Sunday's postcard, and Love in the time of vertigo

September 3, 2023

Devin and me at Lake Quinault in November 2021, from Audrey’s camera

Of fate and fatherhood

Forty four years ago, on one of the better evenings I can remember, I was invited to have dinner with Janet Murrow, the widow of the famous CBS news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. She was in Pullman as part of an entourage from CBS News to host the annual Edward R. Murrow symposium. She was a delight.

It’s the closest I’ve come to American royalty. I mean that in the civic sense. Murrow rose on his merits and courage to become the voice and face of CBS News during World War II and the Cold War. He’s perhaps most famous for his bold 1954 exposé on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, which is framed in the 2005 film Good Night & Good Luck starring David Straithaim and George Clooney.

I don’t know what either of the Murrows would think today—Edward R. passed in 1965 and Janet in 1998—but I suspect they would both see Trumpism as an even greater threat than McCarthyism. I think they’d both be horrified, not just at the amputation of journalism (i.e. the revelations in the Fox News/Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit), but the teetering of a bitterly divided country that lurches toward authoritarianism.

Here I’ll admit to my own horrification. I chose to go into journalism in the way that my father and some of my friends went into the military, out of a commitment to democracy and public service. I’m proud of my work but dazed by the decline of the profession and its corruption by figures like Rupert Murdoch who pour billions into right-wing advocacy that masquerades as legitimate news operations.

I’m disheartened that my generation has been so gullible, so misinformed, and so angry despite the comforts and privileges it has accrued. It’s a swamp of sorrow I hadn’t anticipated. It wasn’t in sight when I joined Janet Murrow for dinner in 1979, the year I graduated from college. That it arrived and has taken on cult-like characteristics is disorienting. It’s like trying to argue with a drunken brick.

Audrey about to swim in the icy cold Pacific near Ocean Shores, WA. Age 9.

Against this vertigo, the great consolation of my life is that I have two remarkable children. I would love them even in good times, but it especially matters in times like these, as I wonder if I’ve done them any favor by co-parenting them into such a precarious world. I’m not sure I would have the will to keep walking (and swimming) if it weren’t for their love and encouragement.

My daughter, Audrey, turns 30 this year. She lives in Portland, is a writer, an artist, a social worker and a force of nature. I wouldn’t be here without her. My son, Devin, is in his mid-twenties. He lives in Denver, is a soul-searching saxophonist, and one of the most compassionate and funniest people I know. If humor is medicinal then the two of them are medics.

Devin at an early swimming lesson on Latah Creek, age 4

I suppose there’s something to my earnestness that reminds them of Graham Chapman’s King Arthur character from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s a zany movie to be sure and one of the choices of convenience and budgeting was to not put real horses in the film. So Chapman’s King Arthur recruits his Knights of the Round Table by riding an imaginary horse through the woods followed closely by Terry Jones’s squire character, Patsy, who uses the halves of a coconut shell to make the sound of the imaginary horse’s hooves.

It was two years ago that Audrey, Devin and I were hiking on a misty, November day through the rain forest near Lake Quinault on the Olympic Peninsula. Of course I had my camera with me and given the muffled light in the mists of the rain forest I brought my tripod. Devin doesn’t even ask any more, he just grabs the pack with the tripod and carries it.

Audrey, winter 2016, with her painting “Indomitable”

A half hour or so into our hike I stop to examine some fungi on the butt of a log. Not all fungi is photogenic but this batch was promising and in the time it takes me to decide it is photo-worthy, Devin is fifty yards ahead of me and 25 yards ahead of Audrey. I call for him, and Audrey relays the shout. Dev turns on a dime and starts running back down the trail—not normal running but skipping as though he is galloping on an imaginary horse. He then makes fists of his hands and simulates Terry Jones’s “Patsy” and his coconut shell clippity-clop from Holy Grail. “Coming pa-pah!” he shouts, fist-clapping above his head, causing both his sister and me to double over in laughter

Devin jamming at The Meadowlark in downtown Denver last September

Need I write more?

I marvel at the joy and improbability of this experience and so many like it. It’s not just their humor but their creative resilience.

It was a fluke I met their mother in 1987, at a retreat in upstate New York. My friend Bob Alvarez (a musician turned environmental watchdog who wound up being a top aide to Senator John Glenn) shot a basketball that rimmed off sharply and bounced onto a path where she was walking. I ran to get the rebound and struck up a pleasant conversation. We got married three years later; three years after that Audrey was born, and five years later Devin arrived.

I can’t help but marvel at the slim math of the odds, especially if Bob’s attempt at a three-pointer had rimmed off in the other direction. It’s been such a gift to be their father, to experience their love, their bond and humanity. It gives me hope. It helps me gather my balance and find my shoes in the morning.

—tjc