Birthday Boy

Dad called me tonight. It’s my birthday. I turned 30 today.

He told me about his new job with Howard industries and how he just got home at 8 p.m.

He was making a sandwich in an empty house - my mother still at the group home - and had heard earlier in the day from Mom about how I was winning the award for student of the year in the school of mass communication and journalism at USM. He congratulated me, told me how proud he was, he told me how I already knew.

He gave me some soft advice. He does that a lot lately, as if he suspects I may have all the advice I'll ever need, as if I may be privy to secrets he is not.

He’s been working for two weeks with Howard Industries, ending a 20-year stretch as an independent man. He quit Griner’s Drilling in 1987 to start his own company, so as I grew up, my father had no boss, no insurance, no pension plans and no 401k. He was his own man, huffing away, toiling with blood and sweat under the harsh sun.

He will turn 60 in July. He told me, low and quiet, how he realizes he is back in the same position he was 37 years ago.

I have more money in the bank than my parents. I’m about to graduate with more opportunities than either of them ever have had.

My dad fought in a war. My dad has worked beneath the sweat of his brow since before I was born, and now his bosses are half his age.

I woke up this morning and spent half the day worrying about whether or not the newspapers had arrived and whether or not someone was going to deliver them. I read several stories for my classes. I had an editor’s meeting. I talked to many members of my staff and planned ahead.

In a caffeine haze, I explored my future options with Chris Campbell and sold myself as a great potential grad student. Then I talked to Maggie Williams, skipping Latin, about all the shit I am putting up with at the newspaper.

I ate lunch with my wife, and we talked about the last “This American Life” we had both listened to. Blake popped by to tell us about the potential location for a record store/recording studio he might open.

Later, after psychology of personality, I stood in Kurt Brautigan’s doorway donning orange tinted shades and listened to him offer job opportunities and phone numbers to me.

Then, watching a Netflix movie about Boston stand-up comedy, my dad called to wish me happy birthday and tell me how he has to go to sleep soon so he can get up at 4 a.m. and go to Picayune to work in a paint factory.

How can I, who deserves none of this, who has this weird little thing I can do, have the world handed to me, and my parents, who have worked a thousand days better than my best, just look on with pride?