Bean Boy

Once upon a time there was a young girl with a difficult family. Her father was old enough to be her grandfather, and though kind and interesting, he treated his large family with the kind of bemused detachment common to men of his age and demeanor. Her mother was a poor manager of money, of which there was never enough, and an even poorer manager of children, of which there were plenty. The young girl was clever and had a way of seeing quickly to the heart of an issue. She knew that their family was not entirely normal, and did what she could to teach and help her younger siblings.

About this time they moved from a smallish city to an even smaller town. It was as though a great magnifying glass had been held up to their oddities. The other girls her age seemed so capable, so tidy, so well-dressed. She felt shabby and embarrassed, and the other kids were happy to ignore or ridicule the girl and her motley siblings.

One summer, to earn money, the young woman and her sisters worked at the bean patch. They would work all day in the hot sun, filling large flats full of beans. As they filled each heavy box, they would work together to drag and push them to the end of the row, where one would stand and yell, “Bean Boy! Bean Boy!”

The girls who were pretty or popular or well-dressed or able to keep their hair in neat braids would wait just moments for one of the farm boys to come along and easily lift the boxes to take to the truck where each box would be weighed and a number noted in the ledger book. At the end of the day, the girls were paid for how many pounds of beans they picked.

But to the young woman’s deep embarrassment, she and her sisters would stand at the end of the row calling “Bean Boy!” over and over again, and nobody would come to help them, at least not for several minutes. Some times they ended up dragging the heavy box to the truck by themselves.

About this time, a new family of brothers started working at the bean patch. The oldest brother was the same age as the young lady. Despite his small stature, he was popular and athletic. Their family owned a small dairy and they worked hard. His family was even bigger than the young lady’s, but his mother was not bad with money or children. She liked the way he always looked her in the eye and never made whispered comments behind her back.

But what she liked best is that when she called, “Bean Boy!” this young man would always make sure that her flat or her sisters’ flats were picked up immediately. If he was unable to do it, then he asked one of his younger brothers to help her. In her whole life, she had never met anyone as genuinely nice as this boy.

She later married him and they had four children.

One day, many years later, her daughter was home from college. She had watched for years as the relationship between her eldest, bookish daughter and her husband had deteriorated to almost mutual hostility. For all his generosity of heart, her husband was also stubborn to a fault and took it so personally when he was disagreed with. She wished there was a way that her daughter would see that all she despised in her father was absolutely reflected in herself. Except for her love of stories and the features of her pretty-ish face, she had inherited nearly everything else from him. The mother could see, as they didn’t, that if they would both give in just a little bit, their relationship had potential to bring them much joy.

So the mother watched as her daughter and husband dug into each other one night. The daughter expressing her opinions with no filter and attacking her father for his; the father becoming so frustrated that he finally barked, “Just get out of my sight!” There was silence, the daughter’s sharp tongue finally silenced, and a look of resolve the mother had never seen before moved through her daughter’s eyes. The girl turned on her heel and left the room.

The mother momentarily thought that perhaps the daughter had made a breakthrough: had she finally just learned to walk away when tempers flared? And then, minutes later, she heard a car start in the driveway and walked outside. Her daughter’s car was loaded with a mountain of half-finished laundry and she was backing out.

“What? No goodbye?” The mother said carefully as the car stopped.

The response was volatile. “How can you love him? He is mean and angry! He never has a kind word for me and he acts like a child. He hasn’t said a nice word to me in months. . . ” She went on in this vein for a couple of minutes and though she was certainly exaggerating, the mother knew her daughter did have some valid points.

Her tirade spent, the mother invited her daughter back in where they could talk. Her daughter refused saying, “I’m leaving today. He told me to. I don’t know when I’m coming back.” The mother let her go, not saying anything else, wise enough not to point out that the girl wouldn’t get far if she decided to make a break for it in a car on which her father made the payments.

Four days later, the college girl got a letter from her mother. The letter contained a pair of trouser socks: her mom was never able to send a letter without some kind of token present. The letter was four or five pages from a yellow legal pad–every line used on both sides of the paper. In the letter her mother told her why she loved her father by telling the story of the Bean Boy, concluding with, “Whenever I feel frustrated or angry with your father, I just remember that inside he is still that Bean Boy. Caring, compassionate and rescuing.”

The girl cried. She drove to the mountains. She meditated and prayed. And in the end she heeded the advice found at the end of her mother’s letter: “I know that he is the adult. I would love to say that if you just bide your time he will one day reach out and this will all be behind you. But I know him. And I know that it is not in his nature to do so. If having a relationship with this man, your father, is important to you, then you must forget yourself. You cannot expect him to meet you half-way. You need to go all the way. I think you’ll be surprised by the man you find on the other side.”

Less than a year later, the daughter moved to Sydney, Australia to work as a missionary.  She cried when she hugged and said goodbye to her dad. All barriers down, he too wept unashamedly as he loaded her on the plane for the greatest adventure of her life. She had come to realize that he, in all his imperfection, was a part of who she was. She had finally come to see his generosity, his insecurity, the way he had always supported her, the respect he had for her as an adult. And she didn’t have to go the entire distance on her own. He had come to meet her.

I know this story is true, because it is my story.

Or at least part of it is. It is also the story of my mother, who took time to write a letter when she might have been checking off a hundred other items from her list. A woman who understood that the most important thing she could do was to create harmony within her family, even if it meant patiently mediating between two people with no desire for reconciliation. A woman who chose to mother instead of just having children.

As I have chosen to nurture my own children, to create a home with traditions and routines that will ultimately create strong and stable individuals and to be a mother after the pattern of my own, I’ve learned that the best stories aren’t those that begin with “Once upon a time,” but the stories that begin with “When I was a little girl . . . .”

Just last night, my nine year-old bowed his sweet head and offered a prayer of thanks for the blessing of being a part of such a wonderful family, for a mother and father that filled his heart with love, for brothers who made him so happy. In his generous heart, I see the strength of so many generations. The stories of both the failures and the successes of his family are a part of the man he will become.

It was only years later that my mother confided to me that the hardest thing my father ever did was put me on a plane to Australia. What neither of us realized, but I have now come to appreciate so deeply through my own mothering, is that I didn’t go into the world by myself at all. I carry in my heart the solace of lovely memories, and in my soul the powerful stories my mother transmitted to me. I am not alone because the blood of so many strong men and women flows in my veins too. I have found stores of generosity, a love of hard work, an ability to make friends with complete strangers, and a powerful sense of duty and responsibility. These incredible gifts could have only come from my father: the Bean Boy who captured my mother’s heart.

Author Nan Peterson blogs at ScienceTeacherMommy.

QUESTION and CHALLENGE: On this Father’s Day, help your children appreciate their family legacy by telling them an inspiring story about their father, uncle, or grandfather.

Bean image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About Nan Petersen

Learn more about Nan Petersen by visiting her blog at http://scienceteachermommy.blogspot.com.