Final Thoughts on Estrangement

Today, it is so easy to mock parents for how they raise their little snowflakes.  Self-esteem above all else.  Above right and wrong, above winning and losing, above proper and appropriate discipline.  These parents are misguided and do not prepare their kids for the real world.  That's bad.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, what happens when parents do not care about self-esteem at all?  Surely this is infinitely worse.  It's unconscionable. These people do not attend to the most basic responsibilities of parenting:  Raising strong, productive, and mentally and emotionally healthy adults-in-the-making.  They have no business raising children at all.

I do realize that this series of posts will come across as self-indulgent.  It is too easy and convenient and cliché to blame our parents for our shortcomings.  Right?  Nevertheless, I need to crystalize my thoughts, and short of writing a book, this blog offers a convenient outlet.

There's an idea:  Maybe I'll do just that and turn this series of posts into a book.  Might be cathartic.

Update, 1 January 2021:  Contrary to the title of this post, turns out these were not my final thoughts on estrangement.  Since originally posting this about a year ago, I have added quite a few more posts on the topic.  But at this point, I think I need to be done.  As for a book, I have put a draft together.  The problem is that in book form, these writings appear even more self-indulgent.  That might be okay if I felt like this work could help others.  But I don't see that.  Rather this exploration has been a sort of cheap therapy for myself.  Time to move on.
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Machiavelli for Parents

I have written previously about my parents' misbehavior when I was a small child, as well as their conduct this year.  In regard to raising children, my parents took the Machiavellian approach.  That is to say, they preferred to employ fear rather than love.  It is easier, more efficient, and from their perspective, far more effective.  It is also an extremely lazy and unthinking form of parenting.

Once, in a Barnes & Noble, I saw a three-year-old running around and screaming, disturbing books and customers.  After what seemed like an hour, the mother finally appeared.  She calmly knelt down to get on the child's level, and proceeded to explain to the young child why running around and screaming in a book store was a bad idea.  I was right there to witness the child's behavior and the mother's response.  And of course I was just appalled.  I mean does one really reason with a three-year-old?

But is that the only alternative response to the way my parents dealt with such situations?  Needless to say my parents would have beat the crap out of their kid right then and there.  Both of these responses are terrible.  But beating a child is barbaric, unnecessary, and traumatic.  The worst you can say about this mother is that she was misguided.

So is a proper response so difficult to figure out?  Evidently.

Simply remove the child.  No matter the inconvenience, remove the child from the environment.  In this particular case, the mother should have grabbed the child and said, no books for you today, we shall go wait for your father in the car, and marched the child out of the store.  Child appropriately punished; calm book store environment restored.

My parents would appreciate another Machiavelli quote:  It has to be noted that men must be either pampered or crushed because they can get revenge for small injuries but not for grievous ones.

Oh yes, misbehaving children must be so severely punished that there is no chance of similar behavior ever again.

My parents chose to crush their children. 
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An Open Letter to My Siblings

Nathan & Leslie,

Here, I am not interested in relitigating the events of 2019.  Suffice it to say that our parents' conduct was despicable.  And fully accompanied by all the bitterness and venom that only our father can muster.  Now, they either cannot bring themselves to recognize it; which is bad.  Or, they just don’t care; which of course is worse.  And they are not stupid people.  I assure you, if they had treated you this way, you would have reacted exactly as I have.

In fact, it was reminiscent of their unconscionable conduct when I was a little boy.  But I was willing to set that aside for the sake of our relationship.  For decades.

I am no longer willing to do that…

What 2019 demonstrated to me is that behind the veneer of respectability lurks a common and wholly unrepentant child abuser, who longs for the day when he could simply beat his children into submission to his will, however irrational it may be.

Early this year, before they found the Monadnock Ridge house, he was bragging (there’s no other word for it) to me about beating Nathan and me in front of a client.  Over nothing.  It was almost always over nothing.  And even when there was cause, it was abusive over-reaction.  I have lived with a small boy for the last nine years.  Not once have I found cause to strike him.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.  Not necessarily about the behavior of their children.  Kids can do outrageous things.  But rather lying about whether or not they have the appropriate demeanor (patience and control) and intellectual fortitude to be raising kids in the first place.

Now one might argue that times have changed.  And parenting has changed.  But that does not negate actual abuse.  It certainly does not negate this attitude of impunity.

I have researched abuse and estrangement quite a bit.  What has always bothered me about the question of child abuse was this:  Did my parents' conduct rise to the level of abuse?  This has been a question for me, basically, all of my adult life.  Broken as I may have been, I still asked the question.

Well in 2019, I found the best answer so far, when I read:

People who were not abused do not ask themselves if they were abused.  The question never occurs to them.  The only people who ask themselves this question are those who were in fact abused.

It is not a perfect answer.  Of course not.  But it sure helps.

So what they gave me in 2019 was a sense of clarity.  It was a gift really.

Their heavy-handed and unnecessary physical abuse (they sure beat the love out of me), their emotional abuse (prominently featuring his unique venom), and their complete and utter lack of regard for the development of my self-esteem.  My sense then and now that raising young children was just a tremendous burden and embarrassment for them.

They were too cheap to buy milk for their little boys.  Let that sink in.  I mean, why have children at all?

So yes, they abused their children.  They were and remain child abusers of the first order.

Now as they pointed out when I last saw them:  "But we’ve done so much for you.”  They threw this at me in anger because I was calling them out on their inexcusable behavior in 2019.  (This was not a conversation I initiated or even wanted to have.  I did not see the point.  But they showed up at my home uninvited, unannounced, and most importantly, unapologetic.)  And of course, this is true; they have done much for me.  In fact, they have treated me better than anyone.  It would be foolish to deny that.  But they have also treated me worse than anyone.  This, too, cannot be denied.

How does one weigh that?

I do not know.

It seems to me that once you break a child, no amount of time and effort can fully reconstruct what has been lost.  No, not lost, taken.  They deny any responsibility or accountability.  He’s so smug and so arrogant.  Their lack of respect for me is palpable.  It's contempt really.  So be it.  I just want to protect what little self-respect I have left.  For my own mental health, I must, belated though it may be, separate myself from them.

And before you ask, of course forgiveness is always an option.  But it seems to me that forgiveness has only one prerequisite:  Remorse.  And of that, they have absolutely none.

It would be an unmerited improvement to say that:  “He has turned into a mean old man.”  No he has not; he’s been mean as long as I’ve known him.  And the time has come, for me at least, to admit that he is not a good person.  And while his sheer meanness was most often visited upon his own children, let's set my issues aside for a moment.

I cringe when I think how he treated his staff in the seventies and eighties.  Even though they were working for peanuts.  I remember when Jane Butler left to go work for Leslie Johnson; Mom and Dad were just baffled.  Evidently it was just too damned difficult for them to figure out that if you want someone to be good to you, you might first want to be good to them.  And similarly, how he treated countless waiters.  (Are you familiar with the Waiter Rule?)  I will never forget the way he treated my future wife on their first meeting.  I think that night, he treated her worse than the waiter.  I cringe when I think of how he treated James Melvin, a man who was always so kind to me and everyone else.  Growing up, I was led to believe that the way the Melvin’s raised their children was deficient.  But looking back on it and the results, I now know where the true deficiency was to be found.

The man did not have any friends because he did not deserve any friends.  If you think about people he would today describe as friends, they are all people who never really spent any time with him.  Business associates, all from out-of-town.

I remember once, when Nathan and I were quite young.  John and Pat Shaw invited all of us over for dinner.  All went well until after dinner, when the adults were playing bridge in the basement and the four children were playing in the adjoining playroom.  I remember, Michael and Susan Shaw being rather rowdy.  Well, by our standards.  And Nathan and I, were scared to death.  Rowdiness was just not to be tolerated.  So we sat in the middle of the room, meekly, and Michael and Susan sort of danced around us.  We were literally shaking.  Sure enough, Dad comes in and beats the shit out of us.  Right on cue.

This sort of fear really defined my childhood.

Now the Shaw’s never invited our family back.  Never.  And they never came to our house.  No doubt if you ask Mom and Dad, even today, they would tell you that their children (Nathan and I) made a bad impression and the Shaw’s no longer wanted to be friends.  But I was invited to that home hundreds of times after that.  No, I think the Shaw’s were appalled by how the Moore’s treated their children.  And no, they did not want to associate with such people.

I suppose you could point to the Danilla’s as the one exception.  But was that a real friendship or just all that was available?  I think it would be a stretch to describe Ron as a true friend to anyone.  Maybe that’s why they got on.

I could continue, but you get the point.  As for mom, well she is what she always has been:  His chief enabler and sometimes participant.

As best as I could, I have left you two out of this statement.  But I have to ask:  What are the odds that all three of their children would suffer mental health issues?  One out of three might be statistically about normal.  Two out of three might be a high statistical outlier.  But three out of three?  That is something altogether different.  I certainly do not want to diminish this writing with idle speculation on subjects I know little about.  But this is a question for me.

In any case, fifty years of bad conduct and bad faith is quite enough for me.

No more.
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On Child Abuse and Delayed Estrangement

I wrote earlier this year that the primary job of parents is to keep their children safe.  That is certainly true in the short term.  In the longer term, parents have a responsibility to raise well-adjusted, psychologically-healthy children, so that they later become well-adjusted, psychologically-healthy adults.

This is not a difficult concept.  But my parents did not give a damn about this duty.  As parents of young children, they only cared about two things.  One, their children conforming to their irrational, unreasonable, and preternatural conception of behavior and obedience.  And two, their incredibly warped and disturbed understanding of, and concern for, their reputation.  And they were perfectly willing to abuse their children, physically, verbally, and emotionally, to insure these requirements.  With devastating long term consequences.

I struggled mightily to overcome their abuse, and had put it behind me, and perhaps had even forgiven them, when in 2019, they were all too willing to demonstrate that nothing had really changed.  Behind the veneer of respectability lurks a common and wholly unrepentant child abuser, who longs for the day when he could simply beat his children into submission to his will, however irrational it may be.

The worst part is that they continue to believe that their child abuse, and likewise their conduct in 2019, were within the bounds of decency.  They refuse to even acknowledge any misconduct.  So they have no shame and deny any and all accountability.  It's arrogance; willfully blind arrogance.  This is what is so unforgivable today.  Not their actual abuse or misconduct, but rather their continuing belief that these derelictions were acceptable.  And why would they believe otherwise?  They have never suffered any consequences whatsoever for their bad behavior.

So in 2019, a new response was in order.  Estrangement is not desirable; no one wants to lose their family.  But when one's self-respect is in jeopardy, surely estrangement becomes a reasonable option; perhaps even a healthy option.  If someone does not respect you, regardless of who they are or what they may have done for you, in order to maintain your own self-respect, you have to let go and move on.

I had put their abuse behind me.  But the events of 2019 really left me no choice.  Our estrangement may have been decades delayed, but its time has come.  Because surely we, all of us, should expect some minimum level of goodwill and behavior.  Surely we owe this to ourselves.

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Misadventures in Real Estate

A Letter of Discontent

I did not find this house for you; you found it all on your own.  But you did ask me to help you with the transaction.  And yet almost immediately, I detected a sense of irritation and resentment from you.  I first noticed this when I was preparing the offer which we had already negotiated verbally.  You seemed to resent having to use a contract at all – You're above all that pedantic rigamarole.  I realize that you acquired several properties back in the ‘70s and ‘80s without contracts, but the only way this can ever be done is with the understanding and agreement of the seller.  We surely did not have that here.  No, this seller expected a closing, with all of its accoutrements.  Maybe after contract execution, you could have arranged for the seller to sign the deed, in the driveway, on the hood of your car.  But it just so happened that from the time the contract was signed until the day before closing, the seller was out of the country.  Everything went through the seller’s agent. And I can assure you, without the seller’s direct involvement, the listing agent would never allow this.  No escrow; no way to insure her commission.

So as the closing is typically arranged by the buyer, as soon as the contract was signed, we immediately started talking about a lawyer.  I arranged for my usual attorney to handle the transaction.  You said you did not want to pay for title insurance.  Okay fine, whatever.  Then you said, you did not want to pay the attorney to do a title examination – You could and would do it yourself.  But when I told you that I thought any competent attorney would do their own title examination no matter what, you flipped out.  And promptly told me, with the venom that only you can muster, that that was absurd.  That conversation and all future conversations went downhill from there.

That was the middle of May 2019.  I have not had a pleasant conversation with you since.

I can only imagine what you wanted.  A third-rate pettifogger to only draw the deed.  I am sure they exist but I do not know any, and I felt this was outside of my purview.  If you wanted one, you could have found your own.  And yet…

On May 24, during another testy conversation you asked me if I thought you should reach out to the listing agent to inquire about an attorney.  I told you that you were welcome to shop around for an attorney.  But that I chose my attorney based on a combination of competence and price.  I then requested that you not call the listing agent for this or anything else.  I told you that it would make you look bad and it would make me look really bad.  That is a direct quote.  So without my knowledge and behind my back, you called her the very next business day.  And you were deceitful about it, never mentioning it to me.  Not even during the three hours that I spent with you the very next morning.  I suppose you thought I would not find out.  But of course the listing agent, sheepishly, told me.  She was obviously embarrassed to tell me – Embarrassed not for herself, but rather embarrassed for me.

There is only one reason that a client contacts the agent on the other side.  That is because they do not trust what their own agent is telling them.  That's it and everyone in the business knows it.  And to my knowledge you never called anyone else.  I mean you could have called every agent and attorney in the Triangle.  But no, you only called the one person I asked you not to call.  No one else; you confirmed this yourself.  Now to me, this proves that you were not, in fact, really interested in finding a cheaper attorney.  If one thinks about this, one does begin to wonder if the actual goal was to simply make me look bad.

(For those readers who need me to be meticulously accurate on this point:  You called the listing agent for a referral to an attorney.  She gave you one and you did call that attorney.  So I guess that is technically two phone calls.  You also called my sister, a former attorney, for a referral.  She also gave you one, but you were not interested enough to call that attorney.  So again, technically, that is three phone calls.  But the problem was only the one call to the listing agent.)

I could forgive the actual phone call.  But you paid no regard to my simple request and were deceitful about it.  Demonstrating a total lack of regard and respect for me.  And so it became just another exploit in your protracted arc of misbehavior.

After that it was trench warfare all the way to closing.  Every little thing was a bitter fight.  With accompanying and palpable venom.  I would have withdrawn from the transaction but felt obligated to see it through – You blamed me for everything and I did not want you to be able to blame me for losing the house.  I could continue with a play-by-play, but I don’t see the point.  I have already left much out, but this is enough for the reader to get the flavor of it all.  It went on day after day, week after week.  You did not have a bad day, or a bad few days, or even a bad couple of weeks.  In fact, it went on after closing and through July. And I assume to this very day.

It was intentional and malicious conduct.  You made a conscious decision to act this way.

~~~

I have to admit that I was caught off guard by this.  All of it.  After the experience in February and March with the Randleman house.  There, again, you found the house yourselves.  But I helped you to put it under contract and advised on due diligence.  And based on the due diligence, you decided to terminate the contract.  Following my advice, you were able to do so without any contractual expense.  In other words, you were extremely well-served and well-advised.

So going into this house, I expected a similar experience.  That was naive.  So what was the difference?  I think the problem in a nutshell is that you decided to purchase a house for cash when you did not, in fact, have enough cash to purchase it.  And this of course created a lot of problems, large and small.  I think in your minds, I should have done more to solve these problems, and in any case, been more sympathetic to them.  Well I did solve the underlying problem; you just did not like my solution, although it was perfectly reasonable, attainable, and affordable.  As for being sympathetic, by the time this came to light, after you had insisted on (no...demanded) moving the closing up as early as possible, I was way beyond sympathetic.  Had I known there was any possibility of a loan, I would never have acceded to your demand to move the closing forward.  So this rather significant hurdle – your lack of necessary cash and its ramifications – you blamed this on me.  There was simply no one else to blame.  In your minds, everything that one need do in order to purchase a house became a lost opportunity to help you save money.  Or even an attempt to cheat you.  I was, after all, the one telling you each and every thing you needed to do. And you resented every bit of it.  Like any of it was going to make up for your six-figure deficit.

(And let me just add this:  I have no idea how you ultimately raised the cash.  But do not even think of blaming me for your choices.)

I could go on and on, but let me skip to the chase:  You believed and continue to believe that your conduct was acceptable.  This includes your ill-conceived and reckless decisions, your malicious and perfidious behavior, and your oh so venomous attitude.

Decent people would be ashamed of themselves.  Clearly you are not.

And this is unlikely to change, as the whole experience was reminiscent of your abusive behavior when I was a small child.  And similarly, you continue to believe that was acceptable.  I can assure you that it was not.  Yet decades later, you remain wholly unrepentant.

I did not learn or experience anything new in 2019; your abuse was all too familiar and you remain untrustworthy.  But after fifty years, I did decide that a new response is required.  All these months later, I stand by that decision.

~~~

Again, the above is NOT a full accounting of the problematic events of May, June, and July.  Examples of items not included:

• Your desire to move stuff in before closing and the seller’s response.
• Your last minute request to move the closing back (after insisting on moving it forward).
• The many acrimonious conversations about how much money you would need at closing, how this figure is determined, and how to get the money to the attorney.
• While this was never discussed, I am sure you wanted to short-pay the attorney (his fee), because after all, the attorney did not do anything. Like I would ever allow you to waltz into my attorney’s office and piss on our long-standing relationship.
• My offer to apply the whole buy-side commission to the purchase.
• Your completely petulant attitude and demeanor at the closing itself.
• Your uninvited, unannounced, and most importantly, unapologetic, visit to my home three weeks after the closing.

Oh, and one final note:  It is worth remembering that you did walk out of the closing with a deed to the property.  Not a trivial point.

This was an incredibly easy deal.  Your cash issue was solved easily enough, and you decided to forgo any real due diligence.  There was literally nothing to fight about.  Yet for some reason, you chose to make this acrimonious.  For as long as I live, I will never understand that.

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Better Offer

I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina.  These were pre-internet days, and small-town life was not very exciting.  But my grandparents lived just south of Chicago.  And every so often when they would come see us, or even on the phone, my grandfather would say, next time you come up to see us, we'll go see the White Sox play.  Well we could hardly be described as a sports-oriented family, but hey, a Major League Baseball game was high excitement for my brother and me.  We must have been six and seven at the time.  Something like that anyway.

Soon enough we did visit them.  And so it came to pass that my grandfather secured four tickets to see a White Sox game.  Nose-bleed tickets, but who cared?  It was my grandfather, my father, his son-in-law, and my brother and myself.  Now my father would rather have had a colonoscopy than sit through a baseball game.  But much to his chagrin, when we got to Chicago, he learned that my grandfather had purchased four tickets rather than three.  So politeness demanded that he had to go too.

We drove into the city from their little town, found parking, and headed towards the stadium.  And almost at the gates, some fellow, a complete stranger, comes up to us and says, "Hey, I have an extra box seat ticket that I cannot use.  Do you want it?"  Very kind of course.  But he had one box seat ticket.  And again, there were four of us.

Now let's stop right here and ask:  What would be the response of any normal person?

But if my family was normal, we would not be here, reader or writer.  So my grandfather, without so much as a look in our direction, says, "Man-oh-man, that's great, thanks so much!"  Then after the fellow trotted off, he turns to my father to rather disingenuously discuss how they would use this unexpected windfall.

So, my father and brother and I went off to watch the ball game, together, in the cheap seats.  And my grandfather went off in another direction, to watch the game from the best seats in the house, with strangers.

To this day, it is the only MLB game that I have ever attended.
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The Shadow

So what is your earliest memory?  Is it happy?  I'd like to tell you mine.

No, that's not quite correct; I don't really want to tell you.  But I need to record it.  And this seems as good a place as any.

I was maybe, four or five.  This was early 1970's.  A time when small-town parents still allowed their children to wander unattended.  And that is where my lifetime of memories begin.

Late one afternoon I was out roaming the neighborhood with my best bud, kid next door, and frequent bully, Steve Cashwell.  And right in front of my house, we found a pack of matches in the street.  Big stuff for pre-internet five-year-olds.

Steve, who was bigger and stronger, took custody of the newfound afternoon possibilities.  And against my urgent protests, he immediately went looking to put the pyrotechnics to use.  I stumbled along, as bullied kids so often do.

He settled on a solitary bush just off the street between our two houses.  As I am sure he'd never before struck a match, it took a little doing.  But before long, he had the dried leaves beneath the bush alight.  And then very quickly, he had that bush ablaze.

Well, that was too scary for me and I took off for help.  I ran through our front yard, past the front door, headed around the house, toward the back door that we actually used.  Unbeknownst to me, my father had arrived home, and saw the burning bush from his bedroom window.  We met just beyond the front door.

He yelled at me to go inside while he went and dealt with the Cashwell's flaming shrubbery.  Steve, by this time was no where to be found.

Afterwards, my father came inside the house and beat the crap out of me.

I tried to tell the story.  Of course I did.  And even after the beating, I denied that I was responsible.  So my parents, my well-educated, liberal parents, did what they considered appropriate and sufficient due diligence:  They phoned over to the Cashwell's, to find out what had actually happened.

And when they were informed during that telephone conversation that ... I ... was the actual culprit, they beat the crap out of me for a second time that night.  For lying about it.

~~~

Like all of us, the most basic needs of children are food, water, and shelter.  But Maslow taught us that right above these physiological needs sits:  Safety.  Even before love, children need to feel safe.  This is the primary job of parents.  This is the primary purpose of a home.

And I learned very early that my parents and our home were not reliably safe.  My greatest fear as a child was not the dark or getting lost or whatever it is that children typically fear.  Rather, I feared the volatile and capricious nature of my parents.  All too eager to find fault; all too willing to strike with unpredictable abuse.  Physical as well as venomous verbal assaults.  Abuse used to insure preternatural behavior and obedience, and to protect a warped view of their own reputation.  For my parents, fear was the tool of choice in their burden of childrearing.

I did not feel safe with my parents.  How could I?  I was scared to death of them.  Trust is a vital element of safety and we are all born trusting.  But if you learn at the age of three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and beyond, that your parents cannot be trusted, do not be surprised if you have trouble trusting anyone, ever.  How does such a child find mental and emotional stability?  You can expect trouble forming and maintaining relationships, distrust of authority, and other symptoms of the maladjusted.

And if a child's home is not safe, he may never feel home anywhere.  He may spend a lifetime seeking a home that he lacks the emotional capacity to find.  If a child does not feel safe, how can he possibly develop Maslow's higher-level pursuits of belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization?

My parents did not give two cents about the self-esteem of their children.

But that is not all.  Abused children are likely to grow up to be angry adults.  And this internal rage affects everything they do.  And all of their relationships.  How could it not?  I wonder what percentage of our prison population were abused as children?

So angry and unfulfilled.  And unable to find happiness.  Yeah, that sounds about right.  But Jordan Peterson says that happiness is not the goal.  It is rather, a mere byproduct of moral venture.  So I guess, there's always hope.  One muddles onward, searching and hoping.  What choice is there?  The question becomes:  Can abused children transcend their anger and their lack of self-esteem to live a life of moral venture?  Here's hoping.

In any case, there was nothing special about the abuse described above; it was just the first incident that I remember clearly.  My parents were always ready, even eager, to find fault and assume the worst about their children and act on those assumptions.  They knew that Steve was bigger and stronger and a bully.  But they found the idea, that their kid was the one responsible, irresistible.  This was the defining element of my childhood.  Imagine what that does to the psyche of a little kid.  I don't think I ever got over it.

Now I know, plenty have it worse.  Far worse.  Some are hospitalized; some go hungry.  But parents should provide all that they can for their children.  Once they've been fed, it is the parent's job to make them safe.  And yes, feel safe.  When children do not have this, it follows them, like a shadow, into adulthood.  Where it lingers...for a lifetime.
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