I cried like a baby at the end of Pixar’s Coco. (Although it was definitely not the first Pixar movie that brought me to tears).
If you haven’t watched it, watch it. You’ll laugh, you might cry, and just like the other Pixar movies, it’ll remind you of the important things in life – in this case, family. In the movie, memories of those gone from this world must be passed down through generations in the stories that those that knew them tell. Either ancestors are forgotten forever, or they never die.
So, in commemoration of my own ancestors, I recently recorded an interview with my parents. Credit to Sahil Bloom’s recommendation (he’s definitely also a Coco fan), in which he said that “our time is finite, but we often fail to recognize it until it’s too late.” My parents shared childhood memories that I had never heard, tales of falling in love, life lessons, how they want to be remembered, and more. Now we have these stories in an artifact that we can cherish and revisit, so they never die.
Here’s what I learned:
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it!
My parents met on a Boston Harbor cruise during Senior Week in college. Two weeks later, my dad moved down to New Jersey for work, and so began their long distance relationship. On his first trip back, they had dinner at his parents’ house. Leaving with my mom to spend the night at her apartment, the good Catholic in my grandmother asked “does she have an extra bed?”
The next morning he told his mother that he had no intention of staying with them while home from NJ just so that she could sleep at night. They hugged, and when he left, he couldn’t believe he had the hutzpah to say what he did. The next day, she called him and apologized.
If you prioritize authentic and independent decisions over those made based on what other people think of you, those who love you will eventually understand and accept, even if they don’t at first.
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it! (Part II)
In the early 2000s, the Department of Defense enacted another round of Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC). The place of employment for my father and thousands of others was in jeopardy of closure, and the only alternative was an undesirable relocation. My dad saw that a high-ranking official was complicit in the closure, and when he sounded the alarm, his boss didn’t want to risk his own career. So him and a couple of colleagues took matters into their own hands.
They got on a plane to meet with the boss of the high-ranking official and present the evidence. Three months later, that general was retired and my dad got “sent off to the corner” because he wasn’t part of the solution. He was humiliated for a couple years and paid the price for his decision.
There’s a silver lining. He dreaded his final years before he retired from the DoD. But when he began working for a contractor that he had previously done some work with, he felt revered and valued from day one, ending his career doing something he loved that he otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do.
Always do the right thing, and stand up for it! (Part III)
At Raytheon, my grandfather worked closely with a black man. This was the 60’s, a time of civil unrest that even liberal Massachusetts wasn’t immune to. They became great friends, carpooling to work and connecting their families together. Still, some people had a problem with it.
A neighborhood friend’s mother called the house one day. “We won’t think much of you if you keep doing this,” she said to my grandmother Mig. She responded, “Well, we don’t think much of you,” and promptly hung up.
(s/o @datrascaldakota)
At the time of defying his mother’s wish to stay in a separate bed than my mom, my dad claims he wasn’t sure where those kahunas came from. But today, knowing that his mother wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for what’s right, I’m sure he would agree that he was just giving her a taste of her own medicine.
There was a viral video from Halloween this year of a young brother and sister putting their candy into an empty bowl on a doorstep for others to have. No one was around. There was no potential acknowledgement from anyone else for their good deed, but that didn’t matter.
Just like those kids, both my dad and grandmother would do it all again, without any regard for the opinions of others, simply because they knew it was right.
Family is everything.
One afternoon while playing in the yard with his brothers, some punks from the neighboring town drove by yelling profanity towards their rivals. At 5 or 6 years old, my dad couldn’t do much, but his older brothers were quick to return fighting words. The kids in the car slammed on the brakes, and my dad had one of those “Oh boy, it’s about to go down” moments.
My two uncles retreated into the house and returned with their respective weapons of choice. One, a cartoonish-length antique bayonet. The other, a BB rifle, carried by my uncle as he climbed out onto the roof, baseball cap backwards like a sniper (definitely not messing around).
Dad stood by like the little kid who pops the bubble gum in his face when he sees Mr. Incredible – an innocent bystander who can’t believe what he’s seeing.
My grandfather stormed out, told the punk kids to scram, and yanked my uncles by the ear. Dad told this story with a big ol’ smile (without a doubt my favorite story I had never heard).
Their father didn’t approve, but they were standing their ground. Protecting their turf, their younger siblings, and their mom and dad.
Family is everything. My grandparents gravestone even says so.
Keep an open mind.
At the beginning of the pandemic, dad had some worries about the future. He had made some prayer beads with the kids at Sunday School awhile back and recalls thinking that he would never use them, forgetting them in a corner. So he dusted them off and started meditating each morning, sending positive thoughts to family, friends, and everyone else he loves.
Soon after, my sister suggested that he meet with an energy healer. With reluctance, he went to see her and was blunt in his greeting – “I just wanna let you know that I’m an engineer and I don’t believe in any of this bullshit.” Six months later he was on the Board of Directors of her non-profit.
Be willing to say yes, even if you’re reluctant at first. You never know what you might stumble upon.
Develop your own beliefs.
My mom grew up attending a Unitarian church and married my father in the same one. Soon after, they decided to raise my brother, sister, and I in one. My mom said she likes being a Unitarian “because there’s no answers – they’re not telling me what I have to believe.”
It’s always felt more like a place to share stories and lessons from human experience, rather than embellished accounts from books written thousands of years ago. People from all walks of life come together to share how their experiences have shaped their beliefs and to challenge their beliefs with new ideas shared by others.
Bruce Lee had a similar philosophy: “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.” Maybe he was a Unitarian too.
Never miss a good laugh.
The fourth and final rule of Sam Berns’ philosophy for a happy life is to “never miss a good party.” I’ll extend that rule to include a laugh as well.
On Halloween night in 1990, my 19-month old sister couldn’t be convinced to wear her puppy costume without a candy bribe. By the time she finally had it on, my very-pregnant mom was in tears of laughter. She was laughing so hard that it sent her into labor, and only a few hours later, my brother was born.
Never miss a good laugh (or party). Just like open-mindedness, you never know what it might bring into this world.
Reflections
Reviewing the footage, I am immensely proud of my parents and grateful for the path I was given and to have had the opportunity to do this with them.
Kahlil Gabran’s beautiful poem On Children says that your children “come through you but not from you.” My parents are “the bow” from which my siblings and I, “the living arrows,” have been sent forth.
The stories they tell remind me of how I’ve become the man I am today. We now have new stories and lessons that we can tell to remember them, perhaps with children of our own someday, letting “our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness.”
As life goes on, many of us see our parents less – maybe once or twice a month and some of us only a couple times a year. In any case, the total number of times that you’ll see them again is smaller than you think.
Our time is short. Take advantage of the precious moments. And if you can, commemorate those moments so you can remember those passed as you also grow old. You’ll be glad you did.
Enjoy every sandwich. 