My twenty-month-old son is obsessed with shapes. This began about a month and a half ago,
when he and I took a trip to the library. I asked him to pick out a book, thinking he might choose
something related to dogs, cats or the moon – the current objects of his affection. Instead, he
chose a volume called Shapes in Architecture.
I was amazed. Who in their right minds would think to publish a book about architectural
design for toddlers? Whoever it was knew exactly what he or she was doing, however, because
over the next several weeks my little son scarcely wanted to read anything else. He began
pointing out shapes wherever he looked: the triangle (“whyadoh!”) on a package of recyclable
materials, the circle in a roll of toilet paper, the stars on his pajamas.
The sheer delight he takes in identifying shapes is infectious. Walking to work in the
morning, I’ll see a stack of milk crates – and suddenly, the crosshatched plastic has become a
row of diamonds. I love being able to see the world through his eyes. And a fresh perspective
on the world is exactly what I need right now.
I am about to turn forty.
I still remember my mother’s fortieth birthday. I helped her celebrate by quoting from an
article I had recently read in the Ladies’ Home Journal about the kinds of changes she could
expect her body to undergo after turning forty. (The fact that my twelve-year-old self was not
only a regular reader of the Ladies’ Home Journal, but one who really believed my mother
would find those types of articles interesting and illuminating goes a long way toward explaining
the success with women I would fail to have in the coming years).
I don’t remember much about the article, though I do remember my mother breaking down in
tears when I mentioned something about the likelihood of “spider-like blue veins in her calves.”
She would break down again later that day, when my brother would compliment her by saying
he was surprised to see that her hair was still black, and that she still had a lot of it. My mother
was, and is, a very sensitive person.
I, on the other hand, am not that worried about my health or physical condition, in much
the same way that residents of Three Mile Island or the Love Canal (if there are any) are, at this
point, not likely to be worried about their property values. Rather than regret the poor decisions
I may have made in the past, I prefer to take an unhealthy pride in having survived them. And
thanks largely to my wife, who never met a vegetable she didn’t like, I now eat, live and look
better than I did when I turned thirty – which, admittedly, is not saying much.
Nor am I suffering from the sort of mid-life malaise that would cause me to spend my
life savings on a sports car or Argentinian girlfriend. I don’t have as much time, sleep or
opportunities to be with my friends and family as I would like, of course, but who – other than
our cat – really does? I’m able to divide what little time I do have among those things that are
most important to me: my family, reading and writing, and puttering about in the garden. When
I woke up yesterday morning and looked over at my wife and son, snuggled together, I had the
kind of thoughts I used to have when visiting Disney World as a child: “I can’t believe I’m really
here. I can’t believe I get to do this.”
In fact, the only aspect of my existence with which I am dissatisfied is my professional life.
I have been lucky enough to have had a number of jobs – a number of careers, even – over the
last twenty years or so. I’ve loved some of them, hated others and been reasonably okay with
the rest. Without exception, however, I have tended to view all of them as “day jobs” supporting
what I believed to be my real career as a writer of fiction.
In that regard, I have been thoroughly and spectacularly unsuccessful.
Despite many long years of discipline and practice (I’m a firm believer in writing a certain
amount every day, even and especially when I don’t feel like it), despite the help and support
of mentors, friends and colleagues (who have endured far more stories about foul-mouthed
parrots, inept super-heroes and tyrannosaurs than ought to ever have been written), despite
undergraduate and graduate degrees in creative writing and despite a continuing love of and
passion for the business of making things up, I am left at the beginning of my fortieth year with
nothing to show for my effort but two unfinished novels, a drawer full of short stories, several
awful poems, a couple of greeting cards and a stack of rejection letters from various magazines,
many of which are no longer in publication (though I take no particular joy in saying so).
I try in principle not to think about this, which means in practice that I dwell on it all
the time. Other people might think of me (depending on how they know me) as a friend, a
colleague, a reporter, a teacher, or that jerk who cuts people off in traffic and can never keep his
mouth shut at parties. When I look in the mirror, however, what I almost always see is a failed
writer.
I’m not sure why that’s becoming more of a problem for me as I approach my fortieth year.
I’m no more or less a failure now than I was when I was twenty or thirty, after all, and I’d like
to think that I’m a better writer. Perhaps it’s because so many other things in my life are going
well that the lovely little line of novels with my name along the spine occupying the top row in
my bookshelf has become more noticeable in its nonexistence. But I think it’s more likely that
certain changes in my life and in the world – the graying of my temples, the occasional aches and
pains in my shoulders, the fact that I frequently find myself making reference to things, such as
C.B. radio, that the people with whom I work have never heard of – are alerting me to the fact
that I am not going to be around forever.
This should not come as any big surprise, and yet it does. I am, after all, still coming to
terms with the realization that I will never be Batman, and that it is increasingly unlikely that
I will ever compete in the Olympics (though you never know for sure). The fact that most of
my communication with friends and family these days takes place through Facebook, in which
the majority of them are depicted as puppies, babies, cartoon characters or some other sort of
imaginary creature, means that I have largely been shielded from the recognition that the people
I love are growing older, and that therefore so am I. In all likelihood, I would probably continue
in the blessed ignorance of my own mortality were it not for the fact that my home is currently
occupied by a tiny, sticky-fingered person who is sweet and lovable and vulnerable, someone
who is an endless source of wonder and who is also a reminder that I and my entire generation
are, in the end, replacable.
This is something that probably should have occurred to me before. After all, one of the
jobs I held – and enjoyed – was writing obituaries. I loved learning about the lives of interesting
people, from astronauts and physicists and people who escaped from Nazi Germany and Soviet-
occupied Hungary to the woman who played Miss Nancy on Romper Room. I also learned a
great deal about the art of dying. It is helpful, for example, to keep one’s social media profiles
and photos tasteful and current, since that is often where lazy newspaper editors will go for
information about the deceased. It is also a good idea to remain on the best possible terms with
the people an obituary writer might turn to for comment after one passes away.
These days, of course, to end up in an obituary in the first place it helps to have done
something interesting before dying. As it is no longer possible for me to escape from Nazi
Germany or Soviet-occupied anything (Belarus comes pretty close, but they were, I think, only
too glad to be rid of me), I have long hoped that writing something would make me the sort of
person worth writing about. It’s not that I suffer from any illusions; I know far too many writers
to believe that having something published would make me rich, or famous, or even happy. But
I still cling to the hope that something I create might survive me.
I know what you’re thinking: But Rob, you have created something that will (hopefully)
survive you, a wonderful little person who is more real and more profound than any work of
literature could ever be… unless it was, like, The Great Gatsby, because that it seriously some
amazing shit. But that role – my legacy – is not one I’ve ever wanted for my son. He is his own
person with his own remarkable life to be lived, and while I hope to be a big part of it for as long
as possible, I would never be so foolish as to see it as an extension of my own.
He has, however, already taught me a great deal about writing, even if he only knows a few
words. Most of what he knows are words for shapes, and many of them require translation from
toddlerese: “whyadoh” for triangle, “whaht-dee” for rectangle. Communication is still so new to
him, and it’s wonderful to see the delight in his eyes when he’s able to tell us about a shape he’s
seen. That look of pure joy – the recognition that he has seen something, something that was
there all along but that no one else has noticed, and that through the almost magical power of
symbolic language he has managed to share with someone else – is marvelous to behold.
It reminds me of what I have always loved about writing.
I may never publish a novel. I may never even finish writing a novel. I may pass through
many more adventures and wonderful experiences in my fifth decade (and my sixth and seventh
and who knows how many others) and still feel, in the end, that I was a failed writer. But I will
certainly be a writer, for the same reason that my son enjoys pointing out shapes over and over
and over again (I never realized just how many diamonds there were in the average manhole
cover): because seeing interesting things in the world, and telling other people about them, is fun.
I can’t think of a better reason for doing anything.
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