My Dreams are not your Duties

I was nearly ten when I first saw the watch. My father had brought me to the Crocker Bank on State Street in Santa Barbara, and into the bank’s vault. Papa used a special key to unlock a safety deposit box and pulled from within a gold pocket watch.

“See, Hugo?” My father pointed to the gleaming cover of the timepiece, and the initials engraved upon it: HS.  My father’s great-grandfather, Heinrich Schwitzer (the spelling of the surname was later changed), had acquired the watch for himself about 1895. Perhaps it was a gift, perhaps it was a purchase he made for himself to celebrate some sort of milestone. Heinrich was a self-made man, the son of a rabbi. He had turned his back on his little insular community and become a secular, successful Viennese businessman.  He bequeathed the watch to his son, the Hugo for whom I was named. Eventually it came to my father, whose given name was Hubert. 

“This will be yours when I die,” my father said solemnly. I promptly burst into tears, and daddy hastily pivoted, declaring that I could have it when I graduated college. That was a slight comfort; it wasn’t that I wanted the watch anytime soon. It was the explicit connection between his dying and my receiving that I found upsetting.  We studied the watch a bit more, and I watched as papa carefully wound it and set the time before placing it back in the safety deposit box.

“Do I have to give my child an ‘H’ name”? I asked as we left the bank.  

My father shook his head.  “Of course not. It will be up to you and your future wife.” He hesitated.  “But it would be nice.”

More than thirty years later, and three years after my papa died, I became a father for this time. Having explained this tradition to my then-wife, we agreed on naming our first born Heloise. (In case you’re wondering, if our first had been a boy, he would have been “Helmut.”)  The watch lives in a home safe now, and I have shown it to my daughter many times. She has asked the same question I asked my dad.  I give the same answer: Of course not. But it would be nice.

I thought of the watch again as I read this piece by Mary Harrington in the November First Things. Ostensibly a review of a new book encouraging fecundity, Harrington suggests that secular, liberal parents in the modern world must struggle to reconcile a paradox:

How do you “parent” children for adult life in a polity ordered to individual freedom, without impinging on the children’s freedom in the process? To form children according to your values—in this case, autonomy—entails the exercise of adult authority over those children. It also implies a vision of the good, to which such formation is ordered. But liberalism recoils from precisely such coercions and such moral visions. Instead it seeks to create and hold a neutral political space within which individuals and groups holding divergent moral frameworks may act in freedom according to their own consciences, and coexist peacefully as they do so. Strictly speaking, then, forming children for liberalism is a contradiction in terms.

Harrington argues that most liberal families practice “acceptance parenting,” which basically involves repeating some variation on the phrase “I don’t mind what you do, I just want you to be happy.” This, Harrington laments, invariably leads to children feeling “tractionless,” or “like wheels spinning in a void.”  This leads to aimlessness, depression, delayed marriages, and plunging birth rates. The solution is to rediscover “oughts,” and in embracing obligations and duties, young people can “liberate themselves from the tyranny of absolute liberation.”

Harrington has some legitimate criticisms of secular liberal parenting. On the other hand, there is a great deal of power in phrases like my father’s “But it would be nice.”  Papa did not say it was my duty to have children, or to give the first one an “H” name.  I was told I had absolute freedom -- and also reminded that that freedom existed alongside a story, and that story had a power that I would do well to  consider. When we tell our children stories of their  ancestors, we ensure that they aren’t making choices in a vacuum. They make choices in the context of awareness of a heritage, one that they are free to reject but one of which they will always be cognizant. When we tell them stories about our own decisions, successes, and regrets, we ensure that they can exercise an informed autonomy.

When papa said that it” would be nice” to give my then-hypothetical firstborn a name that began with H, he wasn’t imposing constraints on my freedom. He was, however, being honest about his desires. He was asking me to consider that I might someday feel the same way, and perhaps derive deep satisfaction from continuing a particular legacy.  Harrington seems to suggest that without “oughts” there are only “wheels spinning in a void.”  That strikes me as a false binary. 

Perhaps raising children is a bit like teaching them how to drive, as I have been doing in recent months with Heloise. There are very strict “oughts” when it comes to operating a motor vehicle. I have taught Heloise not to tailgate. I have taught her how to merge smoothly onto the highway. I have not insisted, however, that her first major road trip be to say, Fresno rather than San Diego. I have given her very real tools so that she isn’t tractionless or spinning her wheels. How she drives is imbued with “oughts” and “don’ts.”  Where she ends up driving in her life? That’s not mine to say.  I will not say, “Mousie, never ever go to Fresno, as it is simply dreadful.” I will say, “When you are on the roadway going wherever you are called, pay attention not just to the car in front of you but the guy four cars ahead of him. Whatever he does, you will soon need to do.”

I think it is clear that this sort of advice applies to many, many things besides driving an automobile.

When I was about fourteen, I took some money my aunt had given me for Christmas and used it to buy subscriptions to three very left-wing newspapers and magazines: In These Times, the Militant, and theSocialist Worker. I told my aunt what I had done with her gift, and I thanked her. She gave me a bemused smile and said, “Darling, whatever’s right.”  In our family, “whatever’s right” functioned as a cheerful way of acknowledging that someone you loved had decided something you found inexplicable or unwise. “Whatever’s right” meant, “You are free to do this thing, but I wish to convey in a very gentle way that I don’t think it’s the best choice.” Harrington would see this, perhaps, as a lamentable refusal to set any rules, as if my family was casting a poor child out onto an ocean of endless choices without a compass. I can assure you that “whatever’s right” was worlds away from an “I don’t care what you do.” It functioned as an opportunity for a young person to rethink their politics, or their hairstyle, or their beau. “Whatever’s right” planted a tiny seed of caution, a seed that might eventually blossom into a full-blown reassessment.

When I graduated from high school, the PTA threw a traditional breakfast for the seniors at a local club. At the end of the meal, after many speeches and much laughter, we had a slide show documenting not just the past year, but the lives of the graduates from their elementary years. We were a small and relatively close-knit group, and so every single one of us got to see his or her photo appear at least twice.  The slide show lasted five minutes and fifty-five seconds. I know this because it was timed perfectly to a song that served as the unofficial anthem of the Carmel High School Class of 1985: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.”  One of the greatest Seventies rock songs, the tune had been released when we’d been first graders, but its power proved enduring.  The track was written and sung by Ronnie Van Zant, whose death in a 1977 plane crash was perhaps the first celebrity loss to touch my graduating class. 

“Simple Man” is an advice song, a mother telling her boy what he should be:

Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say
And if you do this it'll help you
Some sunny day

Oh, take your time, don't live too fast
Troubles will come, and they will pass
You'll find a woman, yeah, and you'll find love
And don't forget son there is someone up above

And be a simple kind of man
Oh, be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me son, if you can?

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul
And you can do this, oh, baby, if you try
All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied.

The theologian might wonder if the great Southern rockers have offered up not only banalities, but outright contradictions.  Perhaps we should see a conflict between the line that advises “Don't forget son there is someone up above” and the reminder that “All that you need is in your soul.”  Is truth primarily derived from God above? Or is it enough to look deep inside and find the truth is already there? Or is there no contradiction at all, and Lynyrd Skynyrd is referencing the natural law that is, as the Apostle put it in Romans, “written on our hearts?”

 The line that has always stuck with me comes at the end of the third verse. After all the instructions, mama says “Oh, won't you do this for me son, if you can?”  Mom knows what she wants for her child, and she believes she has a sense of what will make him deeply happy.  But her “if you can” acknowledges that even between a loving mother and her baby boy there is a great gulf fixed, and she cannot simply transfer her wants and certainties into him. She can only ask, recognizing that he may not be willing or able to live as she thinks would be best.  The mother in the song has a very specific “vision of the good” (to use Harrington’s phrase.) That vision rests more easily alongside an acknowledgement of her son’s autonomy than First Things would suggest. There’s no contradiction.

I’ve never learned the name of the parent who came up with the idea to play “Simple Man”  while we watched the slide show of our evolution from small children to near-adults. Whoever he or she was, it was a wise move. You are grown, the slide show said on behalf of the moms and dads, and we see you now, towering over us. It all happened so fast, and we are willing to let you go because we must let you go, but this song you love distills our dreams for you – and it hints at our fears. You will do as you will, but it would be nice if you would heed at least some of what we’re trying to say.

Whatever else can be said of me, I have not ended up a simple man. I have chosen a lot of complexities and contradictions and compulsions, and I have disappointed and terrified my family. I have broken the hearts of wives, and worst of all, have inflicted real trauma on my children. I will spend the rest of my life trying to “make it up” to Heloise and David. I can still teach them, though, as I must, even if I know they are free to reject my lessons and stories. I can say “it would be nice” if I someday had a grandchild with an H name. I get to have desires, and they get to decide for themselves the degree to which a dad’s desires constitute a child’s duties.  I have made it clear I’m okay regardless. Like the mom in Van Zant’s song, even my strongest advice is accompanied by that gentle disclaimer: “if you can.”