Father Knows Less

by Lee Kalcheim

  In the fall, at Rosh Hashanah, when high school was closed for the Jewish holiday, we of course celebrated the new year by visiting Yale. (Doesn’t everybody?) Yale seemed to perk their interest. Gabe was particularly taken with the architecture, the old-world feeling of the campus. Sam pressed the guide for specifics about the curriculum and seemed pleased with the responses. Julia and I liked the idea that the school was only an hour and a half from New York and the Berkshires. “That’s not a consideration,” Gabe quipped. We couldn’t say outright that we would like them close to home, but the fact is they had never ever been away from us for longer than ten days. And that was only twice! It was Julia and I who were anxious about the separation. The thought seemed not to bother them at all. Except of course, they mostly talked about going to the same school. They would have each other. We didn’t have to be close by.

  “What’s the point of going away to college if you can see your parents every weekend?”

  “Just because we’re close, doesn’t mean we want to see you.”

  “I know.”

  “We know, but what about the idea that we might miss you. And want to be able to see you without having to fly somewhere.”

  Gabe straightened up. “That’s not a consideration. We’re going to the best college for us, not the best college for you.”

  “Oh, Gabey. You’re so tough,” I replied.

  Julia to the rescue. “Gabe, Dadoo’s just trying to tell you that we’ll miss you.”

  “I know. I know. And we’ll miss you too. But …”

  I walked away. Gabe ran up after me. “Dadoo, we’ll miss you too. But distance is not the prime consideration. The quality of the college is.”

  “Gabey, I know that.”

  “Yes … yes. Okay. Okay.”

  An awkward silence. As your kids get older, everything has another meaning. Every little disagreement is not only about the subject of the disagreement, but about his declaration of independence. I took his hand, and we walked on through the campus quad.

  Touring Yale brought up old memories. I had gone to a year of graduate school at the Drama School, but, in fact, I never saw most of the campus. I just walked from my apartment the two blocks to the drama school. I saw little else. Seeing the whole campus for the first time, it was impressive. Who knew? The schools get you by their campuses. You imagine, I could live here. And then a year later they tell you in your rejection letter, “No, you can’t.” But, even though their grades were good, we were realistic about the limited possibilities of the elite Ivy schools. And in some ways, I think the boys resisted those schools, simply because of an admirable resistance to their very eliteness. Harvard was of course, Harvard… but so what? It was the flip side of Groucho Marx’s famous, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” They were saying: these places, the Yales, the Harvards, the Princetons, have the air of being so exclusive that it turns us off. Was it self serving? “If they’re going to reject me I don’t want them.” Or was it an honest reaction to this air of exclusivity?

  But then again, they did apply to Oxford. There was “exclusive” and there was “Old World steeped-in-history exclusive.”

  But, Oxford rejected them.

  And so they were accepted at the two schools they liked, Oberlin (with its Music Conservatory) and … the University of Chicago … with its scary, albeit cryptically funny motto: “Where Fun Goes To Die.”

  So the following spring, after acceptance, we went back to see those two schools to make THE CHOICE.

  When you revisit a school after acceptance you generally go on a designated “look-see” weekend. Hundreds of other kids and their families descend on the campuses. Big receptions. Lectures. Not like the first visit “Rah-Rah-Why-Our-School-Is-Terrific” type stuff. Some very helpful Q’s and A’s about fields of studies. We wanted to know of course just how our little violinists would find a place in the music department. And how it compared to a place like Oberlin, which, after all, did have its own conservatory. But again, the major thing is zeitgeist. What does it feel like being there? And now, actually sitting in a class, there—could Gabe or Sam imagine themselves being here?

  It’s something I never did. Nor my wife. Both of us picked a school after a fast tour, and then, when we got accepted, we went. My interview at Trinity was on a gray, gray day with a gray, gray admissions officer—so boring I had to ask him questions so he could stay interested in me. But I ended up going there. And I ended up loving it. So much for the thoroughness of our mission. The boys decided they’d go to a sampling of classes in subjects they intended to take. Philosophy. Calculus. Music theory. They also stayed overnight with some students in a dorm to get a feel for the students. We stayed overnight at the University of Chicago's International House to get a feel for sleeping in a small room on a narrow bed. The next day we asked them about their dorm stay.

  “It was okay. The kids were slobs. Dirty clothes all over the place.”

  “You mean like your room at home?”

  “Oh much worse!”

  They hadn’t really had time to talk to the kids in the dorm, pick their brains. It was a bit frustrating. But Sam found some solace in one late night foray.

  “Some kid was playing piano in the lounge and I jammed with him and that was fun!”

  The boys had mixed feelings about Chicago. They loved the campus. The noble goal of the school, which touted itself as “The Life of The Mind.” But they were disappointed in some of the kids they met and were appalled that several students surfed the net on their computers during class. But the place did intrigue them.

  “The philosophy prof was great.”

  “He did a lecture on Hegel. Really impressive.”

  “Calculus was over my head, so … I don’t know.”

  “And if it was over Sam’s head,” Gabe added, “You can imagine what it was for me.”

  The University of Chicago is set in the village of Hyde Park, within the city of Chicago, and the ambience of its neighborhood streets and houses and the majesty of its gothic buildings isolates it from the roar of a big city a half hour up the drive on Lake Michigan. It gave the college an availability. A warmth.

  That morning we packed ourselves into the car and headed southeast to Ohio. Driving into Oberlin is like driving into the past. The village green that greets you, surrounded by Italianate college buildings and main-street stores, feels like you are back in 1890. Horses and carriages should be clomping their way down those streets. Women in long skirts, holding parasols, should be walking the green, arm and arm with men in long black hats and topcoats. You are immediately calmed.

  We dropped in for dinner at a school hangout, a Mexican place. Well, OK, they didn’t have Mexican restaurants in 1905, but what this place did have was good food and a young music student sitting in the window playing Scarlatti on the harpsichord. We bought him a margarita for fortitude. And after dinner we walked to the conservatory to see if we could luck into a recital. A young Korean violinist happened to be doing one and we sat in. Exquisite. A wonderful dessert. But yet … maybe, just maybe the ice cream store would be open for more. Cones in hand we paraded down past the Mexican restaurant. There in the window, still playing Scarlatti was the student harpsichordist. We went back to our room at the Inn and the boys went off to the conservatory practice rooms with their violins—to practice.

  They didn’t take their violins on the trip just because they were going to be staying at Oberlin, with its music conservatory, they took them whenever and wherever we went. Even on all our trips abroad. As Gabriel told me often, “If you don’t practice every day, there’s no point in playing.”

  Most times, to save money, we were all booked in the same hotel room, and the boys practiced as there as best they could—usually one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom—while Julia and I tried to read or nap to the din of the repeated exercises. Once, on a trip to Amalfi, while Gabe played in the tiny bathroom, Sam practiced out on the balcony, serenad
ing a local fishmonger, cleaning his catch. On the rare occasion we stayed at a large hotel, like the Holiday Inn in Philly for my high school reunion, Julia phoned the desk and asked if there was an empty conference room the boys could practice in. I think on our first trip to Chicago they commandeered the empty ball room. “Great sound, Mommy. Come listen!!”

  At Oberlin, at midnight, the boys returned to the room after practicing in the conservatory practice rooms.

  “Mommy, Dadoo, we came back past the Mexican restaurant and …”

  “The student was still in the window playing Scarlatti.”

  “He’s been playing for five hours!”

  “Nonstop!”

  “Nonstop? That’s not easy on Mexican food.”

  “Booo!”

  Fun may die at Chicago, but music never does at Oberlin. The next day the boys were due to meet a student guide and stay overnight at a dorm room and then visit classes. I was alone with the boys after driving Julia to the airport to fly back New York for work. We nosed around the campus and returned to the room. And while I lay down for a nap, the boys hit my computer. They were surfing the college curriculum for classes they wanted to take the next day after their dorm sleepover.

  As I lay on the bed, half awake, I could hear them talking about the classes. They wanted to take the same ones they’d taken at Chicago in order to make a ready comparison. Cognizant of their sleeping Dad, they spoke quietly as they huddled over the computer, deciding which classes to take. Lying there, I was wafted back to when they were tots—when I would do morning duty and take them down to the piano room at crack of dawn, and set them off playing “restaurant” while I dozed on the day bed. I would listen to them making the food, talking in their limited vocabulary about how to make the scrambled eggs I ordered. I heard them discuss what an English muffin was. What to serve the tea in. Nothing made me happier than napping there while they played and chatted. And here I was, fifteen-plus years later, napping while they chatted about what classes to observe. Feeling the same comfortable bliss I had felt before.

  The boys were focused. Dogged in their task of picking out the right classes to attend, much as they had been in finding just the right breakfast to serve Dadoo years before. Had they been taught this ability to focus? Did it happen because they were twins and they always had to bargain with each other and find solutions as a team, and therefore were forced to do things more thoroughly? Whatever the reason, as I listened to them carefully choose their classes, they showed me that every decision merits focus. Sure, you can go too far. How many times had we been late because the boys couldn’t decide what attire would be best for a particular occasion. My “just put something on” was always met with derision. The implication: you can’t be careful in your choices just some of the time!

  The intervening month and a half was fraught with discussions about which of the colleges they wanted to attend. They re-read the catalogues. We had an old friend, an Oberlin alumni and booster, over for dinner and they peppered him with questions. They called my cousin in Philly, who had graduated from Chicago twenty years before, and grilled him. They could not get enough information, and the more they got the more conflicted they became.

  “Just put both names on the dart board and throw a dart,” I joked.

  They were not amused.

  May 30! The deadline. The night before they had to decide, the boys, with doubts about Chicago engendered by their disappointment about some of the students, decided to call the Dean of Admissions and “confront” him with their doubts. I left them alone in my study to make the call. They wanted me nowhere in sight. But, as it turned out, nature called just as they placed the call and I was next door in the bathroom as they connected with Dean O’Neill and spoke to him on the speakerphone. So, I heard it all. It was impressive. Gabe, like a district attorney put it right to the dean. They loved the school, but were disappointed in the lack of intellectual fervor of the students.

  “Your college brochure advertises the college—right on the cover—as “The Life of The Mind.”

  Dean O’Neill paused and then, just easily, simply, told them that certainly they would meet some students who did not live up to that standard, but that by and large they would find that that standard was a template for most of the student body, and if they gave the school a chance they would find what they were looking for. He was impressive. And when the boys hung up and I entered the room as if I had heard nothing, they admitted as much. They were still not completely decided. And the next morning, deadline day, they sat with their mother and me and as they talked we both realized that, though they loved both schools, they really wanted to go to Chicago because its reputation as the “smart school” would be a badge of . . .well, “smartness.” As boys who wanted an old fashioned hard-core education, it would set them apart in a way they always wanted to be set apart. It would make people think, when they told them “We go to the University of Chicago,” that they must be smart. That they must love learning. It was the badge they wanted to wear.

  Too often we’re too shy to admit that we want a make a choice that boasts for us. We don’t want to actually boast. That’s too crude. Too egotistical. But we want to let others know something about us that makes us proud.

  It’s not done lightly. It’s done by many choices. They want to dress up for the theater. They want to wear a jacket and a vest and tie and nice shoes to say to anyone and everyone, “This is an occasion for us. This is something we love. And we’re dressing up to honor it.” Being proud of their intelligence, they chose a school that was a wardrobe that reflected who they were.

  SCENE: LIVING ROOM, NEW YORK APARTMENT.

  (The boys burst in the door)

  SAM

  Our band is playing for graduation!

  GABE

  We play some of our set songs before all the speeches, and then, when the class marches up to get their diplomas…

  SAM

  We play “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  JULIA

  You play “Pomp and Circumstance” with two violins, drums, base, keyboard and an electric guitar?

  SAM

  Yes!

  LEE

  No vocalist?

  GABE

  “Pomp and Circumstance” has no lyrics.

  LEE

  How about this? (he sings to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance)

  We’re finishing High School

  It wasn’t a nice school.

  SAM

  Dadoo, cool it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  RENAISSANCE

  The summer after the boys graduated from high school, the summer before they were due to leave for college, we decided to celebrate their rite of passage (and my birthday) with a trip to our home away from homes—Roma!

  They graduated on a sunny morning in June, and only hours later, we were aboard a plane, taking off for London. Why London? Our old friend, the actor Tim Piggot-Smith, was starring in Pygmalion at the Old Vic. We hadn’t seen him onstage since he’d appeared in New York with Kevin Spacey in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. We’d primed the boys with episodes of his Masterpiece Theatre series, The Jewel and The Crown and G.B. Shaw was the family’s favorite playwright. We stayed with our old friends in Peckham and drank up London: Tim’s delightful Henry Higgins, followed the next day by Shaw’s Arms and the Man at the National. Then Shaw-satiated, we took the Chunnel Train to Paris.

  Why Paris? Because it’s Paris, and because another old friend, Phillipe, was there, visiting his family from his home in Vietnam. Phillipe was a charming renaissance man. He’d flown Corsairs for the French in their Vietnamese War, had been a campaign adviser for President Giscard d’Estaing, then been a wine importer in New York, where he met, married, and divorced an old girlfriend of mine, then moved back to Vietnam, married a local girl and had son, Alexander, to add to his already large family. He has a Marc Chagall-like elfin charm. He’s the resident conservative among our liberal friends, and, more than anything, he
loves a good time. His pragmatic political views sometimes stunned (and delighted) the boys.

  “Terrorism is an overrated threat. How many people have died at the hands of terrorists? Thousands. How many died in World War One? Millions. In Russia alone, in World War II twenty million people died. Considering all the violence in the history of the world, this is nothing to get excited about.”

  We dined and drank and drank and drank with Phillipe and his Parisian family, and the next afternoon were squired to see his nephew’s string quartet play under the beauty of the magnificent rose windows in the church of Saint Chapelle. Requisite stops at the Musee’ D’orsay, the Tuillieries and the little blue crêperie down the tiny street near our small, cozy hotel. As rain fell for the first time in the trip, we rushed to the train to catch the plane to fly over the alps to Rome.

  Francesco’s ebullient smile greeted us at the out of the way airport where we landed, and we crammed our luggage into his small car and careened off to Rome. We were subletting a wonderfully eccentric apartment in an area called “I Monti” which was on a hill overlooking the Forum. We indulged in all our Roman pleasures, eating, talking with our friends, eating, walking and … eating. Then we left for a trip south, in a very “hot” rented Alpha Romeo, to meet a friend I’d first encountered on our trip in 1997, Letizia!

  We’d met eleven years before. On a warm September afternoon, I entered the convent where I was teaching and started through the small cloisters to drink my coffee at a table in the quiet area in the back. A young woman was just entering from the nun’s quarters as I passed. I think I literally stopped and stared. I know I smiled. And maybe nodded. And maybe even said, “Buon giorno.” Did as many things as would keep me looking at her as long as I possibly could. She was exquisite looking. She smiled back. Replied, “Buon giorno.”