When my son was a baby, we used to joke that he folds up for compact storage. Even when he was six or ten, and would sit on the couch hugging his knees, we would say: See, he still folds up. Now at 6’2” and at 21 years old, I can hardly remember him – I play back the film reel loop of his life over and over but I can no longer imagine him – small.
I also called him my Favorite Son, and at around five, he finally realized, Hey! I’m your only son.
So, what? I would say. You’re still my favorite son.
The child becomes the adult
We were in San Diego over the weekend for Commencement, an interesting word for it. On the face of it, the university graduation ceremony is a celebration of ending, of four years of grueling intellectual, sometimes physical work. But it is a beginning of a phase of adulthood. As my Favorite Son has taken this effort so much in his own way, we are here to celebrate with him and to see what he has become.
I have already seen the adult pop out. Last time when he was home for Christmas, he rinsed his dishes AND put them in the dishwasher without any prompting. He bought Christmas presents for each of us and explained the thinking process behind them.
The year that my grandparents emigrated is a little fuzzy in my mind. When I worked on the requisite eighth grade Family Tree project forty-some years ago, I seem to recall learning that both grandparents came between 1900 and 1910. There was a wave of Polish immigrants between 1905 and 1910 after the Revolution. Several more waves came at the beginning of the 20th century, as Prussia, Germany, and Russia argued about which of them owned Poland. If the date of my grandparents’ emigration is prior to 1911, they escaped far more strife in their country of origin than whatever hardships occurred here.