 Finding the Boy in the Man in the BalloonbyAlessandra BianchiI am married to a Jigger, a dubious name he comes by honestly. He was evidently a small baby, which prompted his Norwegian grandmother to remark, “Oh, he looks like a little jigger.” Jigger was born in a small ski town in Vermont, and returning to it, as we do weekly, is his religion. In his magical, sacred woods of Vermont, Jigger sheds his midlife family/businessman suburban identity and reverts to his carefree childhood self. Family campfires, snowshoe treks through the woods, lessons in wood-splitting and bow and arrow shooting, skittering over frozen blue ice in sub-zero temperatures—this is heaven for Jigger and our two sons, ages ten and twelve, and after years of practice (for this Southern California born mom), it is approaching my definition of the divine, as well. On a recent Saturday morning, as we set out on our weekly 3 1/2 hour pilgrimage, despite our hallowed destination, Jigger is in a particular funk. Defeated by the annual bloodletting in American capitalism known as tax filing, Jigger’s mood inside our Jeep matches the soggy gray day outside. Gripping the wheel with grim determination, and exhaling unusually loudly, Jigger exudes pain and suffering. Strapped in, slightly slumped, he looks like a defeated patient steeling himself for an unpleasant medieval medical procedure rather than the tall, broad-shouldered oarsman I married nearly sixteen years ago. In the backseat, our boys, Jake and Adam, are oblivious to the clouds upfront, for they are already deeply ensconced in their own devotional act: their sacred video games, which they know Mom and Dad don’t approve of but grudgingly allow in moving vehicles. Buoyed by the caffeine in my latte, and excited to be heading to our family Mecca, I sit in the passenger seat and do what comes naturally: I chat. Correction. Chatting implies an exchange of words among two or more people. In our car, I sit and ask questions that might as well be addressed to the upholstery, given how ignored they are by the sentient beings within a three-foot radius of me. “Do we want to try to ski when we get there, or take a muddy mountain bike ride?” I ask the upholstery. “Did you boys remember to bring your homework?” Deafening silence, punctuated by periodic keyboard tapping, and ditsy Super Mario Brothers theme music. I am momentarily encouraged when I see Jigger move his lips, as he prepares to say something. A reaction! Eureka! Jigger is laconic enough that even after all of these years, I still get excited when he initiates conversation. A real bonus to a character trait I would otherwise find entirely annoying. But he opens his mouth merely to gripe about the torpid traffic. “How can there be northbound traffic during mud season? Where are all of THESE PEOPLE going?” he moans, not hiding his disdain. His jaws clench tighter, and his already furrowed brow deepens its creases. I cannot think of an answer to his questions that would put me in an advantageous position, so for a few uncharacteristic moments I keep my mouth shut. For an otherwise strong and stoic guy, Jigger’s tolerance for traffic is surprisingly weak. Almost boastfully, I think of my own fortitude in this department, no doubt honed to titanium perfection thanks to sitting still on freeways since being in the womb in my native, car-choked Los Angeles. As we merge onto the highway, with remarkably poor sense of timing, I suggest whether it might be a good idea to check in with Jigger’s parents—who are elderly, and, at this very moment, in the midst of a several-thousand-mile-long car trip of their own. For reasons that still elude me after all of these years, Jigger is not nearly as fond of analyzing his parents as I am. He ignores my query. Striking out with his parents reminds me to call mine. I have a thoroughly pleasant, animated chat with my father in California, whom I catch returning from a tennis game and heading to the beach to walk the dogs and frolic in the ocean (father and furry friends). I think longingly of my sunshine home state and the perennially sunny disposition of its inhabitants. Jigger tries not to listen, but I speak so loudly on telephones it is impossible for him to zone out and find the Zen of Highway 89. The boys remain equally impenetrable, and their video prowess and enthusiasm for their God-awful DS machines fill me with shame. I vow not to give Nintendo any more of our increasingly scarce discretionary income, and to rethink the Video Games Allowed in Transit rule. In my solitude, I try my hardest to remember some lines I underlined while reading a New Yorker article about the similarities between a successful magic trick and love. Something about keeping the mystery alive. Looking it up later I see that Adam Gopnik puts it like this: “. . . magicians, like poets and lovers, engage [our minds] in a permanent maze of possibilities. The trick is to renew the possibilities, to keep them from becoming schematized, to let them be imperfect . . .” I recall a far less eloquent version of this advice my 10 college roommates and I chanted as we headed out for our Saturday nights, during the last century. “Be aloof, yet tantalizing.” I have never been good at aloof, and right now the “imperfect” parts of our family car ride are more than I can bear. To hell with Gopnik, magicians, and impenetrable family members! I can’t take it any more. My recourse? I reach toward the door handle, groping for what I seek. No, I don’t fling myself on the highway. Or execute a neat tuck-and-roll maneuver into scrubby brush alongside the breakdown lane. Although come to think of it, the fact that it is called a Break Down Lane would be quite poetic. Instead, I have a different type of dramatic solution in mind. A classic one. From underneath my seat, I brandish a boxed CD set of William Pène du Bois’s, The Twenty-One Balloons. From the opening sentences, we are not disappointed. “There are two kinds of travel,” du Bois begins his 1947 classic, which is set in the late 1800s. “The usual way is to take the fastest possible conveyance along the shortest route. The other way is not to care particularly where you are going or how long it will take you, or whether you will get there or not.” Already the contrast between this second ambivalent style of travel and our family’s typical beeline race up eighty-nine piques all of our curiosity. The next paragraph mentions a future method of “atomically” breaking down people, transmitting them instantaneously “like radio waves” to their destination, “in the same way as the instant a man’s voice leaves a radio station it can be picked up anywhere in the world.” Both boys grin and widen their eyes at this techie talk: it sounds a lot like what Dad does at work: control homes remotely and wirelessly (he’s a smart-home pioneer). They set their DS machines aside, and as they expected, Jigger emerges from his driving cocoon, looks back at the boys, smiles, and raises his eyebrows in complicity. We listen, rapt. As the story unfolds, and Professor William Waterman Sherman recounts his fabulous adventure, crash-landing his hot-air balloon on the island of Krakatoa, I witness another fantastic tale take shape and flourish. Before my eyes Jigger metamorphoses from Cranky Withdrawn Dad to Engaged and Engaging Super Dad. Like the miraculous little piece of flint striker that our boys love to use to jumpstart our Vermont campfires (“like Survivor Man, Mom”), The Twenty-One Balloons is kindling for Jigger. He veritably blazes with warmth, humor, and wisdom, and we, in turn, bask in it. In his modest way, and using the Socratic method, he asks the boys what’s wrong with Professor Sherman’s description of catching up and “flying through” his own smells—the odor from his garbage—that was propelled ahead of him due to the “wind traveling faster than the balloon.” According to Jigger’s recollection of physics and aeronautics, in balloon travel one must necessarily travel the exact speed of the wind, not faster or slower than it. A description of Morse code crops up next, when the professor flashes a fishing boat below with a mirror. The fact that Jigger’s knowledge of Morse code consists of a single phrase, “S.O.S.,” doesn’t detract from the value of his scholarly discussion. The boys and I are equally impressed. We pepper him with specific questions—the feasibility of the family parachute in the story, the pros and cons of hydrogen for fuel—and Jigger supplies detailed, thoughtful answers. He is smiling now, sitting up perkily and straight behind the wheel. When Professor Sherman rhapsodizes about the joys of balloon travel, alone on his deck, feet propped up on the balustrade, reading a book or looking at the stars, with all the world and its cares stretched out far below, Jigger looks over at me and exclaims, “Is this great, or what?” He is beaming and excited like a little boy and this makes me relieved and happy to see these traits brought back up to the surface in him. His day-to-day roles as head of a company and a family typically squelch out this boyish streak and replace it with resignation, duty, and a work ethic that can be challenging to live with. In my selfish and less enlightened moments I think that he is this way by choice. But William Pène du Bois reminds me otherwise. My close-to-the-vest husband, hardly an open book, is being opened up by a book! With close reading, I can reap the benefits of two stories at once, the tale of The Twenty-One Balloons, and that of the boy in the man I married. The fact that Jigger laughs out loud when Professor Sherman talks about his former students, “to whom I was subjected to every day,” I am alarmed that he’s not only thinking of his employees at work, but of the three of us he comes home to. But I take heart when I see that he’s interpreting du Bois’s comment more literally, and asks the boys, “Would your teachers say they are being ‘subjected’ to you, and is this a good thing?” It’s a remarkable thing when an otherwise unremarkable drive becomes a revelation. Particularly after enough years of marriage, during which you think you’ve seen all of your spouse’s sides (and then some) that you wish to encounter. I think I’m a good observer—I see my husband work hard, grin and bear his responsibilities, and act like a man. But how closely am I really looking? I see what I want to see, but only a fraction of what is there. It took a leisurely, indulgent recounting of a glorious adventure to remind me that I must continue to become a better reader of Jigger to fully understand and appreciate his story. Not bad for a book about hot air! Books mentioned in this column:
Alessandra has spent the past twenty years indulging her natural inquisitiveness and obsession with the mot juste by writing on a wide variety of topics ranging from free range fish, to telemark skiing UPHILL, to concierges’ greatest hits. Her work has appeared in Inc, Fortune Small Business, the Boston Globe, Dwell, and Telemark Skier magazines, among others, and she has interviewed subjects as varied as Seiji Ozawa, Julia Child, and World Wide Web “inventor” Jim Berners-Lee. When she is not writing, she enjoys chasing after her husband and two sons on skis, surfboards and bicycles. Thankfully, she can still kick these gentlemen’s butts on the tennis court. She lives in the Boston area and can be reached at www.alessandra-bianchi.com
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