The Retired Sailor: When we forget why we bothered to try

B-friend and I went to look at wedding venues this weekend; at least, that's what I can say was the purpose. The trip had an ulterior function of creating physical, unwired separation between me and my work. We've been joined at the hip lately, and I've had a tough time extricating it from my body on weekends.

I always imagined that when we finally got out of town we would chit chat for hours in the car, catching up from what's been, for both of us, months of 16-hour days and little connection. But I had little to say. My brain still being as efficient as possible and avoiding conversation.

"What are you thinking about?" B-friend said. I must have been quiet for an unusual period of time.

"Nothing," I said, meaning it.

But then my mind drifted to the dustier areas of my recollection, areas I'd neglected while focusing on conferences and advertising models. I thought of a dream I'd had earlier that week that pushed me back to one of my very first jobs. In the dream, I was being reprimanded by my old boss. He was telling me all the things I'd neglected to do at my job. I remember feeling overwhelmed in the dream; I'd worked myself to a pulp, and yet I couldn't argue with my boss's list of job duties I'd neglected. One of my co-workers who was being reprimanded with me refuted every claim, but I just nodded and promised to do better, not knowing how I would. Then I began to think back to last November, when my father passed away from gastric cancer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

There were many ways people described my father while he was still alive. "Difficult," was my mother's classic, understated term. Or, if trying to explain his erratic behaviour to his kids, she often said: "That's just your father." This was to explain the sudden bouts of meanness, the occasional charm and underlying intelligence that, when mixed with ego, tried to poison you.

I like how my grandmother described him a few months ago, after Dad passed away: "A gifted man, but a young soul." My grandmother didn't cry like you'd expect a woman to when she's lost her child, even a 60-year-old child. She saw the full arch of her son's life--where her influence ended and where things could have been different.

"Maybe I shouldn't have let him start school so early," she said. She was ill when she was pregnant with my uncle and sent my father to school at age 4. He tested years ahead of his age, so it was encouraged by the school. My father tested out of everything; he never needed to study to ace tests. Yet his grades weren't good; he got into trouble.

"He had the brains," my grandmother said. "But he never had to work for it; he never learned to be patient."

My uncle jokes that my Dad's claim to fame as a teenager was being the "Unnamed Youth" in the local paper's police blotter. It surprised me, since none of his kids so much as stole a candy bar in their childhoods. We may not have been caught, but the fear of being reprimanded by our father kept us honest. I don't know what would have happened if one of us was caught stealing, or breaking curfew--it never came to pass. The few times I was caught drinking or sneaking back in the house was by my mother. "Next time," she said, "I'll tell your father." She knew that threat was enough. 

I used to want to be like my father. He always knew the answers when I needed help with my homework. In his spare time he read our set of encyclopedias in its entirety several times when he couldn't sleep and was bored. His office was stacked with books he'd consumed like gallons of ice cream in one sitting. Everything that he consumed he stored for discussions with others when he referenced facts and figures like a human Google. Needless to say he always won arguments. Even my smartest friends would get lost in their logic trying to debate him. Dad was a master of knowing what you would say next. He was always ready with a reasoned parry. No one ever outmaneuvered him. We got tired of trying. 

I also admired my Dad because he was a successful entrepreneur. He ran his own advertising business for years and did very well. Only once he bragged about a new client he'd brought in for an amount of money that was inconceivable to me at the time. Wow, I thought, we're rich! His success allowed him to upgrade his sailboat every few years so that a decade into his business he had a Swedish mini-yacht. But even this he bought used--my father believed that suckers paid for things that were new. Still, the sky seemed to be the limit for us. I had everything I ever wanted--great clothes and a mother who I could convince to charge anything I believed I had to have.

Dad didn't spend on himself. His only indulgence was his sailboat. In the summer he left on Fridays for excursions and returned Sundays with a deeper tan, smelling like still Lake Michigan water. A natural Skipper, he headed a crew that met him at his boat every weekend. He could be harsh and yell at his team sometimes, but no one took it as personally as his kids. I was shocked when a woman on his team told me he was a Sweetheart.

There certainly was a gentleness about my Dad when he was sailing. We were just kids, but he let us steer the boat during night excursions and navigate our way back to the dock. He was more generous with his time when he was on water than when he was on land.  The boat was Dad's fifth child; it seemed fitting that he named it after his kids' names combined, Joli.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few years ago, when I was working in New York, my sister called me to chat. Clearly there was something on her mind.

"Dad gave up the boat," she said.

"Did he sell it?"

"No," she said. "He just stopped using it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 1980s were mostly good years for my family. But at some point, things became more tenuous. Several of my Dad's clients fell away, and instead of waiting out the uncertainty or recalibrating his expectations my father gave up his dream.

I was in college and would return home to find Dad--the man who was never home--slinking in the clothes he slept in. He had a number of projects in the hopper, but none ever panned out; they weren't nurtured with the same drive that Dad had when he started his advertising agency. He started to sail every day, and then gradually not at all. Eventually he'd abandon his crew and his boat. The city repossessed it because he wouldn't take it out of the water for the winter. Putting it this way makes it sound like Dad actively refused, but in fact he'd stopped coming to the dock. His boat had become orphaned.

This was around the time my mother started to use the term, "That's just your father." It was the only way she could explain what was happening. His car stopped running, so he let it sit in the yard where it rusted away. There was no point in fixing it, he said. Like everything else in his life, the effort spent in revitalizing something was worth more than the item itself. No one could really say what was wrong, but it was clear something had died in my Dad. There were occasional moments when he was engaged and excited about something--an election, a technology that his quick mind could gravitate toward.  But it became apparent that my father's perspective had shifted. Life was not a mountain to climb and conquer; it was a flat road with very little to make you stop and notice. The point was to keep the car running and to get to the end, wherever that was.

A few months before he died I called and, unusually, Dad answered instead of my mother. We talked about my blog.

"I looked up 'Des Jardins' on Google and saw you all over the place," he said. I explained how blogging lends itself to the "Googlejuice" effect, but he was distracted.

"It occurs to me," he said. "That I will leave this earth being known more for my kids." I'm not sure if he was happy about that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once during a holiday dinner Dad became "difficult", which he often did when he drank, and my sister Julie broke all ranks by calling him a drunk asshole. Now, the unspoken rule in our household was that you waited for Dad to call himself an asshole, which in moments of clarity he often did, but you never did this yourself. I expected a stinging verbal retribution, but my father just nodded his head.

Later that evening Dad approached me and my sister.

"You just can't imagine how frustrating it is," he said, looking up at the ceiling, as if trying to make sense of the ceiling tiles. "I keep looking, but there's just no answer!"

He left the room and I snorted; I suppose I was frustrated by his frustration. It seemed the world was disappointing him, and since we were in this world, I suspect we were part of that disappointment, and that pissed me off.

The last few days before Dad died, he stared up at the ceiling in his hospital bed much the same way, as if waiting for an answer. Or praying--I don't know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

People suggest to me that I need to properly mourn my father, but I'm not sure how to do that. Part of me feels that he wanted the world to put him out of his misery, and in that regard I can't be sad that it did. What saddens me is the thought of his question being unanswered. Of a man perfectly capable of doing great things ending his life having felt he didn't do very much that was worthwhile.

Sometimes I think my father was too smart. He didn't want to go down rat holes of choice and become even more disappointed, so he did nothing the last few years of his life, hedging his bets.

Sometimes I catch myself hedging my bets, getting scared at how life is taking a hold of me without my consent. I fear my work will consume me; my entrepreneurial ventures aren't giving me answers, only more questions. I wonder why am I bothering, why do I work so hard when there's no guarantees that anything will "pay off?"

In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes this precipice of questioning, when we seek justification for bothering to try, but lack a means of gauging our success:

Purpose gives direction to one's efforts, but it does not necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead into all sorts of trouble, at which point one gets tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script by which to order one's actions. The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning.

Many smart people figure out the Purpose Game; they get that there isn't a prize at the end so they stop playing, like my Dad did. Life becomes efficient--the most tangible pleasure for the least effort, and less meandering. Fewer mistakes, but fewer moments of fulfillment. 

My father didn't complain of feeling ill until he was nearly gone. We often run through the morbid exercise of trying to determine when my father actually got sick. Was it when he started losing weight? When he stopped eating? My estimate is much earlier than any medical doctor's. I believe Dad got sick years ago. Somewhere on the water of Lake Michigan, when he unfurled Joli's sails and packed up as he normally did, knowing full well he would be leaving unreasonableness behind.

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There were many ways people described my father while he was still alive. "Difficult," was my mother's classic, understated term. Or, if trying to explain his erratic behaviour to his kids, she often said: "That's just your father." This was to explain the sudden bouts of meanness, the occasional charm and underlying intelligence that, when mixed with ego, tried to poison you.

I like how my grandmother described him a few months ago, after Dad passed away: "A gifted man, but a young soul." My grandmother didn't cry like you'd expect a woman to when she's lost her child, even a 60-year-old child. She saw the full arch of her son's life--where her influence ended and where things could have been different.

"Maybe I shouldn't have let him start school so early," she said. She was ill when she was pregnant with my uncle and sent my father to school at age 4. He tested years ahead of his age, so it was encouraged by the school. My father tested out of everything; he never needed to study to ace tests. Yet his grades weren't good; he got into trouble.

"He had the brains," my grandmother said. "But he never had to work for it; he never learned to be patient."

My uncle jokes that my Dad's claim to fame as a teenager was being the "Unnamed Youth" in the local paper's police blotter. It surprised me, since none of his kids so much as stole a candy bar in their childhoods. We may not have been caught, but the fear of being reprimanded by our father kept us honest. I don't know what would have happened if one of us was caught stealing, or breaking curfew--it never came to pass. The few times I was caught drinking or sneaking back in the house was by my mother. "Next time," she said, "I'll tell your father." She knew that threat was enough. 

I used to want to be like my father. He always knew the answers when I needed help with my homework. In his spare time he read our set of encyclopedias in its entirety several times when he couldn't sleep and was bored. His office was stacked with books he'd consumed like gallons of ice cream in one sitting. Everything that he consumed he stored for discussions with others when he referenced facts and figures like a human Google. Needless to say he always won arguments. Even my smartest friends would get lost in their logic trying to debate him. Dad was a master of knowing what you would say next. He was always ready with a reasoned parry. No one ever outmaneuvered him. We got tired of trying. 

I also admired my Dad because he was a successful entrepreneur. He ran his own advertising business for years and did very well. Only once he bragged about a new client he'd brought in for an amount of money that was inconceivable to me at the time. Wow, I thought, we're rich! His success allowed him to upgrade his sailboat every few years so that a decade into his business he had a Swedish mini-yacht. But even this he bought used--my father believed that suckers paid for things that were new. Still, the sky seemed to be the limit for us. I had everything I ever wanted--great clothes and a mother who I could convince to charge anything I believed I had to have.

Dad didn't spend on himself. His only indulgence was his sailboat. In the summer he left on Fridays for excursions and returned Sundays with a deeper tan, smelling like still Lake Michigan water. A natural Skipper, he headed a crew that met him at his boat every weekend. He could be harsh and yell at his team sometimes, but no one took it as personally as his kids. I was shocked when a woman on his team told me he was a Sweetheart.

There certainly was a gentleness about my Dad when he was sailing. We were just kids, but he let us steer the boat during night excursions and navigate our way back to the dock. He was more generous with his time when he was on water than when he was on land.  The boat was Dad's fifth child; it seemed fitting that he named it after his kids' names combined, Joli.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few years ago, when I was working in New York, my sister called me to chat. Clearly there was something on her mind.

"Dad gave up the boat," she said.

"Did he sell it?"

"No," she said. "He just stopped using it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 1980s were mostly good years for my family. But at some point, things became more tenuous. Several of my Dad's clients fell away, and instead of waiting out the uncertainty or recalibrating his expectations my father gave up his dream.

I was in college and would return home to find Dad--the man who was never home--slinking in the clothes he slept in. He had a number of projects in the hopper, but none ever panned out; they weren't nurtured with the same drive that Dad had when he started his advertising agency. He started to sail every day, and then gradually not at all. Eventually he'd abandon his crew and his boat. The city repossessed it because he wouldn't take it out of the water for the winter. Putting it this way makes it sound like Dad actively refused, but in fact he'd stopped coming to the dock. His boat had become orphaned.

This was around the time my mother started to use the term, "That's just your father." It was the only way she could explain what was happening. His car stopped running, so he let it sit in the yard where it rusted away. There was no point in fixing it, he said. Like everything else in his life, the effort spent in revitalizing something was worth more than the item itself. No one could really say what was wrong, but it was clear something had died in my Dad. There were occasional moments when he was engaged and excited about something--an election, a technology that his quick mind could gravitate toward.  But it became apparent that my father's perspective had shifted. Life was not a mountain to climb and conquer; it was a flat road with very little to make you stop and notice. The point was to keep the car running and to get to the end, wherever that was.

A few months before he died I called and, unusually, Dad answered instead of my mother. We talked about my blog.

"I looked up 'Des Jardins' on Google and saw you all over the place," he said. I explained how blogging lends itself to the "Googlejuice" effect, but he was distracted.

"It occurs to me," he said. "That I will leave this earth being known more for my kids." I'm not sure if he was happy about that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once during a holiday dinner Dad became "difficult", which he often did when he drank, and my sister Julie broke all ranks by calling him a drunk asshole. Now, the unspoken rule in our household was that you waited for Dad to call himself an asshole, which in moments of clarity he often did, but you never did this yourself. I expected a stinging verbal retribution, but my father just nodded his head.

Later that evening Dad approached me and my sister.

"You just can't imagine how frustrating it is," he said, looking up at the ceiling, as if trying to make sense of the ceiling tiles. "I keep looking, but there's just no answer!"

He left the room and I snorted; I suppose I was frustrated by his frustration. It seemed the world was disappointing him, and since we were in this world, I suspect we were part of that disappointment, and that pissed me off.

The last few days before Dad died, he stared up at the ceiling in his hospital bed much the same way, as if waiting for an answer. Or praying--I don't know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

People suggest to me that I need to properly mourn my father, but I'm not sure how to do that. Part of me feels that he wanted the world to put him out of his misery, and in that regard I can't be sad that it did. What saddens me is the thought of his question being unanswered. Of a man perfectly capable of doing great things ending his life having felt he didn't do very much that was worthwhile.

Sometimes I think my father was too smart. He didn't want to go down rat holes of choice and become even more disappointed, so he did nothing the last few years of his life, hedging his bets.

Sometimes I catch myself hedging my bets, getting scared at how life is taking a hold of me without my consent. I fear my work will consume me; my entrepreneurial ventures aren't giving me answers, only more questions. I wonder why am I bothering, why do I work so hard when there's no guarantees that anything will "pay off?"

In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes this precipice of questioning, when we seek justification for bothering to try, but lack a means of gauging our success:

Comments

[Lisa Stone]

Jory, I really love this paragraph you wrote: "Sometimes I catch myself hedging my bets, getting scared at how life is taking a hold of me without my consent. I fear my work will consume me; my entrepreneurial ventures aren't giving me answers, only more questions. I wonder why am I bothering, why do I work so hard when there's no guarantees that anything will 'pay off?' "

And therein lies the question: What IS the payoff? Such an individual question, one I cannot answer for you.

But I know this much: The likelihood that you will ever attain a payoff of any kind (internal or external, material or spiritual), depends upon your ability to continually *ask* questions. I think an unexamined journey is a recipe for failure. You're on a different plane altogether.

If you thought you had all the answers now, you wouldn't be the entrepreneur you are. Many people, when faced with what you've accomplished in the past year, would just cough up The Solution. Hogwash, I say; Bring on the(se) questions...

[Joy]

WOW! I'm just sitting here crying. You've taken me where I didn't expect to go right now...or was purposely staying away from. Your Dad. What a difficult, challenging and amazing man. He gave us ALL a run for our money, and left us with all kinds of questions and very little answers. What an incredible piece sweetie. You understood your father better than I ever imagined. He didn't make it easy.

I see where you make the connection with Dad; but there's one huge difference. Dad stopped communicating his feelings, his concerns to those it mattered to the most. Whether he saw it as a weakness or that he just didn't want to burden us with what he thought he should handle himself; he disconnected.

You are decidedly just the opposite. Your connection and communicaton with people is what makes you the unique person that you are. I can't imagine you any other way. Good, bad...it's all out there to see, to discuss, to celebrate or repair. It's egoless; and that's where I think Dad had a problem. Until the last few years, where even his ego wasn't worth the effort.

I can tell you one thing for sure; and I know this because we DID discuss it...Dad may have been disappointed in himself, but he NEVER was in his kids. I hope you and your sisters and brother know that.

Jory, what you have accomplished in the past year astonishes me...and it's still a work in progress. It doesn't come without pain. It doesn't come without problems; and it doesn't come without stress. But it also comes with the great reward of seeing it happen, seeing your hard work payoff, and developing wonderful relationships with some pretty incredible people along the way. You just have to remember, that you have to take time out for the other things happening in your life. I think you're already starting to appreciate that. This is where Jesse will keep you honest. You are a wonder!

When I grow up, I want to be just like you! I love you. -Mom

[Michael Wagner]

What tender disclosure.

Parents are often mysteries to children. My mom was left to explain my mysterious dad - everyone's friend yet unknown and unknowable to his son.

There's healing in chasing mysteries - keep asking your questions.

[jen]

Jory this has brought tears to my eyes. You're obviously a deep thinker and find it hard to switch off from all those questions going on in your head.

Like your mum says above, you have accomplished a hell of a lot recently, and should be really damn proud of yourself. You are an inspiration to me and others.

[Elizabeth Michel]

Jory, this beautiful posting has moved me deeply. As b-friend's mother, I know that you and I will have many more conversations about your Dad, and so much else, as you and Jesse join your lives together. I look forward to that, and the deepening of a loving relationship with you.

Given my own experience of having a "difficult" mother (to say the least--mentally ill and drug-addicted are more to the point), what you wrote about your Dad took me back to some very painful feelings I had when I was still a young woman and quite confused about my mother and myself. (Is it possible that confusion is pain disguised as questions?) You too will find healing, as I have: you are asking the right kind of questions.

As a physician, I'd like to suggest one straightforward idea here and leave many more complicated musings for when we are together again. It's likely that the changes in your father's behavior that you wonder about had much to do with physical changes in his brain that resulted from his drinking heavily over the years. (And the effect of heavy smoking on his brain's circulation would have compounded these problems.) I don't offer this idea as being any kind of simple answer to the very complex questions that arise about the life of any human being. And your Dad was clearly a complicated man who was so much more than the behavior that this idea addresses. But since you've been so honest in your blogs about your father's problematic drinking, I think it's important to add this question to the others you pose here about wy he "gave up" when he did on the boat, his dreams, and life itself.

A little aside to your Mom: Joy, I suspect that you'll read my comment, as I read yours. You are so right--Jory has grown so much this last year. As has Jesse. And I want them to read it here! They may have been looking at separate computer screens while Jory started a business and Jesse wrote a thesis, but in that cramped study they also learned how to support each other when the going got tough. I'm sure you're as pleased to see that as I am. That's what I'll be celebrating at the wedding!

Love,

Elizabeth

[kare anderson]

Jory
the phone rang a couple of times but I could not take myself away from reading your candid, thoughtful revelation about your father and how he affected you... much less so with your evident awareness.

My grandfather could graft apples and other treefruit, then "dry irrigated" the gorve, meaning he gave the trees barely enough water so that the fruit was crisp, firm and intensely sweet (unlike the often watery, tasteless fruit we might get in the major supermarkets)

Perchance you chose to turn your experience with your Dad into the ways you bear "fruitful" work and friendships now, of intense, distinct flavor and beautiful firmness, e many of the qualities your Dad denied to you.

I sure get the feeling that you are changing many lives with your candor, inventiveness and camaraderie now.

In a civilization when love is
gone we turn to justice and when
justice is gone we turn to power
and when power is gone we
turn to violence.

Love is not always power; that may be as good a description of the human predicament as we are likely to get.

Remember the many compartments of the heart,the seed of what is possible. So much of who we are is defined by the places we hold for each other. For it is not our ingenuity that sets us apart,
but our capacity for love, the possibility our way will be lit by grace. Our hearts prisms, chiseling out the colors
of pure light.

[Suebob]

Thanks for having the courage to share the reality of your dad instead of a cleaned-up version. A truly great post.

[Dan]

A beautiful, heart-felt post. Perhaps it is just part of over-intellectualized male conditioning to become stuck in unanswerable questions; perhaps this was just the irony of your father's great intelligence -- that ultimately he couldn't find an answer despite having absorbed encyclopedias. He could win every argument except the one with himself. You describe him as having a kind of inner barrenness. How could that do anything but wound all those who loved him?

[Gavin van Lelyveld]

I see so much of myself in your and, ultimately, your father's story. I question a lot and when I get stuck in a circle I often give up. Depression is a difficult burden. Would I ever give up for good? I hope not. It's time to commit to being positive. Thank you.

[genevieve]

I have been thinking about this post on and off all week - this has stirred a lot of thoughts I have about 'signing off' and middle age repression, male and female.
So much is repressed so early by men in my country - I have a 17 year old boy I am watching change right now, we are trying to keep his soul bright and clear but it's an interesting process, to say the least. (He has actually reproached me for trying to make him 'too nice' :)!! then I hear him ask his handicapped brother if he wants ice-cream, and think, no, you have little choice in the matter, you funny boy.)

I knew men like Jory's dad when I was a teenager who were also 'unnamed youths'- boys need leading as much as girls do, sometimes they get sick of making their own path I think.

When Jory gets started, you get the whole story with all the questions, ripe for biting into (as Kare so aptly suggests) - that's why I read this blog.

[Jenn]

Jory, I cannot even tell you how touched I am by this. As for how to "properly mourn your Dad"? You are. Everytime you share the open and truthful stories like these. Everytime you question your life in ways like this: "I wonder why am I bothering, why do I work so hard when there's no guarantees that anything will "pay off?" That is how you are mourning your Dad. You are asking questions you may never have asked had you not watched him and seen the way he handled his life...both the good and the not so good ways.

You are an amazing woman, Jory. One I completely admire and respect. You are asking the questions. You WILL find the answers.

[Marilyn]

This was a very insightful and poignant post, Jory. Your Dad's final years sound so sad...it's hard to witness someone giving up. What an incredible gift to have understood him so well. It's like this post was telling him that you really SAW him...and wherever he is today, I'm sure you've made him happy to know that.