Fathers and Motherlands

Andrew’s favorite movie is Jaws, and since knowing him, it has fast become one of my favorites, too. While Jaws is famous for the drama, the scenes of carnage – Quint singing “Spanish Ladies” while slipping steadily into the mouth of the great fish -  Andrew’s favorite scene is a tender, oft-forgotten moment at the Brody family dinner table. It is the evening after Chief Brody has been slapped by the mother of Alex Kintner, the boy who was devoured by the titular shark on the Fourth of July, when Brody failed to stand up to the mayor and unwisely kept the beaches open on the holiday weekend. Brody knows he deserved the slap, and he sits nursing a drink as his five-year-old son Michael sits across from him, similarly despondent. Brody takes a sip of whiskey; Michael takes a sip of milk. Brody puts his head in his hands; Michael mirrors him. After a couple of minutes, Brody leans in:

“Come here, give us a kiss.”

“Why?”

“Cause I need it.”

It’s a lovely, quiet moment, the gestures of a weary middle-aged man parodied in his cherubic son. It shows how much this child still wants to be like his dad, regardless (or in ignorance) of the massive mistake his father made that day. It is about grace, and innocence lost, and the value of family. It also is about mimicry, and how we bond through sameness or the illusion of sameness – especially within our family units.

Human beings are not only tribal creatures; we also share a well-documented tendency toward ‘unconscious mimicry’, the inclination to adopt the mannerisms, postures and behaviors of those around us. Researchers have found that humans spontaneously adopt others’ behaviors, even while focused on a task at hand. In one experiment, subjects adopted the face-touching and foot-tapping behaviors of another person present while drawing a picture.

Beyond the Brodys, this can be pronounced within families. Since families are often cut from the same genetic cloth, though, it begs the question: Are these mirrored mannerisms a true case of learned behaviors, or a biological propensity? Is telling great stories or drinking too much nature, nurture, or a muddle? In my family, several of us claim we were the originator of a certain expression or a favorite recipe. We may share these affectations, but we can’t agree on where or with whom they began: You weren’t even there when that happened; you were away at university... I found that recipe on the New York Times; you just added the cashew nuts.

Ironicaly, in families, it seems that equally as compelling as the tug toward sameness is rebellion: the rejection of shared identity, in particular the type of enforced, rigid group identity that families impose. We seek that which is familiar, and then so often rebel against it – not just in adolescence, but as adults, too. We strive to distinguish ourselves from our parents; we flee our ancestral homes. We percieve the flaws of our families acutely, perhaps because, well, we likely share them.

My father took a philosophical career path, and I like to think I’ve done the same. In his retirement, he is a writer, and during his career, he was a minister and constitutional lawyer. Family dinners often tackled not just the routines of our lives, but the holistic concerns. Dad introduced questions of theology and philosphy to these conversations and my mom, a teacher, often brought in social issues, like poverty and incarceration. I am grateful to have been raised in a family that has been in conversation (admittedly loudly, and sometimes at the expense of visitors trying to get a word in) for as long as I can remember.

Andrew’s dad was a process engineer, which essentially means he made sure things worked – efficiently and exactly as they should. I was not there for the Sharman family dinner time conversations in the 70s and 80s, but I often see Andrew and his dad relate through doing things, in particular fixing things, whether it’s replacing a lock on a door or installing a new shower. Like his father, Andrew is a “doer,” and we often laugh (and occasionally argue) that he is all about “doing” while I am all about “being.”

After being peppered by my parents’ questions, Andrew says that he yearns for this kind of inquisitive conversation with his father. If only his father would ask him about the content of the books he has written or discuss the complexities of his doctoral thesis. Dave asks questions, but he is a fixer more than a talker. I have no doubt that “acts of service” is Dave’s number one love language – and it is Andrew’s, too. They are both quick to offer a diagnosis rather than just hear out venting. They also both would be the first to visit you if you’re sick in the hospital or need help shoveling snow out of your driveway. They share a “rough and ready” attitude about tackling life’s problems, mechanical, spiritual or otherwise. Andrew is the often the person the church ladies call when they need the bathroom painted or a lightbulb changed.

Dave does not normally initiate conversations about the books Andrew has written, it’s true. Andrew’s books deal with workplace culture, psychology, leadership and wellbeing. Dave reads some fiction and is dedicated to the daily newspaper, and at Andrew’s prompting, has made his way through a few of his son’s books. But Dave also has dedicated an entire room of his house to all of the stock of Andrew’s books. Dave is the warehouse. He ships hundreds – over the years, hundreds of thousands – of Andrew’s books and other resources all over the world, from the depot of his spare room. Dave keeps the inventory, keeps Andrew appraised of stock (“We are low on French conversation cards, lad.”), knows the locations of the conferences where Andrew is slated to speak. Andrew’s publishing house is called “Maverick Eagle Press,” and the ladies at the post office have taken to calling Dave “Maverick Eagle,” which is somehow perfect.

As Christians, we are “acts of service” folks too, but I bet my Dad’s love languages would align more with mine – “words of affirmation” and “quality time.” A big draw of volunteering at the meals-on-wheels-style delivery service in Key West, Cooking with Love, is the chat! We are both talkers. There is a family story about when one of Dad’s friends approached me at the gym when I was a teenager. Dad had recently written an article in the paper or given a speech at an event, and the friend was remarking on how “articulate” my father was. I apparently responded, deadpan: “He sure does talk a lot.” While I fancy myself a wordsmith, I have no doubt that if I’m fortunate enough to have a child of my own, and even more fortunate to have them read my blogs, they will level me with some observation of my solipsism or long-windedness.

Some days, we want to be just like our fathers when we grow up, and some days, the worst comment a person can level at us is “You’re just like your dad.” We yearn for and reject the familiar. This is true not only of the people we hold most dearly, but also of our places in the world. Our lineage and familial inheritance keeps us connected to our people, our blood and our place. With that in mind, let’s return to Jaws.

We meet Chief Brody at what will soon be the defining moment of his life. At that moment, he is a stranger in a strange land. Effectively, he and his wife Ellen are foreigners, transplants on the insular, cliquish island of Amity, from New York City. When Ellen asks a friend “When do I get to become an islander?” the friend answers: “Never! You’re not born here; you’re not an islander.”

Even when Brody tries to mimic the New England accent (“They’re in the yaahd not to faah from the caah.”), he fails comically. “How do I sound?” He asks Ellen.

“Like you’re from New York.”

My French isn’t even as convincing as Chief Brody’s New England accent, and I often find myself feeling as though I am mimicking to just survive life in Switzerland. From the cultural cues – never crossing the road off a crosswalk, never making noise on a Sunday, always looking people in the eyes, especially when you toast – to the particular pronunciation of words and places that leave my mouth feeling turned inside out. Andrew has been here over ten years, so he is much more integrated than I, and yet, we are still l’ecossais (The Scot) and l’americaine (The American). I get homesick and try not to complain. My folks call me the “Runaway Bunny,” or, echoing Forest Gump, tell me they think I should come back to Greenbow, Alabama.

On the weekends, I’m often found in the kitchen scrambling eggs and listening to Tennessee bluegrass or “Dolly Parton’s America,” yearning for the beautiful and hard scrabble hills that my family calls home. My parents built a cabin on the Little River, and sometimes when the light hits the lake, I wonder how the same sunshine looks on that pebbled surface that runs by my folks’ place. Andrew’s and my motherlands are not so different: rolling hills populated by working class people, a reputation as a simple place for simple folks, under the yolk of a more sophisticated and powerful neighbor (the Northern half of the U.S., and well, England). A history that is both deserving of pride and criticism, as they are places steeped in violence and tribalism. Both peoples also appreciate candor, hospitality, and good whisk(e)y.

There is something soothing about how our homelands have this commonality. The people and monuments of East Tennessee often echo Scotland, but with the air of imitation, like a younger sibling taking on the affectations of her big sister. The college mascot in my town is the “Fighting Scot,” and they annually hold Highland Games that bring seekers from around the Southeast who wish to be connected to something more ancient than they are.

When my father first met Andrew, he noted that the mountain range that runs through my homeland, the Appalachians, millions of years ago connected to the Cheviots that run through his. Indeed, there was a cluster of mountains right about dead center of the land formation Pangaea, when a series of plate collisions about 480 million years ago birthed the Appalachians, the Little Atlas (which are now in Morocco), and The Caledonian Orogeny (aka the birth of the Scottish mountains). This “Grampian Event” does not mean our meeting was geographic destiny, but there is something there about time, heat, collision and landscape that rings true.  

Scotland has taken on sort of mythic proportions for Andrew, a place that colored his youth with both bucolic adventure and tragedy. The Borders are historically a bloody strip of Scotland, populated by reivers and clans. These days, they are peaceful: technicolor green hills dotted with sheep, winding rivers full of ducks and swans, trout and salmon, cobblestone towns, three-hundred-year old houses forged in Borders red sandstone, and the craggy ruins of castles and abbeys, a thousand years old from the rein of David I, that have nearly melded into the landscape like particularly well-designed boulders.

Andrew loves listening to Scottish music and the sound of pipe bands. You might turn a corner in our house and find Andrew with a glass of whisky, a book about Scotland in his lap and a tear in his eye. Scotland is a place that represents love and nurture to him, and one of his favorite songs, “Caledonia” by Dougie MacLean, personifies the place in much the same vein:

Let me tell you that I love you, and I think about you all the time,

Caledonia you’re calling me and now I’m going home,

And if I should become a stranger, know that it would make me more than sad,

Caledonia’s been everything I’ve ever had.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this relationship, but the motherland seems almost to have done work as a replacement mother for Andrew. There’s an important bit about Dave’s parenting style that I’ve left out. At forty-two, Andrew’s father was thrust into a role he did not anticipate playing for the rest of his life: widowed single parent. He and his wife had left England for rural Scotland to raise their kids in the idyllic countryside, but then he was left to manage alone, as an outsider (“After forty years here, they still call me that bloody Englishman,” he now laughs).

In the wake of Andrew’s mum’s tragic, early death, Dave describes himself as a “zombie,” unable to cope with the hand that he had been dealt as the grieving, sole caretaker of two young children, 7 and 11. He took them on a beach holiday; he learned to cook and sew; he hired a nanny to stay at the house during his long work weeks traveling as an engineer. His pragmatism carried him through - perhaps it is precisely what enabled his little family to survive those years – Dad was making sure the family machine worked, putting food on the table and making the mortgage payment, trying to do the impossible and play two roles.

His daughter gives him a mother’s day card every year, thanking him for being “both.” For Andrew, it is more complicated, and that hole where maternal love was has never been filled – not by his father, nor any of the nannies or aunties that came along, nor by me.  The very “can do” attitude that helped their family survive also left Andrew feeling alone and unmoored – there wasn’t as much time or energy for the tenderness and affection that a mother might have injected.

Sometimes, that dynamic can feel insurmountable and hardened by time. But sometimes, the plates of their relationship shifts; the mountains soften and meet.

Our last night in Scotland when we were over for the holidays offered an example of my “being” and Andrew’s “doing” in sharp relief. I was nursing a gin and tonic by the fire, chatting idly with Dave’s girlfriend and nearly ready to head to bed. When I announced this, Andrew produced a list of tasks we still needed to complete that night, including photographing items stored at his dad’s that he planned to sell on eBay, and mending several sets of blinds for a domestically disinclined tenant. I tried to put on my best “can do” smile, but the mood at the kitchen table was tense.

That is, until Dave came in. With Andrew’s mum’s old sewing kit in tow, he moved me over and set up shop at the table.

“Hand me the blinds, lad.”

With Andrew and Dave working together, the blinds were meticulously restored to excellent condition. Better yet, the mood shifted, and even though it was past midnight, I was laughing as I stood on the chair, holding the blinds aloft as Andrew and Dave tested them and went back to work to make adjustments. The father picks up a corner of fabric; the son picks up a corner of fabric. Their hands moving similarly, their voices echoing each other’s, they go to work doing what they both do best: fixing something.  

When we got back to Switzerland, Andrew had a two sentence email from Dave:

Hung the blinds. Lots of love.