The Coming Apart of an American Family

NOTE: There’s a fair bit of navel-gazing in this post, folks, so if you’re not into that, I’d probably wait for another day.

There was just no way this house could hold the two of us
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind
— Bruce Springsteen, “Independence Day”

To say that my father and I have had a strained relationship is a bit like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. It understates the situation more than a little bit and doesn’t give it the nuance intra-family strife warrants. And I don’t know that what my father and I have faced is really unique or even rare; there are countless stories in virtually every medium throughout history about the struggles fathers and sons have faced.

So why am I surprised at the way things have gone with my father in the wake of my mother’s passing more than six months ago? The truth is: I’m not. But I am surprised at the depths we’ve reached. And it is those depths that have made me realize just how much my mother was the glue that held our family together.

How things were before I was born, I obviously have no idea. And the truth of the matter is that even in the years after I became (somewhat) conscious, I don’t really know what kind of relationship my mother and father had. In the wake of her passing I saw photos of the two of them when they were younger, photos where the joy — and dare I say it: love? — just leaps off their faces and out of the images. And they were together for 47-plus years with nary a separation.

But I can remember some tough times too, including the trip we took — my mother and we three kids — to Nova Scotia sometime in the mid-’70s, a trip my father refused to go on at the last minute because he didn’t like some woman who was going along with us. I can remember things being bad enough one year when Mom came to pick me up at prep school that I told her I wouldn’t blame her if she left (and it was real enough that I can still vividly picture the scene: the location, the weather, everything). And heaven knows I didn’t see a whole lot of passion or open displays of love between them. Hell, until he was laid up in the hospital last fall, I’d never heard my father utter the word “love” about anything — his wife, his kids, the weather, a new car, the Red Sox.

So it was always a shock to me when Mom would fiercely defend both my father and their relationship against charges of lacking love and passion. Several years ago, after I’d had another dust-up with my father, I wrote a letter calling him out on a lot of the injustices I felt he’d done, and continued to do, to his family. I sent it to my mother first so she wouldn’t get blindsided. She and I discussed the things in the letter and she never disputed any of them, but still she asked me not to send it, saying that she’d continue to work on Dad in her own way. I didn’t send the letter, though I found it on the desktop of her computer last year.

And continue working in her own way she did. Mom had her own coping mechanisms throughout her life and she used them to, in Churchill’s words, keep calm and carry on. Clearly, her work and her dedication to her career were her primary methods for staying sane and happy, particularly after all of her children had moved out. In her later years it was spending her time on the third floor of the Plum Island house, trading emails with friends and looking out over the ocean. But when needed, she always ventured down to the main areas of the home and into the lives of everyone in her family, always managing to keep the peace between several very headstrong individuals. Somehow, between the ocean view and the serenity and the games of computer solitaire and the emails with friends, she found enough calm amid the tumult of our family to radiate it outward and keep us all from coming to blows and even got us to coexist.

But now, with that glue in our lives gone, what Mom left behind seems to be coming apart. My father again provoked a letter out of me, and this time, with no Mom to filter the message, I delivered it. It exacerbated the already strained relationship my father and I had, to the point where at the time of this writing we haven’t really spoken in more than three weeks. Mom may have been able to coexist with him in that house in such a situation but I can’t and won’t, so I’ve now begun three weeks of travel before I get out for good. My brother is in the midst of apparently profound financial and professional challenges and his already sporadic communication has dwindled. My sister and her family had to sell their home in Los Angeles not long after Mom died and are renting again. And I haven’t had a steady “normal” job in three years and counting.

More importantly, there’s nothing left to make us want to be together. Sure, we all love Plum Island, but it never really was the beach that drew us back there. It was Mom. Her grace and calm and love made Plum Island the place that it is. And she made my father’s self-centered stubbornness bearable. So with Mom’s passing, our family seems to be splintering outward, hopefully like the stellar material formed in a supernova spins out to create new galaxies and stars and life, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that.

I remember once asking my mother what it felt like to be the pinnacle of our family tree. She scoffed at the notion, always believing that her children and grandchildren and beyond would do great things. But think about it: she and my father were born and raised in the Great Depression. They accomplished and achieved so much in their time on this planet, way more than anything their children have done, without the blessing of a comfortable upbringing like the one my siblings and I enjoyed. And all three of us kids are well into middle age, so it’s not like we can reinvent ourselves at this point and break new ground. We’re pretty much rolling along with what we have.

One thing, the biggest thing, we no longer have is that quietly driving force, that gravity, that love that was our mother. Entropy has replaced gravity.

1 CommentNavel Gazing, Uncategorized

This Post Has No Title (Or Point)

OK, so, it’s been four months and a couple of weeks since I last posted here on Terrastomper. I’d like to say that’s because I’ve been too busy actually stompin’ on the terra, but alas, that wouldn’t be honest. So what HAVE I been doing since I returned from Europe (since I obviously haven’t been writing)? Here’s a brief recap:

* Looked at a few sailboats here in the U.S. Seeing such boats before they got sold (as had some others I’d been watching) was the main reason I returned from Europe. And I even got into negotiations on one boat, which I bailed on in early December. But now with spring approaching (not that we’ve had any winter here in New England), I’ve resumed my search for a boat of my own.
* Attended the U.S. Sailboat Show and took a marine-weather course at the Annapolis School of Seamanship. I also spent three days learning how to kiteboard on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.
* Took an apartment in Newburyport, Massachusetts, five minutes from my folks and my family home on Plum Island.
* Spent a couple of weeks in the U.K. in late November and early December getting a Day Skipper certification from the Royal Yachting Association. In the process, I got to sail in the Solent, perhaps the yachting center of the world.
* Been playing a lot of hockey — skating at lunchtime in Newburyport and Friday evenings with some really good players in Exeter, N.H. — and hitting the local CrossFit gym in an effort to get my fat ass back into shape. I’ve even resumed running a bit.
* Tackling my biennial flight review. I am, once again, a legal pilot. Woohoo!
* NOT surfing or skiing. This has been the year of no — zero, zip, zilch — winter in New England. No winter means no storms, no storms means no waves and no snow, no waves and no snow means no surfing or skiing. I was actually looking forward to experiencing East Coast skiing for the first time after a lifetime of skiing out west but…no such luck.
* NOT writing. I’ve actually jotted down some notes from time to time, and generated an idea or two that I think doesn’t suck. But for some reason, I haven’t been able to sit my ass down and start putting words and sentences together. I am ashamed, to be honest, and brutally frustrated.

And it’s that shame and frustration that has me posting this title-less and pointless piece of “what I did on my summer vacation” homework. I hope that by doing so I’ll prime the pump, so to speak, and get back to doing what some very kind friends have exhorted me to do. Namely: write, write and write some more…and more properly prioritize those other things listed above. The first step has been taken.

Navel Gazing, Uncategorized

Alfred and the Boy Wonder

Well, if the owner’s son is Boy Wonder, I guess that makes the old man Alfred, doesn’t it? Not sure who the Caped Crusader would be in this scenario (not sure there is one), but Alfred took care of the Boy Wonder every bit as much as Batman, didn’t he? Works for me (for now) so I’m goin’ with it…

I don’t know all of the history, but from what I understand, Alfred came by his money as a businessman. He owns a bunch of filling stations in northeast England and not surprisingly, given western civilization’s dependence on the motor car, he did quite well for himself — until recently when grocery stores started cutting in on his business, so now he’s sweating bullets.

At some point, Alfred took up sailing to complement the extensive climbing and other alpine sports he enjoyed, throughout the UK and from his chic cabin in Chamonix. As is so often the case, the son immitated the father. Boy Wonder took to the mountain sports and even got into the sailing a bit, enough to get his yachtmaster’s ticket — the UK equivalent of a captain’s license in the U.S. but much more highly regarded and no mean feat.

On one mountaineering/skiing trip to northern Norway, Boy Wonder had a burst of insight. As he looked down from some summit, he saw peaks stretching out to the horizon, all gorgeous, all untrammeled and all inaccessible — but all with fjords cutting in along their bases. “What a treasure trove,” he thought. “If only one could reach those untouched peaks!” And when he saw the water, Boy Wonder realized that a boat could reach those places, and people — people like Alfred and Boy Wonder — would pay to join the boat heading to those pristine mountain playlands.

But where could such a boat be found? Lo and behold, the perfect sailing vessel appeared: a huge steel racing boat, one that had been around the world multiple times with large crews, was for sale — and it was cheap. Alfred stepped in, he being the businessman and all, and stole the boat for something like 400,000 pounds, along with a shipping container of spare parts. He was offered another boat and another container of spare parts for a mere 100,000 pounds more but, he being the businessman and all, he thought he could haggle ’em down a bit and offered 95. When he realized that even at 100 the offer was another steal, one that would enable him to sell off a lot of the excess and recoup his outlay, he went back to the seller only to learn that he was too late: the extra boat and equipment were gone. It was a portent of how Alfred would approach things in the future.

Alfred set up Boy Wonder with a business they could share: sailing to the great northern destinations. No one was doing it and there was a market. Lofoten, Spitsbergen, Jan Mayen Island, Greenland…for adventurers these names ring out like a siren’s call. No, there weren’t as many people looking to sail to these places as, say, to the Mediterranean, but those other markets were saturated. This venture wasn’t going to make anyone rich, but it could be a going, profitable concern and hey, the principals involved could spend considerable time each year in places they adored.

But from the start, there were challenges, paramount among them the relationship between those two principals. It wouldn’t be anything new if a father created a business to set up his little boy with a livelihood. And it also wouldn’t be anything new if a father created a business in order to keep his son in check.

Who knows what really goes on behind the eyes of those involved, but it’s telling that Boy Wonder said this summer that even after five years of business he’d never seen the books for the venture. Nor had he insisted upon seeing them. He didn’t know if the business was profitable or not, didn’t know what the expenses were and where costs could be contained. That was all up to the father.

Boy Wonder ran the business — except when his father did which, it turns out, was whenever there were substantive decisions to be made. Could it be that Alfred didn’t really trust Boy Wonder? For whatever reason, the father insisted on keeping all the purse strings well in hand.

Keeping those purse strings in hand included having all work on the new plaything done in-house, even though those doing the work had no experience with the unique needs of a marine-based venture. These were handymen who did work on petrol stations. On land. Maybe if those stations got tossed from side to side and from front to back, constantly, while immersed in seawater and while being regularly doused with heavy quantites of both fresh and saltwater, well, then maybe these nice gentlemen would be qualified to work on a 72-foot ocean-going steel racing sailboat.

But they weren’t. So when they installed a bow thruster, they didn’t realize the thing needed its own isolated power source; that tying it to the engine meant the only way one could use the bow thruster to help the boat move sideways when docking was to be going forward at four-plus knots. A 52-ton vessel creates a lot of momentum so approaching a dock at four knots is not exactly prudent. So now Polar Bear sports an inoperable bow thruster, a hole in the hull’s flow that returns no value whatsoever. What did that failed attempt cost?

And for a boat that was going to a lot of places without marina facilities, a solid anchoring system would be a requirement. First up, a good, heavy CQR anchor and a lot of chain. Well done. Then, a roller on the bow to support the anchor while underway and make it easy to deploy when anchoring would be a good idea. For this, the owners went in-house again, with similar results to the thruster. Now the anchor has to be muscled into place on the bow when raising or lowering, and it’s tied with a half-inch line to the aluminum bow pulpit while underway. And because the bow is vulnerable to the anchor coming up so close to the hull, the owners had a custom-made nose pad — at a cost of several hundred pounds — fitted to the front of the boat that needs to be installed and removed manually whenever anchoring is in order.

There are countless other examples of penny-wise-and-pound-foolish behavior, not limited to: an in-house designed and built freezer/fridge system that not only cost a bunk on the boat (read: a paying customer) but was also wedged into a spot where the doors to access both spaces are so small that only items a few inches wide can fit; a watermaker that was rewired incorrectly (also in-house) so it’s inoperable even as we head to Iceland, and if it can’t be fixed there then Greenland, the bulk of the summer season, is off the schedule; not cleaning the hull of more than an inch of barnacles and plant growth — so the boat moves more efficiently (read: cheaper) — while at home rather than on the road where it cost twice as much; and so on.

The bottom line (to use a business expression) is that Alfred treats Polar Bear like a plaything and then wonders why it’s not profitable. The whole impetus for pondering a winter season south of the UK was to keep the boat from sitting idly and paying quay fees while doing so. Heading to Madeira, the Canary Islands and across the pond in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers — the biggest sailing rally in the world and one popular enough that several charter boats already cater to would-be racers — would enable Polar Bear to attract the sailing crowd.

Think about it: summer up north for adventurers, winter down south for sailors — and all the while Polar Bear is generating revenue. And the ARC’s popularity meant that one event would likely pay the costs for the entire winter; everything else would be profit. Head back home in spring for one month of cleaning and refitting, and out you go on the next season. Now you have a business, something one would think a businessman could recognize, especially when given very clear numbers that demonstrate how to make it work.

Apparently not. But if Alfred treats Polar bear like a plaything then Boy Wonder is equally culpable: he doesn’t have the cajones to assert himself and make the business his.

For instance: If Boy Wonder can’t captain the boat himself (read: save on costs) because he has a little girl at home, then he could be out marketing the venture at various no-brainer places in the UK where his enthusiasm for the project would be contagious. If Boy Wonder were doing so then the venture could cut loose the woman (read: save on costs) currently supposed to be doing the marketing but really, no one is quite sure what she does. The venture’s website is woeful, marketing materials are ancient and even the guest information for upcoming trips never makes it to the crew in time for provisioning and planning purposes.

The bottom line is that promises were made by Alfred, promises that have now been broken and often come in contrast to the edicts from Boy Wonder. And given many of Alfred’s explanations, explanations that fly in the face of all evidence, it seems as though he never had any intention of sending Polar Bear south. Which makes one wonder if he ever really wanted it to be a going venture. Now that he’s avowed that he’ll seek to sell Polar Bear after this summer, the answer seems clear.

It’s highly doubtful that Alfred gives a shit about the impact his dishonesty has had on several lives — least of all his son’s. Clearly there are father-son issues to be resolved and it’s to be hoped that Alfred handles those issues better than he handles his business. And it’s also to be hoped that Boy Wonder grows up enough to be the father to his little girl that apparently Alfred couldn’t be for him.

Navel Gazing, Travel, Uncategorized, ,