Fabulous Five

My mother, espousing an archetypical Jewish guilt, habitually shoulders the blame for all her children's failings, attributing them to a primeval dearth of parenting skills -- a noble gesture I formerly dismissed as superfluous and irrelevant. Recently, however, as she traverses her ninth decade with grace and aplomb, I have embraced her sacrifice, comforting myself with the perverse rationalization: "If she really wants to be a martyr, who am I to deny her the pleasure?"

But humoring her, after all, does have consequences; for am I not now compelled by logic to grant her some credit -- which, in fairness, she has never claimed -- for those same children's modest accomplishments? (What role my father may have played in such developments, I am not prepared to judge; he was a titanic figure in those three young lives, but one who influenced them more by osmosis than by design.)

I'm beginning to think my mother's effusive humility is just a little disingenuous. If indeed her mentoring was so flawed, why does she now persist in proclaiming herself an infallible oracle, an incontrovertible expert on a wide variety of subjects -- diet, medical care, interior design, and apparel? Is it simply a matter of aging that enables a mother so admittedly inept fifty years ago to evolve into one so wise today?

Given the typical upper middle class environment most of my readers accept as a norm, I wonder if individual parenting is any more critical to the maturation process than a stable family situation, a proper education, a supportive social structure, and a fortuitous gene pool. When faced with the necessity of making a living, most of the offspring of my friends and acquaintances manage to find a way, some with resounding success. On the other hand, sporadically I hear reports of a lost soul, who, despite his parents' best efforts, remains on the dole for a painfully protracted time period.

As for my own children, they confirmed years ago the worthlessness of my own worldly experience when all five summarily rejected my earnest recommendation that they take Latin in high school. In spite of such snubs, and echoing my mother's excessive protestations, like her, I continue to be astonished at how well they turned out -- although perhaps I shouldn't be. They were blessed with two energetic, devoted, and attentive mothers (my two wives), who more than compensated for a disengaged father. (My simplistic philosophy was: Treat them like adults, and they will behave like adults.)

Who can fathom the random confluence of chromosomes that yields a personality at once so akin to its progenitors and so alien? I think of how my own self-consciousness, reserve, introspection, and caution so starkly contrasts with my father's extroversion, spontaneity, loquacity, and gregariousness. Whereas he never met a stranger, I often forget the name of a person I have known for years. Similarly, my lifelong passion for the printed word and thirty-year running obsession lack any apparent genetic source, although the distaste for physical competition and absence of coordination implied in those activities are indisputable natural legacies -- as are a sharpness of wit and sense of timing which have enabled me to tread gingerly in his footsteps as an occasional master of ceremonies.

It's their good fortune (and mine) that my children have managed to avoid -- at least in my biased view -- my myriad imperfections and to inherit a healthy dose of admirable qualities from my better halves: compassion, charm, common sense, and affability. My meager contribution has been to proffer myself as a positive role model, reflective, hard-working, forthright, and generous.

Young people are amazingly resilient. If my mother was a self-proclaimed novice and my father a distant giant, at least they kept their marriage together, so that my brother, sister, and I grew up in one household with the same two parents. On the other hand, my five children (including two stepdaughters) survived single parenthood, remarriages, blended families, shuttling between separate residences (often hundreds of miles apart), and a host of relocations, to emerge as self-confident, independent, and loving adults -- and connected to each other by bonds stronger than I could have ever imagined -- not better than I expected, but probably better than I deserved -- not a basketball team, but a Fabulous Five worthy of that storied Wolverine moniker.

My older son, David, is a reality television film editor in Manhattan. His resume includes such shows as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Extreme Makeover, Pawn Stars, and Houston Medical. It's a career path I blazed for him twenty years ago when I bought him his first video camera. His mother called me in a state of rage, totally distraught because he had lit a fire in her basement, and she wanted him out of the house. I picked him up, took him to the Schewels store on Timberlake Road, and deposited him in the electronics department, where it didn't take him long to discover the joys of video recording, or me, in a spasm of an estranged father's guilt, to reward him liberally for his incendiary crime.

Happily, the sparks and spoilings of youth -- which included an elaborate and expensive three-level tree house built to his specifications and a vintage 1990 red Jeep Laredo, then, as now, the sophisticated teenager's impractical vehicle of choice -- left no permanent scars on number one son.

Upon graduating from Northwestern University in 1997, with a Major in Communications (among other assignments, he wrote a term paper on the television show Home Improvement), David moved to New York City to look for work in his chosen field -- and found enough after a succession of apartments to purchase a small but comfortable co-op in the West Village. Other than cosigning his first apartment lease, commiserating with him when a rogue moving company quoted him one price and then held his possessions hostage for a higher ransom, and selling him used Tauruses off Schewel leases, I have been of no use whatsoever.

Once David got hold of that video camera, he never let it go. I guess there's something to be said for pursuing one's juvenile avocations into adulthood -- which puts the entertainment industry on par with professional sports as fostering eternal youth. Whenever I dangled the juicy carrot of a thriving family business in front of him, he reminded me how boring furniture was (as if, after forty years, I didn't know; I guess the taste I gave him during his high school summers was too bitter). But, since one man's meat is another man's poison, I question what could be more tedious than planting oneself in front of multiple computer screens eight hours of day and splicing and dicing bits of videotape to produce one coherent montage?

Granted, David does have a discriminating photographic vision. The screen saver on his dueling home computers is a stunning sequence of hundreds of still shots of his friends and family -- a panoramic digital record spanning his thirty-five years.

Some crystallize my own mental images of a brash, confident, winsome, slightly devilish kid wise beyond his years -- smiling with me into the camera as we prop up a sculptured, sugary birthday cake; using the miracle of video editing and his own nascent talent to dunk a basketball in his driveway at the age of fourteen; grinning through the Jeep's windshield, his gorgeous locks buried beneath his signature baseball cap, which I always despised because he, like his peers, insisted on wearing it backwards; towering over me one predawn morning (by then, his height had already surpassed mine, as his younger brother's was to surpass his in a few short years), hoisting a backpack, as he prepared to embark on a five-hundred mile drive to Northwestern in the same Jeep, now precariously overburdened with school supplies and apartment furnishings; and, every day, beaming at me from the photograph plastered on the bulletin board in my office, his visage superimposed in front of a Times Square marquee displaying its own reflection, in profile, my son.

With two of his siblings poised to tie the proverbial marriage knot before year's end, you might think the pressure would be building for the eldest to follow them down the aisle -- especially since most of his New York City comrades have also opted for conjugal bliss, leaving him the last bachelor standing. Is that because none of the one hundred plus women (a wild guess, really, based on ten a year) he has met and dated via the Internet has been able to meet his stratospheric standards for a permanent mate (or, dare I say, vice-versa)? Or because he has grown too accustomed to solitude and the freedom to come and go as he pleases? Or is it because he takes a jaundiced view of the dismal track record of his immediate family -- eight divorces when one includes five aunts and uncles?

Regardless, David seems quite content with his persona and lifestyle. When not editing shows for VH1 or MTV, or putting the finishing touches (a two-year project) on a ninety-minute movie he and some presumptive Spielbergs wrote, produced, directed, filmed, and edited -- all at their own expense -- he spends the weekends relaxing (and partying) at the Catskills lake house he and some friends rescued from deterioration a year ago and have painstakingly rehabilitated -- the lake house he always wanted but which his Dad would never buy.

A few days ago I received a birthday card from my daughter Sara. (I'm still waiting for cards from her siblings, although, to be fair, they did call.) Once I got past the Sarah Palin joke -- "I just want you to know I consider you a real American," she says, "a real old American" -- (Sara knows I have a love-hate relationship with the Alaskan governor turned gadfly, loving her looks, hating her interminable, dangling syntax) inside was this bittersweet message: "You always told me you just wanted me to be happy. I hope you find someone who will make you happy and who will enjoy doing the things you like to do." (Now that's a tall order.)

For Sara, happiness is a full plate of activities -- working, studying, running, biking, training for a triathlon, staying in touch with family and friends, and, if the truth be told, exhaustively informing the latter about all of the above. (Sometimes, Sara, there can be too much information.)

And yet, as one inclined to reticence, I have to acknowledge a certain amount of envy for her unfiltered exuberance, her unabashed congeniality, her sincere and genuine open-heartedness -- the descriptive word I vainly searched for twenty years ago when I stood with Sara on the pulpit at her Bat Mitzvah. (She excelled then, as she always does.) There is nothing for Sara to hold back, because there are no sinister thoughts, no deceitful calculations lurking in the shadowy ridges of her brain.

Of my three children, Sara was the only one to verbalize what I'm sure her brothers were also fantasizing after her parents' separation: "Maybe you and my Mom will get back together."

In spite of baring her soul, Sara is by no means naive. She's endured and triumphed over some harsh realities in her thirty-two years -- struggling with a weight problem (which is hard to believe when you look at her today); valiantly holding her place as the middle child between two brothers and between a stepmother and her own two daughters; coping with the merciless elitism of peers shunning a conscientious scholar, an inferior athlete (like her Dad), and a day student at a boarding school; surviving three teaching positions in three states, ever on the move, in search of the perfect job, until she found her calling -- ministering to the ill and infirm.

Through it all, she has maintained a refreshing sense of humor, regularly tossing out subtle one-liners and mini-jokes, and then, fearful of giving offense, pulling them back with the gratuitous apology: "Just kidding."

At times, Sara can be overly critical of the people and systems where she is employed, a paradigm reminiscent of my own years ago when I was assuming a greater amount of responsibility at Schewel Furniture Company. Like her, I was seeking perfection in an imperfect world, a futile pursuit. On the other hand, a goal most worthy of all our energies, and one which Sara keeps always in the forefront of her consciousness is excellence, excellence in every endeavor, whether it be personal or professional.

One thing I've learned in the past three years is how arduous, crowded, and inflexible is the schedule of a rookie nurse who is also "taking her clinicals" for her Masters Degree. But even when Sara's not in classroom or the hospital, she's busy. How many times have visitors arrived at her apartment of the week (she changes addresses like I change underwear) at the appointed time to find her gone -- for a bicycle ride or an eight-mile run? And once inside, as if those urban abodes weren't small enough, most of the living room space has been swamped by a bicycle (or two) in some phase of disassembly.

As for spectator sports, Sara has inherited my own appreciation for baseball, with allegiances shifting like residences, from the Cubs to the Red Sox to the Phillies. Her attachment has deep roots; early on, she recognized that one sure way to capture the attention of a distracted father immersed in business and books was to engage him in a conversation on his favorite sport -- and consequently, she became a complete student of the game.

It's been gratifying to watch Sara define herself -- as a fitness fanatic, a dedicated caregiver, and a loving companion. In Nate, she has found a true soulmate, one with whom all the opportunities of the future will be so much more meaningful and fulfilling because she will have someone to share them with -- a man who will thrill her senses, challenge her intellect, invigorate her heart, and titillate her taste buds, because I understand he's also a gourmet cook.

I like to think that my youngest birth child, Matthew, is the most like me -- except he's a lot nicer. In a quiet, intense way, he is more gentle, considerate, sensitive, and empathetic than I ever was at age twenty-eight, when I was beset with social insecurities.

Clear evidence of his winning ways was the reaction of his associates at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C. when three weeks ago he resigned as Energy Editor to accept a position at a more prestigious company -- his first foray into the journalistic world after three years exercising his Spanish fluency teaching elementary school in a bilingual program. So distressed were they at his abandoning them that they published a special edition of their Latin American Adviser: the Matthew Schewel Adviser.

This satiric newsletter featured in-depth reports on his infamous accident in an underground parking lot, in which he became the third child to break a bone (wrist) falling from a bicycle (after David, finger, and Sara, collarbone); on his suspicious extralegal connections and purported presidential aspirations in the Dominican Republic, the home of his intended spouse; and on the unsettling effect of his sudden move on global energy markets. Some readers were undoubtedly taken aback by a strange photograph of the cub reporter -- not because he was standing beside the former President of Mexico, Vincente Fox, but because he was wearing a suit.

It is obvious that his co-workers loved him, as do all others who are privileged to look up to this precocious giant; once the smallest of my three stair steps, he now looms over us all, at a healthy 6'3" -- tall enough to see from a distance Payne Stewart sink the winning putt on the eighteenth green at the 1999 U. S. Open, while I could only gawk in frustration.

Matthew has come a long way from the temper tantrums he threw with regularity in his preteen years -- every time disappointment intruded into a world already shattered by his parents' divorce. Something as innocuous as a Kirby Puckett home run propelling the Minnesota Twins to a victory over his beloved (at that time) Atlanta Braves in the 1991 World Series would launch him into an irrepressible frenzy. And now, twenty years later, he commands a classroom of unruly third graders with the composure and indulgence of a saint.

Circumstances and temperament have drawn the two of us into the same orbit. Shortly after learning I was moving out of the house, like a boxer throwing a stinging jab, he stunned me with the innocent remark: "I won't miss him; I hardly know him," a painful, if accurate, assessment of my broken parenting, which I resolved at that moment to repair.

As my youngest, Matthew was more accessible than the older two, less invested at his age in his friends and extracurricular activities. I remember hosting a sleepover (there's a misnomer) birthday party at my rather shabby two-bedroom apartment for six rambunctious five-year-olds (and swearing I'd never do it again); playing catch, swinging a bat, futile attempts to sharpen his baseball skills in the face of overwhelming genetic odds; testing the waters of Smith Mountain Lake with him in a forty-foot runabout whose mechanics were a constant source of frustration to me; and recruiting him as my special sidekick on vacation trips to Disney World and Myrtle Beach, to baseball games and golf tournaments.

Since Matthew was the only child never to live with me after my separation from his mother, perhaps our bonds were strung tighter by the feverish intensity of his weekend visits, in the same way an all-male Washington and Lee University, back in the sixties, erupted into a bonfire of raging hormones and drunken revelries when carloads of coeds invaded for seventy-two hour layovers.

Once Matthew's mother and stepfather embarked on a wanderlust that took them progressively from Evington, Va., to Charleston, S.C., to Concord, N.H., to Los Alamos, N.M., and to Corning, N.Y., air became the preferred mode of transport. While Matthew (and his sister) boarded planes with the nonchalance of youth, I regularly succumbed to panic attacks borne of an irrational fear of flying -- like the time I watched them soar into the darkening clouds of a violent thunderstorm, anticipating the worst -- or maybe I just hated to see them leave.

Matthew is as stubbornly independent as his siblings, disdaining any and all parental offers of financial assistance. He'd rather muddle through on the meager salary of a struggling young journalist compelled to pay exorbitant D.C. rents for substandard accommodations. With his upcoming marriage to the vivacious Dominican beauty he met while both were teaching in North Carolina (how pleasant it must be to whisper into the ear of one's beloved sweet nothings that are incomprehensible to eavesdroppers), he has recently upgraded (and I understand she is demanding new furniture, which shouldn't be a problem) -- a move facilitated by his recent change in jobs. As one who secured his first and only employment by nepotism, I stand in awe of my son, who suffered through eight grueling hours of interviews and outmatched eighty other applicants.

Matthew's penchant for writing unwittingly unleashed some of my own long-repressed aspirations, at the ripe old age of sixty. While mightily to be wished for, a child's success can arouse pangs of jealousy, especially in a metier in which one imagines oneself minimally competent. When Matthew started writing a blog four years ago, I said to myself, "I'd like to try that." One-hundred-twenty thousand words later, I bear witness to James Boswell's disheartening maxim: "The man who writes without remuneration is a fool."

Enjoying a late lunch in an outdoor cafe a few days ago, Matthew and I were astonished to see the unusual name "Kali" imprinted on our check when our attractive, but excessively tattooed, waitress laid it on the table, at the exact moment I was conversing by cell phone with my older stepdaughter, also Kali. "My parents played a cruel practical joke on me," said the young lady, when I pointed out the coincidence. "It's the Hindu god of death and destruction."

While she may have broken a few hearts along the way, our Kali, a tall, willowy blonde, still unattached at twenty-seven, is too much a life-force for a mordant label like that. Her free-spirited nature -- which she demonstrated as soon as her spindly legs were strong enough for her to break away from the family pack -- demanded some bouyant nickname, and her astute stepbrother tagged her "Special K" and "Kali-fornia Girl."

In a stable of five frisky colts, there's always one maverick. Kali always longed to escape the collar of authority, discipline, and conformity, and gallop off into the wilderness. When she seized upon a course of action or coveted some sweet or trinket or item of clothing, she was relentless, conquering her parents' resistance through sheer stubbornness and uncompromising willpower.

Not yet old enough to flee the fold, seduced by the brazenness of misguided peers, she expressed her rebelliousness in surreptitious cigarettes inhaled under the basement stairwell, in multiple ear and nose piercings, in flamboyant attire. But it was largely a sham; at heart, she was a homebody and a conventionalist. While her siblings have migrated to New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Wilmington, N.C., she has bolted no further than Richmond (at least not yet).

She yearned for independence -- for her own apartment, right out of high school, hopscotching from one to another as her finances improved, always with a roommate or two to defray her expenses; and for a job, grabbing the best available to a teenager, hospitality, and liking it, because, whatever the variation, waitressing, hostessing, bartending, or event planning, her innate charm and people-pleasing skills served her well.

Schoolwork never came easy to Kali; K through twelve was a continuous battle, with the outcome always in doubt, and when she strode across the stage of E. C. Glass High School, diploma in hand, and flashed a triumphant grin at a congratulatory audience, I thought her days of mandated intellectualism were over. But like a race horse at the back of the pack, she burst past the field on the final turn -- studying two years at CVCC, moving to Richmond, matriculating at VCU, and earning a Bachelor's Degree, in Business Administration, no less, while still finding time to work and play.

Ever the iconoclast, she did it, in Sinatra's words, "My Way." My father would have approved; it was his favorite song.

Kali's career path has yet to be determined. Disillusioned, impatient, optimistic, she resigns one job and moves on to another, in a restless quest for greener pastures, for some new, exciting, fulfilling experience. She talks of starting her own business, rejecting overtures to enlist in the step-family's. Now the continental United States is not spacious enough to contain her ambitions; she has set her sights on a European odyssey.

Whether we have achieved our lifetime goals or not, those of us well past the age of dreaming must respect our less jaded successors who still envision a magical future. For if they persevere, their dreams will come true.

Validating the Biblical proverb, "And the last shall be first," Adrienne, the youngest in the family, was the first (including all four parents) to earn a Master's Degree (in Higher Education), edging out her nursing stepsister by a couple of months. It is a testimony to her determination and decisiveness.

I first encountered "A," a predictive abbreviation, before which letter there is no other, as a feisty three year-old, and I was at once struck by her intelligence, her self-assurance, and her desire to win -- even at the pre-kindergarten game of chance and quick reflexes, "Pizza Party." Then, as now, she exhibited an unbounded energy that belied her diminutive stature.

And yet, her brashness was always tempered by courtesy, her confidence by consideration, her competitiveness by a sense of fair play. Effervescent, authentic, and spontaneous, like Sara, she never held back, eager to share her deepest thoughts and inmost feelings with whomever was at hand, even if it were only the four walls of her bedroom late at night, or the pages of a journal in which she transcribed them in poignant detail.

These qualities, enhanced by her sparkling brown eyes, pudgy cheeks, and beaming smile must have made her a magnet to the opposite sex, for "A" was never without a boy friend. As soon as she grew weary of one (or vice-versa), another was there to take his place, with whom she would spend hours on the phone, doing most of the talking herself, plumbing the emotional depths of adolescent love. In her tight-knit circle of friends, she was a ringleader of sorts and everyone's confidante, dispensing advice on relationships, schoolwork, teachers, and current events, with a fluency and authority that foreshadowed her future profession, and, incidentally, never failing to charm any parents in the vicinity.

"A's" athletic prowess was legendary. Her mother identified it early on, and we all watched with amazement and pride as she matured into the proverbial "triple threat" -- a graceful young woman possessing the speed, agility, strength, and coordination to excel at softball, tennis, and track.

She was originally an outfielder, and then a catcher, but when her high-school team lost its only pitchers to graduation she was drafted to fill the void (and suffer through two near-winless seasons, never losing her enthusiasm). She won most of her matches playing third position on the tennis team, and could have easily moved up, had the coach allowed her to challenge her superiors. And, on the track team, as if running two dashes and anchoring a relay wasn't exhausting enough, the coach recruited her, all 4'10", for the high jump, at which she became quite proficient.

In a matter of months, her walls, bulletin board, and dresser top disappeared under a profusion of trophies, citations, team photos, and letters.

Did I neglect to mention she was an Honor Roll student and selected by the faculty to deliver a graduation address?

She wasn't perfect. Her ego brooked no opposition, and, foiled of getting her way, after lengthy shouting matches with one or both parents, she would stomp back to her room, slam and lock the door, and hibernate for hours, until hunger or lack of companionship lured her back to civilization.

Once in college, hobbled by a lingering knee injury, "A" traded in her bats, gloves, and cleats (she still plays a mean game of tennis) for academia. As consummate team player, amateur psychologist, and gifted leader, is it any surprise that she was appointed a Resident Adviser as a sophomore, received scholarships to work in Student Affairs, and went on to graduate school at the University of South Carolina? She is now back at her alma mater, UNC-Wilmington, where, like her elder stepbrother, she remains eternally youthful, handsomely compensated to do what she loves, and used to do for free -- counseling, governing, and planning activities. Oh, those students don't know how lucky they are.

Five fabulous, unique, resourceful individuals, whom I am pleased to call my children. And yet, independence can be overrated. Because there is one thing that would make them more fabulous in my eyes -- and that is if I could pay the salary of one or more of them working for me in the furniture business.