The Boys Are Back In Town

The Boys Are Back in Town

Unlike Fred MacMurray, I do not have three sons (aka My Three Sons, the Americana TV series that ran throughout the 1960’s), but I do have two sons and they are just about all I can handle. They are two dramatically different individuals separated by thirteen years and two separate mothers. I can triangulate a few traits that they each have based on their mothers’ characteristics, but I would not go so far as to suggest that their differences lie only in their maternal influences. I could also say that I was one type of man and father when my oldest boy was growing up and a very different man and father thirteen years later. I happen to think that is true about me, but I’m not so sure that it explains a lot about why they are who they are in adulthood. Since Roger is now forty and Tom (a.k.a. Thomas to those of us family members who called him that until he went to college and changed things up) is twenty-seven, I think it is only fair to call them both adults, even though parents always think of their children as youngsters, I suppose.

I would like to start this story by declaring that I know what all of you are thinking at this moment…”I can’t believe he is going to write about his sons for all to read…why does he do these things?” Just yesterday I heard from a long-time friend and colleague who knew me back in college fifty years ago. She and I worked together as recently as a year ago and are part of a group of ex-employees seeking back compensation from a small company that is being liquidated. Naturally, I wrote a story about those machinations (yesterday’s The Plot Thickens), and before she had even finished reading it (she said specifically that she was 2/3 of the way through it when I called her), she felt compelled to ask me what I expected to gain from publishing a story that might run the risk of offending someone and thereby risk an easy resolution. That is the story of my writing life. Someone ALWAYS wants to know why I bother to write when it might lead to controversy. My repeated answer to her repeated protestations was that it is what I do. Period. End of story. I write. I try to be careful, but I gotta write. It’s like when Archie Bunker asks Meathead’s likable gay friend why he just doesn’t “Stop that”. It can’t be done. It’s not how life works or how we are constituted. Sometimes you just are who you are and you do what you do and you live with the consequences. It doesn’t explain the why so much as it explains the inevitability of the action.

I am thinking about my two sons today because this past week they gathered in Ithaca at my soon to be ex-home there in two U-Haul trucks I had rented for them each. Their mission was to load up any of the stuff at that long-time family home of 26 years that they wanted and that we had previously divvied up and cart if off to their homes in Delaware and Brooklyn respectively. This was a 24-hour mission with a high degree of common purpose and yet a snick of potential conflicted overlap. The overlap could have come from competing interest in stuff of value (monetary or sentimental) or work burden (who would do the heavy lifting, so to speak). My boys could not be more different on all of those relevant spectra than they are. Roger is an average-sized man, hard-bitten by life and capable of doing more physical work than three men his size. I don’t understand how that happened to a kid that didn’t like the feel of wet grass as a baby or the discomfort of using chapstick as a youth, but he is one hard-working donkey that will not even stop for water when he is on a mission. I think it is one of his personal great sources of pride, as it should be. Money is a central theme to him and sentimentality is in short supply as a rule. Tom, on the other hand, is a taller man of genteel manner. While he is capable of much, hard work is not something that he necessarily aspires to. He is more a ponderer of life and beauty. He is a sentimentalist and is as sweet as they come. Everyone likes Tom and he is easy-going to be with. He needs to want to do what he is doing otherwise he is less than happy. Money is not his motivator, experiential existence is what drives him.

Strangely enough, Roger was the sweetest child you can imagine. He wanted nothing more in life than to please his parents and other authority figures by following the straight and narrow. His life path has been anything but that and it has made him tougher and more street-smart for it. Tom was a hellish child who caused great angst to his mother and me over and over again. I spent at least three sessions per week with his grade school headmaster convincing her NOT to expel this devil-child from her expensive private school. By middle school that had all changed, not necessarily by itself, but with intensive work with professional counselors and lots of parental attention. Tom became the polite and embracing person we all like being around as he wandered forward with mixed and ever-evolving objectives. Roger always has a plan and it is always shrewd and purposeful without any room for doubt. Tom sometimes forgets what he set out to do and drifts in later but is pleased by what he saw along the way. Both boys have their different strengths and in a father’s eyes, no weaknesses whatsoever (or so I keep telling myself over and over again).

As the boys were rummaging around at the old homestead in Ithaca, a funny thing happened, probably imperceptible to anyone but me. Tom went up with a van rented from Brooklyn. Roger drove up to Ithaca with his wife, Valene, and picked up a full-sized truck to drive one-way to Delaware. Without any warning, the two of them seemed to swap personalities. Roger is the one with a good full-time job with benefits that has him working long hours. Tom has chosen to give up his stable job in favor of a freelancing gig which he feels will allowing him to earn more and work less. Tom is asking me about tax write-offs and Roger is spending his spare time with his little furball mini-long-haired-blonde-Dachshund named Pudding. Tom is hardening and Roger is softening. Can this be happening to my boys?

I would say there were four large truck-fulls of very good stuff accumulated at the Ithaca house over twenty-six years. Imagine the possibilities, with Dad 2,800 miles away with nothing but a three-month out-of-date spreadsheet to remind him of what he owns in a house he loved for twenty five years and has spent a year trying hard to distance himself from. The plan was for everyone, Roger & Valene, Carolyn (daughter) & John, Tom and Jenna, Pete (cousin) and Nancy, all to pick the things they wanted. There were very few requests as it seems that everyone has more stuff than they need or have room for. But that was then and this was now, and there were two empty trucks and lots of neat stuff for the taking. I chose to stay out of it and even refrained from peeking at the spreadsheet or asking who was taking what.

And then, as the dust settled and the trucks had been unloaded here was the report. Roger had left the large custom modern desk and had a pinball machine stuck in his elevator at home since he had mis-measured and now was at a loss for what to do. Tom’s Instagram was suddenly bursting with high-quality For Sale photos of unscheduled items that he decided on the spot to take specifically to make a market in them. Tom says with a shrug, “ya gotta do what ya gotta do” while Roger shrugs and says, “if Tom wanted it, I let him have it.” Who are these boys and what have they done with my sons? I will be seeing the boys next week when I am back in town for a visit and I plan to fingerprint them both to be sure.