I had learned a lot about the military and what was expected of an officer from him, even if he had never said much about his service. I knew that ‘the buck stops here’ wasn’t just a catchphrase, but it really meant something, and I knew the standard he held an officer to. He was totally disgusted over the Pueblo incident, when the North Koreans captured an American spy ship during the cold war. I had to write a paper on it for school at the time (1968) and the ship was poorly officered, poorly crewed, and poorly outfitted. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter; the captain, Lloyd Bucher, should have tried to ram something and gone down with his ship!
My mother, on the other hand, had a somewhat distressed look on her face. I kissed her on the cheek, and then wrapped Marilyn in a big bear hug, picking her up and twirling her around. She was wearing a lovely knee length halter top sundress, cute and cool. My dress uniform was already getting warm and I peeled off my jacket as soon as we got outside. Suzie unintentionally pointed out today’s problem when she gushed, “I love the ring! When did you get it?” She was holding up Marilyn’s left hand and looking at her engagement ring.
Mom’s face hardened at that. Marilyn hadn’t been wearing any jewelry yesterday, because she always took it off when swimming. Marilyn responded, “At Christmas. We had already talked about it and Carl bought me the ring earlier than that, but we didn’t ask my folks until Christmas.”
My mother’s voice was a little icy as she asked me, “Carling, when were you going to tell your family?”
I turned to face her, making sure I had a blank look on my face. “Well, I suppose now’s a good a time as any.”
“When is the wedding? Is this some sort of an emergency?” Did I knock Marilyn up?
I controlled myself, although Marilyn looked horrified, and even my father was upset by the question. “No, mother, no emergency. Marilyn has another year of college, so it will be sometime next summer. I’ll need to report in and talk to my commanding officer about it before I can say for sure. I’ll be saving up all my leave for this in any case.”
“And are you inviting your family?”
I stared at her briefly. “I don’t know yet, mother. We haven’t decided yet. I know Marilyn asked me if Suzie wanted to be a bridesmaid. I can tell you flat out, Hamilton is not invited.”
Suzie squealed in delight. “A bridesmaid!?” She was practically jumping with joy, and Marilyn grinned at her and nodded.
Mom looked like I had just slapped her. “Hamilton is your brother!”
“Hamilton is a delusional psychotic. Hamilton is not welcome.” I glanced over at Marilyn, who was simply shaking her head at me. She didn’t want him around either.
“That’s quite unfair of you, Carling. Your brother is simply misunderstood by you,” she protested.
I took a deep breath. “Let me be very clear on this, Mother. I have zero interest in seeing my brother again this side of the grave. Marilyn has even less interest. We have talked about this, and her interests are the only ones I care about in this regard. If Hamilton shows up at the church, he will be asked to leave. If he refuses to leave, the ceremony will be delayed while the police are summoned to take him away. Anybody he attended with, and that includes you and Dad, will also be evicted at that time. I don’t much care if my side of the church is empty, Mom. You may do as you wish.”
Mom looked like I had just pissed on the carpet, and Dad said, “That’s enough, Carl. Hamilton won’t be there. Now, where is dinner today?”
I just nodded and took a second to calm down. We already had clinical proof my brother was a paranoid schizophrenic, with a delusional fixation on me. I wondered if my mother had similar problems, or simply just heard what she wanted to hear. “I made reservations at L’Auberge. They were for three, but I imagine we can cram two more in. Why don’t we all go in your car? We can leave mine here and not need to worry about parking it in Albany.”
“That’s good.” He took Mom’s elbow and steered her towards the parking lot. Suzie gave me a shrug and a look that said, ‘What did you expect?’, and Marilyn simply held my hand tightly and gave me a look of pure relief.
As I expected, two extra places could be crammed in, at least with the help of a couple of twenties in the palm of the maitre de. It was a trifle cold at dinner, with Mom sulking about my latest snub to my brother. He didn’t have problems, after all. It was me who had a problem with him. Sort of like John Dillinger being seriously misunderstood by all those bankers.
Saturday was much the same way, with the exception that it was held in the Field House, which was about halfway between Kegs and the campus. It was close enough, in fact, that I decided to walk. It was a warm and sunny spring morning. I simply pulled on some shorts and a tee shirt, and some sneakers, and carried my robes and mortarboard along the way. My parents would pick up Suzie and Marilyn and take them over.
I had been through any number of graduations since that first one. The most important thing to do is be comfortable. There’s an awful lot of hurry up and wait involved. (It’s sort of like the army.)We had almost a thousand graduates, when you combine undergrads and grad students, and we were all lined up outside the building in the hot sunlight while all our guests were finding seats in the air conditioned building. Pity the poor student who had to wear a suit underneath his robes! Nobody could see through them, so why not be comfortable.
We actually had to practice all this ahead of time. Grad students actually are at the end of the line; we would march through after the undergrads, who would file in and fill up the seats on the floor from the back moving forward. Our main speaker was Jacques Cousteau, the famous French marine biologist and explorer, who made all the television specials. In honor of Cousteau, the School of Architecture, which every year did something ridiculous, marched all their graduating students in with snorkels, facemasks, flippers, and letters painted in white on their mortarboards ‘J — A — C —’ and so forth, one letter for each student so that when they were all sitting in a line it spelled his name. They must have taken ten tries for each of those TV specials, since Cousteau had the worst accent imaginable, and could barely be understood!
We were not marched up and across the stage to receive diplomas. Instead they simply called our names and we stood up, one discipline at a time. Since I had earned three degrees, I stood up three different times, sort of unusual. Joe Bradley did it twice, once with the math department which he marched in with, and later with the economics department. I was with the doctoral students, and we had special robes and sashes, and special mortarboards as well. Afterwards we all got to escape.
I posed for pictures with my family. Mom was suitably scandalized by my attire under my robes. Nobody else cared, except my father, wearing a suit, who looked like he would have preferred shorts and a tee shirt, too. Since one of my mother’s most favorite catchphrases was, “Charlie, you’re not wearing that, are you?” you can guess who picked out his wardrobe.
(One of the few humorous aspects when Dad got Alzheimer’s was when a visiting nurse did an evaluation of him and remarked in her report that Mr. Buckman was not as independent as Mrs. Buckman reported, since she picked out his clothing. When we three kids read that, we all damn near fell to the floor laughing!)
We all went back to the frat, and then I put on a suit and took the family to a place over on Wolf Road. The wait was longer here, since we had five and not three, but we survived. Afterwards, we packed Suzie up and sent her back to Lutherville with my folks. Marilyn and I spent a final exhausted night at Kegs, and then we took off in the morning.
As we left the parking lot it finally hit me, I was really heading into the unknown. Up until now, I had been doing a repeat of my life, through junior high, high school, and college. That was over now. I had no idea what I was getting into!