Hey Guys, It's Da Weekend

A random thought.

I went to college with a guy from Sweden who was one of the smartest people I've ever encountered. He ended up being valedictorian of his class and I assume he probably owns his own fjord by now. You would never see him during the week because he was either squirreled away in his dorm room, studying for hours at a time, or over in the science building for a little quality time with the Van de Graaff generator. The only time you'd see him was on Friday night, when he'd emerge from his room and say to no one in particular, "hey guys, it's da weekend. Let's pardee!" And he'd promptly have about two drinks and then go back to his room.

The rest of us on the floor didn't exactly see it the same way. Generally speaking, we spent most of our time trying to extend the weekend into the rest of the week. While my Swedish floormate was getting ready to save the world, I was writing bad, Leinenkugel-fueled poetry and trying to affect the manner of a Buddhist saint, which wasn't an effective pose for a Catholic boy from eastern Wisconsin. It's really quite difficult to achieve Bodhisattvahood when you've had a snootful of lager, since if you are going to benefit all sentient beings, it's helpful to be sentient yourself.

I started thinking about all this during this weekend, a stretch in which I spent most of my time shuttling my son to baseball practices. Ben is now 13 and he's clearly straddling the divide between childhood and what comes next. He's a very inquisitive young man and he likes to pick my brain about social issues, which is only problematic inasmuch as Maria is usually there at the same time. While there's no doubt that my daughter is one of the more sophisticated 9-year olds around, I'm not especially eager to discuss the ramifications of gay marriage or the motivations of Arlen Specter while she's there. I tried to talk Ben into discussing something else, because he really doesn't need to think about such matters yet, but lately he's been in a real hurry to grow up.

I really didn't have a lot of conversations like that with my dad. He traveled a lot and I had to vie for his attention with my other siblings in very limited windows and by the time I was Ben's age, my parents were on their way to divorce. I always wished that he might share the deep, dark secrets of adulthood with me, but for a variety of reasons he never did.

I always vowed that I would be more available for my kids than my father was for me. Mostly I've been able to keep that vow, but as my son seeks answers to the deep, dark secrets of adulthood, it's become clear that I'm still trying to figure out the deep, dark secrets myself.

It's a lot easier to feign enlightenment when there's nothing at stake. Now, more than 25 years on, it would really be helpful to be as truly enlightened as I pretended to be, but it's ever more apparent that whatever knowledge and insight I possess falls far short of what I'd imagined was possible all those years ago. It's probably a fool's errand to seek satori in the suburbs, but one can hope that, even in the small acts we undertake each day, we do add at least a little bit of light to a world that has a lot of darkeness in it these days.