Along the Way

Irresponsibly, I skipped through childhood. I was invited to more than 200 birthday parties, owned a Lionel train set, went to summer camp, consumed bushels of crayons, and saw countless Saturday matinees. I had my share of ear infections and contracted poliomyelitis during the 1930 epidemic.

I marched, tripped, and finally strutted through parenthood. Our three children are normal with two cars each. They pay traffic fines, have been on cruises, and own camcorders. They vote, go to church, and religiously use credit cards.

But during all my adult life, I slogged and staggered through a state I call “sonhood.” I failed in this, and I am not sure it was my fault. Thousands of books, erroneously placed in the nonfiction category, instruct all fecund adults in the joys of parenthood. We read how to rear loving children so they can become responsible parents to raise perfect children and on and on, almost like perpetual motion but, like perpetual motion, a physical impossibility.

Where can one find a good book on sonhood? I wanted help in this area all my adult years. I desperately wanted to be a good son, but desire and intuition obviously were not enough.

Formal instruction is almost nonexistent. The Bible admonishes us to “honor thy father and thy mother,” but honor is a stiff, formal word that can best be equated with respect for the flag. A few sensitive Little League coaches help by letting all the boys bat at least once a season so they can make their fathers proud.

I passed the Hallmark-card course in parental communication and sent innumerable syrupy verses uttered by cute forest animals.

Why wasn't an instructor available to help me demonstrate viable sonhood? In what school class could I have learned to yell and scream, “You're right! You're right! I wish I were as smart as you.” I surely couldn't have picked it up where I learned, “You hate me. You've always hated me. You never want me to have any fun.” A considerate, nosy neighbor could have taught me the joys and advantages of snooping. I could then have known my father already owned 11 Arnie Palmer sweaters. Perhaps he would have enjoyed a year's subscription to Playboy more than 25 years of his National Geographic.

Had I been taught the advantages of snooping, I would have known my mother had received two dresser drawers full of silk scarves, and the kitchen cabinet was crammed with electric orange peelers and hydraulic garlic presses on their way to Goodwill.

A good home decorator could have demonstrated how to gold frame the little snapshot of my mother, eight months pregnant, flat-flooted, but glowing with a truly divine smile. I could have been helped to spotlight the snapshot of my father leaping from the high diving board, two fingers V'd, knobby knees bicycling in midair.

Instead, I have a near-life-size portrait of two perfect people upstaged by a monstrous white cake with gaudy silver numbers coming between them. Father smiling grotesquely with new dentures and Mother heavily corsaged with gardenias, which she hated.

By Don Turney CONSIDERING THE JOYS AND DUTIES OF SONHOOD

An honest real-estate salesman might have told me that my parents probably would be happier in the drafty, old 10-room house than they were to be in a 900-square-foot “Carefree Housette” in End-of-the-Line Village.

An inventive travel agent could have suggested that my mother might enjoy a secret stay at Maine Chance for a face-lift rather than the European trip to six countries in eight days.

Thousands could have shown me how to embrace and kiss my parents. Instead, I lightly clasped them as if they were lep-erous and bestowed formal pecks on the cheek like Charles De Gaulle awarding the French Legion of Honor.

My mother, who constantly cared for me during my paralysis, knew every freckle and scar on my body. But I? I could not even recognize her legs or feet and had to read the morgue toe tag to know that it was she.

The many doctors I supported could have taught me to recognize my father's carcinoma before it murderously metastasized. The Army should have taught me bravery so I would have stood up to authority and insisted hospital officials allow my father to have his much-desired cigarettes the last week of his life.

I had planned to expunge my guilt by authoring a definitive book on The Responsibilities and Joys of Sonhood. It is doubtful I shall ever complete the manuscript because of my son who wanted to show me his love.

Secretly, he discarded my old Standard Underwood typewriter and replaced it with an unfathomomable electronic writing device obsessed with power. This state-ofthe-art word processor disrespectfully addresses me by my first name. I cannot, even for a moment, rest my fingers on the keyboard to think or it will spew out Gaeliclike gibberish. When I touch the wrong combination of keys, it remembers the first line I typed on it “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” and proceeds to rewrite this verbiage over and over until I mercifully pull the plug.

Someday, I absolutely must talk to my grandson about sonhood. Someday.