In the fall of 2018, Noah and I turned onto the paved road on his way to school. The resonance of the Yo La Tengo song, Big Day Coming was building up over the speakers in the truck. It begins with a harmonic resonation that like a turbine grows louder. As the lyrics join, they are almost part of the music and gently fold into the waves. Noah had been quiet. He suddenly said, “I feel like this song represents where I have been over the last couple of weeks.”
It was such a deep statement. Its dream-like, slow-motion carnival-ish sound gently fills the space you are in as compressed thought slowly fills waking awareness. The fact that my 13-year-old at the time could make such a connection to art was beautiful. It told me that he was born and raised with an aptitude that others could strive to achieve by studying and never hit the target.
I love how even before your children are born, you can feel their dominant personality traits. For Noah, I felt compelled to give him the middle name Israel. This is a name that was common in the 1800’s. It is his middle name because when I thought about this child coming into the world, I could not help but to think of my Grandfather. Israel was my Grandfather’s middle name.
He was an exceptionally intellectual man. The knowledge he possessed seemed unlimited. He needed to know things all of his life and he was not content unless he dived into that knowledge and owned it. The hundreds of conversations that I had with him until he passed when I was 22 were many of the best moments in my life.
Noah demonstrates so much likeness to my Grandfather’s absolute need to master complex information. It is how he has been at every age. He becomes restless if progress is not being made and pushes even harder to make things happen.
Last night, we went to Springfield to rescue a friend of his who was having car trouble. The weather was horrific. At sundown, a very wet and heavy snow was falling at a good 2 inches an hour. A few hours later, we went out to get Noah’s friend. By this time, ice and rain were falling out of the sky. The roads were not plowed. We picked up his friend and took him home up steep treacherous dirt roads.
On the way home, it is more of the same. We began our trek over the mountain and as we got into the longest decline, I put the truck in low range, something I think I have only done 2 other times since getting it 9 years ago. We came to a point where the slope was very steep with only ditches on either side. We stopped and looked at each other. It might have been ok, but in this mess, it would probably be daybreak by the time someone could come out to pull us out if we were not successful.
I turned the truck around and we backtracked up the mountain. Once we were on a paved but unplowed road, Noah added right into the middle of a sentence, “And I’m 18.” Just like that, it was January 10th. At 3:18 AM, he is 18. I could not believe how fast it went by. I often wonder if I could time travel and visit myself, would I grab my younger self by the shoulders and shake me, demanding that I be there in the moment. Would it still be lost on me? Is there no way, to savor all of the richness around us during these years?
No man ever stated this better than the master himself, Leonard Cohen. In the song, Closing Time, he laments; “And I lift my glass to the awful truth, which you can’t reveal to the years of youth, except to say it isn’t worth a dime.” So, my friends, there it is. Should I now travel back to my younger self, I would be as credible as a crazed person screaming that there was an alien invasion coming.
All I could say is Noah and I were tromping around out there in terrible conditions and feeling like we were the last 2 people in the world. All things considered, it was a fine way to cross into the 18th January 10th with him.