Boy Interrupted
If you saw the movie Girl Interrupted with Winona Ryder you will understand the concept I am going for here. In that movie, Winona spends eighteen months in a mental institution as she has shown an abject inability to cope with reality. There’s a bit of that starting to go around all over the place right now. I’m not sure its being deemed to be worthy of being committed, but there is certainly some crazy in the Coronavirus quarantine. In fact, as time passes we may all start to feel like we are being institutionalized and that our lives are being put on hold for God-knows how long.
Sanity is a fine-line state of being. There is a delicate balance to say the least. One moment all is well and the next the edge has been crossed and one is adrift in the ether. The interesting question we all have to answer before we start talking about crossing boundaries is what exactly is the difference between reality and the lunatic fringe. I am sitting here on a Sunday evening with the sunset beaming its illusion of warmth (it’s actually been a chilly day here in San Diego) across the forty miles of Pacific Ocean over my shoulder. That feels pretty surreal all by itself, but add to that my five foot high eagle statue (made of near-petrified wood and copper) sitting atop its three foot high perch looking out at the ocean and this all seems somewhere west of reality.
I have two sons who are back in the east in New York City, sheltering-in-place in their homes in Staten Island and Brooklyn. The older is in his own house in Staten Island wondering when he will now get the chance to make his planned move to southern New Jersey, where he and his wife hanker to be. He has to sell his house and then he and his wife have to reacquire their furloughed jobs to get themselves repotted from this Coronavirus interruption. He has chosen to listen to his old man for once in his life and I have convinced him that this economic disruption is going to recast the world and end up presenting those that hadn’t gotten a firm foothold in the prior economy to have a shot at finding one anew. He is starting with a Quickbooks certification course to use his time in quarantine to his advantage both for his next venture and to have an important skill to offer others. I am proud of him for that reason and because I know from experience that few people can and do work as hard as he does when he sets his mind to something. He is a beast and a camel at that. I have seen few who can trudge forward without proverbial and literal food and water as much as he can. He will succeed through sheer grit once he gets past this pause and he puts it to good use for himself and his future.
My younger son is very different from his older brother. They are, as they say, brothers from a different mother, which may give rise to some of that, but I know enough about the math of genetics to know that they could be this different if they shared both parents. I am happy to say that all three of my children treat each other as a full-blown siblings and get along famously, which is all that a father can ask of his children. Both boys were given the same advantages except the older was raised in the suburbs and went to a good and very normal public school and the the younger one was raised in Manhattan and went to a small private school in the West Village attended by the children of the hip show business glitterati.
They were both good students in high school, but I would suggest that the older has more street-smarts and the younger has the souls of an artist. The older breezed through and the younger worked very hard on all fronts. They both matriculated at my Alma Mater, Cornell, but the older boy was not keen on the experience where the younger one reveled in it. As it turns out, my daughter that sits between them on the age spectrum also went to Cornell and she muscled her way through just fine. With perfect hindsight I’m not sure any of my children should have necessarily gone to Cornell, but that is now ancient history and two of the three have Cornell degrees. I shouldn’t spend too much time pondering the issue because I’m not sure I would have gone to Cornell had my mother not been a graduate of the Class of ‘37. I can hardly blame my kids or myself about making the same leap I made fifty years ago.
My younger son graduated with a degree in performing arts with a minor in business (which I consider a palliative he wanted to deliver to me, even though I never tried to influence his path). He knocked around in a couple or production jobs and a personal assistant job and then last year he took a corporate job in the marketing department helping to produce content, which suited his desired blend of artistic and business interests. His office was blocks away from where he spent his first thirteen years of school. Well, his company is in the restaurant business (a very hip restaurant I might add), so guess where they find themselves these days with all their worldwide stores shuttered except for minimal take-out business. They had to furlough a third of their staff and he and his boss went on hold this past week. He has a few more paychecks coming and he has a decent investment account compliments of a small trust I had laid away for him years ago. Compared to most young working people, he will be fine. As an artistic type he has lots of creative projects he wants to pursue in this gap time and his money needs are minimal and he has the means to get through it just fine.
He and his girlfriend of some four+ years are planning to move in together in June, when his and her leases run out. They have six weeks to find an agreeable apartment, except, looking at apartments during a state-wide lockdown is just a tad challenging. He told me that yesterday he took a 35-mile bike ride around Brooklyn and used the ride to look at three or four places…from the outside. that combined with a virtual online tour is the best he can do at this time. His significant other is staying with her folks in Connecticut so she can only see the online tour and take his word for the neighborhood and building. It can’t be easy. Imagine making the big move to cohabitate for the first time in your life and having a pandemic quarantine standing between you and the blessed event. And then imagine losing your job six weeks before you are supposed to move and sign a lease as an adult and having to ask your father to co-sign the lease as guarantor. My son has worked hard to be independent and fend for himself. He lives within his means, but it is hard to imagine a tougher set of circumstances to overcome at a crucial juncture in a young man’s life. And yet he is barreling forward. He is refusing to be a boy interrupted.