Loco Parentis: A Clean Sweep
He became interested in physical therapy, went back to college at age 50, and started working toward his degree. I, uncharacteristically, didn’t say a word about the abandoned piano, the tuba, the trombones, the stacks of sheet music and business records. I knew what writing means to me. I didn’t want to dwell on what it would be like to have that taken away — my identity, my long-term, fully adult, accomplished sense of self.
It helped, I think, a little, that other professions were imploding — Wall Street genius, newspaper reporter, construction worker, the small-manufacturing jobs that had been the backbone of our town’s economy. And Doug got pathos-filled calls from fellow musicians all the time: “Do you have anything for me?” “Any gigs lined up?” There wasn’t as much stigma to being out of work when so many people were. Doug and I didn’t talk much about what had happened to him. We both had issues. Mine were mostly classist. Maybe we’d never had much money, but there had been cachet in saying, when people asked “What does your husband do?,” “Oh, he’s a musician.” You could say that to corporate presidents and stockbrokers and heart surgeons, and you’d see the envy in their eyes, because really, isn’t that what everybody wants to be? When NBA stars get rich, they put out hip-hop records. When Jack Black and Kevin Bacon make their millions, what do they run off and do?
But now I had to say instead, “He’s a physical therapy aide.” And while that may be helpful to society, and a steady source of income, it’s a real conversation-stopper compared to “He’s a musician.” I also worried how PT aide would look on college applications, there in a sea of kids whose parents were corporate presidents and stockbrokers and heart surgeons. And then I despised myself for being an insufferable snob.
The changes I was going through were nothing compared to what Doug was, though. His music-performance degree was so ancient that he had to start from the beginning in college, taking English 101 and Intro to Biology. He was invariably the oldest student in the class. He worked full-time and then came home and took courses at night; while I was sitting watching Phillies games, he was studying — hard.
All of which explains why even though I’ve never been a patient person, I managed to keep my mouth shut about the mess in what could have been, by this point, a bona fide dining room. One room after another, I repainted the inside of our house — kids’ rooms, kitchen, master bedroom, hallway, living room — until the only unrenovated space was the dining room. It sat, cluttered and unkempt, its walls a dingy cream, while Doug crammed for his courses at his desk in the corner, and my clutter resentment grew, commingling with the no-longer-the-wife-of-a-musician pique. One day, while Doug was at class, I scrawled THIS ROOM IS A FIRE HAZARD on the chalkboard — and then hurriedly erased it. I’m not the most sensitive person in the world, but I can tell when the stakes are high. Twenty–seven years of pretty damned happy marriage mean more than having a dining room.
