Claiming a Father’s Privilege

Few things are more tedious than people who tell you every little thing their kids do, from their first bowel movement through retirement. Past a certain age, most of us have kids, we all love them, and they all do things their parents think are remarkable. I’m not in the business of relentlessly promoting The Sole Heir, and I’m not about to start.

That doesn’t mean I don’t get to bump my chest a little when she has a week like this one.

On Tuesday she received her MCAT scores. (MCATs are the medical school equivalent of SATs for incoming freshman.) Her total for the three numerically scored sections was 33, including 13 in Verbal Reasoning. Of course, those numbers means nothing to anyone not involved in the medical profession. Suffice to say she well exceeded the average section scores of students for medical school (8.8) as well as some top flight medical schools. (Georgetown 10.0; George Washington 9.4; Johns Hopkins 10.1.) Her writing score was an R (on a scale of A to T, T being highest); the average accepted student gets an N. Overall, that places her near the 90th percentile, and that’s a pretty harsh curve, since you don’t take MCATs unless you’re planning to be a doctor.

That would be a good week for anyone. It’s not even the most exciting thing to happen to TSH.

Tomorrow she leaves for seven weeks in France. First a week of sightseeing in Paris with her mother, then off to Nice to participate in a medical internship at a trauma hospital, observing surgeries and doing other pre-doctor kinds of things. She is the first student from St. Mary’s College of Maryland ever to be chosen for this program.

I’ll miss her and I’ll be anxious for her until she returns, but I won’t worry. My daughter is very much the person I’d like to be if I ever grow up. She knows how to take care of herself.

Well done, Bink.

March 1

It was about 8:00 PM when I dropped my coat on the stairs and made it to the bathroom barely in time to vomit from adrenaline and exhaustion. Awake for thirty-eight hours, hardly anything to eat, and I had the easy job. I might have fallen asleep on my way to the bedroom. When the phone woke me an hour later my shoes were on, neither foot on the bed. I would have ripped the caller a new one, but it was my mother-in-law, and she deserved a special dispensation.

She’d only been a grandmother for three hours.

She wasn’t home when I called from the hospital; she had only just received the message.

It took a little over thirty-four hours of labor to become an official father. Mom was getting stitched up when the midwife invited me to meet my daughter. Unseeing and cold, she looked everywhere and nowhere until they told me to speak to her, and she looked straight at me. We played that game a few times and it was time for neo-natal ICU after a less than perfect Apgar test.

That was twenty-one years ago today. Happy Birthday to The Sole Heir.

Almost eight years ago someone else with a March 1 birthday came into my life. She’s still around, too, known better to readers of this blog as The Beloved Spouse.

Happy birthday to the two women in my life. You are the reasons I look forward to every day.

The Sole Heir Rides Again

Few things are more boring than listening to someone else go on at length about how his kid won the refrigerator drawing contest at Millard Fillmore Elementary School for the fourth week in a row, a new third grade record. Unless he shows you photographs of all the drawings on his iPhone. With that in mind, I don’t spend a lot of time promoting The Sole Heir. She knows what I think of her. Frankly, it’s none of your business.

Once in a while, though, she does something that merits special attention. A junior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, she has been accepted into a five-week undergraduate pre-med program in Nice, France. She’ll stay with a nice Nice family, attend classes, observe doctors, and generally build on the experience she gained from watching her father get his eyes sliced open. She gets to do this while spending the late spring in the south of France, less than an hour’s drive from Cannes while the film festival is underway. (That’s less than an hour in kilometers, so it’s even closer than it sounds.)

As far as we know, TSH is the first St. Mary’s student to be accepted into this program. (This opinion is based largely on the fact the interviewer had never heard of the school before reading TSH’s application.) She’s excited, and the entire family couldn’t be prouder of her.

She’s already thinking of what she’ll need there. I have told her, no matter how prepared she thinks she is, something will come up she hadn’t expected. For example, in the immortal words of the poet-philosopher Steven Martin, in France a street is a rue; a hat is a chapeau; a house is a maison.

Those French have a different word for everything.

The Doctor Will Soon Be In

As if all this new seeing wasn’t good enough, another enjoyable aspect of cataract surgery was having The Sole Heir with me throughout. She’s a pre-med student, and Dr. Grundy and his staff were good enough to let her don scrubs and follow me all the way in and back.

I found out afterward she’d watched my vital signs on the electronic monitors and received a running commentary of what was happening from Brian, the nurse anesthetist, as they watched on the monitor. She said later she was less nervous than she would have been sitting alone in the waiting room. I know I was less nervous during the pre-surgical down time, as talking with her was a lot more entertaining than wondering what happens if the doctor sneezes at an inopportune moment.

The staff fell all over themselves making her (and me) feel comfortable, and I think she learned a lot about what’s involved in minor surgery. She had a knee scoped a few years ago, but I’m sure the focus is different when you can step back and watch instead of being the guest of honor.

She drove me home and we ate lunch and watched baseball and she was at least as much of a Nazi as The Beloved Spouse about enforcing the doctor’s “don’t do anything today” edict. Most people think of surgery as cutting something apart, but it should also tie things together.

March 1

March 1 is a special day at The Home Office. Because of March 1, the grass is greener and the sky is bluer. I am more often happy, and, when I'm not, the unhappiness is not as deep, nor does it last as long.

Thanks to March 1, I find humor in ordinary things. I am more patient, and less likely to assume malicious intent when things don't go my way. My health is better. Honest to God. I am a better friend and a better son and generally a better person to be around.

The Beloved Spouse and The Sole Heir both drew their first breaths on March 1.

Happy birthday, ladies.

Another Milestone

The Sole Heir™ voted today for the first time. Texted me right after, and she was jazzed. I voted during my lunch break, more out of a sense of duty than enthusiasm. Until I got to the polling place, that is, when I got the same feeling as I have for the last 34 years. It’s just a cool thing, knowing the direction and future of a great nation—and, yes, I do think it’s great, no matter what I bitch about here—is determined wholly by tens of millions of individual decisions, all made in the privacy of a voting booth.

You don’t think so? You think money and big companies run the show? Sure they do, because we allow it. No matter how much money is available, or how distasteful the ads are, no one gets to be a senator, congressman, governor, president, alderman, councilman, delegate, whatever, unless more people vote for him—one at a time—than vote for the opponent.

It’s humbling to think about. I always feel great when I leave the polling place, no matter how I felt about the current situation or the voting choices I had. If you’re reading this on Election Day and haven’t voted yet, get your ass out there. You’ll be glad.

Two Gifts

I got a phone call out of the blue from The Sole Heir last week. These are not unusual occurrences; she’s good about making The Old Man™ feel like he’s still at the party with random calls and appearances.

This particular call was prompted by her having to walk through the practice room wing of the music building to get to a professor’s office. Every room filled, different music in different keys on different instruments all filtering into the hall as she walked by; Charles Ives’s idea of heaven.

Her response? Call The Old Man™ to tell him what she’d done, and that it occurred to her, “This is what it must have been like for Dad every day.”

That’s Gift One; to have the thought and take the time. Not too many nineteen-year-olds would do either. Made my day.

Gift two? She got me to thinking about it, how it felt for that to be an everyday occurrence. How it was the most energized time of my life, waking up knowing I was going to learn things I didn’t even suspect at the time, and that everything I learned would make me aware of fifteen other things I needed to know and had better find out. It was intimidating and exhilarating at the same time, the intimidation overcome by the exhilaration and the mindless confidence of youth.

Then I got to thinking of how much better my life has been because I made one decision: to change majors from Medical Technology to Music Education. I would have made a nice living in Med Tech, and enjoyed it. Music allowed a working class boy from more or less rural Pennsylvania to be exposed to a lot of things he had no business expecting, contrasting life experiences a lot of people don’t get.

I’ve played with the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra and German beer bands. Played in Heinz Hall and Meyerhoff Hall and a corrugated metal building that housed a private school built so white kids wouldn’t have to school with Nigras. I’ve played the Fourth of July at Stone Mountain in front of 250,000 people and dedicated a tree. Attended receptions in homes worth several million dollars and eaten homemade Brunswick Stew off a paper plate while sitting under a tree. Played football games in sub-freezing temperatures and parades where I wrung the sweat out of my jacket afterward. Performed next to players now working in major orchestras and high school students now working at Popeye’s.

A lot of extremes I would not have had a chance to experience otherwise. The downside is that I rarely feel fully at home in most places. My blue collar upbringing meant I was never truly comfortable in the chi-chi settings, but my education and experience made it hard to listen to some of the conversations taking place in the American Legion when I went home. It forced me to think about things I likely would not have thought about, and to examine positions in a more detailed manner. It taught me the power of self-discipline and perseverance, and how to pick my battles and to know when to quit. Made me a better father than I would have been, and a better son than I had been.

What it didn’t make me was enough money to live on, so I moved on. No shame in that, and no time wasted. Learning to live a more fully examined life is never a waste of time, and it was nice to be reminded of that.

Thanks, Bink.

Why The Sole Heir Is The Sole Heir

From today's "Shit My Dad Says:"

"A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed."

I have succeeded.

Out One Door and In The Next

I don’t post a lot about my personal life. If your personal life is so bad you feel the need to read about mine, then what you really need is professional help. This week was an exception. Reportable things happened so quickly I didn’t have time to post it in bite-sized chunks, so you’re getting it in one, big, undigested glob.

The Sole Heir graduated high school on Monday. On Saturday afternoon I was accompanied by the Beloved Spousal Equivalent and both parental correspondents to L’Estate du Sole Heir for party set-up duties and a cook-out. It had rained every day for the previous week, but the Sole Heir’s charmed life kicked in on our way over and the weather was perfect once we got there.

Sunday was more of the same. People of a certain age—mine—took care not to get too much sun, but all else was perfect. About eighty-five people moved through the house and back yard during the course of the day. The noon start allowed The Sole Heir to get a monopoly on many of her friends before they had to start making the rounds. About fifteen gathered in the shade near the bottom of the yard for over an hour to reminisce and make plans they already know they won’t keep.

The graduation went without a hitch, except for getting into and out of Constitution Hall. Those not from around here should be aware that DC area high schools do not have graduation ceremonies at the school. They all use larger, more commercial venues such as Constitution Hall, the Verizon Center, or the University of Maryland’s Comcast Center. Constitution Hall lends gravitas to the ceremony and is large enough for everyone to get in, but parking and traffic in downtown late Monday morning is a crisis. Add to that movie trucks on the streets north and south of the building and half a dozen tour buses parked right up against it, and searching for a particular kid among the crowd was like looking for a clear marble in a pile of whites.

Lunch was across the street from the Treasury Building, at the Old Ebbitt Grill, where the politically elite meet to eat. Plenty to eat, all of it good, and it only cost a hand and a foot, as opposed to the expected arm and a leg.

A hectic three days. Tuesday was back to work at [agency name redacted] for a couple of days of relative sanity, before freshman orientation at the University of Maryland. Get there before nine, stay till after six (TSH stayed the night in a dorm), and learn all you need to know to feel comfortable about sending your kid to a major university. The presentations and handouts were such that the parents were never bored, and left as well-informed as could be imagined. The kids went off on their own to do some pre-registration stuff; actual registration is today.

That was our week. The Sole Heir woke up Monday morning a high school girl; she ate lunch on Friday as a young woman in college. I handled it much better than expected. Only teared up once at the ceremony. The memories I thought would break me up were there, but superseded by watching her enjoyment at all aspects of the week. She’s ready to make the next step. Though I’ll miss having her around as much as I have in the past, I can’t wait to see what she does next. Whatever it is, it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch, and to participate in as much as she needs.

The Terrapin and the Panther

The Sole Heir will attend the University of Maryland in the fall. The decision was not lightly made.

It started a year and a half ago, with a core list of eight schools. Maryland was required to be one, by parental fiat: a reasonably priced fallback position. Applications were sent to Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins, American University, and Maryland.

The results were inconsistent. Confusing, even. Pitt got the ball rolling, waiving out of state tuition before she even applied, then granting a full tuition scholarship by Thanksgiving weekend. Boston College accepted her, but provided no aid. Johns Hopkins put her on the wait list. The Ivies passed. American provided a large scholarship, but its base tuition is so high the remaining costs were still roughly equal to full freight at Maryland.

That left Pitt and Maryland, schools with virtually identical rankings. Late in March, Maryland ponied up with a Banneker-Key scholarship, the school’s highest honor, for full tuition. A Maryland Scholar grant from the state knocked off another three grand, so long as she went to school in Maryland.

No word from Pitt. March became April; the deadline for students to accept offers was May 1. Middle of April TSH called Pitt to see when letters would go out and got the runaround. Same thing the next week. Hedging her bets, she continued her research and became comfortable with the idea of attending Maryland. When people asked, I told them I was 99.44% sure she’d go to Maryland.

Pitt finally made their offer last Friday, April 24: free. They would pay her tuition, standard room and board, all mandatory fees, a small stipend for books, and a couple of thousand bucks to study abroad, should she choose to. (Which she almost certainly will.)

I was torn. I’d become a Maryland advocate, in no small part because the campus is twenty minutes from my house. Generous as Maryland’s offer was, Pitt’s was much better. Family meeting time, and I had no choice but to argue in favor of Pitt.

The Sole Heir, her mother, and I went around on the relative merits for an hour and a half. Death Row inmates should have a lawyer as well-prepared and eloquent as TSH was that day. She acknowledged the benefits of Pitt, and the money it would cost her down the road to go to Maryland. (She plans to go to medical school. Every dollar spent on undergraduate school is a dollar that will have to be borrowed later.) Then she laid out the benefits of Maryland. She had me wavering by the time I left. A short phone call on Saturday to mention something else she’d thought of pushed me a little farther. There wasn’t a lot of doubt by the time we all got together Sunday afternoon.

Words cannot express how proud I am. For all the work she did to earn such bountiful offers from two good schools, yes, but mostly for the manner in which she handled herself through the discussion and decision-making process. She made the right decision, using logic and facts, understanding there are other things to consider than money, and that emotional attachments play a role in such a decision. (At one point on Sunday, she said, “I’m a Maryland girl. I like it here.”)

I hope Maryland appreciates what they’re getting here. I know I do.