by Jim Sano
“It sounds like a vicious cycle. As you get further from who you really are, you feel more anxiety, so you double down on building those protective walls and escapes. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen myself that way, but I know a number of people who work for me that might fit the bill.”
Tom smiled. “The reality is that we all do it to some extent. We all have some amount of emotional insecurity that creates a sense of self-rejection or worthlessness. That feeling of emptiness or shame is highly uncomfortable, so instead of tolerating some level of discomfort to deal with it or find out the truth, we find ourselves constantly avoiding it. It’s really the avoidance that causes the most problems. We get busy and look for distractions from our inner voices, but we know, deep inside, something is calling us to something more, something outside of ourselves that can help us see who we really are.” Tom glanced up at the large crucifix hanging over the altar and said, “It took me a long time to find out we weren’t meant to face it alone. I felt like a man stuck in darkness and no one who passed by could get me out until someone jumped in that pit and said, ‘I have been here before, and I can help you find the way out.’ Jesus joined us in our suffering to help us find the way out.”
“Ask me how I feel about my father.”
Tom turned in his seat, towards David. “Okay, how do you feel about your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to see him?”
David sighed. “I really don’t know.”
“David, I don’t think you should feel bad about that or think it is abnormal.”
“What? I don’t know if I even want to see my own father and that’s not abnormal?”
“Think about it. You haven’t seen him in person since you were eight, and you just learned he’s alive. On top of that, the effects of your tragedy were experienced through all your senses over a very long time and that doesn’t just go away. The perceived ‘truths’ you may have built your whole life upon would take anyone possibly years to unlearn and replace with the actual truth. No, I don’t think it’s abnormal, even if you subconsciously hoped you never heard the news.”
David stared straight ahead. “Huh.”
“Think of the feelings that could come up that might feel overwhelming, outside the controls you’ve put in place.”
David rubbed his chin as he thought about what Tom was saying.
“Are you afraid that you might not recognize or even reject your dad when you see him? After all, your only memory is when he was thirty years younger through the eyes of a young boy. Maybe you fear that prison has changed him, or that you’re not sure who the real Gianni Fidele is? Or maybe −”
“Or maybe what?”
“Nothing. I was just rattling.”
“Tom, you never just rattle. What were you about to say?”
Tom focused on the altar. “I was thinking about the question you asked me when we talked about Corlie. You were on the mark with your instincts. What I was wondering is, do you think you might be afraid your dad would reject you? Loss of trust or abandonment can feel very much like a form of rejection to a child. Rejection of who you are inside, instead of the public self you created to protect that real self—that now very vulnerable self?”
As David processed Tom’s question, he felt as if there were suddenly holes in his carefully built armored self. He hadn’t consciously thought of it that way, but the question seemed to pierce through his armor like an arrow shot from the bow of Odysseus himself. Tom’s pause lasted just long enough to let the feeling of fear sink into David’s very being.
“I have no idea if this is the feeling going on deep inside, but knowing you, I can see no way that your father would feel anything but love and pride towards you. The important thing to remember is that you are going to be tempted to pull back and desperately avoid the discomfort. I have found it’s important to be able to tolerate some level of discomfort to move forward, to truly relieve the anxiety and to find peace in your true self.”
After sitting for a few minutes in the welcomed silence of the church, David said, “ I don’t think I want to run anymore. I don’t think it would be humanly possible to busy myself enough to quiet down the voices in my head now, and I don’t think I could be at peace by avoiding what I need to do. I think I’m going to take a walk and think a bit if you don’t mind.”
Tom stood up with David and accompanied him to the back and out onto the quiet street in front of St. Anthony’s. He patted David on the back and told him to take care as David walked and reflected until he found himself on the streets of his old neighborhood in the North End. He hadn’t realized until he saw the masked superheroes, ghosts, and other characters, that it was Halloween night.
David was thinking how hard it would be to tell who hid behind some of these more elaborate costumes on both the children trick-or-treating and the adults out to party for the evening. How long had he been hiding his own self behind his expensive suits, respected position, and protective wealth? How many people had he hurt along the way, ensuring that no one got too close a peek behind his mask? Would his father reject who he truly was or who he had become? Would he be proud of him? His father had nothing, not even his freedom, yet Angelo still had a deep, abiding respect for him.
Suddenly everything David had built up to protect himself seemed meaningless. Would his father be proud of his salary, his houses, his car, his club, his position, or his golf score? Thirty years and these are the fruits he had to share with a man that measured things by a very different yardstick and had a very different idea of what a man was.
David walked by the pub Mo Diavolo once owned. The neon River Styx Bar sign was no longer there, and it was now a restaurant called Pisano’s Café. Mo had built and left nothing that lasted but an old story and years of pain for many families.
David now realized what was bothering him so much and started back home.
Chapter 36
David sat at his kitchen table and started to write out a list of everything he thought was important in life and another list of where he actually spent his time. He stared down at the paper for a while, looking at what was essentially his life and how he defined himself. He repeated the exercise, guessing what his father would put down as important and where he spent his time, and then placed the two lists side by side. Outside of being a hard worker, he saw little if any overlap. He sat tapping his fingers on the page and then got up to walk off some nervous energy before going into the den and picking up the second box of letters. Every letter from his father included something about how much he loved and missed him, but he was thinking his father didn’t know him as an adult and might indeed feel very differently about the man he had become.
Disappointment seemed a certainty. His dad talked about a faith-sharing group he had begun, which had grown over the years. He described what a gift it was to see Angelo grow over time, the peace it brought him, and how Angelo was able to do the same for him. He hoped David had such a friend to trust and grow with. David was happy that his father had someone over all these years in prison.
The next day, after work, he hustled over to St. Anthony’s, where he heard folk music coming from an open basement door under the church. After a few songs, David could hear students saying goodbye and heading off in different directions, their laughing drifting into the dark with them. David walked down the stairs to the basement, where a few people stood packing up their guitars and saying goodbye to Tom. Tom caught sight of David at the entrance and waved him over to introduce him to the young vocalist. David told him he enjoyed his music before stepping away with Tom.
Tom guided him to chairs in the far corner. “So, how is it going today?”
“Self-made David isn’t doing well, but that may not be a bad thing. Do you have plans for the rest of the evening?”
Tom said sof
tly, “If you don’t mind Luke’s company as well. We haven’t eaten yet and we’re going to go for some Chinese food at a place just over on Mass Ave.”
They walked a few blocks over to an old Chinese establishment called Ling’s Bamboo House and sat in one of the old, high-backed, U-shaped booths. Luke ordered a mock Mai Tai, while David and Tom both had a Shancheng beer to toast themselves. Luke joined in with, “The three struggling philosophers are back together again.”
David smirked at the notion of him being a philosopher. “I agree with the struggling part.”
They clinked glasses in agreement.
Tom said, “David, I hope you don’t mind, but I was telling Luke about the news of your dad being alive after all this time. I didn’t share anything else but wanted you to know that.”
“No problem. Luke, your brother’s right. My family suffered a tragedy when I was a boy that took the life of my brother, Jimmy, and sentenced my father to the electric chair for killing him and a police officer. Until this week, I didn’t know he was innocent and still alive in Virginia.”
Luke stared open-mouthed at David. “Holy crap! I can’t imagine how devastated you must’ve been over all these years. What are you feeling?”
Tom’s mug hit the table. “Luke!”
“It’s okay, Tom,” David said with a wave of his hand. “I’m trying to figure out that question myself.”
Luke leaned back in his seat. “I’m sorry, David. I’ve never heard anything like this. Wow. How old were you when this happened?”
“I was eight, and I thought there was nobody like my father. I admired and loved him, and in one act I couldn’t comprehend, I lost all respect, all trust, and all love for him. My family changed forever. Each one of us changed in almost every way imaginable. Despite that, I thought I was doing okay until some guy driving an old, broken-down Honda dropped his basketball, which happened to roll in my direction.”
Tom, studying his menu, kiddingly acted as if he wasn’t listening.
“When I told your brother, I had mixed feelings about the news of my father, wondering if I could really trust him, forgive him or even love him. Your brother asked me if I might be more afraid that it would be my father who would reject me. It challenged me to think past my initial instincts and fears. I had to think if he’d be proud of me and what would he be proud of.”
Luke blurted, “I can’t believe you asked him that.”
“I think he asked me that because he cared about me like a true friend. I realized it wasn’t an easy question to ask, but the right one to help me stop avoiding it.”
Tom looked at David with affection.
“So, I wrote down all the things in life I thought were important, and then where I actually spent my time and energy. Trying to be humble here, but I’m fairly successful at my work. I have made more money than I can probably spend, own two expensive homes, own part of a club, have the sports car I dreamed of as a kid, can date most women I pursue, enjoy expensive restaurants, golf clubs, and entertainment events. Why wouldn’t a father be incredibly proud of that success? Then I started thinking about what my father cared most about and what he thought a man was. I realized none of those things would be on his list. I don’t really know him outside of vague memories as a young boy, but I experienced a man who put his faith and family first, long before he thought of himself. He worked hard, but as a means to take care of his family and not as an end for himself. Listening to Angelo and reading my father’s letters, I saw a man who doesn’t complain or think the world owes him anything but looks to how he can continue to serve others. I also saw—”
David cleared his throat and collected himself. “I saw a man who never gave up on me even though I so easily gave up on him. If I saw him right now, I couldn’t give him back a man whom he’d be proud of because I’m not proud of who I am.”
After a thoughtful pause, Luke said, “David, I don’t know you very well, and I don’t know your dad at all, but I think he’d understand and think you are being too hard on yourself. How could he not be proud of you?”
David rubbed his forehead. “I appreciate that, Luke, but I’m self-focused. As a matter of fact, I’m all I can think about, as your brother would say.” He sighed. “I left my wife and kids. The minute I get close to someone special, I pull back and hurt her, knowing full well when I start any relationship that that’s the plan. I have more money and stuff than one person needs, and I do little good with it outside of my own entertainment. I buried my own mother this summer and felt nothing. I have a brother and a sister I rarely speak, and a daughter and son I barely know. I spent thirty years hating my father when it should’ve been the other way around. No, I don’t think I’m being too hard on myself at all, Luke.”
He shifted his attention to Tom. “I want to see my father, but I want to see him as a man he can be proud of, someone he can be glad he never gave up on. I need to be humble here and ask you for advice on how I can begin to be that kind of man.”
“I can only tell you what I know, but your path can and will be different.”
“I trust your wisdom and need all the help I can get.”
Tom glanced at his brother and back to David. “All right. First of all, don’t do this because you think your father will love you or love you more because of it. If he’s anything like the man Angelo describes, his love isn’t conditional. It’s not based on what you do or don’t do, or what you accomplish or don’t accomplish. He loves you because you are his son, period.
“Secondly, I think you’ve already taken the biggest step to move outside of your personal pride. Our culture isn’t big on humility, and it’s what we need. Pride is a man’s most difficult hurdle and assumes you need no one else, including God, to become a self-made man. The problem is this self-made man isn’t the one God created and not your true self. We remain disconnected from our role in God’s plan for us, which is something much greater with purpose and meaning. I don’t claim to have all the answers you need, but your question tonight says you’re doing what too few men do—being courageous enough to get past your ego and pride, to think about who you really are as a man made for others.”
David was listening with purpose. “You know, I don’t think that would’ve resonated with me several weeks back, but I think I get what you mean. I understand you can't do this overnight, but what else do you think?”
“The next one is tough.”
David glanced at Luke and realized from the look of concentration on his face that Luke was seriously absorbing their conversation.
“The greatest trap in life is self-rejection, and greatest failure is to not love who you are and what you are. Each of us has been created, not as just an ‘average man’ in the eyes of the world, but as a beloved and precious man in the eyes of God. Most people don’t see their self-worth through God’s eyes. If they did, they’d know He is the only source that can satisfy our desire to know we are worthy of love. So, we look for validation in places that can never satisfy. We look desperately for others’ approval and validation, but it doesn’t satisfy. We look to popularity, success, power, wealth, pleasure, or busyness to fill the empty void, but it only makes us more distant from ourselves and more anxious. Instead of pursuing fewer of those things that were never made to work, we tend to pursue them even harder. As young children, we look to our parents’ gaze to tell us they can see in us the goodness and beauty God put there. In that gaze, we see that we are very much worth loving, but even that only leads us to look to the only source that can satisfy, God himself.”
Luke asked, “Tom, do you really think most people suffer from self-rejection?”
“I think we all do somewhat, and the more we buy into the world’s view of what’s important, the more we feel as if we are less. I don’t think most people do this on purpose. They are trying to fill a gnawing feeling, an empty void, or to avoid a fear that may not be their fault and only their subconscious might understand. Suffering the loss of trust and experiencing abandon
ment as a young child would shake anyone’s sense of self-worth.”
David asked, “How do you start to believe in yourself?”
With a half-grin, Tom said, “Good question. I’m working on this myself, but I have to keep reminding myself life isn’t about trying to make ourselves worthy of God’s love but to recognize he has already made us worthy. In knowing that, we are called to live our lives with the dignity of who we are, beloved sons and daughters of God.”
Luke put down his drink. “Are you saying we don’t have to do anything or even be good people?”
“Not exactly. I’m saying we shouldn’t do it to earn love but because we are loved. God can only love us, and love is something you don’t keep, but give away, so we are called to give that love away to others and to trust fully in God’s plan and love for us. It’s the point where you begin to realize your life isn’t actually about you, and you begin to be truly free to be yourself.
“David, I’m sorry for not getting directly to your question, but the essence of being a man is all about self-giving love, of which Jesus gave us the greatest example. You can’t really give something you don’t have to give. A man needs to have a sense of his true self and know where it comes from, to be able to give himself to another. If we live an empty, self-absorbed life, we aren’t giving ourselves made in the image of God. Love is the greatest gift God gave us. Not the feeling of love, but the act of love, of truly willing the good for another. If someone threw a hand grenade into a room with innocent women and children, what would a real man do?”
Luke said, “He would throw himself on it and give his life for the others.”
“When people turned their backs on God in sin and selfishness, what did He do?”
