On a recent Sunday at Akron Family Restaurant, I was reminded of one of my earliest Beacon Journal columns in which I wrote about my eldest son, Claude. In January 2017, he took me to lunch at Akron Family to discuss his existential anxiety.
Claude was a freshly minted college graduate who didn’t know what to do next. In fact, instead of graduating the previous spring, when he had all the credits he needed, he took an extra semester at the University of Michigan.
With three more decades of life under my belt than my son, I knew Claude would be fine even if I could not tell him precisely how his life would unfold. He is curious and hardworking, which has made him many things, including pretty smart.
Claude met his closest friend at college the day they moved into the freshman dorms. Neal earned a degree in engineering, promptly left for Berkeley and began a Ph.D. program with a comfortable stipend. Claude envied Neal’s knowledge of what to do next, even if his friend wasn’t always satisfied.
“I sometimes think I should have taken a gap year after high school,” Claude told me over soup that day.
Thank God you didn’t, I thought.
My parents held entry-level jobs. My mother worked hard, mostly as a waitress, sometimes as a secretary, and lastly baking coffee cakes and fruit bars she sold at markets not unlike the Mustard Seed. My dad worked seldomly, usually retail when he did — a hardware store in Michigan, Circle K in Arizona.
Neither ever talked with me about going to college. After high school, I took classes here and there, including the University of Arizona and Wright State. Finally, at age 21, I settled in at Ohio State where I voraciously studied religion and French, receiving degrees in each at 26.
I set a different course for my children. “After high school,” I told them, “you go to college.” Not “you could” nor “you should,” but “you go.” However, I never pushed them toward, nor dissuaded them from, any particular major. “Just get a bachelor’s degree, that’s what matters.”
A gap year after high school, I feared, might easily lead to a long-term forestalling of college like me, or a permanent one like my parents.
But my children are different from my parents or me. They had a blueprint because I had gone to college and earned degrees. When they talked about juggling studying for tests and writing papers, I understood and could make suggestions.
Also, for four years as a single parent, I regularly brought home Pizza Bogo pizzas before heading off to night classes. I earned my graduate degree at age 44.
Today, my first three children have bachelor’s degrees.
In the years after that luncheon conversation, Claude did as I expected while doing things I could not have predicted. He worked a string of odd jobs, including a stint at Starbucks. They were not career inducing.
In the fall of 2019, Claude became an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked at the Summit Food Coalition, then located at Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. He also worked several positions at Macaroni Grill to supplement his meager stipend.
Six months later, the pandemic hit. Claude loaded boxes of food into vehicles at distribution events and learned much about food insecurity, who it affects and why, and that the best-practices model for combating hunger is food stamps, not food banks.
“I want a career in which I can make a difference,” he told me.
He applied to graduate programs in public policy in the spring of 2020 when the country was in COVID lockdown. Ohio State’s hiring freeze extended to assistantships, knocking out Claude’s first choice, the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.
Maybe it was his AmeriCorps credentials, but Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service offered Claude a full ride with a generous stipend. In August 2020, he packed up his car, left his cats with me and drove to College Station.
Two years later, he was offered jobs by the federal and state governments. Choosing which to pick was something I could discuss, but my life’s experience held no blueprint for this. I suggested he discuss it with his grad school adviser.
Claude works for the EPA in Washington, D.C., a city we’ve always enjoyed visiting. His friend Neal finished his Ph.D. program and recently spent a long weekend with Claude in D.C. Both appear to have arrived at similar points in their careers.
Now almost 30, Claude was home for a visit when we went to Akron Family. He comfortably explained over breakfast how the federal EPA works with state and regional EPA offices, along with other federal agencies. He believes he’ll have a long career with the agency; it suits him.
Eight years ago, I told Claude I wished I had a crystal ball to show him where he would land. But, then again, doing so would have interfered with the maturity and wisdom he’s gained along his way. As I wrote in 2017, a successful life rarely follows a straight line to some prize, nor should it.
Now all I ask is that the next time Claude returns home, he retrieve his cats.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on September 17, 2023.
Whoopsie Piggle 