``Grampa''
Earlier the old man, lying back in a lawn chair, had read some poetry to us. Now he talked about Italy and uncharacteristically engaged us in small talk. After giving Marcella a hard time as usual about her smoking, to my surprise he now asked for her cigarette and took five or six drags from it.

As we got up to leave, I told him that I'd be starting college at Johns Hopkins in the fall. He asked what I'd be studying and I told him I was going to be an engineering major, which would satisfy my interest in mathematics and physics and would also please my father, but I was also planning on studying Greek. This pleased him enormously and he shook my hand, for probably the first time and certainly the last.

Later on, while I was in college, I had several letters from him. But eventually I told him I needed to be free of his influence to find my own direction.

God knows, I didn't do very well at it.
October, 1996
Addendum, June 7, 1997:
I just came across some pictures of the old man when he was in his twenties. I guess I'd never seen any close-up photographs of him at that age before, because I'd never realized how much he looked like me at about the same age. No wonder there was a bond between us! (However I was still in my late teens when I knew him, and furthermore I shouldn't exaggerate the extent of that bond. He answered my letters after he went to Italy, that's really all I can say.)

I also realize now how much alike we were in some ways. I had that same intensity, and arrogance, the same fierceness in my desire to learn things, and the same capability of becoming totally captivated by an idea and committed to it and evangelical about it.

Realizing that about myself, I've since become more cautious about the ideas and beliefs I commit myself to. Probably much too cautious, in fact. Because what I realize now is that by being cautious about my intellectual and moral commitments I've saved myself from the risk of being foolish (as the old man certainly had been about some things), but I've done this at the expense of killing a very fundamental energy at my core.

It's still hard for me to say now to what extent my involvement with the old man was a good thing, and to what extent it damaged my process of finding my own way through life. I think that I was certainly right to put it completely behind me by the time I finished college. (I didn't save his letters to me. I can't really regret that: there was nothing very profound in them. I regret more not having saved my letters from Sheri, which were much more interesting.) And yet it's become this enormous unacknowledged piece of my past -- an enormous unacknowledged part of who I am -- that is like a burden at my core.

Not that it's a complete secret. But the only people I tell about it are people who won't be really interested, and even then I don't really talk about it much. I guess what it comes down to is a fear that if people are interested in me because of that part of my life, it will get in the way of their knowing who I am now.

I guess it's time for me to go back and re-read some of his writings -- to see what that will be like for me now. The idea of doing that, though, brings up some very strange feelings of apprehension in me.