In honor of who we might become...

I look back at the 18-year old I was on Niskayuna High School Graduation Day, at Saratoga Performing Art Center (SPAC) on some June morning in 1973.  I was class president, and had given some sort of graduation speech, and now I found myself standing with my mom and dad, and my dad's half sister Debbie, contemplating the gate I had passed through.

My grandparents must have taken the picture...or my sort-of girlfriend at the time, Sue Ludwig. And where was Glenn, my brother who often is just out of the frame in moments where I was transitioning to another stage? I owe Glenn a lot of apologies...I tried to include you, but I don't think I did it right.

The picture calls to mind Mary Chapin Carpenter lyrics about sepia tones and "they were younger than you are now, that hot summer night." Hah...that's a joke.  My Mom was 38 and my dad was 39.  I'm 65.  Mary--please write a new song to help we with this math! Come on, come on!

It would have been my dad's birthday next week--he would have been 87 I guess. Wow I miss your ringing tenor voice, dad.

As for me, now quoting Bojack Horseman, what did I know?  Did I know anything?

I look at myself in this picture and I don't know what I see.  It appears I have the beginnings of a wry smile, but not quite.  I suspect I felt uncertainty toward the future, but relative confidence that I'd find my way.  I thank my parents and growing up in a GE suburb where we were regularly told we were smart for that optimism.  My parents, I believe, needed me to be self-sufficient, and I was allowed to be a leader of sorts in high school despite a "cutting corners" attitude towards learning. (I was saved from apparent academic mediocrity by my SATs, endless AP classes, and being a National Merit Semifinalist--I tested well, for a slouch. I have two good friends now who work/worked for College Board, Jack and Auditi.  Do they know I silently thank them every time I see them?)

I made up for my high school "I'm better-than-this" underachievement soon, starting in graduate school, and then as a college instructor, and in my career as a niche publisher.  And, my search for empathy with others, willingness to volunteer, and commitment to daunting projects probably surpassed what I might have imagined that early June morning.  I've been willing to dive into my life projects even if Niskayuna and my family gave me a pass and a salute for not trying very hard.

Did I know I'd hike the Appalachian Trail? That I'd realize in the future that I'd just skied for my 60th straight season? (I was, after all, the captain of my high school ski team and went on to a very spotty Division I ski career at Bates College.). That I'd run 15 marathons and do dozens and dozens of triathlons? That I'd think like the kind of person who did those things? That I'd do 10 5:55 mile intervals in a row, within a second, one rainy night in Central Park with a running friend Marty?

My running friendships brought me hours and hours of happiness and friendship.  So many great companions on the road, highlighted by Andrea, Rod Cutler, and of course, Mina, who I met, where else, at a speed workout.

Did I know I'd have two long romantic partnerships that more or less defined my life?  The first was for 13 years--thank you Melanie, now a full professor of women's history at the University of Vermont, perhaps retiring soon?  The second is to my "true companion" Mina and what a great trip together, currently over 26 years--though struggling at the moment.

Did I know I'd sometimes flail to feel connected and would sometimes flee to solitude when I discovered, after this picture, that people and events actually give you critical feedback?  Sometimes even critical feedback when you thought you were doing good, which, to this day, still shocks me anew.  (No, I had no idea what that felt like in June 1973, I can say for sure. Not getting invited to Sue Galley's house party at Lake George the week after this picture was snapped is NOT the same thing!)

Did I know I'd sink a 47-foot boat off Brantford CT with a crew of three, and get them to shore safely--with one a non-swimmer who went into medical panic?  In the 3AM darkness of a three-foot-sea stormy night, I could still see Clark was white as a ghost, and non-responsive--the Adventure mortally run aground and sea water continuing to pour out of the bilge. (I don't understand the punishment of the Navy captain who was relieved of duty because his crew had COVID.  I don't compare myself, but when your crew's in danger of losing their lives, you would, in fact, do anything to save them.)

Did I know that loneliness is always one decision away?

And did I know that I'd run up against the shoals of lost love three times (so far)?  Did I have any idea back in '73 whether this record of dark-night-of-the-soul terror would be better or worse than what most of my fellow humans experience? And all for the same reason in my case--falling into the complacency of thinking I was being a great partner, and then being shocked to discover I actually wasn't. I know now that any human only has to go there once--you don't need a second lesson, though many get dozens--to know what the blues are about. My 18-year-old self didn't know that cocaine and bourbon can sometimes be the mortar that keeps desperation from getting through the wall to claim victory over survival.  Now I do--for one or two nights as long as you still believe that the dawn will be a bit less scary than the impending dusk. Not a long-term strategy.

I never guessed, I know now, that the hopefulness and change of the late 60's would prove to be a chimera, and I'd live in a country that doubled down on militarism, imperialism, sexism, and racism. I learned that our country's path was deadly wrong, quickly.  Three months later, the fuel crisis would alert all of us to the fact we were consuming too much.  Roe v. Wade passed that year, and even then its grip against ignorance was tenuous.  We're still holding on by a shoestring!  (Thank you, New York State, for the $241 access to the abortion my high school girlfriend and I needed in 1972. I knew about that in this picture, at least.)

It helps me with Trump that I had the 1979 experience of never having met someone who didn't think Ronald Reagan was a dangerous clown before he was elected.  I'm still debating who did the most damage.  Trump is definitely the biggest asshole.  What a nasty sad sack loser.

No, I didn't expect that loss of hope--a country unwilling to confront its two main constitutional flaws--a failure to define positive human rights, and a universal willingness to protect property over human dignity. I don't think anyone of us who turned 18 in the last year of the Viet Nam draft lottery, while Nixon was sweating it out on the TV along with the Watergate hearings that would dominate the rest of that summer, would have ever imagined that we'd live in the completely tawdry United States of 2020.  Ouch, that's so sad to even contemplate, how far we've fallen.

Did I think music would stop being about rebellion?  It tried once more, with rap, and then gave up. (Though, I'll admit, I still like those early 80's pop songs a lot--and there's been some good stuff all along!  Just not "radical." Where's CSNY when you need them, as we do very much now.).

Did I know how sex would fit into my life? What sort of athlete I'd continue to be? All the mountains I'd climb?  All the countries I'd visit, particularly the dozens and dozens I'd share with my companion Mina?  I didn't know, and probably would have been surprised to learn, since I didn't have a lot of travel lust at 18.  I didn't leave the Americas for the first time until I boarded a Freddie Laker flight (the "terminal" was in Brooklyn, where the Barclay's Center now stands--and they bussed you to the airport and then on to Gatwick) four years after this picture was taken.

But then I arrived, as my life carried on, in the four hour ocean of wildflowers in the glacial moraine below the Rockwall in Kootenay, British Columbia. Or listening to Mina's brother Noah retch in the tent next to us atop the Drakensburg cliffs in Lesotho. Or screaming down Col du Kolbasse, near St Tropez, at 45kph+ on our road bikes. Or chopping our tent out of the overnight ice at the K2 base camp up the Karakorum Highway in northeast Pakistan. Or swimming in the surf at the end of South Africa's Otter Trail, not knowing that a friend's best friend would drown in that exact spot two weeks later. Or watching the sperm whales off the Pacific Coast Trail, on a rocky coast so isolated wrecked sailors who reached those shores alive couldn't get through the undergrowth to safety.

Did I know how important animals would be?  All the solace and unconditional love I've received from our pets?  I had an inkling from Charisma, who outlived this picture, while I roamed to Maine, for another several years.  But Springer, found on my first wedding day?  The dog who would lean forehead-against-the-wall whenever any negative emotions were in the room?  Or Hercules, the shape-shifter, in every room before you arrived? And Emily, spiritual in her own way.  I even thank the pets I borrowed for short periods, like Bear and Chloe.  I eat less red meat than I would otherwise, but it's not enough to honor them because I know these animals have wisdom far beyond mine, and they've trusted me with it.

Did I assume I would be a dorm leader in college?  A president of a company by 26? A Trustee at Bates for a very long time? The president of my co-op board twice in NYC? The president and the youngest Hall of Fame award winner ever in my professional association? Someone who migrated toward leadership in every instance?  I think I did know that, and I also knew that I was most comfortable in out-of-the-limelight smaller ponds.  I think I knew that I'd find my place and succeed, but I also knew I'd need to hide from view when in pain.  I've always had, and still need, that freedom. What should I call that need?  To fail privately? I knew, the early summer of 1973, that success is communal but failure is terrifyingly lonely. I'm sure I knew that. (I imagine, had I been in public view, with nowhere to hide, I would have behaved like Amy Winehouse...)

That I'd never be peer reviewed, not once, in my whole career?  In place of peer-review, that I'd get to share the fun of earning a living with two joyful people, John Marqusee and Lucretia Lyons?  While doing ecstasy three weeks ago with yet a new and wonderful guide who arrived to show me a new path, I realized that I'd never been alone, even if my parents were busy with other passions.  When I got into trouble, mentors or sages of the "let's shoulder this together" variety always appeared, sometimes literally out of the fog, to guide me.

John and Lucretia have been the top of that list, but let's not forget the guy who saved Jeff Brown and me after our canoe was crushed under six feet of raging river water and a rock on the Kaderoseros Creek in April, two months before this picture was taken at graduation! Or all the others who pointed the direction along the strange winding roads that diverge from the Interstate.

While traveling along that new hallucinogenic road with my new shaman guide, I became infatuated with the vision of Yossarian, the 65-mission sole survivor hero of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I read that book for the first time twelve months before my graduation picture, finishing it at a campsite in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia on a road trip with my family and Sue Ludwig. Yossarian has learned the final "catch" by the end of the novel--that because you're alive, you'll die. What does he do?  Depicting heroism as I see it, which is the willingness to strive against all odds, he practices crash-landing his wounded B-17s. And then, when, because he's alive, he's required to die on a suicide mission yet again over Germany, he strips an empty plane of its rubber life raft, goes AWOL, runs to the shore at the end of the airfield where so many of his friends have died, meters from a safe landing, and begins to paddle to the (theoretical) safety of Sweden.

It takes him an eon to just get beyond the waves crashing on the beach there, but he doesn't stop. He had 65 missions.  I now have 65 years.  We both know we'll make it, with our cheap puny paddles, across the open ocean. Yossarian never gave up the fight.

I can't see into my young mind, but I can picture what I guessed then. I think I expected I would be slightly happier than I actually have been.  That my parents would still be around--I would have enjoyed sharing these thoughts with my mom in particular, who was a great listener when available, perhaps to her detriment since she had a needy husband and a needy son (my brother).  And me, I was needy, too.  I still am.