Looks can deceive when you search for family values
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
He is wise, respected, serious and well-known. People around the world depend upon him to tell them what they think. Few would dispute his intelligence.
I see him when he is on vacation. He is on a cruise ship for seven days with two children. They are his children, I learn. Perhaps he has shared custody. Perhaps he has them every other weekend and for vacations each year. I don't know.
The man is PRIVATE. He shuns strangers, shies away from social discourse. Besides, "How often do you see your children?" is not a question a stranger would ask.
And I am a stranger, invisible to him. But he looms for me. I study him. I want to know if the wall he has built around him is as impenetrable as it appears.
And so I watch. I watch him at breakfast in line at the buffet. The first morning people address him, cluster around him, bow to his celebrity. But he doesn't invite their remarks and soon they understand: HE WANTS TO BE ALONE.
They leave him alone. They assume he wants to talk with his children. This is what I assume.
But he doesn't talk to them. He reads books, which he underlines. He takes notes. He is immersed in the printed page, even at breakfast. After breakfast, he goes for a walk alone.
Lunch is the same. And dinner. He reads while he eats.
His children chew in silence.
"Can you watch me in the pool?" his youngest, a girl about 9, entreats one afternoon.
"I don't need to watch you. You're capable of swimming by yourself," he replies, looking up from the book he is reading on a deck chair he's moved away from the crowd.
This wise man who converses with presidents and kings, who knows the nuances of foreign policy, this man for whom language is his life and his lifebread, totally misses the point.
I want you to watch me. I want you to notice me, Daddy. This is his daughter's appeal.
His eldest, a boy, is mentally handicapped. He didn't build the wall that is around him. He was born with it. He wanders the ship with his sister. He plays shuffleboard by himself. When his sister swims, he sits next to his father and watches him read.
One morning, a woman approaches with a young man who has Down syndrome. "I'd like you to meet -----," she says introducing her son who is about the same age as the famous man's boy. The famous man is silent. He sits with his book in his lap. Finally his son speaks up and says hello.
"I thought maybe you two could do something together," the woman continues, addressing the youngsters.
The boys make eye contact and smile.
But the wise, respected, serious, well-known man is clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion. He says, "Maybe tomorrow," then returns his attention to his book, dismissing the woman and her boy.
To friends, strangers, maybe even to the world the fact that this man took his children on vacation is dazzling: Imagine a man as busy as he, a man so involved with the world, spending an entire week with his kids.
He didn't even bring along a girlfriend or any friend to help. He cared for both children alone, spent all his time with them, ate every meal with them. What a wonderful man. What a wonderful father. How many other men would do such a thing?
The facts paint a pretty picture. But the picture is a lie because this man wasn't with his children at all. He was beside them, but he was a million miles away.
That's the thing about making an issue of something as nebulous as family values. Friends might envy these children, and strangers, too, because their father appears to care. But appearances are not truth. A picture is not always what it seems.
A family that smiles for the camera isn't always happy.
