Image by Rebecca Martell from Pixabay
“Dad.”
“Son.”
52-year-old Archibald Ludlow called home, after decades of having done what his father before him had done … sometimes a man just needed to get away. He had not gone as far at first, working in the family circles on family total legacy things until that became ridiculous, and then reaching out for help to a whole different branch of the family … and then got the help, and then stood off from everyone again … only to have his first cousin reach out to that other branch, be received with goodness and kindness, and then have his father reach out and embrace his cousins near and far … and thus let it be known that the door was still open.
“Tarquin Ludlow IV lives in an ivory tower,” he said about his father, “and there are sharks in the moat, but the gate is never closed for just being different, not evil, but just different.”
Archibald talked often with his mother Agatha, and father and son routinely showed up to and enjoyed the same family events together – it was not even that the lines of communication were ever closed, but Tarquin Ludlow IV gave people the space they said they wanted.
“The father of the Prodigal Son did not send a search party,” he said, “but he was on the porch and looking down the road every day.”
Archibald just wanted to be normal, to live a normal life – not exceptional, not with all the responsibility of being wealthy, but just normal, to the quiet and peaceful side of normal. Tarquin V had stepped up from the womb to be his father's principal heir, but Archibald had been running from all that since he was born and had built the life that he wanted, just like his father had done before him. His father respected that -- no indifference, no bitterness, just respect for what his son was working toward in his life.
However, Archibald having his father's scruples meant he could not stay normal forever – he loved his cousin Vanderbilt, and in seeing how doggedly Vanderbilt had found a way to keep the winery alive as long as he did and then transition it to the Historical Soda Division of Cousin Robert's Ludlow Bubbly, he was moved to step back in and help and was glad for Robert and Vanderbilt's request to do so.
Now, having fully stepped into major family responsibility in a way that was not promoting vice, Archibald knew it was time to call home.
“Your mother is going to the kitchen, having said that on the day that you made this call, she was going to make pineapple upside down cake,” Tarquin IV said to his son as the next point of conversation. “34 years, and that mind of hers is still like a steel trap. I am going to help out with my still-greater hand strength, because we do not eat canned pineapple in this house.”
“I'll roll by Pettigrew Farms and get some fresh milk for us to drink with it -- I understand and remember the standards,” Archibald said.
“Should we expect you this morning, or this afternoon?”
“I'm leaving the house as soon as I hang up.”
“See you later this morning.”
“See you later, Dad.”
"Son."
"Dad."
"I love you, Archibald. Always have. Always will."
"I love you too, Dad. Thank you for just understanding."
Tarquin IV had not received that understanding from his own parents of siblings, but was at peace about that, and then in bliss upon hearing those words from his own son.
"The wounds you carry but determine not to pass onto others are the wounds you heal in yourself, and blessings you pass on to the next generations," he was known to say, and his relationship with Archibald Ludlow was the proof.