From Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
for a speech to the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force
I promise. Next week we'll get back to All-Appropriations-Bills-All-The-Time.
The children of America have gone back to school. And, in about every other household, there is at least one person who is standing over the kitchen sink in tears, wondering where the years have gone.
I understand.
Every year at this time, I remember a wonderful essay I heard on NPR, the summer before The Lad went to college, by a woman talking about the day she sent her daughter to kindergarten for her first day of school. "My husband told me not to cry," she wrote, "because tomorrow she would still be in kindergarten."
"But, he was wrong," the essay then continued. "'Tomorrow' she went to college."
Which is, of course, what's behind this separation anxiety. Yesterday we were whining about getting up for the two o'clock feeding. Today we're worrying, at two o'clock, why he's not yet.
Here's my theory on why time goes faster as we get older: When you're five years old, one year is a full 20 percent of your life. When you're twenty, it's five percent. At fifty, it's only two percent. The speed of years passing is in direct proportion to your age.
Phil Gramm, in his retirement announcement, chocked up twice: When he tried to talk about the time he had missed with his sons. Senator Gramm made difficult choices putting his service to the nation first
I understand.
When The Lad was born - from the second he was born - he became the most important thing in my life. .
I chose to spend Saturday mornings with The Lad at the Air & Space Museum. Later, it was afternoons at the Little League field as assistant coach, while the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices worked in the refreshment stand. Still later, Sunday breakfasts at our favorite Deli in Dallas.
Ours were better choices for The Lad and for us. Gramm's were better choices for the country.
Very early one morning, in August of that summer, I was driving to work at Electronic Data Systems in Dallas where I oversaw the Middle East. In order to keep up with employees spread over nine time zones, I often went to work at about Four A.M.
I was driving up the Dallas North Tollway. The overnight sports station was conducting yet another arcane discussion on the state of the interior line of the Dallas Cowboys, so I shut the radio off and started to hum.
I got to "Puff the Magic Dragon," to which I can sing the harmony. In college, when I was a pretty good folk guitar player, it was a staple in my repertoire for early in the evening at parties. Later in the evenings "Both Sides Now" and "Four Strong Winds" tended to better capture an appropriate mood.
Anyway, I'm singing - in pieno voce - when I get to the line which goes:
A dragon lives forever; but not so little boys.
Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys.
Regular Mullsters know I tear up at Christmas coffee commercials. I weep during selected MASH episodes. I sniff and wipe my eyes at every happy ending in every movie I've ever seen - including on airplanes which generally precludes any further conversation between me and my seatmate.
"�but not so little boys," however, caused me to pull over to the side of the road and stop which, on the Dallas North Tollway, even at four in the morning, is no mean feat.
The woman who wrote that NPR essay said that she had divided her friends into two groups: Those who understood, and those who didn't.
I understand.
Yesterday, The Lad went to kindergarten. The next day he went to college. The day after that he was racing around the country with the Bush-Cheney campaign. The following afternoon he was in Genoa with the President. Today he is, literally, in China with the Treasury Secretary.
He is still the most important thing in my life. We talk almost every day, The Lad and I. He calls from wherever he is; or I call him from wherever I am.
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