A Little Slack

Three days after dropping Max at orientation, I am headed back to pick him up. Which is when, approaching the George Washington Bridge from Route 4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey, I am pulled over by a police officer.

I’d been driving along the shoulder, trying to skirt the huge traffic jam I’d been sitting in for 40 minutes. Finally, I could see the sign for my exit just ahead. I didn’t see anything wrong with trying to jump to the exit ramp a little early.

After the cop took my license and registration, I watched him walk back to his patrol car in my side view mirror, frustrated — and fuming: Don’t I have enough to deal with? Why, with all that is going on in my life, do I have to get punished? I was just trying to get to my son! Can’t I get a little slack here?

A few minutes later, he walked back. “I’m sorry I have to give you this ticket, Ma’am,” he said. “But we’re out here today, at this spot, because yesterday, a young man was walking here and a motorist pulled into this shoulder and the boy was killed.” He pointed to the pavement where a series of white circles marked where the body had lain.

Oh my God! I gasped. And then, I burst into tears.

The officer stood beside me, silently nodding. Honoring me. Honoring the young man who was killed. Then he handed me my ticket, returned to his car and pulled away, leaving me sitting beside the highway.

I sat there for a long time. Thinking about that boy. Thinking about his mother. Thinking about my own son, waiting for me at the end of this road. I thought about everything I was carrying — the overwhelm and also, the martyrdom. As if every hard thing I was holding — Dad, Max, Mom, the book, the angel column, the money — were a punishment, when really it was just . . . life. This is how it is. This is how it works. Sometimes, life is hard. For everyone.

Sighing, reaching for something to help me feel better, I popped an Abraham-Hicks tape into the cassette player.

As I rejoined the flow of traffic, Abraham told me a story about a bear.

There was a man who lived in the woods. He loved those woods and he’d spent a year building a trail behind his house. He knew bears lived there too, and for a long time they coexisted peacefully. Then one day, jogging his trail, a bear began to chase him.

Being an outdoorsman, he knew his only hope was to turn and face the bear. And so, heart pounding, he stopped. So did the bear. They stared at each other until, after a minute or two, the bear turned and shimmied up a tree.

Greatly relieved, the man turned back to the trail — and broke into a run. The bear took chase again, all the way down to his house.

“The problem,” the man told Abraham, “is that now I am afraid to go back into my own woods. To walk my own trail.”

Abraham said: Well, it’s not your trail — it also belongs to the bear. And the last thing you want to do is trap the bear. Kill the bear. That is not the essence of your question.

Of course. Of course. I don’t want to hurt the bear. I clicked off the tape with tears in my eyes.

My father wasn’t a bear but boy I’d sure been treating him like one. It was true that whenever I'd tried to help him, he'd snap at me. But the truth, I knew, was more complicated than that.

These past few months at Nora’s I’d drawn closer to Dad than I’d been in years. We’d talked — he’d told me all about his life. And though he didn’t often share his feelings, I knew he was scared. He was a frightened old man in a diaper, doing all he can to stay on his feet, to control his own destiny, to maintain — in the face of a daily eroding body — his dignity. That’s what turned him into a bear.

And like the man in the woods, I didn’t want to control the bear. I didn’t want to trap him or hurt him. I wanted to take care of him. If he’d let me. My job, my only job, is to turn and face him. To be willing to tell him the truth. And the truth is, he has to go to a nursing home.

But that is tomorrow, I thought, as I finally arrived at Hofstra. Because the other truth is, my son is waiting for me. Today is about Max. I want to hear about orientation and the classes he signed up for. I want to spend this whole afternoon talking with my son.

Tomorrow, I will tell my father the truth about his situation.

—

This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. The previous chapter, Fire Island, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here.

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