Growing Up

by Kevin Fitzpatrick

It’s around 1 a.m. and the loudest sound I hear is the quiet hum of the street lamps that glow through the newly sprouted leaves. I walk down my street in a quiet suburban town, while all my neighbors are asleep. Returning from work as I do most nights, coming from the noisy turbulence of Harvard Square, with all it’s traffic, punks, and poseurs, the bus acting as a sort of decompression chamber. By the time it roars off into the night, the last one to do so until morning rush hour, I am relaxed, at peace. I’m 18 years old.

I have an easy, ground covering stride, the kind of stride that comes naturally to those who top six feet. High School is over, college has had a false start in the first semester and isn’t due to start again until September… and I’m free. I have money in my pocket; my day’s work is done, nothing left to do but go home and go to bed.

It is my world and I know my place in it.

The walk down that tree-lined street, with it’s softly glowing lights: it’s 20 years gone and I can still smell the subtle perfume of the dew-covered lawns, I can hear the soft chirp of the crickets and the quiet, distant hiss of radial tires gliding down the empty streets. There are some intervals where the Boston skyline peeks through the trees, then the trees close in again, a soft green tunnel, and the city disappears.

I suppose, looking back, that I led a fairly sheltered life, although I would have been offended had anyone told me that then. In some ways, I don’t feel much different than that 18 year-old boy. I suppose I feel a little wiser now, but sometimes I still have trouble calling myself a “Man”. By all definitions I am a man now, and an adult. But I had trouble seeing where or how it happened. As I said, sometimes, I don’t feel much different than on that night 20 years ago.

Was there a certain moment where I went from being that carefree teenager to a responsible adult? Most people will say that there is no special moment where you cross that border into adulthood, that it is a gradual process, that those around you notice it before you do, and I guess I almost agree with that. But I also think that there are moments, defining moments, which push us along that path.

We all have an image of our lives and ourselves; those we surround ourselves with; family, friends, lovers, strangers. I look at it as if we see our world and ourselves in a giant mirror, a “Through the Looking Glass” kind of mirror. Sometimes the image is crystal clear, we know exactly who we are and what we are supposed to do. Other times the mirror gets fogged, things get a little vague and hazy.

And then there are the defining moments.

They can be subtle, hardly noticeable cracks in the mirror that can whittle away the image and reveal something new. Things like a job, or a college course, a new place to live or even something as trivial as a vacation, these are the gradual changes; minor adjustments in how we see ourselves or the world.

Or a defining moment can hit with the force of a wrecking ball, leaving a giant gaping hole, with us struggling to frantically rebuild our world; the ‘phone call in the middle of the night’, discovering your trust has been betrayed, or that someone you love no longer loves you.

Defining moments can be profound and gentle too, seeing your bride on your wedding day walking up the aisle toward you, or hearing your child’s cry as they are born.

I have heard my childrens’ cries and welcomed them into the world three different times. Three beautiful daughters, and I know I was changed each time. The first is always the most profound, since the realization that you are totally responsible for another life can be overwhelming. You think that with the second, it won’t be any big change. Until you are standing there with your second child in your arms and you think: ”How could I have believed this would be anything but astounding?”

Of course, with the third, you are an old pro and certainly won’t be affected all that much… except, of course, you are. Any person who can watch their own child coming into the world and not be profoundly affected by the experience must be made of stone.

I was not the type of person who ever worried about ‘the phone call in the middle of the night’. My world was one where the phone call was always a wrong number, or a prank. It was never a person in hysterics, never someone who you could barely understand, but who was desperate for help, and it never resolved into your mother’s frantic voice. It was never the voice that cried that your father was hurt, wasn’t breathing. Until it was.

The wrecking ball went through my mirror that night. Every so often I think that I have put my world back together, crazy-glued the fragments until I can see myself clearly. But every so often, some of the fragments slip. Some little pieces are missing, microscopic splinters, but, as when I glued my daughters broken music box back together, one missing splinter can cause the pieces to fit awkwardly. The repaired version is never quite the same.

I was a man by all definitions, a father and a husband, a provider, a hard-working adult with all the standard grown-up problems, until that late October night when the person I measured myself against, my own father, died of a sudden heart attack.

He was 63. I was 32.

The mirror shattered and I was a kid again, struggling to pick up the fragments and arrange them in some type of order, a jagged puzzle with razor sharp edges. Images flashed through my mind of my dad playing with my kids, of my kids following him around like a trail of ducklings, of him putting together my new bike when I was seven years old. I saw him tinkering with the engine on an old car in our driveway, and saw myself helping to supply a little bit of needed muscle to the process when I was a teenager. I saw him in a hundred different memories and realized that there wouldn’t be any more. I think that’s what hit me hardest; knowing that my 18 month-old daughter, the youngest, would have little or no memory of him. He would just be a name and a photo: Grandpa.

We made the arrangements as best we could and then returned to our respective homes to prepare for the Wake and the Funeral.

I had been touched by death on a few other rare occasions, and I found writing helped me to deal with it. I decided to write a poem, and if it was good enough, possibly to use it as a eulogy. I sat down at my kitchen table after the kids were asleep and let my mind wander over memories and images. I still have the lined yellow paper, cross outs, tear-stains and all. When I finished it, my wife came and took me in her arms.

I cried like a lost child.

One of my proudest accomplishments was reading that piece in front of a church filled with friends and relatives; I made it through until the last line without breaking down. People told me afterward that they thought it described him perfectly and it touched them. My secret is that I know I didn’t write it alone. My father’s final gift to me was inspiration.

I think about him a lot now, especially at this time of year, and while the edges of my grief have healed over, I still have an occasional twinge. It’s been 7 years since the phone rang and my life changed forever. I find it easier to talk about him now, and while sometimes remembering makes me sad, more often it makes me thoughtful. I find myself wondering if he felt as I do… whether he still remembered his buddies from the Teele Square gang of his youth as clearly as I remember the walk down that peaceful street. I wonder how clear his mirror was, how clearly he saw himself and his place in the world. We didn’t really have those “deep” conversations, but I wonder now how introspective he really was.

I am told all the time by relatives how I am like him in many ways. My wife and my mother laugh about it sometimes. I’ll do something unthinking that seems natural and they will comment how my dad would do the exact same thing. I don’t mind it. I suppose it renews my connection to him.

Most people can’t recall a distinct, single turning point in their lives where they actually felt adulthood rest firmly on their shoulders. I can. When I returned to my seat in church that late October day I felt adulthood settle on my shoulders. It felt exactly like my father’s hands.

KWF

Oct. 2003