Modern Family

Last week I passed by my mailbox in the Faculty Lounge, hardly slowing down since all I ever get in that mailbox is the monthly bill from the Jordanian cell phone company. I have gotten used to getting no mail in Jordan, but once in awhile I walk by, just to confirm that I have not received a notice from Ed McMahon that I have won a sweepstakes. (I know the man is dead—you see, that’s how long it’s been since I have gotten mail, my jokes and pop cultural references have to go back that far!!). But lo and behold, there were four envelopes in the mailbox! And none was a cell phone bill. Each of the four envelopes was a real treat—a Christmas card, letter, and photo from long-ago families I have taught! No way! Real mail!

As I grabbed the envelopes, I thought—this is like when you get a bunch of chocolate. Do you eat it all at once, enjoying the sugar buzz as you fill your mouth Augustus-Gloop-style, or do you wisely ration out the chocolate and savor it for longer…do you see what I mean, or am I alone in understanding this dilemma? Do I open all four envelopes today, rushing to see how the former teen-agers and parents have grown, aged, and evolved, having a nostalgic rush all at once, or do I somehow put them in the order of my association with the family, and open one envelope a day. You may be surprised at my answer.

But what a thrill—and what is interesting, not just the thrill of snail mail itself, but that each had a family letter, each had a photograph, and each family was a family of more than one child I had taught. Ranging from the Clouds whom I have known since 1992 to two families I taught when I left the USA in 2007, this was a veritable scrapbook of families and moments and wonderful former students.

The Clouds, from Charlotte, represent the Charlotte Latin chapter of my life. The Clouds were one of those great families with whom I share many a memory, from teaching Mandy, directing all three of the Cloud children in plays, cast parties, graduation parties, beach parties, and teary good-byes. Middle child Matt is a film editor in Los Angeles now, and came to see me in New York in 1999 when I directed a play he had been in Charlotte in 1996. In 2009 I visited the youngest, Mickey, who lives in New York now. Mandy wrote me one of the greatest farewell letters ever, in 1996, as I left for New York and Hackley. This is 9-page opus that is among my treasures. I look at the photo of the family, by their property at the North Carolina beach, and sigh happily.

The other three letters and photos all come from the Hackley chapter of my teaching career. Rebecca Owen always turns out a great newsletter, The Owen Zone, with photos and best/worst lists from every member of the family. I taught all three of the Owen children, but in an interesting twist, I taught each of them in a different course. I taught Abby in U.S. History, Jamie in 20th Century History, and Charlotte in AP Art History. Of course, each is a unique personality, but in a nice twist of fate for parents Bob and Rebecca, all three have ended up in Chicago now. This is a family I have known since 1999, and always very supportive of me.

Then I looked at the photo and letter from the Galgano family. Different memories, different classes and events in the Hackley life come to mind as I remember the two classes in which I taught Ali, the plays in which I directed Chris, a lover of history, and Piper, a member of my last AP Art History class at Hackley. Since I was at Hackley for 11 years, it was easy to get to know families well, teaching all the children, treasuring invitations to homes for dinner, and oh yeah, the Galganos hosted a great farewell party for me in June, 2007—the menu? Oh, I couldn’t forget the BBQ from a great place called “Q.” Mother Holly’s letter lets me know all the travels of the family in the last year, and how well the kids are doing. Holly writes that she is traveling to Egypt in January—hey, Holly, um Jordan is only an hour flight away from Egypt…come see me!

The last card comes from the Kilman family, and as they do every year, all four charming Kilman children on the card. This card is a tad wistful for me; I taught the two Kilman girls—both sharp and enjoyable, but I left Hackley before I got to teach the two Kilman sons. Alas, this card, of the four, makes me just a little sad that I didn’t get to know and teach all of the children in that family. But, I got to come to Jordan and meet a bunch of great students here! As I look at the card I am reminded of the great summer day last July when I got to meet up with daughter Becca and mom Theresa at the Met for lunch. Becca was working at the Met—not bad for an art history college kid—and how fun to remember our monthly trips down from Tarrytown to the venerable Met. And now she was working there.

All four cards/photos allowed me such a wonderful celebration of the families I have known and taught in my teaching career. None of the students in these four families actually was in any of the same courses, and the collection is a great reminder of my good fortune and blessings of the families I have known. If you know me at all, you know how much that concept of family means to me, and I would rather spend my breaks in Jordan dashing back to be with my family than practically anything else.

But it is odd, and I don’t think about too often, but with my love of family, I basically live alone, not in a family in the traditional sense. I don’t know if it is a puzzlement, per se, just the way life has taken me. But in the last 10 days, I have enjoyed a family of sorts, complete with nightly family dinners.

My friend Christy is visiting here in Jordan for three weeks. She and I met back when I had the Klingenstein Fellowship in 1994, and we have been associated/connected/whatever ever since. Two years ago she came to Jordan as well, and one night when I invited the young drama teacher Tristan for dessert, we laughed so much, and seemed so comfortable that Tristan looked at us both and said, “You know we are sort of like a family. I feel like a surrogate son to the two of you.” It was an audacious statement. I mean we say things like, “You’re a good friend,” or “I treasure our friendship,” but rarely does someone step over that imaginary line and declare, “we are like family.” I did think about it, and Tristan does have a number of traits of this new, surrogate “Pa” and “Ma,” but then we just moved on to other topics.

In this visit with Christy, I decided to capitalize on our cobbled-together family—almost every night in the last 10 days, I have cooked a meal, and Tristan and Christy and I have sat down to dinner, held hands, said the prayer that Christy fashioned from my family’s prayer, and enjoyed a family dinner. By candlelight we have shared stories from the day—whose classes did Christy observe that day, what had happened in Tristan’s auditions, what meetings had landed during my day of great classes—shared the food (salad purloined from the Dining Hall, but otherwise, solid Midwestern, homemade family fare) and reveled in a family moment. Each of the three of us ostensibly lives alone, but how fun to take that time and do what families used to do, still do, and should always do—carve out time to visit and eat and relax and reflect.

No, Tristan is not our “love child” from the early 1990s, and no, we are not actually a family, but we are certainly a “modern family” in the best sense of the phrase—we are choosing to bond and celebrate that bond and help each other through the day. Now Modern Family is also the name of a hilarious sit-com I discovered on bootleg DVD here in Jordan last year—a crazy updating of the (tired perhaps) old sit-com formula of a TV family. It is fresh, it is invigorating, it is funny, and it shows a flawed family helping each other stumble through the journey. This TV family may not look like what we think a family should be, or was, but it is new and vital. My makeshift family in Jordan is similar.

Now, I have been known to glean some wisdom from time to time from sit-coms, and I remember a line of dialogue from the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show that allows Mary to thank her WJM colleagues for seven years of collegiality. She calls them “family,” and muses about what a family means. “A family is a group of people who makes you feel less alone in the world and loved,” said Mary tearfully. I am so fortunate to have that here as I sit down to dinner with Tristan and Christy. And I remember those moments with those families who sent me Christmas cards all the way to Jordan by snail mail.

The news last week at this time reached Jordan about the shooting spree in Arizona, and then the editorials began about how our “American family” has been poisoned and civility crushed. I read Bob Herbert’s blistering editorial about the spate of violence and the number of killings every year. He wrote, “Ordinary citizens interested in a more sane and civilized society would have to insist that their elected representatives take meaningful steps to stem the violence. And they would have to demand, as well, that the government bring an end to the wars overseas, with their terrible human toll, because the wars are part of the same crippling pathology…. For whatever reasons, neither the public nor the politicians seem to really care how many Americans are murdered — unless it’s in a terror attack by foreigners. The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it. The horror prompted by the attack in Tucson on Saturday will pass. The outrage will fade. The murders will continue.”

I don’t have anything to add to the shame, the anger, the disappointment. But it does make me want to hold my family a little closer, a little tighter, as I hope for our modern, American family.