Iqra’i

In the Times magazine, Ehud Havazelet has a beautiful and heart-wrenching meditation on his son, a high-school friend, growing up:

Walking home from dinner the night before, as he was discoursing on Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals,” I couldn’t resist telling him to tie his shoe. There is nothing unusual about all this — though every parent has perhaps felt the uniqueness of its poignant sting: Who will take care of him now?

Outside, patterns emerged dependent on the shuttle schedule. Women were usually in plenty of time; men rushed, hair still wet. Some boy was invariably last, running after the bus, disheveled, inexpertly dressed, maybe a half-eaten Pop-Tart hanging from his mouth as he flailed at the bus already moving from the curb.

One of these boys, misreading the time perhaps, was early. He bore a slight resemblance to my son, curly-haired, with the same calculated slovenliness in dress, his backpack half-open. He sleepily approached a group of three young women waiting for the bus, groomed, alert, ready for the day.

They saw him and immediately went to work. One buttoned his shirt, one patted and tugged his hair into place, one zipped the backpack so nothing would tumble out. They gave him the grief he deserved, and one leaned up to kiss his cheek. It was all I could watch. Moved, obscurely relieved, wondering who these young ladies were, and how I could introduce them to Michael, I got up, closed the window and went off to shower.

Growing up and going to college is the slow process of moving from the care of parents to the care of friends. Mom and Dad are, of course, only a phone call away, with advice and consolation, but the shoulders I cry on now smell of cigarette smoke instead of my mother’s perfume.

It is at once a liberation — a friend tells me that my skirt is awfully short but never “don’t you dare leave the house like that, young lady” — and a constriction. Friends care for us, but the responsibility goes both ways. We take care of them in a way that we may one day take care of our parents, but not now. Friends show weakness and depend on us; they were never the godlike beings who explained, and appeared to control, the world.

As we grow up we realize that our parents are only human, that they don’t have all the answers, but they’re older. They know more. And we are, somehow, still theirs — as friendly as we may be, the relationship is never one of absolute equality. They’re adults, and though it may not be the one we take they know a path.

With our friends we are all lost together. None of us are quite certain. We live in a strange bubble, out of the nest but not yet on the wing, and we need each other more than ever.

Poulos called us the Yale Mafia, and the more I think about it the more I like the phrase. It is about family.

Also! There will be no posting here or on the Reactionary Epicurean Blog from Wednesday night to Monday morning. Dara is competing in the Jeopardy! College Tournament, filming in Madison, WI, and we are going to cheer her on.