This week, for the first time ever, Tom and I will be donning the robes of Parents Taking Their Teenage Son on College Tours. Actually, only Tom will be wearing the full regalia. I will merely be wearing the lapel pin. Most of my time will be spent entertaining the 13-year-old who is not going on college tours. This is what he wants to do this week: (1) Go to the Basketball Hall of Fame. (2) Go to Harvard Square and buy history books about the Mongol Empire and medieval Japan. (3) Visit a driving range with his grandfather and learn how to smack golf balls. (4) Eat in as many restaurants as possible. I will keep you posted about how it all goes.
Meanwhile, the overwhelmed 16-year-old and his father will traipse through southern New England learning about the available varieties of collegiate experience. Fortunately they enjoy each other's company. That's about the best one can say about their "vacation."
P.S. It's the 18th of April. That means it's Patriot's Day in Maine and Massachusetts. And Patriot's Day means the Boston Marathon and a Red Sox game that starts at 11 a.m. It also means you have to read Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride." Or better yet, find an old man who can recite it from memory.
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or an old(er) woman who can recite a goodly portion of it and who can paraphrase..."Listen my children and you shall hear of the Winter that seemed to last all year!!"
Good luck to the looking and college son, good luck to the agenda packed son and especially good luck to Mom and Dad.
Here's one old man who recalls these lines, first learned by heart in ci. 1958 -- "On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive, Who remembers that famous day and year..." -- or recognizes bird tweets or reads and rereads poems and select novels as keenly as DP.
Safe travels to you and yours.
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