Checking into the Inn and Out of an Era

FIRST PERSON

What will they remember? The question that teases all parents teased me one evening not long ago, driving up I-91 in the vast, comforting darkness of the Upper Valley, my 16-year-old daughter, Maisie, by my side. We were on the first leg of the College Tour, bound for the Hanover Inn.

I was thinking of the last time I visited the Inn, a scant 30 years ago, when I was on the receiving end of the College Tour, travelling with my father. We'd come by train. I could summon several scenes from that trip — notably the green banner in a dormitory room: "When better women are made, Dartmouth men will make them." College life! But one spoken sentence had survived the decades, and it was delivered not by my father but by the stationmaster at the White River Junction train station. We were on our way home, and my father had asked when the New York train was due. In a tart and deliberate Vermont accent, the stationmaster replied, "De-pends on which way you're go-in'."

This actually seemed to me then, as it does now, a perfectly reasonable reply. But it so amused my father that I pretended to find it funny too. My father loved the accent, and—I guess this was the point—he relished the fellow's provincial obtuseness: as if a couple of well-turned-out gents like me and my old man could be headed anywhere else but the big city.

along in silence for some time. My daughter, though demure in the eyes of the world, nevertheless has the unendearing habit of addressing me as Pops. "What are you thinking about, Pops?" she said.

"Fathers," I said. She said, "I know where you're coming from."

The Hanover Inn is a great place to get serious about going to college. As you step out of the car beneath the porte cochere, you look across the frozen common to the illuminated tower atop Baker Library, and Dartmouth buildings fill the eye to right and left. This may be the most purely collegiate view in New England.

We went inside. Maisie, wearing the clothes of her generation, a generation that seems always prepared to take a five-mile hike, strode across the lobby a couple of steps ahead of me as if to say "I'll take care of this." We checked in and went to our rooms, agreeing to meet in 15 minutes for dinner. As we parted she said, "This is weird." We had never traveled alone together.

We dined in the Daniel Webster Room. Fluted columns, peacock wallpaper, lots of napery. She had, bless her, worn the dress that one was not entirely confident her luggage contained. The menu had changed with the times. Last visit I had had prime rib au jus —I know, because at 17 I had never had anything in any restaurant except

prime rib au jus. Now it would be a tough choice between nage of salmon and oysters, and venison steak. My vegetarian daughter wondered if she could have soup and salad.

I did not come unrehearsed to this dinner. A speech had been prepared. It was a fine piece of work. Ciceronian in its balance, it nevertheless moved ineluctably to its point. Successfully delivered, it would inspire the listener to work with singleminded devotion during the next several months to obtain a berth at the college she chose, and yet she would feel utterly unpressured, least of all by her father, to do so. I would deliver the speech after we placed our orders.

The moment came. I drew in breath. In that instant some look of wisdom beyond her years crossed her face, and she displayed an instinct that would serve her in the future.

"Tell me about your father," she said. Sweetly, intuitively, she spared us both from my good intentions.

It was an early evening. I could say my piece tomorrow, or not at all. It didn't matter. She wouldn't remember.

As we get older we seem to have a better idea of what we will remember; it's as if you can see the memories developing before your eyes, like Polaroid pictures. Just before sleep I saw an image of this day that I knew would stick. I don't know what Maisie will remember, but this is what will stay with me: the vision of my daughter as she walked confidently across the lobby in front of me. Never before, I realized, had I checked into a hotel with a woman who was wearing a backpack.

Writer John Townsley originally wrote this essay for New England Monthly, from which this is reprinted with permission.