Boyz to Men, All Around Us

Each time I dive in again here, I remind myself that my theme is contrasts…things that are next to each other but strikingly different. Life is a lot about merging, but those lines of demarcation are everywhere, too.

Take, for example, the fact that we try to appreciate the little treasures that glimmer through our daily lives while not shrinking from the full force of tragedies outside of our own households. Sometimes, of course, it’s the opposite: our own lives may be crumbling all around us with loss and pain, yet we manage to recognize that for others, the sun still shines.

With news of another mass shooting by another disturbed young man wielding a weapon pounding on all of our souls, it is hard to know what to do, how to act, where to turn. The regular, tranquil moments can seem inconsequential in the face of such unfathomable horrors.

Since I find myself in a precious patch of days at home in the company of my teenage son, however, I am thinking about what it means, for boys in particular, to grow up: What do they need to thrive? What are the factors that, in some cases, can set them dangerously off course?  Their job is to claim places in the world, feel recognized, and still fulfill their responsibilities to others. It’s serious business all right. It is for us too—we watch our sons grow tall, push off from us and sometimes become mysterious in their own might.

Maybe that’s why the hilarious moments are so welcome.

While we were eating dinner the other night on the screened porch, our 16 year old Henry (he’s OK with this telling) decided to pose some questions about those years before his father and I got married. He wanted to know what kind of jobs we had, what the dating scene was like, how we navigated our late twenties and early thirties before being thunderstruck by love. His father being on the other side of the country at Episcopal Convention –combing through resolutions down in a basement, apparently — I was on my own, and so I tried to answer with my usual decorum.

When I mentioned that I’d spent some time working for a “temp agency” in Boston, his face suddenly lit up and he exclaimed, “A tempeh agency?!” Having recently adopted a vegan way of life and now learning to cook many flavorful dishes with this wonderful if drab looking stuff, he was thrilled to hear that his mother had actually been employed at a place dedicated to the production of it. Attaway, Ma!

Little did he know, of course, that my time with the temp-not-tempeh agency was far from the wondrous era he imagined. While I did in fact meet a whole lot of characters in offices around the city, my self-esteem plummeted as people barely saw the need to learn my name or anything else about me. I might as well have worn a sign that said, “I’m In Between Things, so I Don’t Really Count.”

What definitely does count, during this stretch of summer, is the time I’m getting to be with my son. He’s balancing working at an organic farm with taking Drivers Ed; while the classes are pretty deadly boring, and the teacher rambles on with his acronyms about all the things you have to worry about behind the wheel, Henry can stand it because he spends most of his daylight hours outside in the fields, surrounded by green things growing everywhere. And then in the evenings, he runs.

Since the prospect of getting his license is hovering out there in the near future, I still accompany him in the car, doing the daily circuit from home to farm to class and around again. And then there are the screened porch dinners, too. Gathered up together, these pieces qualify, especially as he is my third child, as a glimmering treasure.

The drumbeat of news from the outside, though, rams home the point that far too many young men are lost, unmotivated, full of hate, or all these combined. In these cases, “growing up” is really not what’s going on.

I came upon this book recently; it’s not about how mass murderers are made so much as it’s about the factors that, according to the author Dr. Leonard Sax, lead boys astray, cause them to squander their abilities. They’re doing a dangerous kind of drifting, he argues, and the whole society suffers as a result. Video games, prescription drugs, devaluation of masculinity, teaching methods that favor girls, and environmental factors—these are all contributing to the problem, and we’d better take notice.

This rings true to an extent, based on what I’ve seen. And yet, as the timeless Huckleberry Finn reminds us, drifting done right — in the pursuit of true freedom–can also be glorious.

Here’s what Huck says at the end of Chapter 18:

I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like at raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Amen to that. For my own boy, and so many others coming into their own strength, having plenty of drive is a good and necessary thing of course. Once in a while, though—not when they’re actually behind the wheel! – some Huck-like drifting might just keep them from getting “all cramped up and smothery.”

Let’s all do what we can to celebrate our boys…to care for them, to support them, to let them know that they can make a positive difference and enjoy themselves, too. Oh man, do we ever need them to stay whole — now, and later on too.