Adult Children

[mallorys_camera]

I was snappy and cross all day yesterday.

I didn’t exactly hang up on Ichabod. But I didn’t really want to talk to him either.

Right! You call me once a week because it’s on your list, and you’re a dutiful son, I thought. But it’s not like you really want to talk to me.

A few weeks back, Ichabod had told me he didn’t have the slightest interest in reading my journals after I died. I was staggered by this. Also hurt.

He doesn’t want to know me.

I haven’t gotten over that.

No need to tell me how unfair that is! I already know.

Also, I was in the garden and trying to get as much of it cleaned up as possible before the temps hit 90°. So, you know. A phone call would take up valuable time.

###

When Ichabod asked me about my trip, I struggled for words. You are not interested in Norman/Byzantine architecture, 18th-century palazzos, puppets, Sicilian cooking, or archeological digs, I thought. So what exactly is there to say?

After a truncated and lame travelogue, I concluded, “I was really glad to have been out of the country for the official unveiling of the Roe v. Wade decision. And most of the January 6th committee hearings.”

And that immediately sparked him. Now we were gonna have to talk about the Roe v. Wade decision and the January 6th committee hearings.

I do not care! I wanted to shriek at the top of my lungs. And I do not care that you and apparently everyone else on the face of the planet think I should care! These things are absolutely nothing to the sweep of history. Every epoch is presumptuous enough to imagine that its politics and problems are the end-all! And they fucking aren’t.

###

Somehow we ended up talking about Obama.

Now. I appreciate that Obama the man is the X-President I Would Most Like to Have Dinner With, incredibly charming, unbelievably debonair, akin to me in his tastes in books, films, and all the finer things in life. Plus (of course!) the First Black President.

But I think he was a mediocre President.

And here we were talking about him.

“Mediocre?” Ichabod echoed in disbelief. “How can you say that?”

“Because in eight years, he didn’t do a goddamn thing except get a staggeringly bad health care act passed.”

“Bad? Bad? How can you say it’s bad? It gave healthcare insurance to 21 million people—”

“Healthcare insurance is not healthcare. It did absolutely nothing to curb healthcare inflation. In fact, it accelerated the pace of healthcare inflation. What good is healthcare insurance if people can’t afford the deductible? Also, he totally sold out small business owners and the working poor in favor of Big Money with his Too-Big-to-Fail economic policies after the 2008 Wall Street crash—”

“That wasn’t him! That was Congress!”

“Oh, please. A Democratic Congress. Installed to do the Democratic President’s bidding. No. I think he was lame—”

“Yeah, you and every other Republican,” said Ichabod.

“Republican” is like the worst insult that Ichabod and his ideological ilk can come up with.

Plus, I am not a Republican.

“I don’t appreciate you saying that to me,” I said. “In fact, I don’t appreciate how this conversation is going, so I am going to end it right now. Have a lovely holiday weekend in southern California—”

“Are you for real?” said Ichabod. “Let’s talk about something else! Seriously, are you—”

But I’d already disconnected my phone.

###

What I am realizing more and more is that there is absolutely no one on this planet who’s actually interested in my thoughts, experiences, or feelings.

I mean, I suppose there are people who are interested in a carefully curated collection of my thoughts, experiences, and feelings.

But the totality?

Absolutely not.

And certainly not my children.

No. Adult children have this deep need either to see their parents as buffoons or as secular gods.

Generally, it’s the dead parents that get to be the secular gods.

So by default, in Ichabod’s lexicon, I am a buffoon.

Fuck that.



In the evening, I watched La Strada.

La Strada is my favorite movie of all time, but it is a sad, sad, sad movie, occupying as it does that niche between neorealism and the universe’s mythic heartbeat.

Had Ichabod been a girl, I was going to name my daughter “Gelsomina.”

I wept buckets (as I always do) over the Fool’s death and Gelsomina’s death and Zampano’s brutish life force. And marveled once again at Fellini’s brilliance. Fellini apparently identified so heavily with Zampano that he had a nervous breakdown toward the end of the film’s shoot.