Fifteen

for Chance

The grandson is fifteen. Years ago, when he was so much younger—twelve or thirteen—we discovered he liked jigsaw puzzles. We bought one at the art museum one year, but this summer I took him to The Wizard’s Chest, a place I haven’t entered in decades. I wandered through both floors of costumes and board games, plush toys and action figures, masks and fluorescent wigs, a bit boggled by the number of twenty-somethings who were apparently there to play a game involving actual cards on a table. Strange.

The grandson was already in the jigsaw puzzle section, weighing his choices. The Beatles won, 1967 – 1970, a gloriously creative time: Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, Let It Be.

Grandson on task

We managed to have a meal or two in the dining room before the puzzle took over that domain, but once it did, the Beatles commandeered the table until the kid left. Grandson is fifteen and adept at acquiring music for nothing on his phone. “You’ll have to show me how to use Spotify,” I said. “It’s easy, Grandma,” he replied dismissively and that was the end of that. Hence, I still know nothing.

As he settled in with the puzzle after dinner, we joined him, sorting out all the straight-edge pieces. “Borders are so hard,” I complained, relegated to the corner that included the White Album. “Anyway,” I said, “if we’re doing a Beatles puzzle we should be listening to them.” No sooner said than done. The kid punched commands into his phone and we were listening to “All you need is love, love—love is all you need.” It’s been a long time since I’ve heard any of these. “You say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world.”

Gramps and I sang along in snatches, occasionally pausing to exclaim, “Ta-dah!” Grandson did us the courtesy of praising the three pieces we just connected. Meanwhile, he had assembled the entire yellow-lettered middle of Yellow Submarine. Fifteen.

Apparently tired of The Fab Four, the boy tore himself from his puzzle obsession to punch in more magic on his phone and bring us the Sounds of Silence. “1964,” I said, “University of Florida. We were the first place it became a hit. I saw them in concert in Gainesville, 1965.”

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made…
And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence

The rectangular border of Beatles hits had begun to take shape. Grandpa was having a run of luck with his Let It Be corner. After a dozen Simon & Garfunkel tunes the kid changed it up again. “Oh, Mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.”

Blonde on Blonde, Summer 1966. I graduated from the University of Florida in June and would be on my way to California soon, all by myself, with my portable typewriter and no plan, no plan at all. I bought Blonde on Blonde with my waitressing tips as soon as it appeared, listened to it with friends by candlelight, all of us silently smoking, reverential, hanging on every long-awaited line.

A couple songs later the kid gave us Freewheelin’ ‘63:

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters…
And … it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

It was after nine p.m. I told the grandson it was past our bedtime. We have tried to impress upon visiting grandsons that the nocturnal habits of the young are not ours. “But you’re on vacation because I’m here,” he argued. “You can sleep in tomorrow.”

Dylan tunes continued:

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

Suddenly it was ten. “Now we dohave to go to bed,” I said. “Perhaps you don’t remember that we’re over 70.” “Seventy is the new thirty,” the boy who is fifteen said, unfazed.

But old people with regular sleep times can only last so long. We tottered off to bed, the puzzle nearly done, the boy determined to finish. Who knows how late he stayed up doing that, listening to the music of his grandparents’ youth.

“You hide in your mansion/as young people’s blood/flows out of their bodies…”

Dylan was thinking of Nam, but in 2018, “Masters of War” is a song for the NRA. Those song writers who voiced our generation’s discontents are relevant again. “We should be listening to Dylan now,” I said, pointlessly. Because at that very moment we were, because the child sitting beside us selected tonight’s program, songs written more than 50 years ago. And yet, fifteen, he’s listening.

Beatles Done