Nails and Leaves

A short story

I remember once, in my early forties, I went to visit my parents, for the weekend.

This was before I was willing to admit what my father was.  I remember telling my sister, at some point, that our parents were terrible to their minor children, but decent to their adult children.  And pretty much, this was still my existing view that weekend.

There was nothing special about the time we spent together that weekend; I don't even remember it.  I only remember my departure.  I was gathering my things, loading them into the car.  My father was sort of waiting outside.  I come out, ready to go, and I find him picking up leaves in the front yard, one at a time.  No rake, no leaf bag, nothing.  Just one leaf and then another until he had a handful which he threw off to the side of the yard behind a retaining wall.

"Should I fetch you a rake?"  The garage was maybe twenty feet away.  He did not say anything.  We were waiting for my mother to come out to see me off.

Finally he said, "I once had a client..."  I don't remember the name he gave, but it was a name I had heard before.  So for the sake of this story, let's call him Charles Smith.

He continued, "Charlie once told me about an afternoon when he was visiting one of his construction projects."  It seemed Charles Smith was an extremely wealthy, self-made man with a portfolio of real estate assets.

Anyway, Charlie was visiting a construction site, and the workmen were finishing up for the day.

But Charlie was lost in thought, and one of the younger workmen, says to him:  "Mr. Smith, there's really no need for you to be picking up nails like that.  You are a busy and wealthy man, surely you know that we'll take care of that for you."

Now remember, I am standing in my father's driveway and he is in the front yard picking up leaves, one at a time, while he is telling me this story.

He continues, "Charlie only smiled at the young worker, but did not say anything."

It was only later when recounting this story to my father that Charlie added, "You know Reuben," my father was also Reuben...

"I just knew that the young man could never understand my thoughts."  Charlie was, after all, an intellectual, a man of the world, and very successful, and the young worker was just a young worker.  So while Charlie was picking up nails, one at a time, he was lost in thoughts only God knows.

The point is, Charlie did not want to explain this to the worker, maybe even could not explain, or maybe even thought that the young worker had no thoughts of his own.  In any case, the young worker could never understand a man like Charlie.

But lost in his own ruminations, I doubt Charlie thought about any of this in the moment.  I would guess it was only later that he considered his encounter with the young worker.

The young worker just saw an old man shuffling around picking up nails.  And reacted accordingly.  Charlie did not correct him.  Why bother?

I mean, what does Warren Buffett think about while he's out walking his dog?  And what do the rest of us think about?  The answer to the second question anyway is:  Something less.

Now some people are smart enough to realize that this is not necessarily true.  Buffett could be thinking that it's cold in Omaha and his dog has yet to do his business.  And others could be thinking about their recent cancer diagnosis.

There's a smugness at the heart of Charlie's thinking.  Yes, Warren Buffett may be thinking about what to do with his real estate sales empire in the age of a mature internet.  And the rest of us are probably not.  But we all have our concerns.

So we are standing there, my father and me.  And my father is picking up leaves, one at a time, and telling me this story about Charlie and the young worker who could never understand.  Charlie, it seems, had the good grace, not to share his thoughts about the young worker with the young worker.  If for no other reason, I don't believe that Charlie had yet had any thoughts about the worker.

But by picking up leaves, one at a time, and telling me Charlie's story, my father was simply putting his own smugness on full display for my benefit.  As if I, like the young worker, could never understand the vastness of a great man's thoughts.  And further, I could never understand why someone would busy themselves picking up nails or leaves, one at a time, while lost in such vast contemplations.

It would be another ten years before I finally cut contact with the man.  I still remember the day, it was a Wednesday afternoon, two days after Memorial Day.  By then I was in my early fifties, thirty years too late to have any sort of meaningful impact.  And what kind of impact was I looking to make anyway?

No, I cut contact because I was just tired of it.  I had had enough.

See, mistakenly, I had forgiven my parents for the childhood abuse, and their active and willing, and ultimately successful, attempts to extinguish my self-esteem, at the age when it really matters.  The beatings and the humiliations.  And the shadow this casts over a lifetime; the depression.  It was unearned forgiveness; forgiveness without responsibility or remorse.  Because no one wants to lose their family.

But that smugness, that is what finally ended our relationship.  To return to that weekend's departure, was my father pondering some great question?  Or was he simply thinking about a quirky story one of his wealthy clients told him about distractedly picking up nails?  I will never know, but Charlie's understated hubris would have appealed to my father.

So at that late date, ten years after that weekend and one month short of my fifty-second birthday, I was finally willing to admit what my father was:  A smug brute who fancied himself an intellectual.

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Six Rules for Parents

Articles on parenting often include rules for children.  That's fine, and so they should.  But here's a list of rules for parents.  These are absolute.

1. If you do not want children, do not have children.  Think about this in advance.
   
   This is the first rule of parenting and is far and away the most important.  It is certainly the most important rule my own parents ever taught me.  The problem here is that most people do not think about this in advance.  Ask yourself two questions:  Do I want children?  And, what kind of parent would I be?  Do be honest.
   
   
   
2. Do not hit your children.  Do not even think about beating them.
   
   If you would not swat a dog, how can you believe that beating a child is okay?  This is baffling to me.
   
   
   
3. Self-esteem is an important part of a child's development.  If you disregard self-esteem, it is the worst form of child abuse.
   
   Parents who place self-esteem above all else are misguided.  But parents who completely disregard self-esteem do not attend to the most basic responsibilities of parenting:  Raising strong, productive, and mentally and emotionally healthy adults-in-the-making.  These people have no business raising children at all.
   
   
   
4. Do not have children to serve your own vanity.
   
   Your children are not a scorecard.  If you seek some form of reputational advantage for yourself because of the accomplishments or behavior of your children, you are not doing your job.  Further, see number two; but if you beat your children in front of others, in order to maintain or enhance your reputation, you are a monster.
   
   
   
5. In the age-old debate between nature and nurture, a parent should take the position that everything is nurture.  Short of physical illness, you are responsible for everything.
   
   Parents let themselves off the hook by blaming nature.  Take responsibility.
   
   
   
6. If your children fail to live up to your expectations, you are one hundred percent responsible for this failure.
   
   There is no room for debate on this.  Either your expectations were misguided or you failed to provide your child with the proper tools to meet those expectations, or both.  Maybe you even hindered your child's success by violating the above rules?

I think this list is particularly relevant for parents who have estranged children.  Before you blame your child or external factors, you should ask yourself:  Did I violate one or more of these rules?  And even if you disagree with these rules, as irresponsible parents most certainly will, you should still ask this question.  It might shed some light on your situation.

Now a list of rules for parents could be endless.  But every additional rule that comes to mind seems to be derivative of one or more of these six.

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How to Break a Seven-Year-Old

It's time to talk about Pascal

Round about the time I was twelve or thirteen, my parents decided that it would be a good experience, for our family, to have a foreign exchange student come live with us for a year.  And since we three children were all relatively young, they selected a much older, eighteen-year-old, recent high school graduate from Belgium.  He would attend our local high school and simply repeat his senior year.

Now for myself and my younger brother, age eleven, having an eighteen-year-old in the house was a new and exciting experience.  He was older and foreign and cool, and we pretty much worshiped the kid.  Well you would at that age, right?

However, our seven-year-old sister had a vastly different experience.

The problem was really two fold.  First, my sister was a bit chubby and struggled with her self-esteem.  This problem was heightened by the fact that my parents did not give two cents about the self-esteem of their children.  They never did.

Second, this eighteen-year-old was an arrogant narcissist of the most cruel sort, and he mocked and belittled our sister at every chance he got.  This, in itself, was a problem, but it was not the problem.  No, the actual problem was that our parents never, not once, put a stop to it.  You know basic stuff, for instance:  Pascal, we do not speak to nor about a member of this family in such a way.

And the kid was relentless.  Looking back on it, the proper course of action would have been to stop it, and if it could not be stopped, to send him home.  This should have taken mere weeks.

But this was not done.  In fact, nothing was done.  So our sister suffered this bullying from within her own family for a year.  And I think it is only fair to confess, that eleven and thirteen-year-old boys will mimic whatever an eighteen-year-old does in their house.  So instead of contending with just one bully, my sister had to live with three of us.

Now, my brother and I were no where near as bad as Pascal.  We knew our parents would step in if we were.  But we were bad enough, and I'm sure my sister would say we, the three of us, were all the same.  Remember, she was seven.

I don't think my sister ever got over it.  Maybe she has, but we have never discussed it.  But what I know for sure, is that we have never had a good relationship.  Sometimes it has been better than others.  But it has never been normal.

As smart as she is, one mistake my sister has made over the years is that she has always blamed the eighteen-year-old and the thirteen-year-old and the eleven-year-old.  And I'm very sorry for the part I played in this.  But to my knowledge she has never held my parents accountable for their inaction.  Parental impunity has always been the hallmark of our family.  This is their legacy and our long term tragedy.

In any case, my abnormal relationship with my sister is not one hundred percent Pascal's fault.  I would say, perhaps not even mostly his fault.  It primarily stems from the way my parents raised their children.  In an abusive family, the kids either come together, fiercely loyal to one another, or they become divided.  For us, it was the latter.

My theory is that when an abused child is not the current target of abuse, he cannot help but be relieved.  That is, if abuse is bad enough, a young child is simply grateful that it is not him...this time.  It becomes every kid for himself.  This degrades trust, and does nothing for long term family cohesion.

Pascal just fueled this preexisting dynamic.  But he was a monster, and it was something else our sister had to endure.

The internet reports that he died during early Covid.  Naturally, no one in my family shared this with me, even though he died over four years ago.  So-called experts speciously advise estranged families to cut all lines of communication and information; one is simply in or one is out.  This is the choice they have made, as if I am the one responsible for our estrangement.  Somehow they seem to believe that they hold the moral high ground, when I have done nothing but recoil from their behavior.

Anyway, I learned about Pascal's death yesterday.  At the time of his death, he was fifty-nine years old.

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