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Authors: Jennifer Coburn
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experience it firsthand. He’ll grow more compassionate in the environment. Let’s not assume the environment will affect him. Todd is a strong presence that we must now share with the world. Imagine the love our boy will take out into the world.” Her eyes welled with tears as Jessica rolled hers.
Todd and I never went on dates like normal teens. But we were definitely an item and everyone knew it. It happened the summer he turned seventeen. At his birthday party, in fact. Birthdays were huge celebrations in our family. Everyone got a big party with the theme of his or her choice. Babies and elders were especially celebrated with dozens of horns and rituals and poetry readings. They really knew how to celebrate life, I will say that. Anyway, Todd chose a beach party theme, which meant we built a tremendous bonfire and set blankets around it. Bags of cookies, marshmallows, and Hershey’s chocolate sat promisingly in a crate. The sight of packaged food was an oddity in our home. We could hear Freddy lecturing the younger kids about the packaging of the sweets, asking them why they thought the manufacturers used an illustration of a teddy bear on its plastic bagging. “It’s cute,” my brother, Oscar, answered. “Okay, but let’s take this a step further and talk about why the marshmallow company wants to put cute pictures of teddy bears on their bags.” Freddy’s inquiry was punctuated by Oscar’s little head dropping to his lap.
My mother serenaded Todd that night, changing the gender in The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There.” When she sang that he was just seventeen, and asked if we knew what she meant, I blushed. I knew what she meant all right. I also knew that it meant that in one year from now, we’d be hosting his off-to-college party. Or so I thought. I don’t know what Todd was thinking, but our eyes met from across the fire, stayed locked on each other a second too long, and we both knew the other was interested. The vibe, my parents called it.
Morgan drove an hour to buy two dozen lobsters, which Todd wanted for his birthday beach party. Todd had never tasted lobster, so it wasn’t as though it was an old favorite. Rather, he was starting to dabble in the finer things so he wouldn’t look like a sheltered Indian boy straight off a Montana commune. I think he had this wild notion that Ivy League kids were going to walk around campus talking about yachting and tennis, snacking on caviar and sipping champagne at polo games. I knew he felt terribly intimidated by the whole thing, but was going to go anyway. That’s one of the things I really loved about Todd. He knew what he was afraid of, but didn’t let it stand in the way from his doing it.
While we were sunbathing by the lake, he told me he wanted to attend an Ivy League university mostly because he wanted to measure himself against the standard that terrified him. Greta would have loved him. “Rich people scare me,” he said, using his finger to draw a line in the dirt in front of us. “Everyone here tells me how smart I am, but I have to wonder what they’re comparing me to, you know? My ‘report cards’ from them are always Groovy Plus, but what does that mean? I ask them if I would’ve been an A student at a regular school and they say that there aren’t any letters to characterize my performance. I know what they’re saying, but it doesn’t really answer my question, you know?”
“Todd, you got a perfect score on your math PSAT,” I assured him, reaching my hand to his forearm. He was lying on his stomach and rolled onto his side.
“Yeah, but not English. I don’t have the vocabulary down.”
Todd wasn’t just talking about learning Latin roots and scoring higher on the English sections of the SAT. When he said he needed the vocabulary, he said what all of us older kids thought — we don’t speak the language of the real world. Our college classmates were going to talk about movies and television shows we’d never
Todd and I never went on dates like normal teens. But we were definitely an item and everyone knew it. It happened the summer he turned seventeen. At his birthday party, in fact. Birthdays were huge celebrations in our family. Everyone got a big party with the theme of his or her choice. Babies and elders were especially celebrated with dozens of horns and rituals and poetry readings. They really knew how to celebrate life, I will say that. Anyway, Todd chose a beach party theme, which meant we built a tremendous bonfire and set blankets around it. Bags of cookies, marshmallows, and Hershey’s chocolate sat promisingly in a crate. The sight of packaged food was an oddity in our home. We could hear Freddy lecturing the younger kids about the packaging of the sweets, asking them why they thought the manufacturers used an illustration of a teddy bear on its plastic bagging. “It’s cute,” my brother, Oscar, answered. “Okay, but let’s take this a step further and talk about why the marshmallow company wants to put cute pictures of teddy bears on their bags.” Freddy’s inquiry was punctuated by Oscar’s little head dropping to his lap.
My mother serenaded Todd that night, changing the gender in The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There.” When she sang that he was just seventeen, and asked if we knew what she meant, I blushed. I knew what she meant all right. I also knew that it meant that in one year from now, we’d be hosting his off-to-college party. Or so I thought. I don’t know what Todd was thinking, but our eyes met from across the fire, stayed locked on each other a second too long, and we both knew the other was interested. The vibe, my parents called it.
Morgan drove an hour to buy two dozen lobsters, which Todd wanted for his birthday beach party. Todd had never tasted lobster, so it wasn’t as though it was an old favorite. Rather, he was starting to dabble in the finer things so he wouldn’t look like a sheltered Indian boy straight off a Montana commune. I think he had this wild notion that Ivy League kids were going to walk around campus talking about yachting and tennis, snacking on caviar and sipping champagne at polo games. I knew he felt terribly intimidated by the whole thing, but was going to go anyway. That’s one of the things I really loved about Todd. He knew what he was afraid of, but didn’t let it stand in the way from his doing it.
While we were sunbathing by the lake, he told me he wanted to attend an Ivy League university mostly because he wanted to measure himself against the standard that terrified him. Greta would have loved him. “Rich people scare me,” he said, using his finger to draw a line in the dirt in front of us. “Everyone here tells me how smart I am, but I have to wonder what they’re comparing me to, you know? My ‘report cards’ from them are always Groovy Plus, but what does that mean? I ask them if I would’ve been an A student at a regular school and they say that there aren’t any letters to characterize my performance. I know what they’re saying, but it doesn’t really answer my question, you know?”
“Todd, you got a perfect score on your math PSAT,” I assured him, reaching my hand to his forearm. He was lying on his stomach and rolled onto his side.
“Yeah, but not English. I don’t have the vocabulary down.”
Todd wasn’t just talking about learning Latin roots and scoring higher on the English sections of the SAT. When he said he needed the vocabulary, he said what all of us older kids thought — we don’t speak the language of the real world. Our college classmates were going to talk about movies and television shows we’d never
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