“You awake now, Elie?  You snooze you lose, time is money, chop chop!” said the skeleton of my father gaily.    

Yeah.  Let’s go harvest the ducats, father.

“While you were sleeping, I was thinking.  I may have your theme here.  We had a lifelong argument over whether people could change their natures in a significant way.   You’ve written about that controversy here, but how ’bout you wrap the whole story in that fundamental question?   It’s bullshit that people can change themselves in any meaningful way vs. it’s essential that tormented people change themselves.  We went hundreds of rounds on this question.”  

Yes, and I can make a vigorous case for both sides at this point.  If you’re talking on the level of our essential DNA, our genetic predispositions, our body type, our immediate reflexes to react one way or another, there is only so much we can change.  

“OK, fine, but that’s not the point.  You were talking about moral growth, something I gave a lot of lip service to while I was strafing you and your sister over flank steak and rice-a-roni and telling you, through gritted teeth, that you were going to lose the war.  I think what you were hammering at was the need to develop self-critical insight and what I was defending against was the same thing.  You can’t keep machine gunning your children once you realize what you’re doing.  I had to insist I was right, you see, because my entire personal life was defending myself against the terror of who I thought I was.   No matter how much outward security I had, no matter how much status I achieved, I was always the dumbest, and poorest, Jewish kid in Peekskill — and a physically and emotionally abused one at that.”  

Still unthinkable to me.  Poor, I get that, and I have no doubt of the deep scars poverty leaves.  The physical and emotional abuse is beyond question. But the dumbest Jewish kid in Peekskill still sounds like an insane statement.   

“I could tell you more, but do you really want to veer from the work you might be able to get a  handle on today?” said the skeleton.  

Well, just to say that my theory is that you started school behind the eight ball, a year behind at least since you had to learn English while your little classmates laughed at you.  I also think your 20/400 vision was probably not discovered until after you were placed with other slow kids who couldn’t read.   In Peekskill 1930 I think the class was probably designated “The Retards Class” and the teacher probably addressed you all as such.  But you graduated Syracuse with honors and finished graduate studies at Columbia.  Isn’t there a scale where you weigh these factors and realize you couldn’t have been the dumbest Jewish kid in Peekskill?  

“Well, that’s a fair question.  I’d say it takes some insight to connect the obvious dots like that sometimes.   That’s what our argument over change boils down to, the quest for insight and exploring possibilities vs. insistence that grim reality is immutable.  My failure was a failure of imagination and a lack of faith that anything could really change.  My life experience was that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how comfortably we lived, no matter how many people applauded me when I spoke, it made no difference.  Every night my demons were waiting for me, their pitchforks glowing red hot.   You see, that’s part of the whole pathology  of an adult who takes it out on his kids.”  

“It was easy for me to use the two of you as intellectual and emotional punching bags.  You two were always punching way above your weight class.  You remember Eli telling you about me getting angry at you one day, you must have been four or five, and I came over to menace you.  You said “Oh, big man, going to hit a little kid…” and Eli cracked up, as did mom and everyone else who heard it, and I lost my chance to smack you.”  

Well, to your credit, you were never much of a hitter.  Mom hit us more often than you did, or at least she hit me.  

“Yes, that’s true, but as we discussed, verbal violence, emotional abuse, is as damaging as a belt buckle or a fist.  Both attack your soul, your sense of personal safety, of ever feeling protected.  Abuse fundamentally alters your DNA, as that brilliant and striking pediatrician described in that TED talk you saw.  

“What causes one person to grow up and replicate that abuse and another to become a defender of the abused?   See, that’s a mysterious question, Elie.  Every abuser was once abused– you have that great George Grosz quote to that effect:  ‘to understand how a man can brutalize his fellow men you must study how he was brutalized’ or however he said it.  You can say, as I might have, that certain people are predisposed to a more heroic outlook than others, or that luck plays a role — something hard to deny, accident of birth, fortuitous meeting, wise mentor, and so forth — or you can say that each of us has the capacity to develop insight, to live more wisely, with less pain.”

Three large vultures soared over head.  The skeleton and I turned to watch them.  

“You know, as I was dying I thought what a shame it was that it would have to wait until after I was dead, if ever, to have this kind of conversation with you.  It’s easy to be a philosopher when you’re dead, Elie.  When we are alive, sometimes, it’s just one big fight, as your friend Albert King described his life of hard luck and trouble.”  

One of the vultures swung low, opened his curved beak and let out what sounded like a mocking laugh.  

“Fucking bird, what does he know?” said the skeleton.  “Carrion eating motherfucker!”

“Look, Elie, I know you have to leave momentarily or you’ll be late for your lunch date, but consider this organizing principle.   The difficult and unrecognized change you were forced to make in yourself in order to accommodate my refusal to change, even acknowledge the possibility of it.  It will take a bit of art, to avoid making this sound self-serving, how, as I was dying, I admitted you were right and I’d been a ‘horse’s ass’.  And, yeah, obviously, I also have no idea whose ass I pulled that ‘horse’s ass’ phrase out of.  I think it’s a good theme, that and well illustrated by how you were able to be so mild as I tried to make some kind of amends the best I could that last night of my life.”  

The lazily swooping vulture was now close enough that I could see his red face clearly.  It was not a good looking face in any way that I could see.   On the other hand, if I don’t get up and into the shower right now, I will be late for lunch.  

“Don’t be late for lunch, Elie, we’ll pick this thread up next time.”