Graduation Season
It is quiet as I write this. The sound of the Pacific Ocean is in the air, as the waves break some thirty yards from the couch upon which I am enthroned. It is early on the day before Dash 1 walks across the stage to pick up her MA, and the other occupants of this Air BnB are asleep. Well, some of them. Dash 2 and the matriarch have already been up and left, as Dash 2 needed transport to the start of the half-marathon she has entered opportunistically. I have made the coffee and I expect some signs of life from the various godparents assembled to celebrate this occasion with us.
As some of you know, I am not the biological father of my daughters. He died in the World Trade Center nearing 24 years ago, and I showed up in their lives a few years after that. The family I joined came with many virtues, somewhere near the top of which are children blessed with spectacular godparents. Those assembled here in sunny San Diego with us joined me two years ago for their goddaughter's college graduation (the other one graduating the same day in New Orleans had her mother and godparents there), so this weekend is a bit of a reprise of that fun.
The godparents of my daughters were selected from a field of extraordinarily wonderful people who were the tight friend group of my inamorata and her late husband. I have written here before of my sense that although he (the late husband, Chris) is unknowable to me, I can work backwards from the astounding quality of his friends to conjure a fellow I would have have been proud to have called my friend.
One of my favorite movies is “The Big Chill”, something I share with many in America's best--Generation X--and that entire movie is about a friend group from which one of their number is dead. I often think of this when I am among them, Chris' survivors. They have embraced me warmly, and I count them among my closest friends. But their friendship was forged teaching sailing to teens in the late 80’s, while I was off pursuing other maritime interests. I entered their circle much later, and I do not share in the origin story.
There was a moment at dinner last night, when one of them was talking with Catherine. I imagine they did not know that I was listening, or maybe they just figured I couldn't hear anyway, which is a good bet these days. But at one point, Dash 2 was holding forth on some subject and I could hear them talking about how much she reminded them of him. Of Chris. It made me sad, very sad, that he was not with us. I am an interloper into his world. Don't get me wrong--I am enormously happy to be an interloper, but I am always aware that I am an electron ring more distant from this nucleus.
Another of this group--the one who as the towers fell, hopped into his car from this very place--San Diego--where he was part of an America's Cup campaign--to drive virtually straight through to Maryland to console his best friend's widow in a house surrounded by the moving boxes that she and her now dead husband had not yet had the time to empty, has a daughter graduating from high school next weekend. He is godfather to Dash 2, and Catherine is godmother to his daughter. We will be there for her graduation, and we will be staying in the house of yet another member of this wonderful group of friends.
Within days of that graduation, Cat and I will meet up with STILL ANOTHER of this Band of Brothers and Sisters (remember--they all taught sailing together over thirty years ago), a delightful married couple (who were at UVA when who have asked us to join them on their sailboat for the transit from the Bahamas to the Chesapeake. Their daughter's wedding in October will be the scene of a grand reuniting of much of their number, and I will participate/observe from my interloper's position, trying to discern the father of my girls from the space his death created.
Thirty-Eight Years
As I wrote the above yesterday morning, I was reminded of the 38th anniversary of the tragic attack on USS STARK (FFG 37), which reminded me of another event of that day which was my graduation from the University of Virginia. That was a surreal day. Waking to the news of the attacks and the deaths of a number of Sailors, I--who had been commissioned into the Navy the day before--quite naturally had some anxieties about the life I had chosen for at least the next four years. I was also going to a frigate, although in my ignorance, I was unaware of the cosmic gap in capabilities between the ship that had just suffered two Exocet missile hits and the dinosaur to which I had been assigned.
I made an astoundingly bad choice that morning, one that haunts me to this day. I'd like to attribute it to being 21 years old, but as I look at photos of that day, no other member of my class made such a bad decisision. Rather than walk the Lawn in my cap and gown with a nice shirt/tie underneath, I made the walk in sneakers, some sort of plastic work out pants, and a Mr. Bubble T-Shirt. Badly done, Bryan. Badly done.
I remember little else about that day. I remember that my father had left the day before to head north to my brother Sean's graduation, so my mother was there with little brother Pat and sister Kelly. I don't remember them packing up and leaving. I really don't remember what I did the rest of the day. I think Elizabeth Dole was our speaker, but I don't really remember what she said. I remember that it was a very hot day.
Thirty-eight years is an awful long time. I was looking at my 26 year old and 24 year old yesterday and comparing their lifespan to the eclipsed time since I walked the Lawn. I felt old, not in a negative way, but in a way that is compatible with how I feel. I am not trying to be anything but nearly 60 these days. It pretty much stacks up as the best time in my life. That my hair is a different color and parts of my body look very different and that I nearly killed myself the other day trying to dunk a tennis ball on my neighbor's dunking court…these things matter little. I did think a bit about the likelihood that I will not live another 38 years, which was ok with me. I have this internal narrative that says, if God came down and said, “I'm taking you tomorrow", I think I'd say, “ok. It's been a good run". Obviously, no one can predict how one would react when facing death, but that's the little lie I tell myself for now. I wonder if it would be different if God came down and said, “you have one more year.” Would that create a year long Coach K worthy farewell tour in which I emotionalized countless mundane things? I hope not.