The Baker's Dozen

My eldest son loves roller coasters. He loved them as a child. He loves them still. I am, and have always been, indifferent. However, roller coasters are a great metaphor for our perception of time. I remember sitting in a boring lecture for some course arbitrarily required by the university curriculum. That is how, leaving the station, the unhurried, quiet uphill train climb feels. The cart is swaying and creaking, gravity pulling against the tow chain, its passengers, “scream-less.” But then, in an instant, we might plunge into momentous events. Those moments provide exhilaration that confirms we are alive. As I dip towards the banked sharp curve, left or right, I hope I make the right choices and then navigate them cleanly. This is the nature of the thread of time as we wind our way through life.

The futile exercise of measuring time, expecting our truths to fit neatly into blocks on a calendar or ticks on a clock has always bewildered me. Einstein makes clear that time has a perceived speed of elapse, much like our roller coaster ride. And if Einstein did not say it, he should have, “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it is only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.” Even if immeasurable, there are for each of us instances that are life-changing, life-defining, of such a “great weight” that every other subsequent event is shaped by it. Mine lasted a second.

In Upstate, New Year’s Day that year was the same uninteresting, cold, and snowy event as every other year. I was seventeen and every aspect of my life was as near perfect as one could hope. Academically, I was at the top of my class. I was well into the second year of a romantic relationship with a young woman, a nursing school student. We had grown from kids, making out, to best friends. I completed, the previous months, the paperwork for the traditional college admission strategy, picking a stretch university, two more that I wanted to attend, and finally my safety school, the state university. I had been working as a fine dining busser for three years, so I had my own money. For a working-class kid from Upstate, that is freedom. I had a few close friends, and as high school seniors, the immaturity of underclass shenanigans was behind us. We were on the verge of adulthood. I was looking in one direction only, forward. By March, I had suffered two admissions rejections, one from the Ivy League school for which I was deemed unqualified for unwritten reasons other than academics. The other was a terse letter from my fallback school. My Regents Scholarship in hand, admission denial had not crossed my mind. I had not wanted to go there but nevertheless my ego was bruised. More troublesome were the doubts planted about my preferred choices – would they reject me, as well? What then? The state university rejection is its own tale and not germane – another story for another time. Any disappointment was obliterated when I received the acceptance of my first choice and shortly after my second. One discovers as he matures decisions are multi-layered. As a child, naïve and ignorant, I could select, selfishly. It is when one looks beyond himself to choose that he is ready to face the world. There was little in the way of financial aid available for me from the preferred institution and a scholarship awaiting me at the other. As a family, we deliberated more than a few days. My parents made it clear from the beginning, the decision was mine. Eventually, I chose to save everyone's limited financial resources and head off to George Washington University. I would like to say that this was my life-changing experience. As events unfolded, it may have been one of my most agonizing yet irrelevant decisions.

I split my time the summer before my freshman year, working as a waiter, and hanging out with the woman who I knew I would marry someday. Shortly after Labor Day, we packed up our family Chrysler and my parents drove me to Washington, D.C. My new home was on the corner of 19th and Pennsylvania, three blocks from the White House. My room was on the seventh floor of an old brick apartment building that the university purchased and converted into a student dormitory. It was the least expensive of the housing options, so its population consisted of mostly academic and athletic scholarship students with a smattering of enough other students to make life interesting. I settled nicely and made some friends quickly.

About three weeks in, I received a wedding invitation from a couple back home. They also asked me to play guitar at their service. She had been my first girlfriend back in junior high. That is another aspect of time. Eighth grade is eons from being in the first year of college. Now, five years pass in the blink of an eye. Attending the wedding was a mere excuse. I longed to go home and see my steady. I suppose, if I am honest with myself, I was a bit homesick. Thinking back, I am no longer sure. I booked a flight home much to the chagrin of my parents who imagined better ways to spend the scarce dollars saved. As was often the story over the past six months, one set of sweethearts or another was expecting a baby and then tying the knot. This marriage was no exception. I did not think much about it at the time. It was the way of the world in my little town. It did not seem the most logical order, pregnancy and then marriage, but in other ways, it was very rational. These high school relationships were monogamous and multi-year. At the beginning of these romances, most of the participants were virgins. They would learn lovemaking together, executing the age-old thrust and parry. Some more quickly than others would run through the metaphorical baseball bases, with most couples hitting home runs by their senior year. A few girls were on birth control, but most lived in fear of discovery, uncertain what punishment would sate a father’s outrage. Condoms were still behind drugstore counters staffed by nosy neighbors. Like beer, it paid to have an accommodating older sibling supplying both. And so, I found myself sitting in a pew in a little church in a hamlet bordering the Erie Canal playing a borrowed twelve-string, badly, it badly out of tune.

After the wedding reception, my girlfriend and I stole away to my bedroom. My dad was a waiter, so I am sure he was working on that Saturday night. Not sure where my mom was, but probably at some liberal organizing event or another. I was making up for lost time. In that instant of rapture, my life changed forever.

My girlfriend called in November and confirmed she was pregnant. We had suspected, but now it was certain. Asked if I was happy or disappointed, the answer is “yes.” A person could never be dispassionate in such a circumstance, but it is completely possible to see the positive in either outcome. I do not dwell on the subconscious. “Maybe you didn’t wear a condom because...; Or maybe a nursing student in her second year was not on birth control because...” My retort would be, “maybe we were just walking through life like everyone else making good and questionable decisions.” What I know for sure is that the newness of GWU was over and it was delivering much less than I anticipated. I liked my new friends and would miss them, but I liked my best friend even more and was missing her even more. I would have preferred not to disappoint my parents, who were likely to see this as the end of the dream, and I, their only son, failing them. Few people embrace change and the unknown, thus I was apprehensive. So yes, I was elated at the thought of being a dad and married to the woman I loved. And I was afraid and excited at the challenges we would face as adults in a demanding world.

Confronted with a “life changing” moment, how does one know the path to be travelled? My girlfriend and I were pro-choice. We felt we wanted this baby, but we knew it would be the more difficult course. With choice comes doubt, Frost’s dilemma of the road not taken. Her father counseled terminating the pregnancy and with that advice came clarity. The words no sooner passed his lips than we knew exactly what was right for us.

On December 30, we were officially married in her little Presbyterian church. Her parents hosted a modest wedding reception at a nearby country club for some hundred-plus kith and kin. The year ended much as it started – cold and snowy, but very much more interesting.

Epilogue

It is not my nature to ponder what might have been. The baby boy, born at the end of June, went on to become a chemical engineer. Shortly after his graduation, he came to me and said he had been called to the ministry. He spent the next three years at a seminary. He has been working miracles in people’s lives for over twenty years, especially the poor and homeless. We had another son, three years after the first. For twenty-five years, he has been helping troubled companies, large and small, restructure, breathing into them "new life" for the employees and the owners. Our daughter knew at seventeen that she wanted to be a middle school teacher. I cannot imagine a more trying career, but one she does gleefully each day. I know she is making a positive difference in the lives of so many young people. Her love and ebullient attitude are infectious.

I have a wonderful life with success measured in so many ways. Of all that is material, spiritual, and otherwise, my greatest joy is the thirteen phenomenal progeny. On January 3, 2022, number fourteen is due. Amazing what can be accomplished in an instant.