Nostalgia

The Only Living Boy in New York

I was 16 years old on a train. The fields of sunflowers whipping by in a teary-eyed blur. I was alone.

Before I boarded in Amsterdam, I went to a record store in the train station. They had tapes, and I had a Walkman. 15 songs in the palm of my hand. I had enough money to buy one tape for the train ride from Amsterdam to Zurich, and I think I chose wisely. It was a pink case, Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits, with two weird-looking guys on the cover. I don’t remember being embarrassed by the purchase, but I probably was because I was self-conscious at 16 and overthought everything. Still do.

Kim was my first love. It was the teen love of sweaty palms, breathless, heart-racing, and the smell of dried spit. She was quiet and nice. We held hands because we were in Paris, and we talked about music. She was from Seattle. She listened to Mudhoney and a new band that nobody had ever heard of called Nirvana. I had heard them in Lou’s Records, the cool record store in Encinitas where the lead singer of Drive Like Jehu recommended them to me. Or maybe to someone else, and I overheard because I was too intimidated to talk to him.

We listened to Nirvana. The early demo tape was loud and fuzzy and gave a voice to that anger that 16-year-old boys don’t know what to do with. We each held a headphone to our ears, and then we kissed. The other kids we were with told us they would leave the grey room in the hostel. They set up a blanket on the top bunk that draped over the bottom bunk for privacy. I think they wanted us to have sex, but we just kissed while Nirvana filtered through the torn foam headphones. And when we rejoined the group, everyone clapped and we just smiled. Her cheeks were red and I couldn’t see mine, but they were burning.

I still remember the faces of those kids. Other 16 and 17-year-olds. The rich girl from New York who wore a suit jacket over a bra because that’s what Madonna was wearing back then. I loaned her $60 because she said her Dad would wire her hundreds, and she could easily pay me back. She never did. The tall guy who looked like he was 25 with a beard. He could buy us weed and space cakes in Amsterdam, where the group of us walked through the Van Gogh Museum, blitzed out of our minds while the thick paint strokes circled the stars. The tiny, pretty girl from Hawaii who drank way too much on the brewery tour and passed out in the hostel bathroom as we held her hair back to keep it off her vomit on the floor.

I don’t remember the chaperone too well. She was a college student who was in charge of us, but she was on her own trip and let us do what we wanted.

We all looked out for each other, wandering through the red light district and staring at the beautiful women in the windows, stopping into bars, and smoking hash in the park. The rich girl only smoked clove cigarettes. Kim and I shared Gauloises. The pack was black and blue with the dark silhouette of a French woman hidden by smoke. They were strong.

East Berlin circa 1990

I was a young Mormon kid who had never touched coffee, let alone alcohol, weed, or shrooms. A few years before this trip (arranged by the high school and payed for by my devout Mormon parents), I found some cooking sherry in our fridge and poured it down the drain. I thought my parents would be pleased because I was following the Mormon prophet. I was pleased with myself.

The train ride out of Amsterdam felt like a Sunday morning. I don’t think it was Sunday, but it was not a Nirvana morning, it was a Simon and Garfunkel morning.

I was taught to obey. That was the word used over and over in my house, at Church, and by other Mormon friends who would watch to make sure we were all doing the right thing. That we were obeying. It wasn’t lowercase obeying, it was OBEY. Obey the prophet, obey your parents, obey the Word of Wisdom (that’s the Mormon doctrine that tells what you can and cannot put in your body).

I haven’t done a very good job teaching my kids to obey. I have tried to give them advice, and it’s sometimes good. They are all smarter than I am, and on their own journeys. Our paths touch less and less frequently, but when they cross, I am happy.

They have always been on their own paths. This is something that I think we lose sight of as parents. When I was 16, on my own path, I didn’t think of my parents’ path, or how mine might affect theirs. I was discovering this new thing that I didn’t have a name for at the time, but when I look back, I know I was experiencing freedom.

I picked up my youngest from college this morning. Our paths touched again, and driving home, I was listening to The Pogues on Spotify. A Rainy Night in Soho. It’s a beautiful song, and then another Pogues song came on, then R.E.M., and the way the algorithm sometimes does, it kept playing songs that I loved. And then that Simon and Garfunkel song came on. The Only Living Boy in New York, and those memories from 36 years ago came flooding back, and I was on that train again, looking out the window through blurry eyes and the foam headphones, and Simon and Garfunkel quietly walking me through the emotions I was barely capable of processing.

My kids are doing amazing things. Things I wish I could do. My oldest is a brilliant musician. She sends me music to listen to, or she tells me about the pieces she is working on. She writes me and tells me to listen to the 3rd movement of the 5th Symphony by something-something-ovich and how you can feel the emotion because he was under pressure from Stalin and The Great Terror and LISTEN TO IT WITH HEADPHONES! I listen with an untrained ear, and I feel my daughter’s emotion, and the beauty that she adds to the experience, and I am honored that she is willing to share that with me.

My son calls and tells me about his studies. And his adventures. Skateboarding, surfing, climbing, ceramics. He does it all with an ease and style that I am so proud of. Envy is not the right word, but I don’t think there’s a word for wanting to go back and live that journey through him. That’s the dangerous part of parenting. I see these moms and dads pushing their young kids, trying to force a path that they wish they could walk. It has taken me years to realize that my kids’ journey is their own.

I looked back at my youngest daughter, cocooned in loose sweats in the backseat, on her phone, Snapping or texting, AirPods in her ears, playing the soundtrack of her own path. We were driving home after a year of freedom, new friends, bad food, too much alcohol, finding limits, pushing them, and occasionally some studying. She saw me look back, took one AirPod out of her ear, playing a song I would never recognize, and said, “What?”

“Nothing. You’re just so beautiful.”

I wish the song that hit me was easier to sing. Please don’t listen to it with headphones.