Knowing

Fifteen hundred miles—from Maryland to Texas—is a long way for a middle-aged parent to drive with his college-age son, in a 12-year-old car, under a blazing sun, in relentless 100-degree temperatures, over three dog days in late August. The food, scenery, lodgings, and quality of sleep across five states are highly variable. Upon arrival at the university, several days of repeatedly climbing two flights of stairs while lugging lamps, a sofa, chairs, books, yet-to-be assembled furniture, and groceries into a student apartment on the edge of campus reminds parents they are not getting any younger and that their own college days are a memory fading fast.

Despite the rigors of this kind of trip, parents should cherish the experience. What better way these days for a father to reconnect with his son during this unusually long stretch of time that he is partially “offline.” Of course, the omnipresent cell phone, with continuous text messaging and twittering, keeps young people connected to the collective, to be sure. Nevertheless, it’s a perfect opportunity for a father to gather more insights about his son.

For example, on this trip I learned that my son has set a simple but challenging goal for this academic year: to reach out to and interact with more people. I told him this was a noble objective and I wished him well. I learned or re-learned how well he knows himself. When I suggested that he approach a certain task both slowly and patiently, he responded, “I don’t do slow and patient.” Spot on!

I also learned that he is still holding fast to his hopes of someday performing on the big stage. More power to him! Finally, I learned some things about his many friends, both virtual and actual, with whom he maintained a running dialogue throughout the journey. I took mental notes of what excited him about the coming semester, and what made him anxious.

Better yet, the time together offers an opportunity for children to come to know their parents better. Children should know their parents. Children should know their parents well. It’s important that both my boys know I like putting ketchup on my scrambled eggs, pickles in my sandwiches, and mustard on my pretzels.

Children should know what brings their parents joy, what makes them laugh, what makes them sad, what makes them cry. My boys know that I’m happiest and proudest when I watch them living out their dreams, whether on the baseball diamond or the stage. They know because I’ve told them so, even though I probably didn’t need to. Showing up at all those games and performances was evidence enough, I hope.

They know I love to sing my favorite songs aloud, even though I only know a few of the lyrics. They know I love to dance, even though they know I’m making up steps as I go and have no idea of how it will end. They know I have a difficult time finishing the movie Field of Dreams. They know oh so well how cell-phone challenged I am, and that I am better off avoiding all tasks involving fine motor skills.

They know I live and die with each of the 162 Phillies’ games from April to October every year, and that everything worth knowing in life I’ve learned from Seinfeld and Dave Barry.

Children should know what their parents stand for. The boys know I am proud of my work, even though they are hard-pressed to explain what I do to their friends. They know I cannot tolerate injustices served up by the self-absorbed and arrogant, particularly when they or vulnerable people are the direct victims.

Children should know how their parents feel about them. My kids know that my love for them is unconditional. That being said, I don’t think you can ever tell your kids enough how much you love them. So, I’ll keep working on that.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that kids should know how their parents feel about each other. Love, respect, admiration, fondness, friendship—I hope they got the message and that their lives become filled with the same for their loved ones.

I’ve come to realize over the years, through both reflections on my own life and by watching how my wife interacts with the boys, that knowing provides young adults with a sense of security and a compass to guide them in their travels in whatever direction they choose. And kids these days have so many wonderful directions in which they can travel! They prefer drawing up their own navigational charts, as it should be, but knowing their parents gives them the freedom to take risks, to fly, to travel to the end of the world.

I’ve been fortunate to travel the world, meet the most interesting and inspiring people, and do the most unusual things. There was a time, however, when I couldn’t venture far from my own dorm room, which was a mere thirty minutes from my home. The year before I entered college, my father died, suddenly, at the absurdly young age of 47. I was seventeen.

It happened during the Fall semester of my senior year in high school. Although my tight-knit family, friends, and teachers carried me through the Spring semester and graduation, it wasn’t long into my freshman year in college that I began to feel my confidence erode. Throughout my undergraduate years, I was adrift, sullen. In retrospect, I believe that not ever knowing my father, never having had an adult relationship with him, probably explains a lot about that period of painful disorientation.

So, it’s important that we know our kids and they know a lot about us—from the mundane to the profound. Life is good, but good can be fleeting. I am really looking forward to that May 2010 road trip from Texas to Maryland. Who knows? We might even buy cowboy hats along the way and take in a rodeo!

100 Words, 1,000 Emotions

Two years ago this week, my teenage son had cranial surgery. The search for the cause of the various neurological problems that caused considerable distress for him, his family, and his friends and teachers during his high school years had been long and circuitous, but we were fortunate that a diagnosis was made before the Chiari Malformation (a congenital birth defect) advanced to a more serious stage. It all came as quite a shock to us and forced him to delay the start of his university studies.

During his recovery, I wanted to capture the experience of the day of the surgery, which was probably the most distressing 3 hours of my life as a parent. I fumbled around for a bit. Then one Sunday while reading the “Life is Short, Autobiography as Haiku” feature in the Washington Post Arts and Style section, I decided to try my hand at a submission. The purpose of the feature, according to the Post, is to “Find a way to give insight into your life in under 100 words.”

I had never submitted anything to a newspaper or magazine before, and accordingly had very low expectations. The week I submitted my piece, the feature was discontinued. Until this week, I had lost track of the original piece. Reflecting recently on this challenging experience, I set about trying to track down the original submission. I'm glad I found it. It helps me remember, and every time I read it I take away new insights.

Since his consult with the neurosurgeon, my 17-year-old rarely mentioned the impending operation. When colleagues asked how he was doing, I replied, “Just what other teenagers are doing: reading Potter and hanging out with friends.” Moments before the surgery, he whispered, “I’m nervous.” My wife asked him why; he turned towards her and asserted, “Mom, let me have my fear.” Then he smiled. We all laughed. When he squeezed her hand as the anesthesia flowed, her eyes welled as did mine, and we watched the OR staff wheel him down the hall, by then already oblivious to everything around him.

Resistance is Futile

Thanks to advances in modern technology, it has become theoretically possible to carry out most of the rites and rituals of daily living without ever having to engage another human being. In truth, we can all cite examples of the many imperfections in today’s human-proof “systems.” It will only take the ITers a little longer to work out the remaining kinks in the architecture. In the meantime, I fear that most of the temporary human custodians of these imperfect systems may have already turned to the dark side.

Yesterday, I stopped at the Public Library. I picked out three books, two by John LeCarre and one by Wally Lamb, and approached the check-out desk. To my surprise, there were two self-checkout card readers. I passed my library card under the infrared light, but was immediately informed that there was “a problem” and was instructed to consult the librarian.

When she scanned my card, she looked at me severely, as librarians are prone to do, and declared that I “wasn’t even in the system,” in a tone that unambiguously suggested it was my fault. How could I not be in the system? I was issued a card based on my application. She commanded me to “show some ID,” which I did, whereupon she properly entered me into the system, checked out my books, gave me a receipt, and sent me on my way. There is no doubt in my mind that the “Borg” has assimilated this woman, at least partially, and that she and her colleagues are well on their way to full integration into the Collective.

Last week I went to the newly renovated grocery store in my neighborhood. All the grocery checkers were wearing new outfits, which carried the new logo and reflected the colorful décor of the store. It was as though the company had ordered more material for the curtains than was necessary and so decided to make uniforms out of the excess. At least they weren’t wearing those ghastly company hats. More surprising, however, were the self-checkout machines that had been installed in the aisles that heretofore had been reserved for “express” checkout, formerly staffed by people with a pulse.

Having had prior bad experiences at these automated machines at the Home Depot, I hesitated. Eventually, I decided it was better than waiting in line. Plus, I noticed a clerk milling about who had been assigned to help the risk-averse customers like myself. Everything was going well, until I tried putting my scanned items in a place where they didn’t belong. Next thing I knew I was caught in an automated error loop. I couldn’t proceed to check out, or pay, or receive a receipt.

Just as I was about to call for help, an alert was broadcast from the speaker on the side of the machine: “Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.” Immediately, the clerk came running. He was pressing buttons faster than a guy stuck in an elevator with a snake. We never spoke. Upon resolving my problem, he moved on, C3P0-like, to help the next bewildered, hapless human. As I passed him on my way to the exit, I caught a glimpse of his name tag. Just as I thought! It read: “I, Robot.”

Of course, these days we can accomplish just about anything from the comforts of our homes. We have online banking, shopping, job hunting, travel planning, and entertaining. With these conveniences, however, comes even more dehumanization. We believe we are the kings and queens of our castles. We are not! We are just Users, with unique electronic IDs and Passwords. And we are communicating with disembodied cyber entities that send us electronic messages from unattended sites to which we cannot respond. For anyone who has forgotten or lost an account password, you know exactly what I am talking about.

If you don’t want to wait for 24 hours and are brave or foolish enough to call the company instead, all that you can hope for is an automated message that informs you that you have been placed in a virtual line, with virtual humans, where you can expect to wait for 724 minutes before your call is answered. The only thing worse than the wait, which you can’t even complain about with the other poor souls in line, is having to listen to Barry Manilow doing a cover of the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive.”

Just when you thought things could not get any more impersonal, you realize it’s time to refill a prescription. All you need is your touch-tone phone and your empty prescription bottle, and “Ready-Refill”, the automated system at your local drug store, is at your disposal. In this case, however, you’re not even a User ID and a Password. You are simply the Rx number in blue on the label at the bottom of your medicine bottle.

The situation isn’t any better at work. For security reasons my multiple passwords change every three months. New software systems are introduced. Updates and patches are applied every so often. When things go wrong, I’ve been instructed to call the Help Desk. One or two failed simple fixes later, however, the “helpers” always take control of my computer, remotely, from wherever in the world they are sitting, while I am reduced to watching the cursor bounce wildly around the screen. It’s Pong all over again! Windows are opening and closing so fast my head spins and I eventually go in search of an Advil.

Whenever this happens, I often wonder whether these IT folks ever have trouble checking out books or groceries. I am betting they don’t. I’m sure they have all crossed over.

From the Archives: Reflections from Hotel Room #224 (April 2004)

Soon after checking into the Hotel Des Milles Collines during a recent trip to Rwanda, I turned on the T.V., tuned to CNN, and lo and behold, there was Mr. Jean Aristide, Haiti’s President-in-exile, giving a press conference from, of all places, the Central African Republic. I doubt that Mr. Aristide’s brief sojourn in this doleful country in the middle of Africa was of sufficient duration for him to form any lasting memories; accordingly, I am happy to share some of my own. It’s a place I called “home” from 1987 to 1990.

Never say never

My journey to the “C.A.R.” actually began in 1986, in Togo, West Africa, at the exact moment when my wife glared at me and declared, “We are NEVER going there!” This was her reaction to a recounting of a series of incredible mishaps and misfortunes by a fellow Peace Corps couple, who had just transferred to Togo after one year in C.A.R.. Of course, one year later, my wife, my 2-year old son, and I found ourselves in Bangui, C.A.R’s capital, after I accepted a position with the CDC as a technical advisor to the government’s Ministry of Health. By the time you finish reading this piece, you probably won’t remember that my wife contracted malaria during her first month in the country, but I suspect that you will be impressed by her knack for forecasting trouble.

Wild game, big and small

I never made the trip to the far southwest of the country, where lowland gorillas and elephants welcome the rare visitor. I opted out because my job required that I be on the road so much of the time. The Lonely Planet Guide describes C.A.R.’s roads as “poor throughout the country.” This may be one of the great understatements of our time. Had I been asked, I might have said: “It’s all gorge, gulley, gulch, chasm, rift, and abyss.” I never regretted missing out on the animals as I was fortunate to experience many sights and sounds that most tourists never did. Take my hotel room in Bambari, one of C.A.R.’s 5 regional capitals, where one of the great incidents in modern entomology unfolded before my very eyes. Actually, my eyes were closed most of the time.

Following a late afternoon arrival, I noticed a solitary cockroach in my armoire as I was unpacking. Luckily, a full can of insecticide was included in the cost of the room, and so I set about giving my roommate a thorough spraying. About 8 hours later, I awoke to what sounded like Orville Redenbacher’s stove-top, quick-popping corn. What I witnessed was anything but. A population of dead or near-dead cockroaches, equal in number to the residents of Rhode Island, had come to rest peacefully on the top of my mosquito net. Many of their less-acrobatic colleagues had missed the net and had fallen directly to the floor—herewith the source of my middle-of-the-night tropical alarm. Those that clung to the ceiling—none of which, in any part, was visible to the naked eye—were in the throes of their last spasmodic movements. Having just spent two years in West Africa, during which time I came to appreciate how quickly the unusual could rapidly become the ordinary, I went back to sleep.



The beauty of C.A.R., however, was that you did not have to leave the comforts of your home to observe wild game. One afternoon my family and I had lunch with a reptilian guest. Mind you, I’m not talking about a picnic in our backyard; I’m talking about a routine sit-down at the dining room table. Well, there the snake was, having just emerged from the inside of the air conditioning unit, staring at the three of us from across the table like one of those zany Dr. Seuss creations. This time, though, we weren’t reading one of his stories to our son, we were actually in one!

Of course, one of our two security guards, to whom we had appealed for help, just happened to be a twin—which was good news for our uninvited visitor, but bad news for the rest of us. According to the customs of his ethnic group (the guard’s not the snake’s), if a twin killed a snake, the sibling would die. Luckily, his partner was not a twin and he managed to capture the creature, eventually carrying it out to the compound on a broken tree branch. “Snake on a Stick” made for wonderful theater and provided further evidence of my wife’s unassailable instincts.



Up against the wall, or I’ll wipe my brow

For anyone who has traveled extensively in Africa, the usually innocuous “shake-down” at an airport or a border crossing is as familiar and annoying as that mosquito buzzing your ear while you are trying to sleep at night—under the mosquito net. There are those who view this African institution as an unwelcome, even aggressive encroachment upon one’s personal space. For others, it can be an excellent opportunity to refine one’s negotiation skills, as the following vignette demonstrates.

Male and female police officers routinely took positions at different points along the circumference of Bangui’s central traffic circle. The female officers usually stood under an umbrella, which offered protection from C.A.R.’s equatorial sun. They commonly packed in their holsters 9-calibre hankies (I’m not kidding—not enough guns and ammo to go around, I guess). As a colleague of mine from CDC was moving through the circle in one of our project vehicles, he was stopped by one of Bangui’s finest male officers. After having spent a good 30 minutes “negotiating” the amount of fine to be paid for his egregious, albeit ill-defined, transgression, it appeared that my friend had finally secured his freedom and was about to be released.

During the negotiation, however, the officer had ascertained that my colleague was a physician. Consequently, the parting words turned from money to medicine, and the officer offered freedom with no fine in exchange for some treatments for whatever ills were ailing him at the moment. Without hesitation, my colleague pointed to the Toyota Landcruiser and asked the officers to read, aloud, what was printed on the door. He read, “Department of Preventive Medicine.” My colleague then replied, “If you had come to me BEFORE you had fallen ill, I might have been able to help you. Now that you are already feeling sick, there is not much I can do for you.” Recognizing that he had met his match, the officer bid farewell to my colleague, who drove directly into the Shake-Down Evasion Hall of Fame.

The Once and Future King (Not!)

If anyone has heard about the C.A.R., it is usually because of the notoriety of a former president, who declared himself “Emperor,” had the French pick up a major share of the tab for his coronation at a cost that exceeded the country’s annual GDP, and changed the name of the country to the “Central African Empire.” The excesses of Jean-Bedel Bokassa are legendary. He was eventually overthrown and went into exile in France and Cote d’Ivoire. His statue was torn down from the downtown traffic circle and the pedestal left in place (see photo above) as a silent testimony to this bizarre period in the country’s history. In 1987, our first year in C.A.R., the self-declared Emperor decided to return from exile, expecting to be welcomed home with open arms. The only arms that welcomed him were those slung over the shoulders of then-President Kolingba’s troops, who immediately arrested him as he stepped off the plane in Bangui.

He was eventually convicted of treason and other crimes of hyperbole and sentenced to death; his sentence, however, was later commuted to life in prison. He spent the rest of his days under house arrest at the Presidential Palace in Bangui, where he eventually died in virtual obscurity. One day, as my driver and I were passing by the palace, we saw an elderly, unshaven man in shorts and a tattered tee-shirt, washing his clothes, by hand, in a basin on a primitive wooden table located in a rear courtyard. My driver insisted that it was the erstwhile Emperor. Although I was not entirely convinced, if what my driver said was true, I’m willing to bet that these were not the new clothes this Emperor had in mind when he first took the job.

Oh, no, not another spoonful of sugar!

At a time before internet, DVDs, and CDs, in a place where there was not much to do after work, and where there lived few compatriots, finding diversions and distractions was always a major challenge. There were swimming and tennis at the U.S. ambassador’s house, the occasional softball game, and even some basketball with the local university students at the house of the U.S. Marine detachment. At our house we had a pool, which had achieved some notoriety because its diving board had been installed at the shallow end. The Central Africans, particularly the young people, were passionate about basketball. In 1987 the national team won the Africa’s Cup. The day after an animated and exuberant victory celebration through the city, a colleague from the Ministry turned to me at one point and said, with no small amount of discomfort, “Well, I guess it’s nice being #1 in something other than infant mortality.” Sad, but true.

For us, having a young child meant organizing playdates and watching videos at home. We brought with us from the States a couple of classics—“Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music”—to hold us over until our personal effects arrived. The shipment took far longer to arrive than we anticipated, however, and we were forced to watch or listen to these two films more times than the manufacturer recommended, and twice as many times as was legally permitted. To this day I still suffer from Post Julie Andrews Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The principal symptoms are random, inexplicable urges to clean out my chimney, and transitory impulses to jump from any second-story window with umbrella in hand.

Lepidoptera flying amok

What the C.A.R. might lack in artistic tradition, it certainly makes up for in creativity. C.A.R. exports butterfly wing “art” all over Africa, and the world as the living rooms of many a home in Atlanta or Washington, DC can attest. Again, as with the word “road”, I use the word “art”, liberally. Whatever you choose to call these creations you can be sure to find just about any image of an animate or inanimate object fashioned out of butterfly wings: village women carrying large water buckets on their heads, birds (parrots are particularly popular), assorted wild animals, and even circus performers. Two collages that I’ve never seen in African markets, or hanging in anyone’s home in the U.S., however, are the butterfly “portraits” of then-President Reagan and then-Vice-President Bush, which were hanging in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Bangui. The likenesses created by the “artists” were uncanny.

Oh, the places you’ll see and the people you’ll meet

One of the nice things about being a resident advisor was that consultants and colleagues were always passing through. Many of the consultants were quite entertaining, while others were memorable for other reasons. For example, there was one consultant who was an accomplished squash and tennis player, a very dexterous juggler, a man of great humor, and a connoisseur of chicken bones. He used to eat all the bones at one sitting. He was very popular with my Central African colleagues and with the expat community, as well as a favorite at our house, with the exception of our dog, who used to eye those bones with considerable, albeit unrequited, longing. I will always remember the colleague who almost dove into our pool—from the diving board. And then there was a colleague who accidentally slammed the door of the project vehicle on my fingers.

During supervisory visits to the interior of the country, European and American missionaries kindly offered me lodging. The European Fathers were most hospitable, albeit men of few words, even fewer possessions, and Spartan quarters. The Americans were equally hospitable, albeit more chatty, and some had spent many, many years in C.A.R.; accordingly, their homes had become repositories of Americana Past. As I strolled from kitchen to living room to bathroom, I always felt as though I was walking through a 1952 Sears showroom that had suddenly materialized before me.

For administrative purposes, I had occasion to travel to Cameroon once a year to touch base with the staff at the local USAID office. Most of these trips were uneventful, with one exception. At the time, the passport control area at the Yaounde airport was organized into 5 kiosks, each designated by several of the first letters of the traveler’s last name, and manned by highly specialized agents, as I would soon discover. On this particular trip, to my dismay, approximately 90% of the arriving passengers happened to have last names beginning with the letter M or N. Consequently, a long queue formed at this kiosk, while the few remaining passengers moved quickly through the other lines. Once they had cleared these travelers, the agents responsible for these kiosks closed their books and took off, leaving the unfortunate, middle-of-the-alphabet-travelers to spend most of their morning in line at the airport.

An amazing labor of love

We had arranged for my wife to depart C.A.R. a full 2 months prior to her projected delivery date. So, when a complete stranger came to tell me that my spouse was in labor at the precise moment when we were about to begin a training course for health workers deep in the interior of the country, I was skeptical. She was only in the 6th month of her pregnancy! Nevertheless, he informed me that he had just received a radio communiqué from the U.S.Embassy, and insisted that I return to Bangui immediately.

We still laugh about the moment of our reunion at the local clinic in Bangui where my wife had been admitted. She thought my ashen complexion was a reaction to seeing her in this unexpected place, three months ahead of schedule. She was already well into labor, the medical evacuation plane from Switzerland was not expected for another 8-9 hours, and no one was quite sure whether there was an incubator anywhere in the city. Even if there were, the electricity in Bangui at this time of the year was completely unreliable. The truth was that I never thought I would survive the six-hour return trip from the bush that we completed in just four! The driver claimed, at least ten times, that he used to work for Bokassa. Well, the self-declared Emperor sure could have used this guy two years earlier when apparently the royal welcoming party got caught in traffic somewhere on its way to the airport.

Miraculously, my wife’s labor did not progress, and she held on through the escorted ride to the airport in the President’s personal ambulance, and the seemingly endless wait for the plane on the tarmac, on a stretcher, in the most chic hospital attire. Once she was successfully loaded onto the plane, we all breathed a sigh of relief as we watched her head off to Frankfurt and the U.S. 97th Army General Hospital. It was there that our son was born 2 days later, weighing in at 2.2 lbs, and where he would stay, in the neonatal intensive care unit, for the next three months (and in Frankfurt for another four). My older son and I joined the new baby and my wife a few days before Christmas, and it will always be, in our collective memory, the best of all our holidays.

During the next seven months of family separation life was far more challenging, and my memories of C.A.R. are less clear. One last recollection cannot help but come to mind, however. The event in question occurred on the eve of my departure from C.A.R.

Excuse me, but do you work here?

It was barely perceptible, but unmistakenly familiar—the sound of the glass door, sliding, like a fingernail across a chalkboard, in its rusted metal track in the upstairs living room. I rose sleepily from my bed, stumbled over to the window, and peered, with difficulty, through a covering of screening and metal security bars. It is difficult to see much of anything through these windows at night. The back of someone’s head against the screening, however, makes the task even more difficult. In fact, as I stepped back to gain my bearings and a better view, it became clear that it wasn’t just any head, but one attached to shoulders, over one of which was slung a “coupe-coupe”. A “coupe-coupe” is a crude version of a scythe, usually employed by residents throughout C.A.R. to cut back the elephant grass found throughout the country, which, despite repeated cuttings, insists on behaving like a cowlick on a bad hair day and just plain refuses to be controlled.

My first thought was: “Does this guy work for me?” When I came to my senses and realized what was transpiring, I approached the window, and, after a deep breath, screamed, directly in his ear, “Thief!” The kid almost had a heart attack. He leaped into the air, his coupe-coupe went flying, and he scrambled to find his legs, which suddenly were failing him. As the cacophony of whistling from security guards gradually unfurled down the river’s edge, where most of the embassy and expatriate residences were located, it wasn’t long before six more pair of feet joined those of the erstwhile “look-out,” who, while still in control of all his visual faculties, was now running around with impaired hearing.

The other 12 feet came tumbling, in cascade, down the external staircase that led from my house. I watched with a mixture of amazement and bewilderment as best I could as they scaled my compound wall and disappeared into the African night. By this time, Dali, our German Shepherd, came upon the scene. I don’t know where he had been (probably looking for chicken bones!), but now the chase was over, and the thieves were halfway across the river to Zaire in their dugout boats.

Luckily, they only made off with our VCR. Unfortunately, they forgot to grab the Julie Andrews videos on the way out!