To: Adulthood

From: Childhood

Date: Timeless

Re: Growing Up

I’ve heard you are coming, and that you are going to stay. No fair! Why??—you don’t have to—besides, I never even asked you to come anyway….

I like it the way it is!!…. I like being cared for; I like playing around; I like just chillin’ with friends. I want to imagine things that are more real (and true and beautiful) and more fun than that “real”

stuff, all that serious stuff, you have to offer.

I’m afraid of what I’ll have to do and where you will take me …. Routines, responsibilities, commitments, hurts—bigger hurts—when things go wrong, and work, so much work….

But you know, I am kind of curious about all the things that you can do…. You, like, achieve things and get real close with people, and I guess you understand stuff, like how things work and all. That sounds pretty cool….

So, will you take me with you? I won’t take all your

time, I promise, and maybe I can help, if you’ll let me. Can we go … together?

March 2004

I spent part of my spring break in Las Vegas. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it—that is, serve as an advisor to The Reporter staff attending the National Collegiate Newspaper Convention. Besides, as a certified United States culture watcher, it was… well… sort of my duty to do some genuine culture watching in this remarkable town.

The Reporter remains the oldest collegiate student publication in the state of Florida–read on for more about their 2004 spring convention!

Originally published December 1, 1999 by the American Historical Association, and can be accessed here: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-1999/on-job-interviewing-thinking-from-both-sides-of-the-table

A long weekend at the AHA meeting can go very quickly with all the intellectual, professional, and collegial work to do. Plus it’s just nice to take a break and see the town surrounding the hothouse atmosphere of the conference. So I found it difficult to imagine adding anything extra to the schedule. That was how I first conceived of the session “Interviewing in the Job Market of the 1990s: A Workshop,” organized by Carla Rahn Phillips. But the description intrigued me, since I was not very far in time from sitting for interviews myself. The uncertainties of being evaluated for one of the biggest steps in my professional career still loomed large in my memory. I folded down the corner of the page in the program book to mark the session for future reference.

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November 1997

My son, Peter, was ready for the SAK theater performance on October 24. Remembering their spray of Tootsie Rolls into the audience to sweeten up the crowd, he had a bag full of candy ready to toss back to them. The show started, and the Tootsies flew—and sure enough Peter threw some of his candy onto the stage. Maybe that was the only bribe they needed, since they chose him when they asked for volunteers for one of their first skits.

Peter’s five minutes of fame catapulted him onto the front page of the Reporter, in a nice photograph that captured his ambivalence about being on stage. His only disappointment was that the caption didn’t mention his name. What could I say, but “Come to think of it, the caption says you are ‘Ann Jerome Croce’s son’ but not mine.” I looked at him with a smirk, and said, “Do you think it’s anti-boyism?” In his seven-year-old wisdom, he didn’t know what to make of that, but he still didn’t like not being mentioned.

I’m not very bothered by not being mentioned but the caption has gotten me thinking about the perceptions of men in childcare and about the role of men in contemporary society.

Are fathers becoming invisible? Read the rest of this essay here.