In Search of Commiseration

It was already mid-morning, but there I was, still dozily resting in the loft of Doris and Ellwyn’s cliff-top home in Boise. There came an urgent knock on the door, and, previously unannounced, enters Uncle Joyce from Oakes, North Dakota.

Doris and Ellwyn were my in-laws. I was a guest in their home. Laura was off somewhere, maybe shopping with her sisters.

The open second-floor loft, or balcony, sometimes served as a bedroom. Often when we were visiting, “Mom” would assign that area to me and Laura. I was in the lap of luxury there, treated as though I were a royal guest.

We benefitted from a private bath, private library, private sleeping area with a handy refrigerator loaded with soda pop. Mom and Dad of course knew I was upstairs that day, but Uncle Joyce obviously wasn’t aware of my presence.

Uncle Joyce (yes, his real name) was a man with a mission. He had come to the Robinson home seeking commiseration regarding his son, Vernon, who was at that time a resident of Boise.

Uncle Joyce was not happy with Vernon; it would have been difficult to find anybody who was happy with Vernon. He had a frightful lifelong practice of making other people’s money disappear.

The conversation downstairs began so quickly, and Uncle Joyce was so urgent and animated, that I decided to hold still and keep quiet as a church mouse rather than to reveal my presence.

Uncle Joyce was among persons either in or out of the family who had been victimized by Vernon’s various schemes, but this wasn’t the topic of his rancor. He was seeking moral support; misery loves company.

I guess I could have sneaked into the bathroom, I could have started the shower. But for some reason, I stayed put and I listened.

It was a fascinating experience. I couldn’t see Uncle Joyce from my lofty perch, but he sounded so much like my own Dad that it gave me goose bumps. I had an urge to hide under the bed.

The message was ever so slightly different. Dad would have been talking about my hair, or my beard, or my tattered jeans. Uncle Joyce spoke about his son’s lack of interest in spiritual matters.

Uncle Joyce had much the same mission as Dad would have had; he sought to gather his own strength and to enlist family pressure to set his errant son aright.

His approach to any situation including this one was expressed in the vernacular of his protestant Christian faith. His campaign had the same fatal flaw, the same manipulative tone, as my Dad’s.

Spitting out the words, Uncle Joyce said, “If he would just come to Christ. I have told him a thousand times, he needs to come back to Jesus, back to the church.”

Dad would have said, “If he would just get a haircut. And a pair of pants without holes in them. I’ve told him a thousand times, he needs proper grooming and dress to succeed in this world.”

The similarities were astounding. I suspected Uncle Joyce’s motives just as I had always suspected Dad’s motives.

What each man really wanted was control. In truth, coming to Christ or seeing a barber were secondary. Control was the issue.

Their messages used verbiage which was vastly different, and yet the import was the same. They were coming from different cultural backgrounds but they were essentially saying the same thing.

Each of the messages was falling on the deaf ears of the misbehaving adult offspring. Same lack of impact. Same frustrating parental failure.

Vernon wasn’t going to respond to his father any more than I was going to respond to mine.

The manipulative devices of my parents had become so cloying over time that I became an expert at avoidance.

After many years of this, I got so I didn’t mind confrontation – but I’d hold off until it was obvious that aversion and avoidance had failed.

Provoked, I could do some serious retaliatory verbal damage. Provocation, however, never caused me to make any real change in my behavior.

The Bible warns fathers not to provoke their children. (Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6, 4.) My Dad might not have known that – but Uncle Joyce surely should have.

I did want to “get along” with my parents. Yes, after particularly poignant counseling sessions (fights) with the folks, as a last resort, I often tried obedience. A dog can be kicked into obedience. A horse can be whipped into obedience. It’s always an uneasy, temporal obedience.

So just like I tried the haircut thing again and again, Vernon would try “coming to Christ” again and again – to please his father.

It doesn’t work that way.

I still feel no urge whatsoever to go downtown and get a haircut. I gave up barbers in 1967. I have a razor and I could shave, but that idea doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Never has.

I would have had to want a haircut to please Dad. He’s been gone a dozen years, and I still don’t have any ambition to cut my hair.

Laura and I are longtime Sunday-school teachers, so we know firsthand that people will not succeed in coming to the Church, coming to Christ, if they are doing it at someone else’s bidding, under pressure from somebody else.

Grampa can bring little Johnnie to the class, and the boy can sit there and pretend that he is listening and taking it in, but if it isn’t something he wants for himself, it just won’t take.

Years later, Doris told me, “Vernon has been saved again. Saved again . . . again.” Poor Devil.

That particular time, Vernon had been saved while he was incarcerated. Something to do with a widow whose inheritance was missing. Or that one might have been the incident with the camper van that somehow changed ownership.

When he left that day, Uncle Joyce wasn’t real happy with the Robinsons’ response. They told him, kindly but firmly, that Vernon wasn’t likely to heed his father’s words. It had to be Vernon’s idea to change. Joyce departed quickly, unsatisfied, without that moral support he so needed.

He had wanted Doris and Ellwyn to join him in his effort to beat up on Vernon. He didn’t get what he wanted.

What’s a Dad to do?

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Word of the week: Bailiwick. It’s from Middle English, bailie, or bailiff, and wick, village. It means the district within which a bailiff has jurisdiction, hence one’s special field of interest or authority. I can fix your saddle, but it’s not really my bailiwick.