The World According to Chuck

There is a darker side to being a vaguely public person; I may tell you about that one day.

The fun part, of course, is getting stopped in the grocery store and told you’re wonderful. I can live for a while on that, although it’s usually after I’ve written something I’ve worked hard on, something about contemporary culture or presidential politics, filled with allusions and metaphorical jumps and literary references, and my loyal reader in Albertson’s chats with me a bit and then says, “I really liked the one where you fell down the stairs.”

I am tolerated, in other words, and grateful for that tolerance.

On the other hand, readers know an awful lot about me and my family, which can get awkward when, say, I’m buying ice cream late at night. If I’m trying to lose weight, they hear all about it. If I’m dealing with recalcitrant blackberry bushes, they’re in the jungle with me.

And if my daughter is preparing to graduate from high school, as she did 6 years ago, and that eventuality is gnawing at me, churning up memories and all sorts of angst, they will have to tolerate a lot of whining. And they did.

I’m afraid to count the columns I wrote in the spring of 2003 about Beth’s impending graduation. It was bad, overkill, public flailing. And the truth is I was a mess, and I would get messier, and it had less to do with her moving on than with me moving nowhere. But that’s another story.

This is a better one. It’s the one that fascinated me that spring, and continues to fascinate me, and as we approach another eventful period in all our lives it’s nice to look at once again, and remember. Because it’s about family, and fate, and funny futures, and what I thought of as

The Prophecy
(Originally published 5/21/2003)

It is his favorite picture of her, he realizes suddenly one day, and then wonders why it took so long to figure that out. Maybe it’s a sign of maturity, or middle-age; after years of trying to keep an open mind with shifting tastes and likes, the races are over and there are winners. This is the book, the song, the movie, the moment. This is the picture.

She is a Texan. He knows this, of course, but then anyone would, he thinks. Who else would rehearse an opera, be captured on film interpreting the music of Mozart, wearing cowboy boots?

He gives her the boots on her 28th birthday, years before the picture, his way of acknowledging who she is and also surrendering to a more powerful culture. I give up. Y’all win.

She goes home a month before their wedding, to have it out on home turf. “What does this boy do?” her father asks, and she sticks up for love. “He’s an actor and a writer,” she says defiantly, and the screen door slams and there are words. Not a good sign.

He meets the in-laws the day before they marry, and his bride-to-be holds onto his arm as if he’s about to bolt, which he is thinking seriously about. Her mother hugs him, trusting her daughter, but daddy just says, “So this is what you brung us,” and sticks out a meaty hand. To his credit, he has a slight smile. This will only hurt a little.

He finds his first trip to Texas disorienting, disturbing. It’s flat, seemingly spread out over a quarter of the country, and though his mother-in-law claims they have mountains he thinks she’s probably making this up. It’s humid and hot, and he meets aunts and uncles and roughly a thousand cousins, only 6 or 7 of whom are apparently not named Bubba, Billy Mac, or Pam. They all come over, to see what she’s brung them.

He learns that ponds are “tanks,” that potatoes are taters, and that what’s really important is God, country, and the Dallas Cowboys, and not always in that order, depending on the time of year.

She takes him on a tour of her life: Her house, her high school, and finally her college, the University of North Texas in Denton. A state university but with a prestigious, internationally acclaimed college of music. This is for serious students. You come to North Texas as a musician, y’all better have the chops for it.

She did, and does. He smiles when he thinks about the conflicts over the years, the choirs she directs and budgets she projects, and the self-appointed powers-that-be who want to dismiss her as just a pretty voice. She was music student of the year at North Texas, he thinks, at a time when North Texas was the largest school of music in the world. Shut up and learn something.

“Texas?” he says when someone asks. “Yeah, I spent a year there one week,” but he’s just joking. Texas is fine, there’s just no connection for him. Nor is there one with his former states, California and Arizona. He came home 20 years ago, and this is it: The mountains, the Sound, the trees and the rain. This is where he always belonged, he believes, and his children are now natives.

He looks at his favorite picture again. It was taken during a rehearsal for Tacoma Opera’s production of “The Magic Flute.” She is playing Pamina. She is 31, looking younger than that, with lots of hair, a plaid shirt, blue jeans and the boots. Other cast members are in the background, watching her.

And on her shoulders, in a baby backpack, is her one-year-old daughter, red hair blazing, thumb securely in mouth, apparently unperturbed by the setting or the sound of her mother singing, as if she had been doing it all her life. Which she had.

“Someday,” someone could have remarked back then, “that baby will grow up and follow in her mother’s footsteps.” Her mom would have howled. “Oh, Lord, she’ll probably be a chemist.” These things happen. Children make their own lives. Prophecies about their futures are bad bets.

Genetics and geography are funny things, though, he thinks as he puts the picture away. And destinies are only clearly seen from the perspective of the future. He will probably think about this often, and especially in August, when he puts his daughter on a plane. North Texas will get another freshman voice major in the fall, this one a red-haired Northwest native with a will of iron and an impressive pedigree. She will, in a way, be going home.

This is his favorite picture. Just a shutter click in time, it still has power and magic. It holds the middle of one story and the beginning of another. It is a picture of symmetry and cycles. It is a picture of the future hiding in the past, where it always is.

And it’s a reminder that his little girl is leaving. He always knew she had to, of course, always knew that she would, and if only he’d paid more attention he would have always known where she was going.