Casting Characters

With turns of luck and manipulations of schedules, Kominksi and I find time for books, beer, food, vintage cars, deer in the headlights…. Twenty years ago we could not have imagined how things have turned out, but I’ve learned that if you write enough fiction, the plot you’ve painstakingly outlined often gets out of whack, especially when major characters start to think and act in ways you don’t want them to. Sometimes they fall in love, sometimes out, and sometimes they simply remain where they are. Or, now and then they can be killed off when they get in the way, and now and then they simply die unexpectedly and leave everyone else to adjust.

A week later my oldest son graduates from college; ceremony leads to celebration, and assorted characters assemble in the backyard to toast the academic rite of passage, to embrace the graduate literally and figuratively before letting him go. It is a good thing to have worked hard at something and finally to be recognized, and I want to say “Go west, young man,” or something just as trite to encourage worldly exploration. I want to relate to him how invaluable such exploration can be.

Another major character, the graduate's brother, has news, too: he is moving to Salem, Oregon, in a matter of weeks, something that has been rumored for half a month and something that many of us have advised against, considering the impetus. I do not want to say “Go west, young man”; I don’t want to say anything trite. For some unclear reason I instead want to embrace him and not let go, to relate to him the risks in such a move—such exploration. (See “Wanderlust” in “Scribble, Scribble,” August 8, 2007.)

The hypocrisy is not lost on me.

One very major character is not in attendance—the 95-year-old family matriarch, who decided she should instead ride in an ambulance to the hospital where she could enjoy a steady morphine drip. On the way to visit her today, I told my wife I remembered when my oldest son graduated from kindergarten, and here he was a college graduate. And I thought of my grandmother being 95 and how many experiences she has had, and that she would trade none of them if doing so would get her out of this hospital room. She asks about the graduation and says she is sorry she missed it. (People who are 95 do not have to apologize for anything, do they?) And we tell her of the grandson who is moving to Oregon, which does not necessarily bother her. She understands how people move.

She, too, certainly never pictured herself like this when she looked ahead decades ago: small in the hospital bed, her hovering family asking if she needs anything.

We check our schedules, change our plans, curse our luck--and everyone remains in character: some major now, some minor.