Wise Men and Other Stories (5 page)

I want to tell you about something very personal. It’s about a note I received from my youngest sister one Christmas. It made me very happy when I received it, but it also made me cry. So I debated for a long time whether I should show it to anybody. And finally, for a number reasons, I decided that I should tell other people about it.

I’ll show you the note in a minute, but first, I have to tell you a few things about me and my sister and our family.

Our parents got divorced when I was ten. My youngest sister, Sharon, would have been two. Sharon and I, along with the rest of our brothers and sisters, stayed with our mother. Our father moved to another part of Louisville for a while, remarried, and eventually moved away to Massachusetts.

After a few of years of trying, Mom finally acknowledged that she could not raise seven kids on her own. My brothers and sisters—including Sharon—were put in an orphanage. By that time, I was fourteen and I had a part
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time job, so Mom kept me home with her.

Now before you go feeling sorry for me and saying, “What a noble little boy, taking a job at fourteen to help his mother pay the bills,” you need to know that I was not helping with the bills—although I did buy some of my own clothes. But overall, I didn’t make that much money. And what I did make, I spent on myself.

So I wasn’t at home to help pay the bills. When you get right down to it, I think Mom kept me at home so she wouldn’t be lonely.

Unfortunately, I was not the greatest of companions. In fact, I was nothing but trouble. I skipped school, snuck out late at night with my friends, went to beer parties, and generally got into a lot of trouble. The culminating event came shortly before my fifteenth birthday when I skipped school one day, stole the keys to Mom’s car, took some friends for a joy ride, and ended up wrecking the car.

After that, there were lots of talks about what to do with me. My Mom talked to me. My uncle talked to me. Our priest talked to me. And, of course, my probation officer talked to me. (I got a probation officer after I got caught shoplifting earlier that same year.) Everybody finally decided that the best thing to do was to have me go live with my father in the hope that he would provide more discipline.

The result for Sharon and me, though, was that due to the difference in our ages, our parents’ divorce, and my juvenile delinquency, we never had a chance to get to know each other very well.

That bothered me a lot when I was growing up. Especially after I moved away and began to realize how important family is. And I felt guilty. Guilty because my brothers and sisters spent several years in an orphanage, and I did not have to. And guilty because I had abused that privilege—so much so that I further broke up our already broken home.

I went back to Louisville about once a year to visit while I was living with my father, and I went back more often after I was out on my own. But I was always very self-conscious when I went back. I had much in common with the divorced father who comes back and tries to force everything into what has commonly come to be known as “quality time.” But unlike the tentative, divorced father, I did not have to deal with children who withheld their affection because they resented me leaving them. To my knowledge, my brothers and sisters never blamed me for anything that had happened in our family. Quite the contrary. They always seemed glad to see me, and they never held back. Still, I always felt that I needed to make things up to them, so I was always trying, sometimes awkwardly, to do something special whenever I visited.

My brothers and sisters are all grown up now. Sharon is married and has her own life: husband, daughter, son, career, the works. A lot of years have gone by. And all those years, I never knew what my brothers and sisters thought, if anything, of me and my visits and my efforts to do something special when I visited. Until I got this note from my little sister one Christmas:

Dear Mike,

I thought I’d share a special memory that I think about every year about this time. It was a long time ago... I don’t know how many years. It was one of the times you came down for Christmas. It was Christmas Eve as I remember, and we didn’t have a tree yet, and when you came in, we went and got one. It was the first time I ever got to help pick out a tree. I don’t remember if anyone else was with us or not. I just remember you and the tree. So every year when we’re going to get a tree, I get a special feeling and remember you on that Christmas Eve and that tree and I smile. Thanks.

Love,
Sharon

That’s the note, and there’s not much else I want to say about it. Except that if there’s anybody out there in the world that you like and feel good about—and if there is any reason at all to suspect that they may not know how you feel—for God’s sake, tell them. I guarantee they’ll appreciate it.

Hold the world in your hands. That’s what the advertisement for EcoSphere says.

EcoSphere is a little glass ball. It really does fit in your hands. Inside the ball are several things: water, algae, bacteria, and some tiny shrimp. It is billed as “man’s first successful attempt to create a self-sustaining life system.”

It’s actually a pretty interesting idea. Sunlight provides energy for the algae and bacteria. They, in turn, supply food and oxygen for the shrimp. The shrimp contribute by producing carbon dioxide and “wastes,” which keep the algae and bacteria alive. (Funny how the highest life form in most ecosystems ends up listing “wastes” among its major contributions.)

Developing this little self
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sustaining world was no easy task, I’m sure. Yet I find something kind of unsettling about the whole thing. Maybe it’s the fact that this little world was developed by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. You’d think that our top rocket scientists would have more important things to do.

But on second thought, I can see where the delicate balance between creatures of the world would be of concern to any serious scientist.

So it must be something else about the EcoSphere that bothers me. It could be that this little item is being sold in catalogues as a Christmas gift idea. A very expensive gift idea at that. It goes for up to $500. You can buy one, set it on your desk or your bookshelf, study it, observe it, maybe meditate on it. The manufacturer boasts that the shrimp can live for more than five years.

They even got Carl Sagan to hype the EcoSphere when it first came out. Quoth Sagan regarding the organisms in the globe: “You find yourself worrying about them, rooting for them.”

The commercialization bothers me a little. So does the notion of “owning” a little world. We can’t really “own” life. The idea of holding it in the palm of your hand is a bit too much. It deifies man in an age when we would be better served by humility.

I also find it a little unsettling that you could find yourself pulling for or even identifying with a shrimp. That scares me. The creatures in the EcoSphere only live for five years or so. That’s a pittance in the whole scheme of things. Then again, in the whole scheme of things, seventy or eighty years is also a pittance. Suddenly, the shrimp and I have more in common that I care to acknowledge. I’m not trapped inside a glass ball, but I’m not likely to leave the planet any time soon either.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the EcoSphere itself doesn’t bother me. It might actually be a good thing for everybody to have one of these little items. Looking at the EcoSphere from your desk chair is a little like looking at the Earth from the Moon. You feel kind of sorry for those little waste-producing shrimp. They are not long for this world. So an EcoSphere could serve as a constant reminder of our mortality and of the delicate balance amongst living creatures. It might raise our consciousness a little.

And in the end, that’s what I find most troubling—not the EcoSphere, but the realization that our consciousness still needs raising. Too many people still disregard the concept of our own ecosystem. And because we haven’t acknowledged the fact that we are all part of a very fragile ecosystem, we fail to treat the environment, the other creatures in the world—even other human beings—with proper respect and concern.

I probably will never own an EcoSphere. The idea of owning a world still bothers me. But I’m glad somebody invented it. It makes you think. And while it’s not very pleasant to identify with a shrimp, it’s probably a pretty important thing to do from time to time.

For Kathleen

After a marathon day of opening presents and nonstop play, you have collapsed exhausted on the living room floor. It is now my job to get you up and put you to bed. Christmas is over.

I try to wake you up, but you can barely open your eyes. “Carry me, Daddy,” you say, and as I pick you up, you put your little arms around my neck.

You are almost three, and it occurs to me that there will not always be little arms around my neck. So I am taking nothing for granted. There is not a single little hug that doesn’t go straight to my heart and give me a thousand reasons for being.

Sometimes in the middle of a hug, you threaten to “eat me up”—which consists of a tight hug accompanied by some loud chomping noises. When the chomping noises begin, it makes me think of Maurice Sendak’s
Where the Wild Things Are
, one of your favorite stories. It contains one of the best lines in all of literature.

Early in the story, a little boy named Max tells his mother he’s going to eat her up, and she sends him to his room for being such a wild thing. Then Max imagines a land where he becomes king of all the wild things. The other wild things love Max and don’t ever want him to leave. “Oh, please don’t go,” they say. “We’ll eat you up, we love you so.”

That’s what comes to mind when I feel little arms around my neck and hear little chomping noises. So I never take hugs for granted.

And later, when you are older, when I am no longer able to lift you up and feel your little arms around my neck, I will not be sad. Instead, I will look forward to each new hug from you, allow myself to feel it and enjoy it and love it every bit as much as I felt and enjoyed and loved your hugs when you were a little girl.

And above all, I will hug you back.

No matter how many company holiday parties I go to, I never feel completely at ease. Fact is, you’re essentially being asked to socialize with people you normally try to avoid.

Also, I have to confess to what may be inappropriate thoughts. For example, I begin to fantasize that our new intern might not mind if I were to catch her under the mistletoe. Or I imagine that this would be the perfect time to tell the president about my ideas for restructuring the company—which naturally include a promotion for me.

Of course, I know in my heart such actions would be inappropriate. But at the time, when one is caught up in the spirit of the holidays, such things seem not only appropriate, but logical. It’s as if smooching with interns and schmoozing with the president are things I should have been doing all along.

Fortunately, not all my thoughts are so deplorable. I also find myself complimenting some of the people I genuinely enjoy working with. There’s something about the holiday season that forces you to search your soul for nice things to say—especially if someone catches you off guard and says something nice to you first. Unfortunately, I don’t always have something nice to say about some of the people I work with. Which makes me really appreciate the people I can say something nice about.

All too often, I receive a compliment and find myself responding with something innocuous like, “Thank you, Earl. I enjoyed working with you on that direct mail piece, also.” And while I suppose that’s better than nothing, I enjoy it much more when I can say sincerely, “You’re a good person, Fred. I’m glad we work together.”

Of course, I then find myself wondering why I never complimented that particular person during the course of the year.

So in order to safeguard against career
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ending miscues at the holiday party—and at the same time, to help encourage appropriate behavior throughout the rest of the year—I have two suggestions. Use these to guide your actions during the holiday season and throughout the year:

1. If it seems inappropriate in July, it’s probably still inappropriate in December. White beards and Santa suits notwithstanding, you should keep your hands out of your coworker’s stockings.

2. If it seems appropriate during the holidays, you should probably try doing it throughout the rest of the year. I appreciate it when someone tells me at the holiday party that they like working with me. But my best friends are the ones who have a kind word to say in the dog days of July or August.

Follow these two rules of thumb, and you’ll come to be known as a decent and much valued coworker. You’ll also get invited to a lot more holiday parties.