Familyhood (13 page)

We were united in our conviction that when the time came, some nice Home for the Elderly would be getting more paintings of flowers and more chairs that wobble than they could shake a stick at—courtesy of us, the executors of our parents' estate.

On the other extreme, I know people who have lots of money and are convinced that the best thing they can do for their children is to not give it to them. I understand the reasoning; give your children the joy of earning it themselves and, at the same time, spare them the burden of dealing with it. But I notice that surviving children, as a rule, seem to opt for the “please burden me” plan. It's a pain they're willing to endure.

No matter what, there are problems.

Some parents will leave their money to charity, and to the children go only the personal effects. The “heirlooms.” A lovely gesture, for sure. But this can lead to even uglier displays of discontent. “Really? American Cancer Society gets all the dough and we get the Broadway show-tunes records and a ceramic vase? How is that fair?”

Then there's the middle-ground “slow leak” approach: Leave
everything
to the children, but dole it out at such a glacial pace that the “children” are sixty-five before they get their hands on any real money, and by that point, they're well into planning their own estate and seeing how they can tease
their
children.

The more I consider it, though, the more I think this may be the way to go: delay the decision and make it the kids' problem. In the case of my sweet but anxious son, it would at the very least give him something to talk about in that speech he's so eager to deliver at my funeral.

I'M NOT SURE
exactly how I left it with him, by the way. I think I told him he needn't worry about funerals anytime soon, but if there's something he felt he wanted to say, why not say it
now
, so I could enjoy it? (Or defend myself, as the case may be.)

And as far as his invitation for me to speak at
his
funeral, same deal; whatever flowery, glowing sentiments I might want to impart, I'm going to share them now while we can both enjoy them, together. Everything that's great about him, I'm going to tell him today and tomorrow and every day as those things spring to mind. There's no gain in saving them; they're meant to be given away.

And same goes for the material goods, I've decided. Give them all away now.

Which is why every morning, I give each of my children a glowing compliment, a check for $45, and some knickknack from my parents' house that I never knew what to do with. Let
them
figure it out.

Castle Walls

I
came home
one day to find some people in my house I never saw before. Two women and a kid. Eating and frolicking, laughing and casually putting some stuff into bags.

It turned out the kid had been over at the house playing with my son, his mother was there now to pick him up (it was his stuff she had been packing up), and the other woman . . . I'm still not sure. Their cousin, maybe? I don't know—but she was with them. My wife came in from the other room and explained the whole thing to me.

So while I was relieved they weren't, as I'd first feared, a marauding band of remarkably cocky prowlers, and had in fact been granted legal access to my home, I've got to be honest: I still wasn't thrilled with the whole thing.

IN DAYS OF OLD,
kings built castles. They'd secure themselves and their families behind the strongest, thickest, highest, most impenetrable walls they could build, then put soldiers up on top to be
extra
safe.

Even this wasn't enough. They'd also build a moat around the perimeter of the castle, and inside the big wall they'd erect still
more
walls; a series of ever smaller concentric walled circles, surrounding the central, walled residential quarters—generally consisting of the royal bedrooms, the royal TV room/den area, and a small kitchenette.

Should any undesirables from the outside world manage to elude the guards on the walls and then get past the crocodiles, eels, and dragons of the moat, the castle family would fall back and lock themselves behind the next set of walls. At this point, the hope (though rarely realized) was that upon arriving at the third or fourth set of walls, the intruders would screech to a halt, slap their foreheads, and then—embarrassed for having been so oblivious to the fact that they were unwelcome—turn and leave of their own volition and sense of propriety, leaving the king and queen and royal offspring safe and undisturbed.

Hence the expression “A man's home is his castle.”

TODAY, NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE
live in castles, but the theory remains the same. A condo or an apartment can be a castle too. So can a tent, or a yurt. Or even a nastily worded “Keep Away” sign taped to a big cardboard box. You just need some sort of marker; some delineation that says, “
This
side is me and mine,
that
side is you and yours.” Your castle is what protects and keeps the people you love
inside
, while keeping everything bad—rain, sleet, snow, invading armies, bears—
outside
.

And here's the best part: it's
your
castle, so
you
get to decide who gets in and who doesn't. It's like the greatest clubhouse in the world.

Personally, I don't like too many people in my castle. You know how they say, “There's safety in numbers”? Well, to me, it's a very
small
number that provides that safety.

It's not always easy to know who it is we should be keeping out. So really, the safest thing you can do, I say, is expect the worst and refuse entry to everyone not closely tied to you biologically. My family has rejected this plan as “unworkable.”

So we've broadened our admission policy.

Grandparents? Always welcome. (But let's say for no more than a week at a time, and never grandparents from opposing fiefdoms visiting at the same time.)

Siblings of the king and queen? Absolutely.
Children
of these siblings? Of course.
Our
castle is
your
castle. But boundaries have to be established here too. Castle access, for the most part, should not be open-ended, or scheduled too closely to visitations from
other
outsiders—welcome though they all may be.

Furthermore, it's generally wise to deny or strongly discourage castle access during the heavy-homework days. Or flu season. Or if either the king or queen is “just not up to it” and feels so moved to use his or her highly charged veto powers. (Which, while entirely enforceable, are not to be used casually, as consequences can be ugly—both inside and outside the castle walls.)

But castle visitations are, of course, never limited to just family members. There are countless
friends
of the court. And the friends' children. How about your
children's
friends? And, by extension, the
families
of your children's friends? Let 'em all in, I say! What's a castle for if not to bid welcome to friends, that they may partake in the bounty of your kingdom?

But not
all at the same time
. Their visits too have to be scheduled intelligently. I mean, you can't just let
anybody
into your castle. Because then it stops being a castle and becomes a Starbucks. (And even Starbucks will throw people out now and then—though always with a smile and often with a free cup of coffee.)

Castles have walls and doors for a reason. You've got to use them now and then.

THERE ARE ALL KINDS
of social norms that make castle visits very tricky. Once they've been to your castle, people generally feel the need to reciprocate. And conversely, if other people have invited you into
their
castle, the pressure to have them over to
your
castle becomes profound.

Truth be told, I'd gladly give up visitation rights to pretty much every other castle in the world if it meant I could withdraw invitations to have them over to mine. My wife points out that this makes me seem somewhat unwelcoming, perhaps even a borderline
shut-in
. I don't see it that way. All curmudgeonly and antisocial behavior notwithstanding, there is darn good reason to maintain vigilance when it comes to who and what gets past your castle gates.

Not that I believe marauding armies or bears are circling the castle. Or that visiting friends and loved ones intend us any harm. But that doesn't mean harm can't happen.

Sometimes it's
emotional
harm; grazing slings and arrows of criticism or insult, which can, in fact, be harder to defend against than flaming javelins and hurling cauldrons of hot oil, because these verbal attacks are staged from
within
the castle walls, by people you've already let in. You're unprepared for assault.

“So, uh, Buddy . . . What, did you—put on a little weight?”

“Boy, your kids sure watch a lot of TV.”

“You let him have that much sugar so close to bedtime?”

First of all, who asked you? And second of all, shut up. You have something you want to say? Say it in
your
castle. Don't be bringing your opinions into
my
castle.

I have an old friend I hadn't seen in years visit from out of town. Naturally, he was invited up to the castle. As we sat at my kitchen table enjoying a few hefty mugs of ale, a side of mutton, and some hearty bonhomie, the conversation turned to a movie I had recently worked on and of which I was very proud. I noticed my manor guest grinning.

“What's so funny?” I asked him.

“Oh . . . nothing,” he said. “It's just . . . I have a friend at work. He said in his whole life, he never enjoyed a movie less than yours.
Hated
that movie.”

Okay. I hadn't seen that coming.

“It's funny,” he continued. “He doesn't know you and I are friends.”

Well, first of all, I thought to myself, it's not
that
funny. And second of all, again: use some discretion, you jackass; don't share that with
me
.

Not that his idiot friend at work—or my idiot friend himself—isn't entitled to his opinion; just don't be bringing it inside my castle. Because when a person is inside his own castle, his armor is off; he's vulnerable to attack. The heart is exposed. So if you're a castle guest, embraced in the warmth of the castle keeper's hospitality and open-armed trust, you cannot violate that trust, or you will be attacked in return. Perhaps not a full, armed assault, but a gentle smack in the head isn't out of the question. At bare minimum, you are less likely to be welcomed back to that particular castle.

I'm telling you: once you open those gates, you never know what nasty stuff will come blowing in. It doesn't even have to come from actual visitors. Evil can wend its way in
electronically
. Ever go online and read one too many “readers' comments”? It's not good. You don't want every nutty opinion, every horror story, every repulsive yet hard-to-forget-you-saw-it image getting into your head, your home, your soul. You've got to maintain those lines of demarcation. That's why people remove their shoes before entering the home. It's not about keeping the carpets clean; it's about leaving the outside world outside, and honoring the sanctity of everything inside.

THE OLDER I GET,
the more I find I treasure this sanctity—and relative safety—of my castle. Sometimes, staying home and shutting those doors sure feels like the way to go. But ultimately, we can't do that forever. We need to go out in the world. And we need to bring some of the world back to our home.

So what's a reasonable king to do? You build the best castle you can, but you still have to open those gates. You want your castle to be safe, but not suffocating. Welcoming, but not vulnerable. You want the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. A moat won't cut it. (Plus, my wife has shot down the idea repeatedly.)

What we need is something subtler; a defense more nuanced in its give-and-take. We need a
membrane
. A
semi
-
permeable membrane
, like living cells have. And mitochondria. (Gee, I hope my ninth grade science teacher is reading this.) What we need is
that,
but around our home; a protective outer shield that lets your castle breathe and expand naturally. A delineated perimeter that continually and judiciously admits and rejects, absorbs and expels whatever it must to survive. It lets in warmth, love, support—all things Good—while at the same time protects your family against all things Bad: outside invaders, unsolicited opinions, germs, and, again, bears.

The trick, of course, is having the membrane distinguish Good from Bad, Helpful from Destructive, Dastardly from Perfectly Nice. Bears look like bears, invading armies look like invading armies. But good friends can look a lot like not-such-good friends. Nice cousins look, to the naked eye, very much like cousins who start-out-nice-but-stay-too-long-and-along-the-way-you-learn-some-details-about-their-personal-life-you-wish-you-hadn't. Discerning what's what is not always easy to do.

My solution? Again: get
small
. We've gotten into a custom in my house. Well, not a
custom
per se, but once in a while we . . . Okay, we've done it twice, but I really like it. We do this thing where we huddle up—my wife, my boys, and me—and we put our heads literally together, forehead to forehead to forehead to forehead. We put arms around each other and take a moment to lock in; to remember that this particular, quirky, remarkably imperfect foursome is, in fact, all we have, and all that matters. If all is well inside this huddle, all will be well going forth. Until, of course, it's not. But at such time, we can always re-huddle and once again re-fortify in the solidity of our bonds.

Generally, we stay huddled for about fifteen, twenty seconds, at which point the kids get restless and my wife feels compelled to get on with her day. And to stand up straight.

Me? I could stay in that huddle all day. I don't need a castle any bigger than that. It's the most glorious and empowering fortress I could ever imagine.