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The Family, A School of Compassion
“Good Lord. I’ll never, ever let that happen to me.”
Thoughts along those lines used to cross my mind quite a lot when the Booths and Daytons and Birchards and Balls were all still alive—these would be my mother’s parents and their cousins. They had been born before the turn of the last century and spent much of their lives on dairy farms, the men awake at four every morning to milk the cows, the women awake not much later to chop the wood, start the fire in the stove, and cook breakfast. (My grandmother refused to permit my mother to touch an ax. She wanted my mother to have an easier life than she’d had, and she believed that if she never taught my mother how to chop wood, then my mother would never have to chop wood. It worked. More than a dozen young men proposed to my mother before she married my father, but none was a farmer.)
By the time I knew them, many of these old people had developed a peculiar hitch in their walk or stiffness in their hips. Instead of walking erect, they all bent at the waist, leaning forward a couple of degrees as if making their way into a good strong wind. Why didn’t they pay more attention to their posture? I knew, of course, that they had all led hard physical lives, but still. Didn’t they ever look at themselves in front of the mirror? Couldn’t they stand up?
You can see where this is going, I suppose. Meeting a friend in downtown Palo Alto for breakfast just yesterday morning, I got out of the car, and, halfway to the bagel shop, caught a glimpse of myself in the plate glass window of an adjoining store front. There I was, bent at the waist, leaning forward a couple of degrees. I stopped, drew myself up, getting the kink out of my back, and walked especially erect for the rest of the day, so much did that glimpse of myself in the storefront startle me. I’d turned into a Booth or a Birchard. I’m still young enough to shake myself out of it and correct my posture. But for a moment I’d become one of them.
If only in a small way, that realization represented a moment of enlightenment, of increased understanding. Although I’d never made a big deal of it—I’d never actually spoken to any of those old farmers about standing up straighter—a little voice in the back of my head had judged them remarkably harshly. Now I could replace that harshness with a certain compassion. A lot of stuff just happens to people, I saw, and in our family—who knows why?—we seem to have a certain predisposition to an odd walk. If the predisposition shows up in me—I, who have done desk work all my life—then to those old people it must have represented a kind of inescapable genetic sentence. Work on a farm all your life, inherit the genes they’d inherited, and by the time you’re in your seventies you’ll have lost any ability to straighten out that hitch in your giddy-up.
Because of that brief moment of reflecting on my family—of grasping that, as I put it, I’m one of them—I think I’m a slightly better person. I’m slightly more—well, understanding. And in this difficult world, even tiny improvements in character and compassion count for something, don’t they?
Which brings me to a holiday question.
As we gather with our families for the holidays, in what ways—small ways, perhaps—has your own family served as a school of compassion? In what ways do you understand better, now, perhaps, what your parents went through raising you—of what your grandparents went through raising your parents? How has family life made you a better person in ways that surprised you?
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What a great prompt question, and the contributions thus far have coincided with an unseasonal pollen count–hey, I don’t cry, but I got allergies. And lead me to thoughts of my father, and the lessons he taught me about compassion and self-determination.
My father was an Irish Catholic out of Holyoke and Chicopee Mass. His father was a brutal, abusive man. His mother was, as some abused wives are, emotionally abusive and manipulative in her own right. My father often said that his parents were a couple that should have never had children, and instead they had five. The clashes between my father and his father grew to epic proportions, as my father not only took the licks for his own perceived misdeeds, but shielded his siblings as well. My father did well in high school, but the clashes with his father were growing in scale and severity.
My father secretly took and passed the GED exam, and enlisted into the Air Force at the age of 17 (in order to enlist at 17, one must have a parental waiver, which my Grandmother signed; my father and grandfather were on a path that would, in the estimation of everyone involved, end in lethal tragedy).
Pops left under the cover of darkness and began his enlistment. He served multiple tours in SE Asia. After being grievously wounded, he earned six months convalescence leave in Okinawa, where he met my mother. Mom was a teacher, who had never left the state of Texas before signing on to teach at a missionary school in Okie.
Pops went back to Vietnam, Mom stayed in Okie. Over time, Pops started doing more gigs for Air America than he was for Air Force. He got reassigned to Okie to be an action officer (well, NCO) laying the groundwork for Operation OXCART, and married my mom. They knew that they were on a string: be prepared to get off the island within 48 hours of notification (once the project went operational, “they” didn’t want anyone around that could be pulled in and asked about what the hell was going on).
So, after Okinawa, my parents globe-trotted with my father’s job. We moved every two- to three years, and we were a tightly knit nuclear family. And my father beat the so-called cycle of violence.
My brother and I called it “the look.” We would see my father restraining himself from knocking the snot out of us with every fiber of his being. When we transgressed, we would see the molten fury just below the surface that called to him to unleash violence and mayhem. And we would see him visibly, through an effort of will, hold his anger in check. Watching the Big Man fold his anger, tamp it down, and put it aside was an awe-inspiring sight. Anyone who hadn’t seen it, but only heard it described, might think that this was a parental ploy. But my brother and I were there, and agree that it was an epic exertion of will.
Not to say that the Big Man wouldn’t raise a hand to us. He would–and we needed it. My mother asserts that I, singlehandedly, made her a believer in the “bad seed” theory. But any corporal punishment was preceded by an explanation of what, exactly, we had done wrong, why we were being punished, and a reiteration of the standards we were expected to uphold.
Pops was a hard man, but he was long on hugs, and my brother and I were never short of hearing “I love you.” He was unremitting in his expectation that we excel in academics. We were not going to go forth as adults with a GED.
I am humbled, to this day, by the man who, through an effort of will, erected and held a dam against fury, who decided that the bruises, abrasions, and broken bones would end with him. Pops’ talisman was a poem by MacArthur that hung on the wall of every house we ever lived in.
Thanks, Pops.
These are all really beautiful and powerful stories. Thank you!
I cannot directly match it: my parents always seemed (rightly) to be more interested in making sure we were educated and capable, than in protecting us. Or maybe they were so good at protecting us that we never even noticed.
But there is certainly plenty of older history. In my family we have a book that shows our ancestry back many hundreds of years. These sorts of books are basically pedigrees for Jews – pedigree is measured by the scholarly stature of one’s ancestors, and such things are considered very important among certain kinds of Jewish communities.
But to me, the book has special meaning not because of who my ancestors were, nor even because it shows a millennia of literacy. It has meaning because it records, for hundreds of years, how many children were born, and how many survived. Not atypical is a great-grandparent (through my mother’s line) who had 16 children. 8 survived to adulthood. Two of those had descendants who survived the Holocaust.
Perspective: they,who had every adversity imaginable, still never quit. They buried more children in their lifetime than they saw get married. (My older brother is no longer with us: I know what that does to parents). My ancestors survived, year after year, in a very nasty and miserable world. They kept kosher, the Shabbos, clinging to our Torah and traditions, even when it meant poverty, starvation, and disease. All for the sake of connecting the past to the future, for the sake of Judaism and our mission in this world.
I am driven by the fact that I have every advantage, every comfort, that my ancestors lacked. I have been hungry – but I always had sure knowledge that I would not starve to death. I have the best education money can buy. Thank G-d, I have physical health that enables me to pursue any target that I strive for.
So many years ago, perhaps when I was 13, I took this as my personal challenge: I must make their sacrifice pay off, both in terms of my accomplishments, and in terms of what I pass on to my own children in turn.
This is my debt to my ancestors, who suffered and died so that I could be here. Though I will never repay this debt in full, I will be the happiest man in the world if, on my deathbed, I can say that I did everything I could to make them proud.
Thank you Peter and all of the commenters. This is why I belong to Ricochet.
My Grandfathers both served in World War II and both in the Pacific Theatre. One of them was a radio operator aboard either the Wisconsin or the New Jersey. He was a very quiet an unassuming man who worked hard his entire life. I only knew him as a farmer and a journeyman Mold Maker at a auto plant but after he passed I was able to get ahold of pictures from his Navy days when he was a man young enough to be my son. My other Grandfather was a Seabee in the pacific. I could never get much out him either but he was a big bear of man that all of the grandkids absolutely adored. I do remember watching the movie “Stripes” with him and he completely dissolved into uncontrollable laughter in the scene where the soldiers are running the confidence course and one slips on the walk across the log in a very painful way. Apparently he had experienced that exact same thing in boot camp. As with my other Grandfather I got to know him much better when he passed on and I was able to hear the stories told by others and see the photos. I miss them both dearly and feel as though I cheated myself by not making more of an attempt to get to know them and their history.
Thank you all so much for sharing.
God Bless and Merry Christmas.