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 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.  Certainly nothing of substance.  In any case, the young worker could never understand a man like Charlie.  Obviously not.

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

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 ties 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 rob me of 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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Thanks for Letting Me Know

A short story

The phone rings, which is somewhat strange because no one calls me these days.  It takes me a minute to realize that it is actually the phone making the noise.

I answer:  “Yes?”

“Hey man.”  I hear my brother’s voice.  I have not spoken with my brother in years, so this can only be bad news.

We’re long past small talk.  “Mom died this morning.”  He tells me.

He had emailed me a year earlier, telling me that she had developed some type of cancer.  Then he would occasionally email me one-line updates, but that stopped after a couple of months.

I remember the last time I saw my mother, the year before that.  And the last thing she said to me was that she loved me.  They had come to see me for some reason or other, but did not stay long because they could feel how unwelcome they were.  My father did not say a word the whole time.

Other than that extremely brief visit, I had not seen them for three years.  Not since they had asked me to help them with a house they wanted to buy.  During their long search, they had asked for my advice and I gave them the best counsel I could from a distance.  But the house they ultimately selected was only about forty minutes from me, and I could actually get involved.  I did not seek out involvement in this affair; they asked for my help.

It did not go well.  Oh they got the house and all.  But they behaved shamefully.  Mind you, not towards the seller.  No, shamefully towards me.  I will spare you all the gory details.  But the worst of it was that they decided to put the house under contract for cash, when in fact they did not have the cash available.  That's bad enough.  But they blamed me for the consequences of this bad decision.

Well, that's not actually the worst of it.  The worst of it was their attitude, which was belligerent and condescending all the way through.  Venomous is a better word.  As if I was the one preventing them from doing what they wanted, however irrational it may have been.  Had they not been my parents, I would have withdrawn from the transaction.  As it was, I felt an obligation to see them into the home they wanted.  So that is what I did.

It only cost whatever was left of our relationship.

About three weeks after they closed on the property, they showed up at my house – Uninvited, unannounced, and unapologetic.  I think their goal was to put the bad blood behind us and simply move on.  But there was no explanation and no apology.  Nothing of the sort.  When I complained about their attitude and behavior, all I got was, We’re sorry you feel that way.  That was my mother.  Again, my father did not say a word.

But I was having none of it.  By this time, I did not need an explanation.  I knew who they were.  My parents, with typical self-righteous impunity, tied their supposed love (well, our relationship anyway) to their irrational expectations, including my acceptance of their betrayals and their lies, and of their sheer nastiness and spitefulness and venom.  That is who they were.  That is who they always have been.

Sure my parents loved me.  But it was a conditional type of love.  Conditional on what?  Well, whatever it was they expected at the time.  And if I did not meet their expectations, well there was a price to be paid.  There was always a transaction on the table.

But by this time, I had the strength, or rather the experience, to say:  Oh no you don’t.

You see, by the time they bought that house, I knew unconditional love, belated though it may have been.  I had met someone who would later become my wife.  And in my mid-forties, she became the first person in my life to love me unconditionally.  And now that I had experienced unconditional love, I simply would not tolerate anything less.  Certainly not from people who happened to be my parents.

The effect was explosive.

I had to accept my parent’s conduct and bad faith for what it was:  A termination of our relationship.  No doubt, they would argue that it was not a termination because they still wanted to fix it.  My mother even said:  You may have given up on us, but we've not given up on you.  But words are easy.  There is a level of maltreatment that indicates that you no longer value a relationship and that you have no expectation nor desire to maintain it into the future.

Let me say that again:  There is a level of maltreatment that indicates that you no longer value a relationship and that you have no expectation nor desire to maintain it into the future.

Surely we, all of us, can expect some minimum level of goodwill and behavior.  We owe this to ourselves.  So I just decided that it was time to make their decisions irrevocable.

That was very difficult for me.  But conditional love is all they knew and all they were capable of.

And for my parents?  Well they have other children.  And their own comforting self-righteousness.

Now my parents love their other children conditionally as well.  Like I said, it is the only kind of love they know.  But my siblings are more willing to indulge it than I am.  And no doubt it helps that they have certainly done a better job at meeting parental expectations.

Without my wife, I would still be trying, and failing, to meet their expectations... their conditions.

The transaction on the table.

Their table.

So my wife and I crafted a new table.  And around our table, there is only unconditional love.