To My Sons
53
but this time was an exception. Inside the bag was a shirt -- a kind of bright blue
with this strange red design repeated all over the shirt. It was one of the worst
looking shirts I had ever seen. But of course, Joey, Anton (excuse this syntax
change -- this is both to you and for others), that’s just it. It was the gesture, the
meaning behind it. It was the Crosscut Literary Prize Shirt! And, you see, it’s as
vivid in my mind as it was thirty years ago. I came to understand through a
couple of conversations with friends just before I got on my motorcycle and
headed cross-country home with my degree and blue shirt packed in my
saddlebags that some people thought I was very poor while I was a student
there. I’m not sure if I was or not —I know I didn’t have a lot of clothes and
never ironed one piece of clothing. But I worked part-time in a gas station and
part-time tutoring other students in the college writing lab, and I had money to
buy books, and have a few beers at the bars (a quarter each!) where we met
several times a week with professors to talk about the world in which we lived. I
do remember Sunday nights not having any cereal or milk left and being a bit
hungry, but on Monday mornings I could make it to the cafeteria at school
where I could get two meals a day. No. I was not poor - it’s just that the things
that mattered at that time were not clothes, or video games, or cell phones, or
Big Macs. And maybe that’s what’s different, and maybe that’s why the lessons
of literature seem less clear to us now, and why I’m always trying to say
something about the intent of a poem and the purpose of telling a good story.
The kindness behind the giving of that b