization.
What seems to have been perfect weather no doubt enhanced side trips to the town and ancient aqueduct of Segovia, the village of Alcalá de Henares, and the summer palace of Felipe V at La Granja de San Ildefonso.
David returned to Madrid a couple days ago. Advocates for Catalonian independence…and (I suppose this naturally follows) against the arrest of its leaders…marched in protest at their trial, thereby depriving nuestros estudiantes their planned visit to The Prado.
Unconcerned, our teen travelers made the most of the disruption, merely diverting their itinerary even further into the past…to the ninth century hamlet of Cuenca.
Founded by the Moors and known for its casas colgadas, this city of “hanging houses” is, according to David, anchored by an impressive 12th century cathedral and linked by several historic bridges connecting the old and new sections of town.
I regret they missed The Prado, but envy their consolation prize. Perhaps fortune, as Einstein said of coincidence, is simply God’s way of remaining anonymous.
I cannot imagine David regrets anything he saw or experienced. Anything he missed is simply added reason to return.
Montaigne thought travel could form a vital part of education…if we leave our prejudices at home.
He recalled it being “told to Socrates that a certain man had been no whit improved by travel. ‘I believe it well’, said Socrates, ‘for he carried himself with him.’”
David sounds like he has been improved more than a whit by his travels, and I am certain he learned more from a week in Spain than he would have from months in school.
I’d be lying if I said a part of me doesn’t wish he had taken me with him.
But I am glad he left himself at home.
JD
