Ramadan 1433 - Theron

Theron is visiting me today from Texas, after having spent a month or so with his family in Detroit and Indiana. He is being a bit too sensitive to my fasting right now, and I am not sure if it is genuine concern or he is just trying to wind me up. This good natured bantering was born fairly I suppose, given that he had threatened to beat me up a few weeks after we first met.....

I met Theron in Philadelphia in 1988 as we were both about to go off to Peace Corps Yemen. Although we (about thirty in total) spent several weeks in Pennsylvania together waiting for our visas, I didn't interact much with Theron. We didn't really talk until we were in Yemen, immersed in our three months of language and cultural training.  My first impression of him was the he was just another English major, kinda aloof and effete, and that I wouldn't be rushing to get to know him. And then there was the matter of Kat, the volunteer he was obviously pining for - I figured he would be a busy guy. The first time I do remember talking to him, he had just been sick and was looking very weak. I must have been teasing him because he became upset and returned several hours later to confront me.  If I hadn't been recovering from typhoid, he might have tried to beat me up, but mercifully, I was spared the experience.

After our bumpy start, Theron and I became good friends while in Yemen. I respected his passion and his introspective view of the world. Theron could be quite serious one moment and then quite whimsical the next, breaking some sort of silent code by chuckling at his own mirth. His silliness was strange to me but I liked it. Most of all I like the quiet passion that lay beneath it. Although we grew somewhat close during those two years, it would be almost a decade before I would really get to know him well.

I should stop here for a moment and talk a little about the bonding that happens in Peace Corps. I have been a volunteer twice, and I have supervised 100+ volunteers. I have thought long and hard about this phenomenon. Peace Corps service can be very foreign and bleak, often exposing people creating a kind of vulnerability they have never experienced. When you serve with people in this environment, you develop bonds that are very powerful and lasting. Often, you get close to people that you never would have associated with in your home country. You share things too, like music. I came back from each adventure with great, life long friends and a much broader, eclectic musical scope.

So Theron and I and his new wife Kat, stayed in touch those years after we returned, and I knew that they had spent time in Japan and had had a son, Theseus. When they returned, Kat called me and asked that I help Theron move their furniture from Cleveland, Ohio to Arizona, some 1,500 miles. He rented a truck and we made the trek while Kat and Theseus flew home. Those three days were a lot of fun, and I got to know him a lot better. Years later, when Kat left him and took Theseus with her, I would learn far more about my friend.

Over the next few years, Theron and I spent a lot more time together, often at his mother's cottage at the lake where we just fished and hung out. I loved our conversations as I felt he knew far more about literature and philosophy and I just a little more about life. I felt honored that I was allowed to be there in his life when he struggled, and that he trusted me with this new level of vulnerability. I learned a lot about being a man from Theron, a lot about real strength and family. He is a great father and a dedicated son, two things I was never good at.  I  never leave a conversation with him not thinking of something new, or learning more about myself.

So here we are twenty-four years later, and Theron hasn't threatened to beat me up once this weekend. He has been patient as I have teased him about his lizard and cat (my two newest house guests. We managed to retrieve his car after it was towed, and tomorrow I will even let him drag me down the Jane Addams Hull House museum; a true testament to the virility of Peace Corps friendships.