2004: Accidents will Happen
The 2004 Annual Update: Happy Holidays to all!!
It’s been a bit of a rough year here in Northern
California. Touch wood, our health is fine, but in January the year began with
the bang of Nick having a bad car accident. Early on a weekday afternoon, he
was driving on one of the worst winding, hilly, narrow, poorly maintained roads
in the area, heading home from High School. A car coming the other way came over
the double yellow lines and pushed Nick over the edge of the tarmac. He
overcorrected in bringing himself back on to the road, and crossed the double
yellow lines himself, straight into a minivan. Its driver was 75 years old, and
not strapped in. . . .
The authorities determined that there were no indices of
misbehavior, no drugs, no alcohol, no friends in the car, no speeding, and thus
let him off without prosecution.
So he’s prosecuting himself. We essentially obliged him to
graduate High School, which he did not want to do after the accident, and then
sent him to Europe. He’s currently coming to the end of a six-month stay based
with his mum in Paris, working here and there (at a youth hostel, in a grape
harvest), and trying to decompress. The photo on the right was taken at his High
School Graduation before he left.
Marie-Hélène took the initial weight of the accident
entirely on her shoulders. She took the call from the neighbor where it
occurred, and talked it through with the California Highway Patrol officer who
investigated. She held Nick as he cried and cried at the scene, and then watched
the other driver and his wife, who had been strapped in but was still gravely
injured, driven away with Nick to be flown by helicopter to the trauma center in
San Jose. . . . Not an auspicious beginning to the year.
The logistics were a nightmare for a while. I was working
down South, only home on weekends, and Marie-Hélène was obliged to drive six children to
and from three different schools scattered around the area, not to speak of the
soccer practices and other activities. Since then, she has been picking up the
pieces, for herself and for the family. It has been a real drama, and working
through it has taken qualities that she may not have known that she had. She has
strengths at things that I have given up on.
In April, I stopped working down in Newport Beach and moved
back home on a full-time basis. The ensuing free time has been
a godsend. I’m 50,000 words into an autobiography of my first 18 years.
We are learning how to print digital photos, and the
website (www.zinzins.net)
has been a pleasure to embellish. We have even made a DVD of highlights of this
last season’s soccer games. The preservation of memories is becoming more and
more fun. The Company was very nice in letting me go, but now it is time to get
back to work.
Daphné has her own car too now and is doing pretty well,
the two facts not being unrelated. She regularly does her homework without being
harassed to do so, which makes her unique among the four adolescents. She
attends the local Teen Court, a model of a real criminal court where juvenile
petty criminals are prosecuted, defended and judged by a jury of their peers,
with the only adults the judge (a real one, at that) and bailiff. She has held
two jobs this semester to keep herself in funds, working 30 hours a week during
the Xmas rush. We bought the car, but she has to share in the running costs. Her
first boyfriend appears to be serving at the pleasure of the State (we can’t be
sure of this: she is very discrete), but she remains loyal to him in the fashion
of the times. She has friendships with other guys, “with benefits!” Oh boy.
Her grades are good, and she has a natural writing talent, but for now wants to
work in the criminal justice system. We call that “looking for love in all the
wrong places”!
Alban deliberately gets as close to failing in school as he
can, to be cool. We have engaged a tutor for him and Tom, a friend from my
undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, and he is very pleased with Alban’s
progress. He turned white when we told him Alban’s most recent grades: “but how
did he do so badly? It’s just not possible!” As I said, it’s deliberate.
He
won’t do any of the activities that we would like, for instance continue his
soccer, at which he excelled, or start high-board diving, at which he showed
great promise. Rather, he now applies his natural athleticism to skimboards,
which involve racing along the water’s edge after a wave breaks and then jumping
on a board which skims on the shallow water. So he’s gone from skateboard to
surfboard to skimboard.
We’ve given up on moving him on to blackboards, but are
making headway in helping him discover that not all reading will make him bored!
Tom recently took up wrestling at Harbor High School, and
has taken on with fervor learning the guitar (see Tom with his guitar
here) that he received for his birthday
this year, both of which are encouraging. He has even started taking an interest
in cooking. All very nice. Unfortunately, his most inflexible habit remains
saying no, which he regretfully does a great deal at school and with his tutor.
His reaction to the uncertainties of new knowledge is to refuse it, which does
not bode well, but since I started explaining this to him a couple of months
ago, he has promised to turn over a new leaf . . . next year. At least he
accepts the principle.
Tom and I took a wonderful road trip to western Colorado
during the summer, notable for his abandoning the ever-present videos and video
games in favor of the extraordinary scenery and his dad’s company. We drove
hundreds of miles across back-road Nevada without seeing a motel, and otherwise
explored the great American West for six wonderful days behind the wheel.
Charles and Alex are still at ages, 9 and 6 respectively,
where it is easier to get on with them and feel proud of them.
We spent Thanksgiving in Death Valley, at a hotel located
about 200 feet below sea level. Amidst this glorious scenery,
Charlie’s high
spot was a tarantula we ran across in a dry canyon. He took four photographs of
it. He is a bit influenced already by the pervasive negativity emanating from
his older siblings, but remains at heart a sweet boy self-consciously learning
how to become a less sweet older boy, but without taking that reduction in
sweetness to heart. On his own, a little tired, he likes nothing more than a long
hug with a parent, and he is careful to allocate the hugs democratically between
us. He remains a star of his soccer team, and is currently watching Manchester
United on TV (switching back and forth between the soccer and Sponge Bob Square
Pants), but supports Real Madrid, where his hero Zinedine Zidane plays. In his
Christmas wish list, mixed in with the soccer garb and video games, he wrote
“Nick to come back.”
Alex plays the violin well,
soccer well, and does very well
at his schoolwork. He is, in short, a very well-rounded little chap, if a little
fragile to look at. He won’t eat a lot apart from French fries and Mexican rice,
and that only from Taqueria Vallarta. It is always a surprise for the other
team’s parents watching his soccer games when he goes at it, wins the ball and
runs around the bigger and stronger looking players on the other team. Which he
does with a frequency that rivals Charlie’s. He has started doing the occasional
sleepover with a friend, and having friends sleep over. He is thriving and
blossoming and very cute, as only a six-year old can be. “Charles de Gaulle was
a President?” he asked his mother one day recently. “I thought he was a
goalkeeper!” Alex has the last word.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!!
Or Happy Holidays, as you wish!!
Charles and Alexander were baptized this summer in the
church of Saint Anne de Tréal in Brittany by l’Abbé Texier, a friend of their
grandfather’s. Aren’t they angels?
Here is is our carousel of time, and here are
other annual updates:
1994, 1995,
1996,
1997, 1998,
1999,
2000,
2001, 2002,
2003,
2005,
2006,
2007
