Condolences

Seems like everyone's reminiscing about Reagan right now and giving their revisionist histories of "Morning Again in America", so why not add to the pile. When I remember the Reagan years, I remember hard times. It's funny to me how no one seems to remember that little thing called the "Reagan Recession", but I remember it very well. I remember business being so bad that I had my hours cut back at work, and I remember having so little money left after paying the bills and the rent that some weeks I lived on nothing but pancakes and water. In fact, it was only many years later that I could even stand the smell of pancakes, and to this day I detest them and the memories of those times.

But I don't want this to be a political statement. This is not politcal, but strictly personal. I was poor under Reagan, and didn't really get back on my feet until the Clinton years rolled along, the go-go 90's as they were called. That's not a politcs or a re-writing of history, that's just the plain truth as I knew it.

I remember going to hear Reagan give a speech in Cupertino back in '84. I went to hear a lot of speeches back in those days, partly because I was only working 4 days a week, and partly because I felt I really had a stake in the elections that year. I was hoping the democrats would nominate someone who could defeat Reagan and get the country moving again, but unfortunately they nominated Walter Mondale instead. I went to hear Mondale give a speech in San Jose that year too, and came away with the distinct impression that this guy had all the personality and charisma of warm jello. I also heard his running mate Geraldine Ferraro give a speech at San Jose State, and thought the democrats had gotten the ticket backwards. Ferraro was everything that Mondale wasn't - energetic, informed, committed, but, of course she was a woman. There have been Queens and Empresses throughout history, but for some reason America will never elect a woman president. That never made sense to me.

Anyways, I heard Reagan give his speech, and while I was never a big fan of his, the speech was a revelation nonetheless, for he was not more than a minute or two into it when it became abundantly clear to me that he was the biggest phony I'd ever seen in my life. He just stood there with that "aw shucks" manner of his, and told one pretty lie after another, and with each new lie the crowd roared and I felt more and more like Winston Smith at a party convention. I came home that day and wrote my impressions in a little song (which is something I used to do in those days). I can't remember the whole thing, but I do remember one of the choruses. It was supposed to be like a Sons of the Pioneers song and it went

There's a man named Reagan and he's showing us the way
This working for a livin's gonna put me in my grave
But he was talking to God and he heard him say
Jesus Saves at the BofA
Yep, the Lord told him
Jesus Saves at the BofA.

Well, that was my song. As far as I'm concerned, if anyone ever asks me who Reagan was, I'll just tell him he was The Face in the Crowd. Only no one knew it, and it seems like no one ever figured it out.

School Drowning

While I'm being topical, there was a story yesterday about a 12 year old boy who drowned in a swimming pool while on a school outing. I'm don't want to be morbid here, but it immediately reminded me of kid from my old junior high school who also drowned many years ago on a school outing at a place called the Rock Canyon Club. In yesterdays news story they mentioned that grief couselors would be on hand to help the kids cope with this tragedy, and it struck me that back when I was going to school there were no such things grief couselors.

I'm not trying to wax nostalgic, but in those days, you see, kids had people called parents and family that they would go to if they were feeling distressed. But for some reason that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. It almost like with everything that kids have today - televisions, video games, designer clothes, cellphones, etc..., they don't really have very much, do they? Not if you need to see a grief counselor when you need someone to talk to.

As it happens, I don't remember talking to my parents about the drowning that happened at our school. The boy was not in my class, and I think he may have been one or two years behind me, so I didn't know him. I do remember talking to my parents many other times, though, and in the four years since my mother died I think about it a lot.

You see, it's funny. When parents think about what they will leave to their children they usually think about money, or heirlooms, or estates, and I won't pretend that those things don't matter, but I doubt that most people who've lost a parent would feel that those are the really important things. To me, the really important thing is the thing I can never get back. That is, being with my mother and sitting in the kitchen and talking to her.

She came from a town in northern Japan and emigrated here after marrying my father, and had lived a very interesting life, starting literally from horse-and-buggy roots (she had pictures of the town where she grew up and you could see the horse-drawn carts in the background), moving to postwar Tokyo, and then making a headlong rush into the twentieth century here in California. Sometimes we used to sit in the kitchen for hours and I loved to hear her stories of the changes she'd seen and the life that she'd lost. When she died it was strange because despite all the stories she shared, I still felt like I never got to know her as well as I should, and I've wished many times for one more chance to talk to her again and really get to know who she was, and to let her know how much I loved her and how much I was going to miss her when she was gone.

My father passed away about a year and a half ago, but it wasn't the same with my father. I don't know why that is... I guess my father and I never really talked the way my mother and I did. He was a rocket scientist (really, he was) and travelled a lot on business, and just wasn't there a lot of the time. Not that he wasn't a good father, he was a great father, but there was always that distance. I think the relationship between fathers and sons is different, anyways. There was always more of a sense of expectation, of having to prove myself to my father. Of course he never really understood why I dropped out of college or seemed to live this sort of desultory life of mine, but I think somewhere along the line we both came to the understanding that I wasn't him, or my brothers, and that he would never change me nor I him. It was just different with my father.

Anyways, I think that is what most people cherish and miss when their parents are gone. Just the chance to be with them and talk with them, and I don't know if the kids today will feel the same way as they reflect on those office visits they had with their grief counselors. Maybe they will, who knows, or maybe with all the things they have today, they don't really have that much.