Letters to My Son. Kent Nerburn

But do not let them overwhelm you and do not let those who confuse maleness and manhood take your manhood from you. Most of all, do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.

      Be like my father. Be like the generations of nameless men who served as stewards of the age into which they were born and never willingly raised their hands to harm another.

      Measure your greatness by the length of your reach, but also by the gentleness of your touch. For now, the world needs hands that love, not hands that conquer. Let your hands be among them.

       CHAPTER 3

       STRENGTH

      The other day I saw a group of boys pushing against another boy outside a local store. The lone boy was gesturing as if he was going to hit back at his attackers, but you could see he was afraid. The others kept crowding him and taunting him and daring him to strike them. Then they were going to jump on him and beat him. They only needed that first blow to set them loose.

      Finally, an older man walked by and stopped them. The taunters looked at him and skulked away. The lone boy was free, but not safe. His attackers will be waiting for him on another day, in another place.

      I don’t know what caused this confrontation. I’m sure it was nothing important. The wrong word, the wrong action. But from it came a ritual as old as time — boys measuring themselves by their physical strength.

      It’s a sad ritual, and not one to make us proud. Yet, somehow, this notion of physical strength has survived in our biological coding as something significant, and even the best of us feel its shudder deep inside us. It is a residue of our days as hunters and protectors, when our physical prowess was a legitimate measure of our success as men.

      Now it is a caricature of all that we need to be.

      For ages we have lived with this biological imperative by which manhood has been defined as strength — strength to master others, strength to master our emotions, strength to master the world around us.

      Can we lift more, carry more, run faster, work longer than others? Then we are better men.

      Can we subdue another person physically? Then we are stronger men.

      Can we resist tears when we experience joy or sadness? Then we are truly men of strength.

      The world doesn’t need this version of strength anymore. We are not locked in some physics of survival where we must turn force against counterforce in an elemental battle to see who will prevail. We need greatness of spirit more than we need greatness of physical strength.

      Let me tell you two simple stories. Perhaps you will see what I mean.

      Last week I was home alone. I had two tickets to a chamber orchestra concert to be held on Friday night.

      I started calling our friends. Those who might enjoy the concert were busy. Those who might be willing to go didn’t really like classical music.

      The ticket hadn’t cost much — I could have just thrown it away and gone alone. But something kept gnawing at me.

      For most of the morning I avoided the issue. I tried to ignore the ticket that sat innocently in my billfold. By noon it weighed about a thousand pounds.

      Finally, I got in the car and went over to the local nursing home. I went to the nurses’ station on the second floor and found the head nurse. “Is there some resident here who can walk a bit, likes music, and wouldn’t mind going to a concert with a stranger?” I asked.

      The nurses who were standing nearby looked at each other and began discussing various residents. “Edna? Florence? Joe?” After a few minutes they decided that Edna would be the perfect choice. We went to the dining room and asked her. “No, I don’t want to,” she said. She was afraid.

      So we decided on Florence.

      We went to her room. She was sitting in her wheelchair with her hands in her lap. She was probably eighty, almost completely blind, and had heavy orthopedic shoes with straps and four-inch soles and laces up the side.

      “This young man has tickets to a concert tonight, Florence,” the nurse began. “He wants to know if you’d like to go.”

      I laughed at the nurse’s phrasing. “A nursing home is the only place left where I’m likely to be called a young man,” I said.

      Florence turned her heavy glasses toward me. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go. I haven’t had a date for a while.”

      We talked a bit about the concert and the difficulty she might have getting in and out of my car. We set a time when I would pick her up, and I went off about my daily business.

      At seven-thirty I arrived back at the nursing home. Florence was dressed and sitting in her wheelchair in the dark. She had on green cotton gloves and was clutching a purse. I said hello to the nurses and off we went.

      Everything went smoothly. Florence was able to get into my car. The wheelchair fit into the trunk, if just barely. The people in charge of the concert helped me get Florence into the auditorium and stayed with her while I found a place to park.

      Florence decided to stay in her wheelchair during the concert; I had an aisle seat and could stay next to her. Until the lights went down, we talked about people and places we both had in common. While the orchestra was tuning up I read her the concert program — Vivaldi, Bach, Dvorák, and Beethoven.

      Then the music began. For an hour and a half Florence sat silently, staring with empty eyes toward a stage she couldn’t see and listening to music that she had not heard in years. There was a tiny smile on her lips. She never took off her gloves or let go of her purse.

      At the end of the concert, after the applause had died down, she asked if I would get her a copy of the program. “I can’t read it,” she said. “But I’d like to have one anyway.”

      There’s not much more to the story. I took her home. She thanked me. The nurses joked with her and wheeled her down the darkened hall. Her green gloves were resting on her purse, and under her purse, flat on her lap, was the program.

      That’s all. Nothing more.

      Now, the second story.

      One summer when I was just out of high school I worked at a country club with a man named Haines and his son, Calbert. Haines was about sixty and always had a gentle smile on his face. Calbert was in his midtwenties and wore a slicked-up pompadour and tinted glasses. Because they were black they were required to eat downstairs near the boiler room rather than in the employee lunch area upstairs near the kitchen. I used to bring my food down to eat with them.

      “You don’t have to do this,” Haines would say. “You’re not proving nothing.”

      “I’ve got to do it because I don’t think what they are doing is right,” I responded.

      “Suit yourself,” Haines would say. “Can’t do you no harm.”

      Calbert would just smile and shake his head. “You’re just messing yourself up over nothing,” he would say as he pulled out the cribbage board. “Nothing you can do about it.”

      Day by day I would watch Haines and Calbert. I complained to the manager and complained to the other staff. Nothing was changed. Yet, never did I see Haines or Calbert show even the slightest hint of rancor or anger. They just ate their lunch, played cribbage, and went back to work cleaning the men’s locker room and shining shoes.

      At the end of each day they were given a list of shoes that were to be shined and ready to go the next morning. Sometimes when I would go home Haines and Calbert would still be there shining shoes while the laughter of golfers and their families filtered down from the dining room and lounge upstairs.

      At the end of the summer I went off to college, but I continued to visit Haines