It was a cool autumn day in October, and I had just gotten into my dad’s car after a soccer game against our rival Upper St. Claire. I remember looking at my dad and noticing he was not acting like himself. He is usually a really happy funny guy, but in this particular moment he seemed very somber. I tried talking to him about the game however he seemed distant and distracted. This is when I noticed that he had two identical Nokia phones sitting in the cup holder of his car. Obviously, I thought this was a little strange, and in an effort to make some conversation I asked him why he had two phones. This seemingly simple question set my dad off into an extremely serious mood. He turned to me, drew a deep breath and said, “I split from the agency.” My dad had just left his job and was now putting the entire family’s wellbeing at risk. He had been forced to buy a new phone because his old one was a company possession and had been deactivated. At the time I knew it was serious, but being only fourteen-years-old I do not think I understood the magnitude of the situation. Sure people leave their jobs to start their own businesses all the time, but this case was much more complicated. My dad’s old boss just happened to be his father in-law, my mom’s dad. This broken business partnership would go on to change to the landscape of my family relations forever.
I would arrive at my house to my mom with tears streaming down her face. This was a strange sight to me because I had hardly ever seen my mom full-out crying. She was heartbroken over the breakup, but knew that it had to be done. For years my dad was essential running the company. For years he had tried to get the succession plan written on paper, but my grandpa refused and stalled. My dad also wanted his name attached to the company so it would be called Coyne, Berry Advertising and Public Relations. My grandpa, being the stubborn man that he is, objected to this unless my dad paid him some ridiculous sum of money. My dad had given everything to that company, and in return was being treated horribly. He even took a pay cut to join the agency, and this during a time when money was tight.
I found it somewhat surprising that my grandpa would be so unreasonable about this. As someone who had split from an agency in the past to start his own, I thought he would realize what was at stake. He knew the risks that would be associated with losing my dad, but he continued to hold up a stubborn front. I think this has entirely to do with his personal pride. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man who was able to rise out of the steel environment of 1950s’ Pittsburgh and become very successful. He was the son of Irish immigrants, his dad a steel worker in the mills, and he grew up as a member of the lower class. With hard work, dedication and stubbornness he was able to get himself through college and into the working world. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandpa did not respect my dad as much because they never had to experience that. I think he may have thought my dad was handed too much in life and that he did not know the value of hard work. On the other hand, this is entirely untrue. My dad is the hardest working person I have ever seen. This has been extremely apparent since he has started to run his own business.
Anyways, apparently negotiations had been taking place all that week unbeknownst to me. However, these negotiations only made the whole breakup even uglier as my grandpa threatened to take away the pool membership at his country club, my dad’s car, and access to his condo in Florida. My dad hated how these personal perks, which had nothing to do with business, were brought into the negotiations arena as a ploy to retain him. To this day he still talks about how he believed that was totally unprofessional and classless. My mom is an intelligent and realistic person so she knew she had to stand behind my dad and support him through these trying times. The entire ordeal had to be the roughest on her. It pitted her husband against her father and she had to pick a side. I cannot imagine having to face this situation and knowing that if you pick your spouse, your father may never speak to you again. This would be a terrible dilemma and one that I would do anything to avoid.
I remember her agonizing over making conversation with my grandpa. She would send him emails, and she would nervously wait, anticipating a response. However, this response would never come. Another email would be sent to him, and again to no avail. Now these emails were not her pouring out her soul to my grandpa, but rather random things trying to spark dialogue between the two. One email I believe was a link to some specials on plane tickets to Florida, with a message attached. The message may have read something like this, “Hey dad, I thought you might be interested in this, hope you’re having a good day, love Pam.” A simple message, but more symbolic of the hope she had that they could return to their normal father-daughter relationship of the past. Constantly my mom would be checking her email, waiting for a response of any sort from my grandpa. Like I said before this response never came and it only further scared and saddened my mom. Eventually, she would drop the email approach and try to round up the strength to call him. I can still see her sitting on the kitchen island holding a phone in her shaking hand. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the call or not, and she even asked me for advice on it. I think my advice at the time was to go ahead and do it. I remember her saying that her biggest fear was her dad picking up the phone and saying, “Pammy I never want to talk to you again.” I can only imagine how scary it would be to think that it was a real possibility that your dad would say that to you. I’m sure my dad would never say anything like that to me, but if he did I would be absolutely heartbroken and devastated. After a while, my mom did gather the courage to make that call. She headed up to her room, filled with the fear of rejection, to do the thing that she had agonized about for so long. We were all nervous for this moment because my grandpa has a history of overreacting and severing ties. At one point he had cut my Uncle John out of the will and said he did not want anything to do with him. This was in response to him leaving the church, joining a new church or as we describe it a “cult”, and marrying a woman from that church. In time, my grandpa would apologize and go on to love my uncle’s wife and daughter.
I know that my mom thinks my Uncle John was his favorite kid. He was the only son my grandpa had; he was the middle child between my mom, the oldest, and my Aunt Kate, the baby. From day one his life had been laid out for him. He was to follow in my grandpa’s footsteps by attending Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and then entering into advertising. This was the path that he followed despite having the grades to go anywhere, and having football scholarships to other schools. This made my uncle the golden child, and put him above my mom and her sister. This was extremely apparent in the college process. While my uncle was being pushed to Duquesne, my mom was being pushed away from college. My grandpa wanted her become a secretary, and enter into the working world at age eighteen, and for a year she tried this. Eventually realizing that being a secretary wasn’t for her, my mom went to college and graduated in three years. Having enjoyed college and the whole educational system my mom wanted to go and get her master’s degree. However, she was told by her dad that going to graduate school was a ridiculous idea, and only for people who are trying to avoid working by become what he called “professional students.” This is weird considering only a year later my uncle would enroll in a graduate program at Northwestern University with my grandpa’s full blessing and advice. This is just one of the stories my mom has given me to support the idea that my grandpa played favorites, and was pretty obvious about it.
Anyways, back to my mom and her phone call that had the potential to strengthen or crumble her relationship with her dad. My dad and I sat in the kitchen anxious about what was going to happen and how the conversation would go. I think we both came to the conclusion that my grandpa would not even answer, and my mom would be forced to further agonize about the future. Time began to pass as five minutes ticked off the clock, then ten, then twenty, and then thirty minutes. We weren’t sure what was going on. Maybe this long conversation was a good thing; perhaps problems were being hammered out. On the other hand, maybe the conversation had gone horribly and my mom was sitting upstairs on her bed crying. By the time she finally emerged, my dad and I had moved to the family room where we were watching a game. When she entered the room we could immediately tell that she was happy and that the conversation had gone well. Not because she had a smile on her face, but just by her presence, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Apparently they just talked it out, and while my grandpa was still extremely upset and angry he didn’t have any plans of disowning her. I know if he would have severed ties it would have killed both my mom and my dad. My mom would have been upset and traumatized for obvious reasons, but my dad would also have been heartbroken. He would’ve had to live with the fact that his wife’s dad was no longer talking to her because of him. Knowing my dad, this would have weighed heavily on him forever.
My dad’s perspective on the whole situation was that it was something that needed to be done. He had been wronged and it was time for him to take action, the time for diplomacy was up. My dad wanted to avoid the split, but at the same time he saw it as an opportunity. It would allow him to run his own business, and to be his own boss. I can also remember him telling me not to worry about money because he felt like he could make more on his own. Being the money obsessed kid I was back then, this appeased me and helped me feel better about what had taken place.
To make the whole thing more complicated, my dad planned on taking a lot of his clients with him. He had his eyes on ten potential clients to take with him, and I think he ended up with nine of them when it was all said and done. This added business aspect of the dispute would only further strain the already fragile existence of the relationship between my immediate family and my grandpa.
The biggest question surrounding the fallout was what would happen with our family outside of the business atmosphere. Would we still have Easter brunch together? Would my grandpa be there to celebrate our birthdays? Overtime the answers to these questions would surface. At first it was as if my grandpa conveniently scheduled vacations to avoid family get-togethers. That first Christmas he was in Florida and when it came time for my brother’s birthday in January, he was in Hawaii. Was this coincidence or was it pre-planned? To the day I still don’t know but I suspect it was premeditated. As time would go on, things would become more and more normal, or at least more normal for everyone in my family outside of my dad. There is definitely still tension between the two. It is an unspoken tension, but one that we can all notice.
This tension has never been more apparent than the first time he came over our house following the split. It was sometime in May and we had gotten together for either my birthday or Mother’s Day. My grandpa was the last one to arrive and you could sense the anxiety surging through the house waiting for him to show up. When he did it was a little weird at first for me. I wasn’t quite sure how to treat him. Should I act like I always had, or should I be holding a grudge against him for what had happened? After I began talking to him about sports and whatnot, the weirdness began to evaporate and was replaced with normalcy. For my dad and my grandpa I’m sure it was strange and probably very awkward seeing each other for the first time. These were two people who in the past had been very close. For fifteen years they had spent time together on almost a daily basis, mainly at work but also on the golf course and at family dinners. They had spent uncountable hours driving around the Northeast on business trips together, and they had even taken boating classes together so that my grandpa could buy a boat and make them co-captains. Now the two were barely speaking, consumed by the tension resulting from the breakup. The only words that I can remember them speaking were simple greetings. Perhaps a, “Hello Bill” from my grandpa, followed by a, “How’s it going Jack” from my dad. The rest of their time that afternoon was spent avoiding each other and talking to other people.
Over the years and with time a lot of this awkwardness and weirdness would pass, and things would start to return to normal. After golfing my grandpa would sometimes randomly stop by our house unannounced and hang out for a while. I loved when he would do this because it was a sign of the world returning to normalcy after all those years of strangeness. My grandpa also started to do things with my brothers and I again. He would take my middle brother and I golfing. He even entered himself and my brother, Sean, in a father-offspring golf tournament. As for me, he gave me his hat that was signed by former Pittsburgh Penguins Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. This meant a lot to me because it was something that I had always wanted from the time when I was little. When I was younger I had even laid claim to it upon his death. As horrible as that sounds, that’s how much I wanted that hat. I know my grandpa gets kind of a bad rap in this story, but he is actually a really good guy. He is someone who I respect and truly care about. Not having him in my life at all was definitely strange and uncomfortable. Moving forward I hope to develop a stronger relationship with him, one that could withstand another chain of events like this. Fortunately the situation has progressed so far that there have even been talks between my dad and my grandpa about uniting their businesses. This would be amazing and something that I pull for everyday. From the entire ordeal I have gained a sense of optimism. I now believe that when it comes to my family, time can heal all wounds.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
big post
It was a cool Autumn day in October, and I had just gotten into my dad’s car after a soccer game against our rival Upper St. Claire. I remember looking at my dad and noticing he was not acting like himself. He is usually a really happy funny guy, but in this particular moment he seemed very somber. I tried talking to him about the game however he seemed distant and distracted. This is when I noticed that he had two identical Nokia phones sitting in the cup holder of his car. Obviously, I thought this was a little strange, and in an effort to make some conversation I asked him why he had two phones. This seemingly simple question set my dad off into an extremely serious mood. He turned to me, drew a deep breath and said, “I split from the agency.” My dad had just left his job and was now putting the entire family’s wellbeing at risk. At the time I knew it was serious, but being only fourteen-years-old I do not think I understood the magnitude of the situation. Sure people leave their jobs to start their own businesses all the time, but this case was much more complicated. My dad’s old boss just happened to be his father in-law, my mom’s dad. This broken business partnership would go on to change to the landscape of my family relations forever.
I would arrive at my house to my mom with tears streaming down her face. This was a strange sight to me because I had hardly ever seen my mom full-out crying. She was heartbroken over the breakup, but knew that it had to be done. For years my dad was essential running the company. For years he had tried to get the succession plan written on paper, but my grandpa refused and stalled. My dad also wanted his name attached to the company so it would be called Coyne, Berry Advertising and Public Relations. My grandpa, being the stubborn man that he is, objected to this unless my dad paid him some ridiculous sum of money.
I found it somewhat surprising that my grandpa would be so unreasonable about this. As someone who had split from an agency in the past to start his own, I thought he would realize what was at stake. He knew the risks that would be associated with losing my dad, but he continued to hold up a stubborn front. I think this has entirely to do with his personal pride. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man who was able to rise out of the steel environment of 1950s’ Pittsburgh and become very successful. He was the son of Irish immigrants, his dad a steel worker in the mills, and he grew up as a member of the lower class. With hard work, dedication and stubbornness he was able to get himself through college and into the working world. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandpa did not respect my dad as much because they never had to experience that. I think he may have thought my dad was handed too much in life and that he did not know the value of hard work. On the other hand, this is entirely untrue. My dad is the hardest working person I have ever seen. This has been extremely apparent since he has started to run his own business.
Anyways, apparently negotiations had been taking place all that week unbeknownst to me. However, these negotiations only made the whole breakup even uglier as my grandpa threatened to take away the pool membership at his country club, my dad’s car, and access to his condo in Florida. My mom is an intelligent and realistic person so she knew she had to stand behind my dad and support him through these trying times. The entire ordeal had to be the roughest on her. It pitted her husband against her father and she had to pick a side. I cannot imagine having to face this situation and knowing that if you pick your spouse, your father may never speak to you again. This would be a terrible situation and one that I would do anything to avoid.
I remember her agonizing over making conversation with my grandpa. She would send him emails, and she would nervously wait, anticipating a response. However, this response would never come. Another email would be sent to him, and again to no avail. Now these emails were not her pouring out her soul to my grandpa, but rather random things trying to spark dialogue between the two. One email I believe was a link to some specials on plane tickets to Florida, with a message attached. The message may have read something like this, “Hey dad, I thought you might be interested in this, hope you’re having a good day, love Pam.” A simple message, but more symbolic of the hope she had that they could return to their normal father-daughter relationship of the past. Constantly my mom would be checking her email, waiting for a response of any sort from my grandpa. Like I said before this response never came and it only further scared and saddened my mom. Eventually, she would drop the email approach and try to round up the strength to call him. I can still see her sitting on the kitchen island holding a phone in her shaking hand. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the call or not, and she even asked me for advice on it. I think my advice at the time was to go ahead and do it. I remember her saying that her biggest fear was her dad picking up the phone and saying, “Pammy I never want to talk to you again.” I can only imagine how scary it would be to think that it was a real possibility that your dad would say that to you. I’m sure my dad would never say anything like that to me, but if he did I would be absolutely heartbroken and devastated. After a while, my mom did gather the courage to make that call. She headed up to her room, filled with the fear of rejection, to do the thing that she had agonized about for so long. We were all nervous for this moment because my grandpa has a history of overreacting and severing ties. At one point he had cut my Uncle John out of the will and said he did not want anything to do with him. This was in response to him leaving the church, joining a new church or as we describe it a “cult”, and marrying a woman from that church. In time, my grandpa would apologize and go on to love my uncle’s wife and daughter. I have actually always believed that his favorite grandchild was my Uncle John’s daughter, Dylan. I think this comes from the feeling a got when I was younger and he used to talk about her. He would get so excited when telling the stories about visiting her, and going to Disney Land with her. It made me wonder if he shared that same excitement about me and my brother whenever he was over there, I suspected not. I’m sure this was just me overreacting, and I bet he was just excited because she was his newest grandchild, his first girl grandchild and he rarely got to see her because she lived in California. On the other hand, I don’t think it would be unlike my grandpa to play favorites.
I know that my mom thinks my Uncle John was his favorite kid. He was the only son my grandpa had; he was the middle child between my mom, the oldest, and my Aunt Kate, the baby. From day one his life had been laid out for him. He was to follow in my grandpa’s footsteps by attending Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and then entering into advertising. This was the path that he followed despite having the grades to go anywhere, and having football scholarships to other schools. This made my uncle the golden child, and put him above my mom and her sister. This was extremely apparent in the college process. While my uncle was being pushed to Duquesne, my mom was being pushed away from college. My grandpa wanted her become a secretary, and enter into the working world at age eighteen, and for a year she tried this. Eventually realizing that being a secretary wasn’t for her, my mom went to college and graduated in three years. Having enjoyed college and the whole educational system my mom wanted to go and get her master’s degree. However, she was told by her dad that going to graduate school was a ridiculous idea, and only for people who are trying to avoid working by become what he called “professional students.” This is weird considering only a year later my uncle would enroll in a graduate program at Northwestern University with my grandpa’s full blessing and advice. This just one of the stories my mom has given me to support the idea that my grandpa played favorites, and was pretty obvious about it.
Anyways, back to my mom and her phone call that had the potential to strengthen or crumble her relationship with her dad. My dad and I sat in the kitchen anxious about what was going to happen and how the conversation would go. I think we both came to the conclusion that my grandpa would not even answer, and my mom would be forced to further agonize about the future. Time began to pass as five minutes ticked off the clock, then ten, then twenty, and then thirty minutes. We weren’t sure what was going on. Maybe this long conversation was a good thing, perhaps problems were being hammered out. On the other hand, maybe the conversation had gone horribly and my mom was sitting upstairs on her bed crying. By the time she finally emerged, my dad and I had moved to the family room where we were watching a game. When she entered the room we could immediately tell that she was happy and that the conversation had gone well. Not because she had a smile on her face, but just by her presence, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Apparently they just talked it out, and while my grandpa was still extremely upset and angry he didn’t have any plans of disowning her. I know if he would have severed ties it would have killed both my mom and my dad. My mom would have been upset and traumatized for obvious reasons, but my dad would also have been heartbroken. He would’ve had to live with the fact that his wife’s dad was no longer talking to her because of him. Knowing my dad, this would have weighed heavily on him forever.
To make the whole thing more complicated, my dad planned on taking a lot of his clients with him. He had his eyes on ten potential clients to take with him, and I think he ended up with nine of them when it was all said and done. This added business aspect of the dispute would only further strain the already fragile existence of the relationship between my immediate family and my grandpa.
The biggest question surrounding the fallout was what would happen with our family outside of the business atmosphere. Would we still have Easter brunch together? Would my grandpa be there to celebrate our birthdays? Overtime the answers to these questions would surface. At first it was as if my grandpa conveniently scheduled vacations to avoid family get-togethers. That first Christmas he was in Florida and when it came time for my brother’s birthday in January, he was in Hawaii. Was this coincidence or was it pre-planned? To the day I still don’t know but I suspect it was premeditated. As time would go on, things would become more and more normal, or at least more normal for everyone in my family outside of my dad. There is definitely still tension between the two. It is an unspoken tension, but one that we can all notice. This tension has never been more apparent than the first time he came over our house following the split. It was sometime in May and we had gotten together for either my birthday or Mother’s Day. My grandpa was the last one to arrive and you could sense the anxiety surging through the house waiting for him to show up. When he did it was a little weird at first for me, but eventually the weirdness evaporated and was replaced with normalcy. For my dad and my grandpa I’m sure it was strange if not very awkward. These were two people who in the past had been very close. For fifteen years they had spent time together on almost a daily basis, mainly at work but also on the golf course and at family dinners. They had spent uncountable hours driving around the Northeast on business trips together, and they had even taken boating classes together so that my grandpa could buy a boat and make them co-captains. Now the two were barely speaking, consumed by the tension resulting from the breakup. The only words that I can remember them speaking were simple greetings. The rest of their time that afternoon was spent avoiding each other and talking to other people.
Over the years and with time a lot of this awkwardness and weirdness would pass, and things would start to return to normal. After golfing he would sometimes randomly stop by our house unannounced and hang out for a while. I loved when he would do this because it was a sign of the world returning to normalcy after all those years of strangeness. My grandpa also started to do things with my brothers and I again. He would take my middle brother and I golfing. He even entered himself and my brother, Sean, in a father-offspring golf tournament. As for me, he gave me his hat that was signed by the former Penguins Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. This meant a lot to me because it was something that I had always wanted from the time when I was little. When I was younger I had even laid claim to it upon his death. As horrible as that is, that’s how much I wanted that hat. The situation has progressed so far that there have even been talks between my dad and my grandpa about uniting their businesses. This would be amazing and something that I pull for everyday. From the entire ordeal I have learned that time can heal all wounds no matter how deep the cut especially when family is involved.
I would arrive at my house to my mom with tears streaming down her face. This was a strange sight to me because I had hardly ever seen my mom full-out crying. She was heartbroken over the breakup, but knew that it had to be done. For years my dad was essential running the company. For years he had tried to get the succession plan written on paper, but my grandpa refused and stalled. My dad also wanted his name attached to the company so it would be called Coyne, Berry Advertising and Public Relations. My grandpa, being the stubborn man that he is, objected to this unless my dad paid him some ridiculous sum of money.
I found it somewhat surprising that my grandpa would be so unreasonable about this. As someone who had split from an agency in the past to start his own, I thought he would realize what was at stake. He knew the risks that would be associated with losing my dad, but he continued to hold up a stubborn front. I think this has entirely to do with his personal pride. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man who was able to rise out of the steel environment of 1950s’ Pittsburgh and become very successful. He was the son of Irish immigrants, his dad a steel worker in the mills, and he grew up as a member of the lower class. With hard work, dedication and stubbornness he was able to get himself through college and into the working world. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandpa did not respect my dad as much because they never had to experience that. I think he may have thought my dad was handed too much in life and that he did not know the value of hard work. On the other hand, this is entirely untrue. My dad is the hardest working person I have ever seen. This has been extremely apparent since he has started to run his own business.
Anyways, apparently negotiations had been taking place all that week unbeknownst to me. However, these negotiations only made the whole breakup even uglier as my grandpa threatened to take away the pool membership at his country club, my dad’s car, and access to his condo in Florida. My mom is an intelligent and realistic person so she knew she had to stand behind my dad and support him through these trying times. The entire ordeal had to be the roughest on her. It pitted her husband against her father and she had to pick a side. I cannot imagine having to face this situation and knowing that if you pick your spouse, your father may never speak to you again. This would be a terrible situation and one that I would do anything to avoid.
I remember her agonizing over making conversation with my grandpa. She would send him emails, and she would nervously wait, anticipating a response. However, this response would never come. Another email would be sent to him, and again to no avail. Now these emails were not her pouring out her soul to my grandpa, but rather random things trying to spark dialogue between the two. One email I believe was a link to some specials on plane tickets to Florida, with a message attached. The message may have read something like this, “Hey dad, I thought you might be interested in this, hope you’re having a good day, love Pam.” A simple message, but more symbolic of the hope she had that they could return to their normal father-daughter relationship of the past. Constantly my mom would be checking her email, waiting for a response of any sort from my grandpa. Like I said before this response never came and it only further scared and saddened my mom. Eventually, she would drop the email approach and try to round up the strength to call him. I can still see her sitting on the kitchen island holding a phone in her shaking hand. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the call or not, and she even asked me for advice on it. I think my advice at the time was to go ahead and do it. I remember her saying that her biggest fear was her dad picking up the phone and saying, “Pammy I never want to talk to you again.” I can only imagine how scary it would be to think that it was a real possibility that your dad would say that to you. I’m sure my dad would never say anything like that to me, but if he did I would be absolutely heartbroken and devastated. After a while, my mom did gather the courage to make that call. She headed up to her room, filled with the fear of rejection, to do the thing that she had agonized about for so long. We were all nervous for this moment because my grandpa has a history of overreacting and severing ties. At one point he had cut my Uncle John out of the will and said he did not want anything to do with him. This was in response to him leaving the church, joining a new church or as we describe it a “cult”, and marrying a woman from that church. In time, my grandpa would apologize and go on to love my uncle’s wife and daughter. I have actually always believed that his favorite grandchild was my Uncle John’s daughter, Dylan. I think this comes from the feeling a got when I was younger and he used to talk about her. He would get so excited when telling the stories about visiting her, and going to Disney Land with her. It made me wonder if he shared that same excitement about me and my brother whenever he was over there, I suspected not. I’m sure this was just me overreacting, and I bet he was just excited because she was his newest grandchild, his first girl grandchild and he rarely got to see her because she lived in California. On the other hand, I don’t think it would be unlike my grandpa to play favorites.
I know that my mom thinks my Uncle John was his favorite kid. He was the only son my grandpa had; he was the middle child between my mom, the oldest, and my Aunt Kate, the baby. From day one his life had been laid out for him. He was to follow in my grandpa’s footsteps by attending Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and then entering into advertising. This was the path that he followed despite having the grades to go anywhere, and having football scholarships to other schools. This made my uncle the golden child, and put him above my mom and her sister. This was extremely apparent in the college process. While my uncle was being pushed to Duquesne, my mom was being pushed away from college. My grandpa wanted her become a secretary, and enter into the working world at age eighteen, and for a year she tried this. Eventually realizing that being a secretary wasn’t for her, my mom went to college and graduated in three years. Having enjoyed college and the whole educational system my mom wanted to go and get her master’s degree. However, she was told by her dad that going to graduate school was a ridiculous idea, and only for people who are trying to avoid working by become what he called “professional students.” This is weird considering only a year later my uncle would enroll in a graduate program at Northwestern University with my grandpa’s full blessing and advice. This just one of the stories my mom has given me to support the idea that my grandpa played favorites, and was pretty obvious about it.
Anyways, back to my mom and her phone call that had the potential to strengthen or crumble her relationship with her dad. My dad and I sat in the kitchen anxious about what was going to happen and how the conversation would go. I think we both came to the conclusion that my grandpa would not even answer, and my mom would be forced to further agonize about the future. Time began to pass as five minutes ticked off the clock, then ten, then twenty, and then thirty minutes. We weren’t sure what was going on. Maybe this long conversation was a good thing, perhaps problems were being hammered out. On the other hand, maybe the conversation had gone horribly and my mom was sitting upstairs on her bed crying. By the time she finally emerged, my dad and I had moved to the family room where we were watching a game. When she entered the room we could immediately tell that she was happy and that the conversation had gone well. Not because she had a smile on her face, but just by her presence, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Apparently they just talked it out, and while my grandpa was still extremely upset and angry he didn’t have any plans of disowning her. I know if he would have severed ties it would have killed both my mom and my dad. My mom would have been upset and traumatized for obvious reasons, but my dad would also have been heartbroken. He would’ve had to live with the fact that his wife’s dad was no longer talking to her because of him. Knowing my dad, this would have weighed heavily on him forever.
To make the whole thing more complicated, my dad planned on taking a lot of his clients with him. He had his eyes on ten potential clients to take with him, and I think he ended up with nine of them when it was all said and done. This added business aspect of the dispute would only further strain the already fragile existence of the relationship between my immediate family and my grandpa.
The biggest question surrounding the fallout was what would happen with our family outside of the business atmosphere. Would we still have Easter brunch together? Would my grandpa be there to celebrate our birthdays? Overtime the answers to these questions would surface. At first it was as if my grandpa conveniently scheduled vacations to avoid family get-togethers. That first Christmas he was in Florida and when it came time for my brother’s birthday in January, he was in Hawaii. Was this coincidence or was it pre-planned? To the day I still don’t know but I suspect it was premeditated. As time would go on, things would become more and more normal, or at least more normal for everyone in my family outside of my dad. There is definitely still tension between the two. It is an unspoken tension, but one that we can all notice. This tension has never been more apparent than the first time he came over our house following the split. It was sometime in May and we had gotten together for either my birthday or Mother’s Day. My grandpa was the last one to arrive and you could sense the anxiety surging through the house waiting for him to show up. When he did it was a little weird at first for me, but eventually the weirdness evaporated and was replaced with normalcy. For my dad and my grandpa I’m sure it was strange if not very awkward. These were two people who in the past had been very close. For fifteen years they had spent time together on almost a daily basis, mainly at work but also on the golf course and at family dinners. They had spent uncountable hours driving around the Northeast on business trips together, and they had even taken boating classes together so that my grandpa could buy a boat and make them co-captains. Now the two were barely speaking, consumed by the tension resulting from the breakup. The only words that I can remember them speaking were simple greetings. The rest of their time that afternoon was spent avoiding each other and talking to other people.
Over the years and with time a lot of this awkwardness and weirdness would pass, and things would start to return to normal. After golfing he would sometimes randomly stop by our house unannounced and hang out for a while. I loved when he would do this because it was a sign of the world returning to normalcy after all those years of strangeness. My grandpa also started to do things with my brothers and I again. He would take my middle brother and I golfing. He even entered himself and my brother, Sean, in a father-offspring golf tournament. As for me, he gave me his hat that was signed by the former Penguins Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. This meant a lot to me because it was something that I had always wanted from the time when I was little. When I was younger I had even laid claim to it upon his death. As horrible as that is, that’s how much I wanted that hat. The situation has progressed so far that there have even been talks between my dad and my grandpa about uniting their businesses. This would be amazing and something that I pull for everyday. From the entire ordeal I have learned that time can heal all wounds no matter how deep the cut especially when family is involved.
Monday, February 23, 2009
1200 word post
It was a cool Autumn day in October, and I had just gotten into my dad’s car after a soccer game against our rival Upper St. Claire. I remember looking at my dad and noticing he was not acting like himself. He is usually a really happy funny guy, but in this particular moment he seemed very somber. I tried talking to him about the game however he seemed distant and distracted. This is when I noticed that he had two identical Nokia phones sitting in the cup holder of his car. Obviously, I thought this was a little strange, and in an effort to make some conversation I asked him why he had two phones. This seemingly simple question set my dad off into an extremely serious mood. He turned to me, drew a deep breath and said, “I split from the agency.” My dad had just left his job and was now putting the entire family’s wellbeing at risk. At the time I knew it was serious, but being only fourteen-years-old I do not think I understood the magnitude of the situation. Sure people leave their jobs to start their own businesses all the time, but this case was much more complicated. My dad’s old boss just happened to be his father-in-law, my mom’s dad. This broken business partnership would go on to change to the landscape of my family relations forever.
I would arrive at my house to my mom with tears streaming down her face. This was a strange sight to me because I had hardly ever seen my mom full-out crying. She was heartbroken over the breakup, but knew that it had to be done. For years my dad was essential running the company. For years he had tried to get the succession plan written on paper, but my grandpa refused and stalled. My dad also wanted his name attached to the company so it would be called Coyne, Berry Advertising and Public Relations. My grandpa being the stubborn man that he is objected to this unless my dad paid him some ridiculous sum of money.
I found it somewhat surprising that my grandpa would be so unreasonable about this. As someone who had split from an agency in the past to start his own, I thought he would realize what was at stake. He knew the risks that would be associated with losing my dad, but he continued to hold up a stubborn front. I think this has entirely to do with his personal pride. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man who was able to rise out of the steel environment of 1950s’ Pittsburgh and become very successful. He was the son of Irish immigrants, his dad a steel worker in the mills, and he grew up as a member of the lower class. With hard work, dedication and stubbornness he was able to get himself through college and into the working world. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandpa did not respect my dad as much because they never had to experience that. I think he may have thought my dad was handed too much in life and that he did not know the value of hard work. On the other hand, this is entirely untrue. My dad is the hardest working person I have ever seen. This has been extremely apparent since he has started to run his own business.
Anyways, apparently negotiations had been taking place all that week unbeknownst to me. However, these negotiations only made the whole breakup even uglier as my grandpa threatened to take away country club memberships, my dad’s car, and access to his condo in Florida. My mom is an intelligent and realistic person so she knew she had to stand behind my dad and support him through these trying times. The entire ordeal had to be the roughest on her. It pitted her husband against her father and she had to pick a side. I cannot imagine having to face this situation and knowing that if you pick your spouse, your father may never speak to you again. This would be a terrible situation and one that I would do anything to avoid. To make the whole thing more complicated, my dad planned on taking a lot of his clients with him. He had his eyes on ten potential clients to take with him, and I think he ended up with nine of them when it was all said and done. This added business aspect of the dispute would only further strain the already fragile existence of the relationship between my immediate family and my grandpa.
The biggest question surrounding the fallout was what would happen with our family outside of the business atmosphere. Would we still have Easter brunch together? Would my grandpa be there to celebrate our birthdays? Overtime the answers to these questions would surface. At first it was as if my grandpa conveniently scheduled vacations to avoid family get-togethers. That first Christmas he was in Florida and when it came time for my birthday in May, he was in Hawaii. Was this coincidence or was it pre-planned? To the day I still don’t know but I suspect it was premeditated. As time would go on, things would be come more and more normal, or at least more normal for everyone in my family outside of my dad. There is definitely still tension between the two. It is an unspoken tension, but one that we can all notice. My grandpa started to do things with my brothers and I again. He would take my middle brother and I golfing. He even entered himself and my brother, Sean, in a father-offspring golf tournament. As for me, he gave me his hat that was signed by Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. This meant a lot to me because it was something that I had always wanted from the time when I was little. When I was younger I had even laid claim to it upon his death. As horrible as that is, that’s how much I wanted that hat. Sadly this peace was short lived. A couple of months ago during break the feud erupted again. Once again, business got in the way of personal relationships. Hopefully, this riff in the relations will be resolved, and things can get back on track once again.
This personal dispute is just one of the conflicts that has taken place within my family. Differences in personalities, beliefs, and personal taste have all lead to some memorable fights in the past. Some of these are funny to look back on while others are side reminders of what could have been. In the extended version of this post, I want to dive deeper into some of these family conflicts.
I would arrive at my house to my mom with tears streaming down her face. This was a strange sight to me because I had hardly ever seen my mom full-out crying. She was heartbroken over the breakup, but knew that it had to be done. For years my dad was essential running the company. For years he had tried to get the succession plan written on paper, but my grandpa refused and stalled. My dad also wanted his name attached to the company so it would be called Coyne, Berry Advertising and Public Relations. My grandpa being the stubborn man that he is objected to this unless my dad paid him some ridiculous sum of money.
I found it somewhat surprising that my grandpa would be so unreasonable about this. As someone who had split from an agency in the past to start his own, I thought he would realize what was at stake. He knew the risks that would be associated with losing my dad, but he continued to hold up a stubborn front. I think this has entirely to do with his personal pride. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man who was able to rise out of the steel environment of 1950s’ Pittsburgh and become very successful. He was the son of Irish immigrants, his dad a steel worker in the mills, and he grew up as a member of the lower class. With hard work, dedication and stubbornness he was able to get himself through college and into the working world. I have a sneaking suspicion that my grandpa did not respect my dad as much because they never had to experience that. I think he may have thought my dad was handed too much in life and that he did not know the value of hard work. On the other hand, this is entirely untrue. My dad is the hardest working person I have ever seen. This has been extremely apparent since he has started to run his own business.
Anyways, apparently negotiations had been taking place all that week unbeknownst to me. However, these negotiations only made the whole breakup even uglier as my grandpa threatened to take away country club memberships, my dad’s car, and access to his condo in Florida. My mom is an intelligent and realistic person so she knew she had to stand behind my dad and support him through these trying times. The entire ordeal had to be the roughest on her. It pitted her husband against her father and she had to pick a side. I cannot imagine having to face this situation and knowing that if you pick your spouse, your father may never speak to you again. This would be a terrible situation and one that I would do anything to avoid. To make the whole thing more complicated, my dad planned on taking a lot of his clients with him. He had his eyes on ten potential clients to take with him, and I think he ended up with nine of them when it was all said and done. This added business aspect of the dispute would only further strain the already fragile existence of the relationship between my immediate family and my grandpa.
The biggest question surrounding the fallout was what would happen with our family outside of the business atmosphere. Would we still have Easter brunch together? Would my grandpa be there to celebrate our birthdays? Overtime the answers to these questions would surface. At first it was as if my grandpa conveniently scheduled vacations to avoid family get-togethers. That first Christmas he was in Florida and when it came time for my birthday in May, he was in Hawaii. Was this coincidence or was it pre-planned? To the day I still don’t know but I suspect it was premeditated. As time would go on, things would be come more and more normal, or at least more normal for everyone in my family outside of my dad. There is definitely still tension between the two. It is an unspoken tension, but one that we can all notice. My grandpa started to do things with my brothers and I again. He would take my middle brother and I golfing. He even entered himself and my brother, Sean, in a father-offspring golf tournament. As for me, he gave me his hat that was signed by Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. This meant a lot to me because it was something that I had always wanted from the time when I was little. When I was younger I had even laid claim to it upon his death. As horrible as that is, that’s how much I wanted that hat. Sadly this peace was short lived. A couple of months ago during break the feud erupted again. Once again, business got in the way of personal relationships. Hopefully, this riff in the relations will be resolved, and things can get back on track once again.
This personal dispute is just one of the conflicts that has taken place within my family. Differences in personalities, beliefs, and personal taste have all lead to some memorable fights in the past. Some of these are funny to look back on while others are side reminders of what could have been. In the extended version of this post, I want to dive deeper into some of these family conflicts.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Running part 2
After reading this second section of Running in the Family, I feel like a change in the style of writing took place. The first section seemed to be more about stories about his relatives that had been past through his family. Often these stories were humorous and entertaining. However in this second section, it seemed to me that Ondaatje really changed the direction of where this book was going. Some of these chapters had him in it, but we still didn’t find out anything about him. To me this is becoming a little bit frustrating. I still do not know anything about him, and we are already halfway through the book. Also I thought that the random poems contained through out these chapters were kind of strange. I think it took away from the message and the flow of the book in my opinion. Maybe if you enjoy poetry and analyzing it this would probably add to the effect of the whole thing. As for me, I really do not enjoy reading poetry, and especially do not like analyzing it. So I found these poems to be boring and a distraction from the book.
The one chapter that I did really enjoy was the last one of the section. I thought that it shed light on to what was happening in the country. It talked about the child soldiers and how they were attempting to take over the country. This showed me why he probably left the country in the first place. Apparently there was a lot of turmoil going on and his parents probably wanted to get him out of Sri Lanka, and make sure he did not join the child army. This part of the book made me stop and think how lucky we all are to live in America. We do not have to worry about these threats to our security and way of life. Overall I hope the book starts to back track to the original style of the first section.
The one chapter that I did really enjoy was the last one of the section. I thought that it shed light on to what was happening in the country. It talked about the child soldiers and how they were attempting to take over the country. This showed me why he probably left the country in the first place. Apparently there was a lot of turmoil going on and his parents probably wanted to get him out of Sri Lanka, and make sure he did not join the child army. This part of the book made me stop and think how lucky we all are to live in America. We do not have to worry about these threats to our security and way of life. Overall I hope the book starts to back track to the original style of the first section.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Running in the Family
When I first started to read Running in the Family, I was initially confused. I did not know where he was or what was going on. Eventually, I began to figure it out, and the book started to get a lot better. What really stuck out to me was how incredibly random these essays are. The one essay entitled Honeymoon had nothing to do with anything or a Honeymoon. I think I actually enjoy this unpredictable style of the author's writing. He only spends a short time on each story. So if I don't like a particular story, or I am bored by something, I know that it will be over soon. However, thus far the majority of these essays are very interesting. He seems to have a pretty crazy family with a lot of stories to tell. My favorite of these so far was that of his father and his experiences. The part about him stealing three years of Oxford tuition and using it to live the high life in England was really entertaining. Another thing that really stood out to me was the daily lives of these people. I am curious as to how they made there money so that they could live these lives. They just take off and leave for the summer to the northern part of the country. How can they just do this. I have been assuming that these are all prominent people in society who have large inheritances or something. During the days it seems like all they do is hang out and drink. They go to horse races and gamble all day long, and when they are not doing that it seems like they are swimming or dancing. This makes me think of how big of a role that dance seems to play in their lives. The author has already mentioned dancing numerous times. There is dancing in the morning, dancing and the afternoon, and dancing at night. I bet this is a huge part of the Southeast Asian culture. Overall, I am looking forward to reading more of this book.
Monday, February 9, 2009
900 word post
Fathers, Sons and Brothers author Brett Lott uses great detail in his writing to create powerful imagery. This is paramount to his success as a writer. Some may doubt that such minor details could be generated on an event that took place decades ago. On the other hand, I believe that these details are genuine and not just made up for the sake of the story.
When something really has an impact on your life, you are more likely to remember it. In Brett Lott's case he seems to remember every single detail about it. For example on page 147 he writes, "a johnboat lying upside-down in a side yard, its flat bottom and squared-off ends in sharp contrast to the soft jasmine tendrils snaking up a trellis beside the house; a row of crab nets hung from eaves of a carriagehouse; a tree fort high in the fork of an oak, up the trunk a crooked row of two-by-four pieces nailed by a child's hand." This paints an amazing picture, one which I can actually see with my own eyes. I suppose the question with this passage is could Lott actually remember all of those details and be able to put it on paper so perfectly after so much time has passed. I would argue yes, this is a realistic scenario. The drive to Wadmalaw seems to have had a huge impact on his life. We know this from the following passage, "Though she does not know it yet, the view form here is the most beautiful gift I can remember Melanie giving me, and already I'm lining up words in my head to give back to her once we drive back home.... words that will amount, I know already, only to a meager translation of all I've seen" (149). This quote tells me a lot about the author. First, I think it helps me understand his entire purpose for writing this memoir. He is obviously better at writing his words and thoughts down than actually saying them. I believe that this is contrary to what we talked about in class. In class we said that he was almost wasting his time writing this because he would never be able to capture what he saw and felt. I feel like he did capture his surroundings and his feelings through the words and details that he used. After reading this, I would bet that his wife, Melanie, now understands how great of a gift she gave him. Second, I believe that this is testament to the fact that these details are genuine. Why would he make up details about a story that seems so insignificant to us? If he was trying to impress us with his writing and detailed stories, he would probably apply them to a cool story. Maybe something about a fight he was in or something crazy that happened to him. Not this story about a simple drive through an isolated island. What I am getting at is that making up details, especially in the passage I selected, would serve very little purpose.
Another thing that Brett Lott does well is recall quotes of what people said. Some may argue he remembers them too well, but I believe that the quotes he used in the memoir were very significant to his life. These quotes taught him life lessons, created bonds between two people and reminded him of the past. A quote coming from Uncle Lynn helps illustrate my point, " Only through concentrated effort... can one achieve one's goals. Sowing wild oats should be one of your goals" (page 56). It is obvious why this would stick out to Brett. At the time it was probably very awkward, but this awkwardness also made it very memorable. The quote also defines Brett's relationship with his Uncle Lynn. Lynn never had that father-son relationship so he fills this void by making these kind of statements to Brett. A few sentences later Lott writes, "He loved to use words, I came to see during that week, and articulated each one so that it sat by itself for a fraction of an instant between us before the next one arrived." This shows how the previous quote had an impact on Brett Lott. Through hearing his uncle talk, he learned how to use words. Lott has applied this lesson on words to his writing. I get that same kind of feeling described when reading his work. With all of these factors working for him, how could he not precisely remember all of these quotes. It is not just in the last quote where there are so many reasons for him to remember it, but in every quote of the memoir. I have gone threw a lot of the book looking for some irrelevant quotes, quotes that there is no way he could possibly remember. So far I have not been able to find any. All of the ones I have come across are either about significant moments in his life or more recent memories. An additional example can be found on page 49. Lott quotes one of his coworkers, Red, as saying, "Seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents... Now how the hell am I suppose to live off this?" Like many of the other quotes in this book this played a significant role in his life. This is the point in his life where Lott realized that work was work and serious business. It was not all about just making money for the movies or saving up for a bike, it was a matter of living and providing. This event also put everything into perspective for him. On the next page he explains this by saying, "This wasn't fun, but a job. How you lived."
Through evaluating the above sources I have determined that Brett Lott has the ability to remember specific details about the past. He is able to do this with extreme clarity and detail. I believe that this detail and clarity is genuine and not created for the sake of the story.
When something really has an impact on your life, you are more likely to remember it. In Brett Lott's case he seems to remember every single detail about it. For example on page 147 he writes, "a johnboat lying upside-down in a side yard, its flat bottom and squared-off ends in sharp contrast to the soft jasmine tendrils snaking up a trellis beside the house; a row of crab nets hung from eaves of a carriagehouse; a tree fort high in the fork of an oak, up the trunk a crooked row of two-by-four pieces nailed by a child's hand." This paints an amazing picture, one which I can actually see with my own eyes. I suppose the question with this passage is could Lott actually remember all of those details and be able to put it on paper so perfectly after so much time has passed. I would argue yes, this is a realistic scenario. The drive to Wadmalaw seems to have had a huge impact on his life. We know this from the following passage, "Though she does not know it yet, the view form here is the most beautiful gift I can remember Melanie giving me, and already I'm lining up words in my head to give back to her once we drive back home.... words that will amount, I know already, only to a meager translation of all I've seen" (149). This quote tells me a lot about the author. First, I think it helps me understand his entire purpose for writing this memoir. He is obviously better at writing his words and thoughts down than actually saying them. I believe that this is contrary to what we talked about in class. In class we said that he was almost wasting his time writing this because he would never be able to capture what he saw and felt. I feel like he did capture his surroundings and his feelings through the words and details that he used. After reading this, I would bet that his wife, Melanie, now understands how great of a gift she gave him. Second, I believe that this is testament to the fact that these details are genuine. Why would he make up details about a story that seems so insignificant to us? If he was trying to impress us with his writing and detailed stories, he would probably apply them to a cool story. Maybe something about a fight he was in or something crazy that happened to him. Not this story about a simple drive through an isolated island. What I am getting at is that making up details, especially in the passage I selected, would serve very little purpose.
Another thing that Brett Lott does well is recall quotes of what people said. Some may argue he remembers them too well, but I believe that the quotes he used in the memoir were very significant to his life. These quotes taught him life lessons, created bonds between two people and reminded him of the past. A quote coming from Uncle Lynn helps illustrate my point, " Only through concentrated effort... can one achieve one's goals. Sowing wild oats should be one of your goals" (page 56). It is obvious why this would stick out to Brett. At the time it was probably very awkward, but this awkwardness also made it very memorable. The quote also defines Brett's relationship with his Uncle Lynn. Lynn never had that father-son relationship so he fills this void by making these kind of statements to Brett. A few sentences later Lott writes, "He loved to use words, I came to see during that week, and articulated each one so that it sat by itself for a fraction of an instant between us before the next one arrived." This shows how the previous quote had an impact on Brett Lott. Through hearing his uncle talk, he learned how to use words. Lott has applied this lesson on words to his writing. I get that same kind of feeling described when reading his work. With all of these factors working for him, how could he not precisely remember all of these quotes. It is not just in the last quote where there are so many reasons for him to remember it, but in every quote of the memoir. I have gone threw a lot of the book looking for some irrelevant quotes, quotes that there is no way he could possibly remember. So far I have not been able to find any. All of the ones I have come across are either about significant moments in his life or more recent memories. An additional example can be found on page 49. Lott quotes one of his coworkers, Red, as saying, "Seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents... Now how the hell am I suppose to live off this?" Like many of the other quotes in this book this played a significant role in his life. This is the point in his life where Lott realized that work was work and serious business. It was not all about just making money for the movies or saving up for a bike, it was a matter of living and providing. This event also put everything into perspective for him. On the next page he explains this by saying, "This wasn't fun, but a job. How you lived."
Through evaluating the above sources I have determined that Brett Lott has the ability to remember specific details about the past. He is able to do this with extreme clarity and detail. I believe that this detail and clarity is genuine and not created for the sake of the story.
FSB post
I enjoyed reading this section of Fathers, Sons and Brothers. It really made me think of the way people's lives turn out. In doing so it made me think of where I might end up 5, 10, or 30 years down the road. The way Brett changed what he was doing with his life just over the course of a couple years was amazing. He went from first wanting to be a a forest ranger, to a marine biologist, to a salesman, and finally deciding on being a writer. Right now I am an advertising management major, but don't know if this is what I want to do. Perhaps I am in this major because this is what my dad does (he has his own advertising agency). Even though he has never pushed me into doing this it is where I have ended up so far. Also adding to me being here could be that advertising is a sort of family business. Virtually my entire family has worked in that industry, and it is all I really know as far as business goes. Maybe I ended up at this point as a way of subconsciously making them happy. I don't really believe this but you never know, it could be something that has happened without me noticing. This section also makes me think about where my brothers will end up. Hopefully they don't end up like Brett's brother Brad. Even though he ended up in an alright situation, his life was all in all somewhat of a failure. It's kind of scary how Brad went from being a model citizen to falling down the slippery slope that eventually ended in his going to rehab and dropping out. Like I said earlier, I would hate to see either myself or one of my brothers go down that road. Brett Lott's writing really does a good job of making the reader think about whats going on in their own life.
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