Between Father’s Day and 76: lifetime lessons learned

I’m at a fine moment: on the verge of celebrating my 76th birthday, both elder son Jared and younger son Adam are enjoying professional and personal success. I thought I might take the moment to reflect, not so much on them as on what I learned from them over the past 45 years. I hope they’ll excuse the indulgence.

Both sons chose markedly different but competitive professions. Architects either win contracts or they don’t. Journalists either get recognized or they don’t. Jared works now in Atlanta for Perkins and Will, a big international architectural firm, mainly designing academic buildings. Here is the Camp Southern Ground dining hall he designed outside Atlanta:

Here is Adam, who works at The Atlantic, yesterday afternoon on NPR’s All Things Considered, two days before his first book, The Cruelty Is the Point: the Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, is published:

Jackie and I are enormously proud of them both. I suppose we contributed, if only by setting an example of working hard for long hours.

But they both achieved their successes despite me. I was a middle child who thought he always had to strive for equal treatment with an older brother and a younger one. So when I became a father I thought I could do better than my parents and cure the world by treating my two sons the same way.

That was a big mistake. Different children have different needs, not only because of their placement in the family order but also because of their dramatically different talents and preferences. This has been a big challenge in my teaching life as well: I need to treat all the students fairly, but what that means can differ because of their diverse backgrounds and preparation, not to mention intellect, career amibitions, ideology, maturity, and the rest.

Jared has a terrific visual and spatial imagination. He can picture how things will look before drawing them, the way a composer can hear how things will sound even before writing down the notes. Adam has a literary and theatrical imagination. He started beating us all at Scrabble around the age of 14. He knows how to use written and spoken words eloquently and dramatically to make a point. I had no idea when they were growing up that two people who shared the same genetic origins could be so different.

Adam got the shorter stick, as my habits were formed first with his brother. I expected that Adam would behave and think like Jared. I saw any deviance from the established pattern as potentially problematic. He naturally rebelled, causing no end of friction as a teenager that I had not experienced with his elder brother, who was much more careful to hide his divergence from expectations. I didn’t learn until recently about Jared’s teenage excursions with friends in Rome on their motor scooters, despite a (well-founded) parental prohibition. Adam made sure I knew he was smoking as a teen, despite an even stronger (and equally well-founded) parental prohibition.

There are silver linings: Adam’s willingness to defy and critique authority has been an important aspect of his journalistic career. Jared’s ability to maintain his unique perspective while working within an established system has allowed his creative impulses to find expression in glorious buildings.

Now both Jared and Adam have strikingly accomplished wives and delicious children. Jared’s two boys are rambunctious. I’ve learned not to try to squeeze either of them into a pre-determined shape. Adam’s less than two-year-old daughter is less rowdy, at least for now, but definitely knows her own mind. I hope she will remain that way. It is difficult to know where to draw lines: should she be free, as her parents prefer, to choose whatever snacks she pleases from the pantry, or should there be some limits? The former might develop some self-discipline, while I imagine the latter encourages challenging restrictions. Which is better?

I don’t know is the short answer. All I know is that how we deal with others has a lot to do with our own treatment growing up. It’s best to be aware of the internal impulses, but to react mainly to the external stimuli. Right now that means enjoying my small but precious family and trying not to impose my preferences on their thriving lives. They are all looking good to me right now, as I approach old age. That is a great satisfaction. I hope it stays that way, even though I know there are challenges ahead. No one escapes those.