Seven Sons

Less than 30 hours to go in this decade.  No idea what we’ll decide to call this decade.  It’s not like they ever decided what they should call this one.  And now that we’re ready to shuffle the corpse of this one off in a few more hours in a haze of alcohol and bad decisions, it seems as appropriate a time to being writing the epitaph for the next one as ever.  The 2000’s haven’t been complete rubbish. Only mostly rubbish.

I for one navigated the chasm between my third and fourth decade on the planet only to find that in retrospect my thirties were a relatively useless span of years.  I changed jobs, gained weight, and started going gray.  Also it bears mentioning that for the modern American male, you spend the majority of your professional career while in your 30’s being viewed alternately as an overly ambitious career climber and an inexperienced whippersnapper.  Most often by people younger or older than you by less than a decade themselves. There’s something settling about forty.

But the past decade—like my past decade—is wholly remarkable for its utter lack of utterly remarkable things. Yes, yes, yes– there are images of the 2000’s forever burned in our collective memories.  The attacks on 9/11. President Bush and the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the deck of the aircraft carrier declaring the end to a war that we’re still fighting. Paris Hilton’s eyes lit up like a raccoon sifting through a trash can on her “accidentially leaked” sex tape. Notoriety is the new black.  It goes with everything. Sheryl Crow hit it earlier in the decade—”We got rock stars in the White House, and all our pop stars look like porn.”

Ford brought back a Mustang that looks like a Mustang, and Pontiac ceased to be. We have our first black president to close the decade. One that ironically began with our first special ed president. We spent ten years getting more. Too much actually.  And I suppose the challenge is to see if we can pay for it all in the next ten. My bold prediction is that we will have to learn to do without. Money, much like matter, can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet no one can seem to figure out where it’s all gone.

Banks have failed.  Automakers have failed—oops, covered that one already. Even Jay Leno—the most infuriatingly populist of the no-talent late night hosts—has failed. Jay has failed because he’s the ideal American product. Loud. Rich. Smarmy funny in that used car salesman way. But we’ve stopped buying American cause we’ve come to view the product as crap. We’re lucky Jay failed.  If he hadn’t, then all original scripted programming would’ve vanished into the air like the settlers at Roanoke. And we’d have been subjected to a Malcolm McDowell-like cavalcade of night-time viewing more fitting for an ill-thought through remake of A Clockwork Orange.

America makes art for the dinner theater crowd.

Here I’m going
Walkin’ with my baby in my arms
‘Cuz I am in the wrong end of the eight ball black
And the devil, see, he’s right behind us
And this worker said she’s gonna take my little baby
My little angel back

But they won’t getcha,
‘Cuz I’m right here witcha
On the Night Train

Swing low, Saint Cadillac
Tearin’ down the alley
And I’m reachin’ so high for ya
Don’t let ‘em take me back
Broken like valiums and chumps in the rain
That cry and quiver

When a blue horizon is sleeping in the station
With a ticket for a train
Surely mine will deliver me there
Here she comes …
I’m safe here with you
On the Night Train

Oh mamma, mamma,
Concrete is wheeling by
Down at the end of a lullaby
On the Night Train.

Rickie Lee Jones. From the eponymous 1979 album. The song is “Night Train.” It is beautiful and haunting.

I first heard it when I was probably 16, maybe four years after the album was released. Even then it spoke to me. A desperate woman. A helpless baby she’s responsible for, completely now that ‘dad’ is long gone, assuming he was ever there for anything but the requisite chemical reaction in the first place. And if he stuck around for a while, it was probably just to do more damage.

“And this worker says she’s gonna take my baby, my angel.”

In many years of this work, I’ve yet to meet the mother or the child who welcomed the intervention of Child Protective Services (or ACS, Administration for Children’s Services, as we called it in NYC). Few jobs are more difficult than that of a CPS worker, pulling a screaming and terrified child from her mother, sometimes in the middle of the night, for reasons the child can’t possibly fathom. Anyone who believes that a hungry, dirty, abused or neglected kid will welcome the strangers who arrive to remove her from the only reality she’s ever known is sorely misled. It really doesn’t matter what the child is dealing with, and how miserable and inappropriate it seems to the well-intentioned interlopers. To the child, the barren cabinets, the rotten smell in the fridge, the rodent droppings and the paint chips in the hallway are just what she knows. And it’s all she’s ever known. Given a choice between what’s awful and what’s unknown, most adults- let alone children- will grasp the former.

So word gets around, and sometimes, the mothers run. They do whatever they can to stay a step ahead of those who purport to know better, whether it’s the right thing to do or not. Running is open-ended, like an impulsive visit to a casino. It’s a one-way ticket to something better, maybe. Or maybe not. In any event, it’s an uncertain path. On that path, they trust no one. And frankly, I don’t blame them.

“But they won’t getcha, ‘Cuz I’m right here witcha. On the Night Train.”

I’ve worked with women who had been victimized by life- and every male in it- up until the thing that put them on the other side of my desk. Sometimes it was the biological father of the child in a sex case; a lot of people are surprised at how often biological fathers sexually abuse their own children. Sometimes it was a boyfriend, or a second husband, or whoever else looked at the time like something stable and basically good. Until, of course, that illusion disintegrated in a principal’s office, or a hospital, or a police station. Until it fell through like wet paper with the details of what he’d done to her daughter or son behind her back. While she was at work. While she was with friends. While she was out clubbing, or at a 12 step meeting, or wherever else the daily routine took her. The details ring in her ears while she clutches her purse and fights back tears. And wonders what the hell she’ll do now.

So the gears of the system turn, and eventually she arrives in my office.

At that point it’s crucial to remember, if I’m going to be effective in any way, shape or form, that to her I’m simply the next man in the line. I’m further trouble, just not the kind that will leave a bruise. The tie I wear glows as malevolently as a nightstick. The desk I sit behind is the perfect barrier between everything that I am and everything that I’m entitled to, and everything that she is, and will never have. It’s that simple.

And so I come out from behind the desk, and sometimes I lose the tie. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

“When a blue horizon is sleeping in the station, with a ticket for a train, surely mine will deliver me there. Here she comes. I’m safe here with you. On the Night Train.”

The train image might be a little antiquated. The urge to run isn’t.

“Concrete is wheeling by. Down at the end of a lullaby.”

The end of a lullaby. That’s where I work, which is say, live. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.