The Worthless Son
Although as a man, the father despaired over his son,
nevertheless, as a father, he loved the youngster. However,
everything the boy did grated against the man’s basic nature.
The father didn’t care for the boy’s personality, attitudes, habits,
friends, activities, choices, or interests. Again and again, the father
had lectured the youth about this or that aspect of the latter’s
wayward style of living, but to no avail -- or, so it seemed to the
father.
As far as the father was concerned, the boy only had one good
quality. The father had never known his son to lie – but, in the
opinion of the father, this one quality was not enough to off-set all of
the other problems which he saw in relation to his son.
The boy always listened to his father without comment and with
equanimity. The youngster believed his father to be a good man, with
considerable wisdom about the world, and, as well, someone who had
a good heart but who, unfortunately, often let his better self get
buried beneath a variety of ideas about how the universe ought to
work.
Whatever was of merit in the father’s words of counsel, the boy
tried to incorporate into his life, as best he could and in his own way.
Whatever the boy believed to be untrue or unfair in those words, he
let go, without resentment.
The boy loved his father, but the youngster also knew that, as a
son, he was a huge disappointment to his dad. His father wanted him
to make something of himself in the world, to be a success, to be
someone of whom the father could be proud.
Instead, there was just an intense anguish concerning the son
which smoldered beneath the father’s exterior, like a ground fire
which lingers in the roots of a forest. From time to time, anger about
the son’s situation would erupt from the father, as some event or set
of circumstances would fuel and fan the smoldering, flickering
flames.
The mother was caught between two worlds. She loved both her
husband and her son, but after many bitter experiences, she had
learned that keeping silence and patience was often the best way to
approach the problem, for no matter what she might say in the boy’s
defense, the father’s disgruntlement in relation to his son was so
strong that his wife’s attempts to sow seeds of empathy for the boy
tended to fall on fallow ground.
As is often the case, the mother knew things about the boy which
the father did not understand and/or appreciate. She also knew her
husband, and when he got in his moods of disparaging the boy,
words formed a very ineffective levee for stemming the flood of her
husband’s tirades.
Wishing to bring peace to the family, and desiring to bring to the
surface the love she knew the boy and his father harbored for one
another, she began thinking about how to resolve the problem in a
way that might, once and for all, put the father’s concerns to rest and
reconcile the two. She considered a number of possibilities and
rejected them due to some difficulty or weakness inherent in those
plans -- problems which weren’t initially apparent but came to light
with a little analysis.
Finally, after several weeks of constant reflection, one plan arose
in her heart that she felt had the best chance to accomplish her
purposes. She would set about implementing the idea tomorrow
afternoon when her husband had finished work and the boy was
back from school.
The next day, when the boy and his father had returned home,
she said: “Son, I was wondering if you would help me out.”
The boy smiled and replied: “Sure, Mom, what do you want?”
“I’m preparing a special dinner for us, and I wanted to give the
meal a festive look. So, would you go out into the fields and collect a
variety of flowers which we can place in vases about the dining
room?”
Her husband, who was reading the paper, shook his head slightly
and rolled his eyes a little as he thought about the problems which his
wife was inviting by asking the boy to do anything. This look of
contempt was hidden from the boy by the paper, but his wife noticed
the expression.
She ignored her husband’s attitude, went to a counter top in the
kitchen and selected a large birch bark basket with a handle. She
gave the basket to her son and said: “Don’t be too long. Dinner is
going to be ready soon.”
The boy left on his mission. After their son had left, the father
remarked to his wife: “You know, you’re just asking for trouble.
He’ll find some way to foul things up.
“You should have called me and told me you wanted flowers. I
could have picked some at the florists on the way home.”
“I’m sure you’re right, dear,” she answered, “but, I always feel
that if we give the boy just one more chance, maybe, he will turn
things around and demonstrate his true worth.”
She had a strange smile on her face. Her husband noted the smile
and sighed with a certain amount of exasperation as he often did
whenever his wife acted in a way that seemed to defy reason.
Nevertheless, he looked at her in a loving way and said: “That’s
just one of the many things that I love about you – your capacity for
hope.” And, then, he added with a note of disdain: “Even in hopeless
cases like our son,” as he returned to his paper with its reports about
the real world.
Several hours passed, and the boy had not returned. The meal
had been growing cold waiting for the youngster.
The coldness of the meal was in contrast to the hotness of the
father. For the last hour, he had been criticizing, in turn, first his son,
for being unreliable, and, then, his wife, for being too soft with the
boy.
Just as the father was on a roll with respect to berating his son,
the boy came into the kitchen through the back porch. The basket in
his hands was empty.
The father saw the basket, gave his wife an ‘I told you so’ look,
and exploded in anger. “Why haven’t you done as your mother
asked? Can’t you do anything -- even the simplest of tasks --
correctly?”
The boy was in tears -- not just because his father was angry
with him, but because he had, most likely, deeply disappointed his
mother. He ran to his room and threw himself on his bed, sobbing
into the pillow.
His mother indicated to her husband to come with her to the
boy’s room. Reluctantly, he accompanied his wife, glaring all the
way.
When they got to the boy’s room, his mother sat down on the
edge of the bed, rubbed his back and gently said: “Son, what
happened? Why didn’t you get the flowers I asked for.”
The boy turned over, still crying, and hugged his mother. “I’m
sorry Mom. I really did try.”
“So, what happened?” demanded his father.
The youngster looked toward his father over his mother’s
shoulder while the boy was hugging her. The boy appeared to be
thinking how best to respond to his father’s demand.
The mother gave the boy a warm squeeze and stood up, going to
her husband’s side. Both of the parents were looking at the boy,
waiting for an explanation – the father with impatience and the
mother with empathy.
The boy looked at both at them and, then, hung his head. As he
lowered his head, he said: “Whenever I tried to pick a flower, I could
hear it singing the praises of Divinity in its own unique way. I could
not bear to interrupt the flower’s remembrance of God, so, I left that
flower alone.
“The same thing happened again and again. And, I must confess,
I found their singing so beautiful and enchanting that I kept joining
the flowers in their songs of praise.
“All of this delayed me. When I realized the sun was about to set,
I knew I would not only be late for dinner, but I would have no
flowers to bring back, and my fears about how I would be received
here caused me to hesitate returning for a while longer – until I
understood that further delay would only make a bad case, worse,
and, so, I came home.”
The boy’s mother looked over at her husband, not knowing quite
what to expect. There were tears in his eyes.
He went to his son, hugged him, and said: “Can you ever forgive
a stupid, old man who does not recognize a treasure of great value
even when it appears before him every day of his life.”
The boy’s heart leapt with joy at his father’s words and he said:
“Father, I love you.”
As he looked over his father’s shoulder, he could see his mother’s
face, radiant with happiness and admiration for a son who had not
disappointed her in the least - quite the contrary. Dinner was delayed
for a while longer since the three had much to talk about.
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