Growing up I always thought my mother was a Gestapo agent who somehow snuck through United States customs, learned English and disguised herself as a native born American. Then when I was 8 or 9, I learned the real news about Mom. It was even worse. She was a Yankee! In fact, she came from a long line of ‘em, going back to Connecticut’s founding. And to rub it in even further, her birthday was April 9th, the day Lee offered his sword to Grant at Appomattox.
By 8 or 9, I daresay every kid in Virginia knew about the Yankees and how ill-mannered they were, burning down our houses and stealing anything they could get their money grubbing hands on. I never knew what a “belly-button” was growing up. Pop just referred to that area of the stomach as “where the Yankee shot ya.” All the other kids I knew had such holes in their stomach, so I just assumed the Yankees had shot them too. Then one summer when I was 11 years old, my family took a trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to visit friends. I was stunned to see that all the Yankee children had holes in their stomachs too, and I thought, what mean sons of bitches these Yankees are. They shot their own children!
My Dad had a bigger than life personality. When he walked into a room all the energy flowed directly to him. Mother was no wallflower, but keeping up with the old man’s likeable dynamism was an impossible task. I was one of 4 boys, all left brain oriented regular guys who drank and ate sports. We had our favorite players and teams and virtually every day we’d play hoops, sandlot football, baseball, tennis, etc. Of course, we didn’t play soccer because that’s a Euro-socialist sport developed by Saul Alinsky devotees to destroy America (at some point, we became reconciled that the Confederacy was likely not going to be revived and had thrown our lot in with the United States). Dad was a badass lawyer and businessman, and also a war hero. Mom was a housewife. I just gravitated to Dad because he was a guy. For all you wokesters out there, this might be hard to believe, but I never once, not even for a nanosecond ever thought of becoming a woman. I wanted to be the type of man my dad was. So Mom was a bit overlooked.
The reason I at one time thought my mother might have been a Gestapo Drill Sergeant was she could be a demanding task manager. She had a rule, no fun allowed! She hated us dribbling the basketball and throwing the pigskin through the house. When I broke some 4th century Chinese vase, she got really pissed. I couldn’t understand why she was so mad, I mean it was a perfect no-look behind the back pass, and my dumb ass older brother Wally muffed it. The appropriate response of course would have been to take Wally outside, give him 20 lashes, and instruct him to always expect the pass and to catch the damn ball. Speaking of basketball, I can’t tell you how many University of Virginia basketball games Mother single handedly lost by walking into the den (the tv room) with 2 minutes left and jinxing the outcome of the game.
I think her biggest fear was her four boys growing up to be tobacco spitting hayseeds who made their living entering bass fishing tournaments and distilling moonshine. I was a little like Huck Finn resenting Miss Watson for trying to civilize him. I didn’t like Mother correcting my English, hauling me off to museums, giving me books to read and wanting me to take piano lessons. I wanted to be outside swimming in the river, playing baseball and of course blowing stuff up with dynamite. When I was 12 or 13, she kept offering opportunities to travel abroad. One that I remember was a youth bicycling trip through Europe. Obviously, I rejected these offers because 13 is of course the recognized age to sneak off, drink Boone’s Farm Apple wine and make out with girls.
Well by now I am sure you have surmised that I never did get civilized, but as I matured and became a man, I started noticing my mother more. She was quite a remarkable woman. To this day, 25 years after her death, many people come up to me and tell me what a warm and wonderful person she was. Many women my age tell me that she was their role model. Surprising to me, they thought she was a fashionista and quite hip. No man ever thinks his mother was a “babe,” unless of course he is a weirdo perv member of the Biden clan. But apparently, Mom was a real babe. She was a model in New York. She was an accomplished artist at Parsons School of Design. She also went to what was considered the best woman’s college in the country. She didn’t know who Johnny Unitas or Brooks Robinson was, but she knew all the Roman emperors, all of Henry VIII’s wives and had read every author from the Venerable Bede up through Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck and beyond. She didn’t play around with John Grisham books, she was a serious reader and bibliophile. Funny, once I “rediscovered” her we had much the same tastes in books as well as many other topics. My greatest memory of her is the discussions we had over the books we had read. She was also no wall flower. She once got in Dan Rostenkowski’s face, calling him a crook in front of his cronies at the Cycle and Saddle Club in Chicago. Ha, go Mom! She had guts too. At 24, she quit drinking and formed an AA Chapter back when such things were considered a stigma and something to be hushed up.
As a parent I feel a bit guilty I didn’t know her better growing up, but I also know that it is not unusual for boys to idolize their fathers and girls to have a special connection with their mothers. My brothers and I have no regrets about our childhoods or family. We all feel incredibly lucky to grow up where and when we did and to have great, very loving parents. I am sure if you ask anybody who knows us they will all to a person shake their heads and say “them Smith boys ain’t right in the head.” But for some inexplicable reason, we all get along, and I can’t ever remember having a cross word with any of my ugly, dumb ass, less athletic and much less charming brothers.
All of this longwindedness brings me to the point of my story. “All happy families are alike, but every family is unhappy in its own way (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1878).” Nothing could be more true. If you are a bit estranged from a family member, especially a parent, please forgive them and move on. None of us knows what goes on inside people’s heads or what life events create whatever hurt feelings that cause schisms in families. If you are a bit estranged or not at ease or comfortable with one parent, I am almost sure that that parent loves you beyond measure and longs to be close to you. He/she just has hangups that they can’t control. Ain’t nobody perfect and if you expect perfection you will never have a relationship with anyone. Let it go! Give it all to the big guy. Don’t harbor a grudge or be angry.
Now, I say all this out of experience. My company Chartwell Capital Advisors helps wealthy families manage their wealth. It pains me to no end to see schisms in families, sadly mostly over money. This article is not a solicitation for you to do business with my firm. We handle our clients’ investments; real estate, tax matters, insurance, spending, just about everything. I hate lawyers, even though I am one, but one of the, if not the most effective means of holding your family together is via the right legal instruments and planning. Unfortunately, siblings fight over money. It is sad and depressing, but it is a reality. For example, you want all gifts and inheritances to go swiftly and smoothly. Any hiccups just invite dissention. You likely don’t want anybody to have unfettered control over any money without a means of oversight and timely accountings. Avoid probate. Think through contingencies and contingencies to contingencies. There is a human element to all this. See a lawyer who is not a crook (a difficult task, I know) and not some dry boring as#hole who thinks of you as a number instead of a human with a beating heart. Look for one who knows the personalities of your family, not just the money and the investments. If he doesn’t know, tell him about the brother with the substance abuse problem and/or the spendthrift sister. There are all kinds of fancy advanced planning techniques we do that create tremendous wealth and tax avoidance, but keeping families together is always the paramount concern. I usually incorporate a “love” clause in all trust agreements. Hearing the grantor talk to his children in the first person, telling them how much he loves them and why he devised his estate as he did works wonders to assuage hard feelings.
I always tell our clients, our number one goal is to make sure that all the cousins spend Christmas with one another. Nothing is more important than family.
