A Plan for Progeny

On October 3, 1952, Andrew Lobotham was born into a world brimming with excitement. A world that simultaneously knew it had begun its next chapter, but could not decipher how the story would unfold. The war, one older generations didn’t expect to happen and younger ones were expected to die in, ended seven years ago. New York City, where Andrew was born and where his parents lived, teemed with life. The postwar exuberance filled most everyone. Jobs were plentiful, products were becoming easier to acquire, and opportunities that never existed were created every day.

It was in this world that Andrew took his first breaths. The first pair of non-latex coated hands to touch his wriggling, warm body were his father’s: Jonathan Lobotham. Jonathan, or Mr. Lobotham—as he always requested people call him—was born 38 years prior to two immigrant parents. He attended school, got good grades, attempted to play sports, made a few friends who never seemed to last, and above all enjoyed building things. After high school, Mr. Lobotham intended to go to college with one goal in mind: become successful. It was this goal—to attend college—that began a thought Mr. Lobotham could not escape for the rest of his life: he was unlucky. Maybe he was. It isn’t luck to try and attend college right as the Great Depression was finally starting to feel “Great”; it wasn’t luck when both of Mr. Lobotham’s parents were fired from their jobs because “Americans get first crack at the available positions”; and it wasn’t luck when, in 1940, Mr. Lobotham’s draft number got called and he shipped out to the Pacific, even though he swore time and time again that he didn’t know how to swim.

When a man fears he is unlucky, he has two options: he can embrace this fact, and steer into the unlucky nature of life, viewing it as exciting and unpredictable; or the man can lie to himself, think that with enough determination he can beat his inherent nature and achieve all he wants like the few who are inherently lucky. Mr. Lobotham was unlucky. And if one is truly unlucky, they will always hold the second view. Thus, Mr. Lobotham fought, and fought hard. He didn’t go to college, taking odd jobs around the city, helping where he could. No floor he swept looked cleaner, no factory saw a faster worker, no grocery store hired a better bagger. The day Mr. Lobotham learned his father died from pneumonia he caught after waiting outside for a job that never came, he viewed it as a chance to save some money. After all, now only his mother needed tending to. And when Mr. Lobotham went to war, he thought if he could just survive, he could make a name for himself with all he learned.

Now, one may think that such an unlucky man like Mr. Lobotham would be marked by the undertaker in such a calamitous war. But those who die in war are often the lucky ones. The unlucky are who must live the rest of their days knowing; knowing what other men did to their friends, and what they did to other men and other men’s friends. That their actions can be recited, but why they did them—not just the immediate reasons of survival, but the real reason of why they were even there in the first place—cannot be explained. Mr. Lobotham carried these thoughts with him when he returned home. A few pounds lighter, a few more wrinkles, and many more stories that he would never share, on December 15, 1945, Mr. Lobotham arrived back in New York City. Receiving a hero’s welcome from nobody specifically, he returned to find his mother, who now was in hospice to close out her twilight years.

Mr. Lobotham arrived at Bellevue Hospital within two hours of his plane touching down. After checking in at the front desk, he walked to his mother’s room. Once inside, Mr. Lobotham was greeted by an incredibly soothing voice and kindly face. The individual providing this reprieve was named Meredith Samson, but her friends only knew her as Merry—not only because she insisted they call her that, but also because that was the one word to describe her disposition.

As Mr. Lobotham entered his mother’s room, he heard Merry’s voice for the first time.

“Ah, you must be Jonathan! What a pleasure to meet you, my name is Meredith but anyone who hasn’t made me too annoyed may call me Merry. Your mother has told me so much about you: the soldier son of hers. I must admit, when she informed me that you would be coming from the Pacific today, I made sure I had a shift to get a glimpse of you! I’m sorry, what an introduction I’ve made. You’re likely hoping to see your mother.”

Mr. Lobotham, not one for words to begin with, found it hard to say anything. Instead, he settled for whatever he could muster, which resulted in “No. . . No. . . uh. . . well. . . yes I did intend to check on my mother. . . but. . . .”

In response, Merry showed Mr. Lobotham how she earned her nickname, softly chuckling at this stammering figure in a full military uniform struggle to form a complete sentence. At that, Merry excused herself to give Mr. Lobotham time to see his mother, which he did.

After Mr. Lobotham finished, and only upon leaving the hospital, a thought occurred to him that didn’t before.

I didn’t ask her to call me Mr. Lobotham.

All who knew Mr. Lobotham would agree that this was an odd occurrence. As soon as he turned eighteen, the early adolescent teetered between pleading and demanding everyone besides his parents refer to him as “Mr. Lobotham.” But when he heard Merry call him Jonathan, he only wanted one thing: for her to say it again.

In the following weeks, as Mrs. Lobotham grew sicker, her son’s visits became more frequent. Mr. Lobotham truly believed that his mother’s condition drove him to Bellevue every day, and sometimes multiple times a day. And it likely was. But close behind this concern came the thought of any opportunity to speak with Merry. It’s odd. Mr. Lobotham began to solidify his scheduled appearances almost, one could contend, as soon as he knew what Merry’s schedule was. And almost as odd is that Merry seemed to spend much more time around Mrs. Lobotham when her son was present.

It was in this way, surrounded by the infirm and the mending, that Mr. Lobotham and Merry learned they loved each other. Almost to the day they realized, vocalized, and decided to act on this adoration, Mr. Lobotham’s mother called to her son to deliver her final message.

“My Jonathan, I have always loved you, and will continue to love you once I am no longer constrained to this bed by illness. But I will not be here when that time comes. Still, I will go happy, for I see that my son is in love. He has found someone that loves him, and loves someone more than I have ever seen from him. He is ready to take on the world for the one he loves, like he did for me and his father for so many years. My Jonathan, in my final days, I tell you what I need from you. Make Merry your wife. Raise a family with her, share in her joys and sorrows. Experience the wonderful surprises of this world with her, and be there for each other when those same surprises are less kind to you both. I love you, and know you will be okay.”

At that, Mr. Lobotham knew he had to follow through on his mother’s final request. It did not take long after that for Mrs. Lobotham to pass. A week later, Mr. Lobotham and Merry wed. On their wedding night, Mr. Lobotham told Merry of his newly formed life goals. He promised her a house, a happy marriage, and children they would raise together. Secretly, Mr. Lobotham harbored his own goal: to raise a son to be more successful than he could have ever imagined.

Mr. Lobotham and Merry became inseparable. If Mr. Lobotham was unlucky, Merry was lucky enough for the two of them. Their first year year of marriage belonged only to the two of them. During that time, Mr. Lobotham continued working odd jobs, saving for a house, and spending all his free time with his wife. He kept his word. By the time their first child—a daughter named Alice—was born, Mr. Lobotham saved enough to buy a decent apartment in an up-and-coming neighborhood aptly called “Midtown.” By the time their second daughter, Sandra, was born, Merry’s luck rubbed off on Mr. Lobotham. His odd jobs and hard work paid off. David Hornoff, a construction boss Mr. Lobotham had begun working for, noticed the early days and late nights this random laborer put in. Mr. Hornoff also respected the no guff attitude and formality of an underling requesting to be called by his last name to co-workers and bosses alike. And Mr. Hornoff saw Mr. Lobotham’s interest in building. For these reasons, Mr. Hornoff asked Mr. Lobotham if he would like to join his design team. Of course, Mr. Lobotham would have to go get a degree for the job.

For the next two years, from 1948-50, Mr. Lobotham worked for Mr. Hornoff during the day, went to school to learn architecture and structural engineering at night, and saw Merry and the girls whenever he had time. At the end of the two years, Mr. Lobotham graduated at the top of his class, and had earned the trust of Mr. Hornoff to such an extent that he became the lead on all the firm’s projects.

It was during this period that Andrew Lobotham was born. Although he would never admit it to Alice and Sandra, Mr. Lobotham felt a different type of pride in holding a son for the first time. Looking into Andrew’s eyes, those that were just experiencing the hospital’s fluorescent light for the first time, Mr. Lobotham saw all the triumphs that he couldn’t achieve in his youth manifest in his son. Mr. Lobotham also saw opportunity: a chance to mold the perfect legacy of success that he had always striven for. A chance to once and for all prove that he could beat his natural misfortunate state.

Mr. Lobotham carried this secret desire with him for many years. In the beginning, Andrew appeared to live up to Mr. Lobotham’s idealized vision. The boy did everything sooner than expected. He walked, talked, and read before any of the other children. But then something changed. Nothing perceptible, rather more of a gut feeling by Mr. Lobotham. When Andrew turned four, something in Mr. Lobotham’s mind told him that Andrew would not be his savior. Immediately upon this realization, Mr. Lobotham went to Merry begging her to try for one more child. And Merry, normally happy to welcome another creature into this world, worried about her ability to both work as a nurse and care for another child. It wasn’t until seeing Mr. Lobotham’s pleading turn into begging that she gave in, thinking his desire was pure hearted, for the man she married always was.

In 1957, Merry gave birth to a girl named Edith. Much to Mr. Lobotham’s dismay, he knew this would be his last child. It was a daughter he did not want, but one he loved with all his might. It was not Edith, nor Alice, nor Sandra who bore Mr. Lobotham’s contempt, but the growing Andrew.

With Andrew as Mr. Lobotham’s only son, it slowly became clear to the young boy that he had expectations to live up to—and that he was not meeting them. But Andrew was also quickly becoming his own person. At five, he began making friends in earnest, learning what relationships created based on common interest meant. Andrew liked it. It’s not that he didn’t love his family. Rather, he loved the feeling of other people choosing to be around him not because they shared blood, but because they liked him.

But Andrew was not the only Lobotham to evolve. It was known early on that Alice had her mother’s intellect and her father’s drive. Andrew always described it as Alice stealing all the good traits of her parents before her siblings got a chance to claim any. Sandra inherited her parent’s ability to care for the downtrodden. Anyone who met her felt almost compelled to share their lives with her, and knew she would understand. Finally, the baby Edith seemed to have her mother’s luck, along with a cosmic ability to have the world revolve around her—though nobody knew where that came from.

Andrew—suffering from the sins of all children who were not alive to experience their parent’s upbringing—slowly began to learn he was unlucky, and wondered where this came from. His whole life he saw his parents as the luckiest people in the world. His mother was a highly sought after nurse, respected by every doctor she worked with. His father now ran Mr. Hornoff’s company when the latter retired, and had established himself as a no-nonsense businessman. But Andrew, unlike his sisters, didn’t excel in school, wasn’t particularly good at sports, and most importantly didn’t appear to be well liked by his father. The worst part of all of this is that those around Andrew always told him how he was as a baby. Some prodigy, incredible at everything, including at earning Mr. Lobotham’s love. These stories didn’t inspire excitement in Andrew, only a longing to remember a time his father looked at him with adoration.

As the years advanced, Andrew attempted many things, hoping to find what he was excelled at. Whether it was truly his lack of luck or that he had yet to exhaust all his options, Andrew was getting left behind. His classmates began to progress past him, and while he had friends, he quickly realized that their paths exceeded his own. By high school, when classmates hoped to get into prominent colleges or trade schools, Andrew was hoping to graduate.

Meanwhile the rest of his family seemed to be in the opposite position. By 1970, Merry was now the head nurse at Bellevue; Alice graduated from college and was seeking a doctorate degree; Sandra was traveling the world in the peace corp; Edith was the star of her school plays and on her way to Broadway; and Mr. Lobotham had grown the construction company to be a leader in building the New York City of tomorrow. In a family of success, Andrew’s failures stood out in stark contrast. It was something that each family member personally noticed, but felt too embarrassed to talk to Andrew about. This only made him more alone.

Mr. Lobotham noted Andrew’s shortcomings earlier and more often than anyone. Although, by all accounts, Mr. Lobotham was a bona fide American success story (the son of immigrants, a World War II veteran, a successful business man, happily married with four children), he felt like a failure. He once again considered himself unlucky. His one goal in life—to have a son more successful than him—seemed impossible. Mr. Lobotham planned for Andrew to attend ivy league schools, marry into a successful family, and never worry about money. Though Mr. Lobotham never explicitly told anyone this goal, by the time Andrew was twelve it became apparent that Mr. Lobotham lost hope. Once Andrew was in high school, Mr. Lobotham settled on a new plan: cut Andrew off once he graduated. Mr. Lobotham hoped this would light whatever pithy potential Andrew had tucked away, and he would finally have a son worth his name.

It was a warm spring day when Andrew Lobotham graduated. After the celebrations, congratulations, and talks of the future, his father pulled him aside. Just as Mr. Lobotham was about to tell his son of his plan, Andrew did something rare. He surprised his father by talking first.

“Sir, I wanted to say two things before you if that is okay.”

When Mr. Lobotham remained silent, Andrew continued.

“I know I am not the son you wanted. And as I say this, I still don’t exactly know what you ‘wanted,’ but I know that whatever I am is not it. I could say I’m sorry. I could say that I’ve tried, that I will try harder, and that if you help me maybe I can make something of myself like you have. But the truth is. . . I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m unlucky; or that my sisters are better than me at everything I could ever do; or even that I never met your expectations. It has taken me eighteen years to realize this, but. . . I intend to be happy. Whatever that means. I will strive day-in and day-out to find what brings me joy each day. I don’t care if the entire family abandons me for attempting to find happiness. This is what I will strive for as long as I can. I hope you understand.”

Mr. Lobotham looked at his son. He looked for a long time, and for the first time in almost fifteen years, since that fateful day when he realized his son wouldn’t be successful, did he reflect and realize how wrong he was. In that moment Mr. Lobotham realized his son was already successful, more successful than Mr. Lobotham ever had been. His son didn’t fight his unlucky disposition every day like Mr. Lobotham. His son wouldn’t grow old trying to be something he did not want to, could not, be. And that realization opened up a new world to Mr. Lobotham. A world where Mr. Lobotham would be happy with himself and not just his accomplishments. After planning to disown his son, now Mr. Lobotham had to mend the relationship. To both their surprise, Mr. Lobotham hugged his son.