Sunday, June 08, 2008
The only Father's Day present I want
Ben Stein writes movingly about the hard work that parents do earning the money that their ever more affluent children spend.
[My father] also wondered, if he quit, what he would do next and how he would pay the bills, and he did not want his children to have to worry about money, as he did when he was a child of the Great Depression.
I think of this as I shlep through the airport security line with my heavy bags (Willy Loman style), as crazy people sit in front of me on the plane, trying to break my nose by throwing their seatbacks onto me, and as I wake up early to travel to the next destination. Then, as I look at all the other middle-aged (and sometimes older) road warriors in the security line, on the plane or checking into the hotel, I think of our children in school.
I picture our kids bravely taking moral stands on global warming and the polar bears, refusing to “sell out,” get a job or learn anything useful. I think of what I could write to them about their parents’ work. I would start with a short phrase from Hart Crane, the genius poet.
“O, brilliant kids, I was a fool just like you. I was in my mid-40s before I properly thanked my father for his decades of hard work — paying for me to laze around in the cars he bought me, to get drunk in the frat house whose dues he paid, to spend the afternoons with my girlfriends looking at trees and rivers while Pop worked and got so anxious that he took up smoking three packs of Kents a day.
“O, brilliant kids, you get to put on the garments of the morally righteous and upstanding while your parents work — because mothers work now and always have worked — and your parents must say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir,’ to those who hire them. O, golden children, you get to talk about how you’ll never ‘sell out,’ and meanwhile your parents stay up late in torment, thinking of how they can pay your tuition. Because, brilliant kids, work (business) involves exhaustion and eating humble pie and going on even when you think you can’t. And you are the beneficiaries of it in your gilded youth.
“Be smarter than Ben Stein ever was. Be a better person than I ever was. Right now, today, thank your parents for working to support you. Don’t act as if it’s the divine right of students. Get right up in their faces and say, ‘Thank you for what you do so I can live like this.’ Say something. Say it, so that when they’re at O’Hare or Dallas-Fort Worth and they’ve just learned that their flight is canceled and they’ll have to stay overnight at the airport, they will know you appreciate them.
“Get it in your heads that if you throw away your moral duties to your parents, you are thieves. You were born on third base and your parents put you there, and you think you hit a triple. It’s not true. It’s time to give back.
Not holding my breath here, but it would be nice to get a thank you every now and then.
The truth is, we have kept our standard of living fairly well below our means, so I do not feel and never have felt trapped in any particular job -- I am highly confident that I can earn our "nut," even if that means making a lot less money than I earn today. That said, there are a great many things that I would love to do that pay no money, and we have managed to build up our fixed costs and other obligations to the point where I cannot afford to give it all up and write the great American novel or cultivate orchids (as relatives of mine have done). This is not a large sacrifice -- self-indulgent non-remunerative hobby "careers" are luxuries of people who have nobody who needs them to be economically productive -- but it does remind me, when I think of it, that mere affluence does not reduce one's obligations to others. Quite the opposite.
7 Comments:
By 
SR, at
Sun Jun 08, 10:28:00 AM:
TH: Thanks for this blog.
BTW: Queer line that last one about obligations to others. I always think that the number one obligation is to be productive so that others can benefit from what you produce. The obligation of others is to be likewise productive.
By 
, at
Sun Jun 08, 12:42:00 PM:
I think SR is quite right. Being productive is 'giving back'. Besides, if you are really productive, Uncle Sam will take a chunk back via the death tax. As for the kids, Weekly Standard has a piece titled the Kindergarchy. The author asserts that we are raising a generation of airheads twits and numbskulls. Young princes and princesses that can produce nothing yet want everything, and all because they were raised by over protective parents catering to their every whim and picking up the tab for everything they want.
By Steve M. Galbraith, at
Sun Jun 08, 12:47:00 PM:
I'm reminded of the line that Thomas Carlyle (really) said to the young Scottish man who asked what he (the young man) could do to "save the world".
"Go back to Scotland and make a decent man of yourself."
Don't fix the polar bear problem or the ozone layer, first fix yourself.
By , at
Sun Jun 08, 02:06:00 PM:
I was speaking to an acquaintance who knows how much I make per year. He was surprised to find out that I had 5 children.
"How do yo afford a large family on your salary?" he asked.
"Children," I said,"are not expensive to raise, they are expensive to spoil".
By , at
Sun Jun 08, 03:14:00 PM:
It seems to me that duties and obligations go down the generations, not up. And so, for me, the most satisfying Father's Day present is seeing my children committed to teaching their children (my grandchildren) to be good parents to their children (my great grandchildren).
At those times I have felt resentful about what I was giving to my children, I have usually concluded, upon reflection, that my giving was done for me--often to avoid their anger at not getting what they wanted at the moment. Perhaps being a good father requires being willing to be hated. I have not found that hatred to be abiding.
By , at
Sun Jun 08, 05:47:00 PM:
I have found that, eventually, as they grow up, children do recognize and appreciate the sacrifices Fathers have made along the way to give to them the best they could muster.
I've seen it in my own children, 3 of whom are now young men. Their respect and admiration for their Dad grows as time goes by.
It is not the comforts and perks that the Father can provide that count... It is the Father's example as a man that counts. The Father's relationship with the women in his life (the Mother, the wife, the daughter), the Father's interaction with his colleagues at work (be they the boss or fellow employees), the Father's interaction with neighbors and friends... and the realization that the Father has given up a lot (like writing the American novel or cultivating orchids) for the sake of his progeny.
In due course, and as the children grow up, an appreciation of the Father's selflessness stands out. That's what I have witnessed with my own children as they've become adults.
We are not perfect, but, if Fathers, in their imperfection, do their duty and sustain their obligations to their children and others, they build a legacy that their children will one day appreciate and emulate...
What more can we ask? Isn't this the biggest Thanks we can get as parents?
By , at
Tue Jun 10, 11:30:00 AM:
TH, As you probably recall, I grew up in a fatherless household. It wasn't until I got married in my 20's that I finally had a permanent father-figure in my life, in the form of my father-in-law.
My FIL was a kind of larger-than-life John Wayne type of guy - the stuff of legends. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, you had better listen closely. He was a patriot, having spent many years in the service, and many years after than in the service of his country in the defense sector. He was patriarch, protector, provider, and friend, all roled into one. He passed away last November, and the void is almost unbearable at times for my wife and I.
Before he passed away, we got to throw him a 75th birthday party at a beach house. It was the party to end all parties and brought our extended family together for several days to pay tribute to a man whom we had all come to consider our father in some way, shape, or form.
Normally a modest, unassuming, and attention-shy man, I could tell that he truly enjoyed himself and deeply appreciated the accolades. That we got to express to him what he meant to us, before his passing, is something that to this day, remains a great comfort to us.
So, TH, I would have to wholeheartedly concur with the subject of this thread. Don't wait to say thank you.
- Coach
