My father's money

My father wrote to me:

You have never loved me. All you have ever wanted from me was my money. Therefore, unless you write to me immediately, I am going to strike you out of my will.

My father came to America penniless and in his middle age. Through hard work, he earned that amount of capital, stability and well being which is usual with the American middle class. The false comparison between his youth in Europe and his mature age in America has made him perhaps more proud of that accomplishment than it should have: most middle class Americans would consider that level of accomplishment a birthright rather than success.

Perhaps it is this pride which made him overlook the obvious – that his note effectively checkmated me – and him, and any chance of reconciliation. Did he not notice that, were I to write to him now – presumably to avoid dispossession – I would be proving nothing but precisely the theory that I have never wanted from him anything other than his money?

Falsely proud myself, I didn’t write.

But who is to say – perhaps the fact (which my father does not know) that I could easily buy his entire legacy with the spare cash on my balance sheet had something to do with the decision.