The Gift of Making Yourself Disappear

New York Times

4 days ago

For my next act of fatherhood, I plan to help my son disappear.
My oldest son, Sebastian, is about to turn 19 and — painful as it is to admit — what he really needs is a little less of me. OK, a lot less of me.
When I was his age I pulled my own vanishing act. I left college, drained my bank account and bought a plane ticket to Prague. My plan? Live cheaply and finish my screenplay about a con artist who falls in love with a beautiful one-armed girl. I promised my parents I would check in by pay phone. This was 1994. My family had no cellphones, no GPS and the only inbox we checked was the one nailed to our front door. You could actually vanish back then.
This sort of escape, of course, is a privilege — something you can do easily only with a passport that opens doors and a future to return to. I didn't appreciate this at the time. My mind was on other things, like whether my backpack would fit in the overhead bin.
The first leg of my trip was a train ride to New York. My father drove me to the station in downtown Buffalo. The moment felt like 'Fiddler on the Roof' in reverse. In the musical, Tevye says a tender goodbye to his daughter at the station, as she departs for a life far from home; and here was my father, bidding me farewell as I returned to the land from which we came.
My dad was so upbeat about my grand adventure. Both my parents were. It wasn't until I boarded the train and glanced back through the window that I caught a glimpse of something else. The glass was tinted: I could see Dad, but he couldn't see me. I watched as he searched the long line of windows. I saw his worry and his sadness; the breeziness had been an act and also his gift to me.
Sebastian starts college in January, and in a strange, almost mythic twist, he's heading soon to Prague. The same city. The same age. The same beautiful, naïve hope of becoming something else.
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