ESSAY
Answering a son's questions
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Oct. 9, 1997) -- My father, a Certified Public Accountant, had a makeshift office in the house where I grew up. He would retreat there after dinner, at the end of a long day spent servicing clients at their places of work, continuing to work on accounts late into the night. If his presence among his family was at something of a premium, his presence at his desk in his basement office offered the consolation of constancy and reliability. If he wasn't at the dinner table, you knew where you could find him, at least.
Before I learned irony and became a surly adolescent who mocked my father's workaholic efforts in "the dungeon," as I termed his underground office, I was -- like any young boy -- intrigued by my dad's work. Often in the evenings I would gravitate downstairs, poking around his desk, fiddling with the paper clips, staplers, adding machines, mechanical pencils -- all the tools of his inexplicable trade.
Sooner or later, I would wind up asking him a question about his work or about a related matter. What is the difference between an exemption and a deduction? What is a capital gain? What is the difference between stocks and bonds?
Up to this point, my father might probably not even have raised his head to acknowledge my presence. I can see him lifting his left forefinger telling me to wait a moment, he'll be right with me, and watch as with his right hand he finished reconciling some column or row of numbers, undoubtedly solving some sort of accounting mystery about which to this day I remain totally ignorant.
Soon he would stop what he was doing, put down his pencil, turn around in his chair, invite me to pull another chair up to his desk, and begin to answer my question, in inordinate detail far beyond my understanding and the limits of the attention span of a schoolchild nearing bedtime.
In fact, I can recall struggling to keep my eyes open as the minutes would tick by while he droned on and I secretly hoped that my mother would rescue me by calling downstairs that it was time for me to go to bed. She never did, probably in the mistaken belief that her "boys" were spending "quality time" together -- before there ever was such a notion - - and not wanting to interfere.
After an hour or two, my dad would finally wind down, and I'd thank him for his explanation, say good night, and crawl off to bed, vowing never to ask him anything again. Of course I'd be back in his office just a few evenings later, listening again to another lecture about something I could not possibly have cared less about, interested only in being the focus of his attention, however misspent or misdirected that might have been.
All this came back to me the other evening when my four-year-old son walked into my home office while I was finishing up a newspaper column on deadline. This was a rare intrusion; my children are typically very respectful of my work, so I let my son amble around for a few minutes while I continued to write.
The wiring of my portable CD player caught his attention at first, and he made some remarks about it while tracing the path of the electrical cord to the fully-loaded surge strip located underneath a desk. I gently admonished him not to touch it, then or ever, and he looked elsewhere for something over which to obsess while I continued to focus on my work.
He discovered a dusty cassette tape lying on the floor in a corner, picked it up and asked, "Daddy, is this an old Bob Dylan tape that you don't want any more?" His question betrayed terrific inventiveness and resourcefulness on his part. The resourcefulness lay in grabbing my attention by appealing to my soft-spot for hearing the name "Bob Dylan" tripping off my child's tongue as if he were a family intimate. His invention was in trying to ascertain as indirectly as possible if it would be all right for him to unravel the tape.
At this point, I saw this for what it was: a strategic maneuver to separate me from my work, a form of divide and conquer. I told my son that I had to finish my article, that it was his bedtime anyway, and that he needed to leave my office and I would see him in the morning. Without betraying one iota of disappointment, he said "okay" and "good night," and left me to my work, which I finished in due time.
I spend an inordinate amount of time with my children. Four days a week my wife goes to work and I stay home with the kids. I do this by choice and it is a role I wear with pride, and I would not have it any other way. It makes for a tough work schedule for me, writing mostly in the evenings and on weekends or on days when my wife is home. But for us it seems to provide a sane balance in the insane struggle we all face juggling family and work.
Yet days after I turned away my son's indirect but unmistakable appeal for my attention in the midst of a few stolen moments at my desk, I still am troubled by my response or lack of such. The first words out of his mouth when he came into my office that evening were, "Daddy, I love you so much." My reply, not in so many words, was, "You had me all day, I'm working now, leave me alone and get out."
Years from now, what will my son recall? Will he remember the long days when we did everything together, when we went to the library and the playground, when we played trains, read books, ate snacks and banged on our drums?
Or will he remember that in the evenings, when I was hard at work like my own father used to be, I closed the door between us and didn't let him in? That, unlike my father, I chose my work over answers to his questions -- however long, tedious and boring those might have been?
[This essay originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Oct. 9, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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