Ten-Twenty-Thirty

Mama and I about 36 years ago

My friend and fellow theological ping-pong player, Kay at Unfinished Soul tagged me for this 10-20-30 meme thingy. I'm supposed to tell you what I was doing ten, twenty and thirty years ago.

For those like me who are mathematically challenged that would be 1997, 1987 and 1977, respectively.

1997 Ten years ago I had just moved from Washington, D.C. to southern Florida in an attempt to salvage my life from a career that was quite literally killing me. I had been editing for government development projects in India and Cambodia. Got a nasty bug and decided to go into cultural media (music, books, films) where the most exotic place I would ever have to work would be Cannes. I met my wife that year, thanks to that move. It was an important year for me in many ways. I read the Book of J that year as well. That really changed my view of hermeutics. It's one of the best books written to date on the Books of Moses, which Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg argue were probably written by a woman, perhaps even Bath Sheeba herself.

1987 Twenty years ago, I spent an academic year in Blois, France. I was living at home in Boston and returned with my mother to visit some family and friends in France and England in the summer of 1987. When I returned to Boston, I wound up working as an office boy for George Herbert Walker Bush’s office which was in the same building as my mother’s office on Boston’s Commonwealth Pier. I’m a proud independent Liberal, mind you, but I was very naïve then, and the people and free garden parties were actually very nice. George Herbert’s set is quite a bit different than his eldest son’s, who gave me a ride home one day in September 1987. No kidding, it was a light metallic green Jaguar. He was a failed business man still on whatever it was that he snorted. He insisted on calling me “Dan.” I’ll never forget it. I thought to myself, “what an idiot.” It’s the God’s honest truth.

1977 Thirty years ago my mother and I had just returned to Boston from a self-imposed exile in Arizona. My parents divorced in 1976, and we had taken refuge in far-off Tucson to avoid my father. I loved it there. We got a small apartment, one bedroom, so I slept on the floor. I remember the white-noise of the washing machine putting me to sleep. We walked long distances because my mum didn’t have a car, but it all seemed like a fun adventure to me at the ripe old age of six or seven. I got to know my great-aunt Iona and Uncle Ernest. Aunt Iona had red hair and a red personality. She had a washboard and a wringer that she still used. I almost got pecked to death by her turkeys. I never liked turkey. By 1977 we returned to Boston and I enrolled in the first grade. My teacher was Mrs. Lavin, but everybody used to call her “Torpedo Tits.” I can’t imagine why. We were living with my maternal grandparents then. I became the last "son" to my grandfather, being only eight years younger than his youngest son, my uncle. We slept in bunkbeds and attended Protestant Sunday School religiously. My grandpa used to cook us oatmeal every Sunday morning, and he would play the marching band music of John Philip Souza to wake us up to go to church. 1977 was the true beginning of a "normal" childhood and family life for me.

And all this makes me very grateful, as I look back and remember the long distances and great opportunities that my life has afforded me. Now I think I undertand why they do this meme thingy.

P.S. I forgot to tag three other people. So I'm tagging my fellow Johannite Fr. Scott Rassbach, Brother Jeremy Puma the Master Gardener at the PTG, and Eileen the Episcopalifem, if she has recovered from the after-effects of a certain wild-and-crazy Anglican blogoshere reunion.