I just finished reading James Talarico’s victory speech from a few days ago. I voted in Texas while I was living on the road, and I gotta say, what a beautiful and a-fucking-stounding speech that is, especially coming from a Texan. Please, find it and read it if you haven’t. Okay, on with my own speech.
You know what happened: My son, who lives in Michigan, came to spend two weeks with me, the first while he attended a collaboration meeting for his IceCube project, and he stayed a second week just to get some writing done on his physics dissertation. I’ve written about one of the days he spent with me, and here’s some more. I do love to draw this time out in my memory.
Déjà Vu & into the Future
The first morning, Finn was leaving early for a meeting on campus. I hovered around, seeing if I could shove breakfast his way or interest him in stashing any food in his backpack (no and no, thanks). As he walked out the back door, I put my head outside and said, “Bye! Uh …”
Right then, I was overwhelmed with dysphoria. How many times had I said, “Goodbye! Have fun!” Or, “Goodbye! Good luck!” Or, “Goodbye! You’ll do great!” Or any number of variants there, before school, before standardized testing, before piano competitions, creative competitions, parties, his whole life.
What should I say today, as he goes off to his Nobel-prize winning project meeting?
What will I say in the future, if I’m ever lucky to say goodbye to him as he leaves for whatever he does with his life? What if he’s left his child with me for the day? What if he’s gone to go deliver coffee and breakfast to executives so he can play in a band at night? I don’t care what it is, but what do I say to him later in life, now that I’ve been lucky enough to say it in so many situations?
Under pressure, I pulled out the ever-useful add-on I’ve been saying his whole life.
“Have fun!”
I’ve decided to stick with that one, from now on. I just hope I get the chance to use it, again.
Ohio Tacos
One night, actually two nights, we walked over to The Ohio Tavern, because they serve a big variety of good vegetarian street tacos and you can sit outside to eat them on a fun, busy sidewalk. Plus, it’s two blocks from my house and that can’t be beat. Tracy and I avoid going there because the bar is always so busy and they don’t like to wait on us irregular old people, but I figured I’d have better luck with Finn, and I did.
The first night was the Saturday night before next weekend’s Halloween, and an oddly throw-back rock band was playing near the bar. They were all wearing these funny rat-face costumes, and other people were dancing in costumes, and the band was loud, and everyone was full of energy. Finn and I sat outside where we could still hear the band but also hear each other talk, which was perfect. We had tequila drinks and rum drinks and street corn.
The taco cook (I hate to call him a chef) came outside carrying what had to be our tacos: three of one kind of veggie and one of another. I mean, who orders that? I think there was exactly one other table of people sitting on the sidewalk.
But, this guy insisted they were for Michael. No Michael out here. As the guy walked around inside with our tacos, I was rambling on at Finn, like I always do, this time about the fact that a lot of times people call me Michael by accident when they don’t know me, because Michael is more quickly recognized than Michele, when I realized that that must be exactly what had happened this time. I mean, those were our tacos for someone named Michael.
Our taco cook came back, holding our tray of tacos, yelling with us over the band, everyone in good spirits but trying for the life of us to figure out why he thought we were Michael. I don’t remember what made us realize this, but I had paid, which means someone down the line (of maybe two people working the bar) saw Michele on my card and told the cook that those tacos were for Michael.
Oh my God you’d think the funniest thing had ever happened, ever, when we figured it all out. That was because we had been entirely flummoxed, all three of us, and all three of us figured it out simultaneously, which made us all very happy with ourselves and each other. We’re so smart! My name is Michele, which often gets mistaken for Michael, and that’s why our tacos were for Michael!
Fun night, it truly was.
Walking to East of Eden
Finn and I had to balance each of our needs during his rare free time. My need was to see him, and his needs were to work out, to read his book for an upcoming book club night, and to spend time with old friends online (boy howdy do I respect this need). Last visit, he walked over to the community center and worked out there, but at $10 per workout, that adds up, so this time he made do with my random weights and with walking.
He also had to listen to his book for two hours each night (I know, what is he, a Lit. student?) before his book club meeting, so a few times we combined that need with his exercising and my needing to be with him, all rolled into several walks around Madison.
The weather was freaking perfect the entire time he was here, in the 70s, with trees at their peak colors. Sometimes we would run into typical Madison stuff (like a political sign in front of someone’s yard that read:
If you voted for Trump and can read this sign,
You’re too close to my house!”
Alas, the guitarist who often plays with his feet in the river and with a friend accompanying him on various instruments—he wasn’t around. I do think Madison showed itself at its finest, though.
I know Finn had leaving on his mind because this would be his last IceCube meeting, and I think he thought to himself how much he would miss Madison. The last time he thought that, he told me that he realized his mother lives here, so he can come back to Madison any time he wants, no matter where he moves to. Amazing! I’m surprised by that, myself, this being the first time I’ve lived anywhere that he could revisit. Heck, that I could revisit.
We sat in the backyard for two nights around our cool Solo Stove firepit, and we went to Lola’s Hi/Lo Bar, where we were accosted by a patron smoking outside who wanted to trade jokes. “Nothing with the N-word in it, though.” Dude, if you have to distinguish your jokes that way, you kind of already used the N-word. One of his three jokes was funny, the first in his ascending line of offensive. The fact that we stood outside the restaurant chatting with him throughout that says a lot about us as well as Madison.
GLEAM
We walked through Olbrich Botanical Garden on a GLEAM night, when the normally free garden sells tickets to see maybe 10-15 artists’ light exhibits. This year I think the theme was insects, something like that. We saw bats made of lights, giant praying mantises, one giant squid perched on the surface of the pond in front of the shrine, and lots of cool stuff you could read a better account of elsewhere.
I knew Finn would enjoy it because we went to a similar light show last Christmas that he liked. To me, at first it seems all kind of expensive, but there was one display that made the cost of admission worth it, singularly.
A straight walkway was lit (like, lights shining from above onto the bricks) in a variety of ways, and they rotated every eight minutes, so if you stood in one spot, you’d see all the ways the walkway had been intended to look by this one artist in those eight minutes. At one time, the walkway looked like the surface of a pond with rain hitting it, and another time there were lights in the air above it, maybe lit with fireflies? Children ran and danced around, trying to catch the lights. The walkway turned into a stream, with multicolored coy swimming under our feet. My photos don’t do them justice. What was thrilling was feeling like I was the small children who shrieked. I wanted to shriek (and I probably did).
Best part was that we walked to Olbrich, like we walked to the Ohio for tacos, and to two types of ice cream, and to the bar at Garver Feed Mill. Finn has never lived in an interesting town (his dad and my fault, entirely), so he’s easy to impress. Heck, though. I’m impressed, too. That’s why I moved here.
Down Times
As always, my favorite moments were the average ones that happened in between the high-cost ones. Finn’s patience with me as I showed him my new ukulele (he plays one, but his isn’t as awesome-sounding as this one). Us watching the last episodes of Strange New Worlds together, and talking about time travel after, and talking about Finn’s future, and his past, and all of time.
Me hanging his laundry with mine on the line outside. Seeing that there were splatters on the mirror in the bathroom, way up where neither Tracy nor I could reach. Seeing his stuff spread all over the house, just as if he were in his own home. Which is just the effect I wanted.
Sitting with Tracy, breaking in our new kitchen island top with lunch together, where Tracy talked some about his PhD financing as we helped Finn untangle his own.
The last day Finn was here, I got my Covid vaccine. I had just enough time before the after-effects walloped me that I was able to help Finn brainstorm his Halloween costume for the next night and provide a few materials for it. In East Lansing, there’s a famous truck-eating overpass, so Finn went as that bridge, using spare pieces of foam insulation board we had in the basement.
I was in bed, deliriously ill, the next day, Halloween, so both Finn and I missed the annual witches’ paddle down the Yahara River. I will do that next year!
Finn, remarkably, made it to his home in time for a pre-game Halloween party, Party 1, and Party 2. I asked if his costume had gone over well. Turns out, the East Lansing Roller Derby team had just chosen that bridge as their mascot, and they were at Party #2. Finn was a very popular guy, Halloween night.
And, the two weeks before.
