I didn’t get home until just after 2 a.m. Work tends to keep me out late, both at the newspaper and at the diner.
When I parked my car and turned the engine off, I heard an unusual sound in my neighborhood: shouting. The cries were agitated, aggressive and unrelenting.
Though the wiser decision may have been to go inside quickly and close the door – and every naturally ingrained instinct in this vessel of the weaker sex was urging me to do so – the journalist in my decided to follow the noise. Not that I could have escaped it anyway – the whole neighborhood could hear.
To the edge of the hill overlooking the community pool below, I teetered through the dark. The shouts were coming from inside the dark pooled area and trees were blocking much of the view, but I could tell by the shouting that four, possibly five people were in the hot tub area of the deck. They sounded young and they sounded troubled.
I don’t mean troubled as in, “This riffraff is bad for the neighborhood” – though one of my neighbors certainly made his opinion on that clear. What I mean by troubled is that they sounded desperate, in despair, and in such emotional anguish that it was literally boiling over in tears and anger.
Some of them were clearly drunk, I could hear by their slurred speech. I tuned my ear closely from the top of the hill to try to distinguish whether there was any sign of danger. No one seemed to be armed, and except for the occasional sloshing of water indicating that they might be shoving each other around a little, it didn’t sound like there was any physical violence taking place below. Even the pleas from the girls who were with them to stop before the cops showed up did not betray any immediate threats.
So I held my peace for a while longer and waited, watching.
Our quiet neighborhood, mostly asleep – or trying to be – was like a hollow vase in which the cries from the pool bounced around in careening echoes.
This was no gang fight. They weren’t arguing about drugs or territory or some menial offense. No, they were arguing about their grandmother.
Apparently, one thought their grandmother was partial to the other, but that the other did not help her out enough. In shrieks and screams, they argued about who took better care of her, including staying away from the house when necessary. The girls begged and pleaded for them to be quiet, to leave, reassuring them that their grandma loved them all.
One by one, very private personal stories of absence and abuse at the hands of their parents and relatives were screamed in accusation into the cool, indifferent night air.
It broke my heart to listen to, especially when my own home life has been so stark a contrast. I have never doubted that I have been loved. And while the women in my family have been the strong arm of that, having a steady father figure in our home laid the foundation for the people my siblings and I became.
The young men in this pool, their own devastating stories revealed, did not have that kind of father.
The police did eventually show up. Several people had made calls. I had also called when it sounded like they had begun pushing each other more – I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. But then I walked down the hill toward the pool to be nearby when the officers showed up. As a member of the community, and a neighbor to at least one person in that pool, though we had not met formally, and as someone who had made the call, I felt I should see the whole thing through.
The officers quieted things quickly and no one struggled or made a fuss. The night returned to its silent slumber, but my mind was disquieted.
How sad that these young people – my own age, really – had such grief in their hearts.
Really, if you could have heard their cries, your heart would break, too.
My father is not a macho man, despite his background as a decorated swimmer and an Army airborne officer in special forces. He is more well-read than most people you’ll meet. He’s a hard worker and a good conversationalist and always ready to laugh. He gardens and he plays piano and he builds puzzles. He’s a Renaissance man.
For all these things, I respected him as I grew up, but I loved him simply because he was there. He came home for dinner. He tucked me into bed each night. He let us wave him off to work in our pajamas every morning, looking at each of us with a sober brow as he gave us the daily reminder: “Fear the Lord.”
Loving others is easy because I have seen him do it my entire life in very real, very tangible ways. I know I am not alone in having a great father or father figure in my life. They make a difference, don’t they?
I hope those young men in the pool that night are able to find healing. I hope they are able to do better with their own families. I hope this Father’s Day is not a painful reminder of what they didn’t have but an inspiration to surpass their own experiences. I hope my community can come behind men like these and support them as they try to be better fathers and role models.
I am looking forward to Father’s Day. My dad abhors it – he thinks it’s patronizing – but I cannot not celebrate it because I know how lucky I am to have been raised by a man who acted like one.
