In John Grogan’s international bestseller Marley & Me, the recalcitrant one’s the dog. In his new book, The Longest Trip Home, it’s Grogan himself: a wax-splattered, wine-gulping altar boy who grows into a skeptical journalist and, final proof of his parents’ failure, marries a Protestant.
In a cosmic sense, Marley, the exuberant yellow-lab pup who galloped through Grogan’s life with no regard for convention, obedience or duty, just might be his parents’ revenge.
Grogan didn't send Marley to the pound—although he would’ve been justified. Instead, Grogan showed a dogged, if you will, determination to weave this troublesome young creature tightly into his new family.
His parents had shown an even greater determination to raise good, staunch, conservative Catholics—with less happy results. All three kids grew up fairly liberal, and far less enamored of the hierarchical church than their folks. “Our parents were very traditionally Catholic,” Grogan says. “You know how there’s almost an expectation that kids will challenge the Catholic dogma as young adults before coming back into the fold? My father never did. As a lieutenant on an aircraft carrier, he was an altar boy for the chaplain. He kept track of how many Sundays he was away and wrote a check for those offerings when he came home.”
Does Grogan ever regret his slightly less devout adolescence (covertly growing weed, spying on his sunbathing neighbor when she unhooked the top of her bikini, finding little appeal in the Mass)? “I respected my parents’ devotion,” he says slowly, “and their certainty in their faith. For me, it was always a struggle.”
Catholicism was his parents’ entire world, he says, “and there’s a lot of comfort in that rhythm, and they found a lot of solace in their faith. If there was a worst—and this is something they might not have recognized—it was their ‘the world’s going to hell in a handbasket’ outlook on life. Where I just saw human nature, they saw the work of evil forces and the decadence of modern society. They fretted a lot, probably unnecessarily, about the state of the world. They were a little apocalpytic.
"Certainly there’s comfort in the structure," he continues. "Everyone who’s tried to raise kids—or a dog—knows structure works. But not only did I grow up in the most tumultuous anti-establishment time in recent history but I went into journalism, where we are trained to be skeptical and keep digging. So for my sensibility, there was always a little bit of bristling—'No questions asked?'
Still, Catholicism left its mark. “It was this all-encompassing moral compass. The total life experience was built around the Catholic experience; it wasn’t just one element. Those values and that strong moral code are imbued in you; you don’t just wash yourself of them. You do the right thing even when you know no one’s watching.
“I know my parents felt that somehow they failed, but I don’t think they did,” he concludes. “The only thing I rejected was the mechanics of how the Church is run." He chuckles. “If nothing else, I was a thoughtful fallen-away Catholic. It wasn’t just out of laziness. I think what’s important is to feel you’re leading a moral life not because you’re afraid of punishment or hoping for eternal reward but for the intrinsic good of helping others—and challenging the inflictors of pain.”
So was The Longest Trip Home easy to write? “No,” he says. “It was not. Marley and Me flowed right out of me. All I had to write about was me, my wife—who’s a journalist too—and the dog. Now suddenly I’m writing about a 40-year expanse of my life, and I’m bringing in all these people, and I don’t want to pull any punches.” He’s silent for a few seconds. “I don’t think I could have written this book while my dad was alive,” he says quietly. “Even though we made great strides later in his life, I would have had a hard time being totally candid.”
What about his own family—does he wish he could give his kids more certainty? “I think my children navigate a much more complicated world than I did,” he says carefully. “What I had that they don’t have is this really clear sense of right and wrong, this rulebook to play by. You might break the rules, but you knew the rules were there. I remember overhearing my mom talking to other Catholic parents, saying that with all the rules Catholicism imposed, there were plenty of harmless rules to break without getting into real trouble. The girls could roll their uniforms up three feet above the knee …” There were, in other words, outlets built into the system, benign ways to rebel and remain good.
Like spying on the neighbor lady when she sunbathes.
“At a book signing in Detroit, the neighbor kid was there,” Grogan says. “Of course he’s now a grown man, and he says to me, ‘Will you just say hi to my mom?’ And suddenly I’m talking to Mrs. Selahowski, the sunbather, who’s now somewhere in her mid-80s and has just read the chapter.” The chapter in which he described her tiny bikini top, perilously unhooked, and the “baby oil slathered all over her golden body,” and how he asked for a telescope for his birthday that year, and how he figured he ought to confess coveting his neighbor's wife …
“Oh, Johnny,” she said, “I had no idea!’”
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
