The Southwest Voice

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This summer, my son and I took a trip to Aspen. That’s where one set of grandparents live. Though the weather was comfortably warm, it was much cooler in the highlands.

     On this day, we hiked at Maroon Bells, the Rocky Mountain peaks closest to Aspen. There, I marveled at the clear water and air. We secluded ourselves away from other hikers. Now all we heard was the gentle hum of the breeze through the trees, the chirp of birds, and water rushing down a rocky stream. It was like a nature soundtrack, except we were here.

     Then there was the path, nestled in between trees and the large rocks. This is when it was quietest, when nature gave you a solo: you heard the sound of your feet and your breath, nothing more. Nature likes to see you work for the space she gives you. I opened my mouth to tell my son how beautiful it all was, but he was walking the same path. In this sanctuary, you are grateful, but there’s not much to say, except perhaps, “sanctuary much.”

     After twenty minutes, the path grew steeper, and hiking became more like exercise. Our legs – or mine – hurt. Tree branches suffocated the path, which now seemed rough and whimsical. There was no clear destination. But, that’s okay here. We instinctively followed nature’s whims, noticing the silence.

     After the hike, we asked a park ranger to snap a picture of us. Father and son. A quiet and profound day.

     In a way, our silent climb was much like home. Though our son comes with us everywhere – the beach, the movies, the store – I realize just how important “solo” time is. So, at home, I don’t make too many demands on him. He is the quietest member of the family. And, you’d think he was conducting scientific experiments on the thermodynamics of prolonged silence – until you stand outside his door and overhear his tender conversations with his girlfriend: “That’s SOOO RETARDED. I mean, gosh, if you ever wore something like that, I’d never talk to you again!” He then laughs good-naturedly, safe in her affection.

     Sometimes I wonder if I am setting a bad example by leaving him alone. Maybe I need to kick his door down and climb through the rubble. I’ll yell, “Silence is death!” and beat my chest. Maybe I’ll enter his room wearing sunglasses and cocking my fingers at odd angles. I’ll rap while he stands in shock. “I said, Yo, you better embrace time with yo’ peoples. I mean, take a look, fool, it’s illin’ and chillin’ to be with my chillens! Whatcha think about that, Yoyo?”

     It's the surest way to lose your children, so I have to be more creative. Yet, I have mixed feelings on this matter of silence because I know that noise can often kills a good idea. If I don’t write things down immediately, valuable bits of inspiration will be drowned in the course of everyday conversations. Last year I flew to Detroit for a writing seminar. I paced the room of my near-private mansion and dictated a complete synopsis for a new novel into my tape recorder. I credit silence and seclusion for that prolonged moment of inspiration.

     Silence is good. No, it’s sacred. But, I also credit seclusion; I was two thousand plus miles from home. 

     Yet, I have often gotten similar moments of prolonged inspiration sitting in my bathtub, and I didn’t have to fly my bathtub to Montana for that inspiration.

     Seclusion; that, I have decided, is what my son and I enjoy in our own separate ways. He doesn’t escape into his electronic gadgets for long before he'll throw open the door to show his family his latest drawing. Sometimes, he'll come out, tell his younger sister, “YOU will NOT touch this  drawing. Do you UNDERSTAND?” and quickly return to his room. He is proud of his artwork. That's enough for me.

     But I still beat myself up trying to find ways to break out of my own “solo time” and enter his world. There are not one but two gulfs I must cross. The great thing about a visit to Aspen is that it’s often a cure-all for the sickness of silence, as I see it. Even my son’s grandparents see more and do more in their indigenous Aspen when we visit. My son and I also see more of each other during these visits. Rather than think in isolated time periods – a trip, a movie, a good laugh – I know that when you want to spend time with someone, you never focus on time. What I wanted was not simply time with my son, but a closer relationship. He is in his first year of high school, a year in which he will grow in dramatic ways. He’ll face many temptations and have some great times with his school buds. I cannot let him face these alone.

     Some so-called experts say that your job as a parent is not to be your child’s friend but his parent. They are half-right. My father always disciplined me to follow a certain path, but when he did it, I knew he did it in love; in that sense, he was my friend. I had equated “friendship” with equality. In that sense, I felt I could never completely be my son’s friend, because I would have to abdicate my parental authority. And that would ultimately be hurting him. What I missed was that you have to start with the basis of friendship in its broadest sense: Jesus called his disciples “friends” and said that the greatest love was to lay down your life for your friends.

     My favorite aspect of the trip was asking my son what he wanted to do. I love it when it’s just the two of us. No books, no television, no computers, no iPod, no piano. These days it seems like you have to kidnap your children to really get their attention. Figuratively speaking, I had kidnapped my son … and taken him to the Rocky Mountains to find peace in seclusion.

     In recent years, we’ve taken a number of small trips. Often the best time to do this is when you don’t feel like. I love to smoke the pipe of solitude, enjoying the lightness of my thoughts like smoke rings floating up. Moreover, my imagination is straw for the fire of my writing … and procrastination. I wonder when pondering Joyce’s Dublin will finally bring me to take out the garbage. Maybe if I finish Ulysses I’ll meet a character who does just that.  

     The next day, we went to the Aspen Recreation Center. The center’s “pool” is actually a combination of three separate pools and a large hot tub. The largest of these pools is no deeper than four feet. On occasion, we ran up four flights of stairs and rode a water slide. Then we just relaxed in the shallow pool.

     The banter and splashing was loudest in this pool. Several babies were being whisked by their mothers through the pool like angels in the air. They brought their tiny arms up high up and back down again into the water. With each splash, the mothers and babies celebrated together.  

     I rubbed my back against the rock wall in the pool for a deep massage. But the deepest relaxation came as I gazed out the window and saw the Rocky Mountains. There was still snow on the tallest peaks. The sky was a blue I have not witnessed since my childhood, looking into the sky though my telescope

     This is what came back to me and transformed my whole being – nature, blue and green; nature, rocky and gentle, nature, harsh and creative; nature, blunt yet peaceful.

     What did my face say? I wish I’d had a camera then. In any case, children and mothers played on totally unaware, I’m sure, of the energy they’d given me.