The Noticer Returns Read online

  Suddenly the old man was animated. He rose from the chair and passionately declared the conclusion to which he had come. “You see, my friends,” he said, “by not addressing the issue of an accepted standard, today’s parents have defaulted into an uncomfortable agreement with each other. They have agreed that there will not be a standard for raising our children.

  “One set of parents teaches their daughter to say ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘no sir.’ Another couple contends that standard of behavior to be a matter of opinion.

  “One parent demands her boys dress in trousers that are belted at the waist. Her boys must wear their ball caps with the bill pointed to the front, and those caps are to be removed, with no exceptions, when indoors. That parent’s next-door neighbor, on the other hand, might have entirely different rules about what clothes her children are allowed to wear and how they are allowed to wear them. Meanwhile, society lives with increasingly discouraging results.”

  Kelli spoke. “So you are saying there are no standards?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Jones replied. “I am saying that there are many different standards. That is essentially why there is a vast array of parenting books published every year, each touting new methods or different ways to measure a child’s success. There are scores of classes—most larger than this one—all being taught by a countless number of people who claim to be experts in the field of parenting.”

  “Jones?” a voice responded immediately. “Are you an expert in the field of parenting?”

  The expression on Bart and Kelli’s faces was one of mild shock and amusement. Evidently neither could believe Jones had been confronted in this manner. As for me, I could believe it. I was horrified, but I could believe it . . . because the words had come from my own mouth.

  Yes, I was embarrassed. I was also familiar with the situation in which I had placed myself. Ever since the fifth grade I have been aware that my mouth occasionally leaps without warning from the resting position into unrestrained activity. More than once I have been as shocked as anyone else when fully formed sentences have vaulted from my throat toward a target well before any conscious thought was acknowledged in my mind.

  Jones laughed at my outburst, and that alone was enough to make the Porters smile. “Am I an expert on parenting?” he repeated before answering. “No. No, I am not.”

  At that, the Porters stopped smiling. Kelli gave Bart a quick elbow, and that tickled Jones again, for he laughed even harder. “No, friends. Though I have ‘parented’ more than you could possibly imagine, I am here with you now, and perhaps a couple more evenings, to exercise for you my primary function.”

  “Which is?” Bart posed.

  “You see, Bart . . . I work with people. I suppose you could say that people are a great passion of mine. But I have great interest in other things as well, and I can’t help but notice the connections that exist. For instance, try this. In a way people are like trees.”

  When all three of us furrowed our brows at the same time, Jones laughed. “Yep,” he continued, “folks are a lot like trees. You can know them by their fruit. You see, everyone produces one kind or another. In an orchard a quick examination of a piece of fruit can reveal a lot about the health of the tree. Without looking at the limbs, measuring the base, or inspecting the leaves, a single apple or pear can often tell you exactly what you need to know.”

  After a pause the old man sat back down and crossed his arms comfortably. “Here’s an example . . . The Meyer lemon is a hybrid,” he said, “and should ripen in this area around the middle of November. If one happens upon a mature tree during that time, even having never seen it before, one can easily discern how the tree has been ‘raised.’ Kelli? You look like a citrus person. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Well . . . yes,” Kelli replied hesitantly. It was not because she disagreed but because she did know something about citrus and couldn’t figure out exactly what made her “look like a citrus person.” She glanced at me as if I could explain Jones, but I was useless, having given up on that possibility several decades earlier.

  Still without a clue as to where this line of questioning might be taking them, Kelli gamely plowed ahead. “We have a couple of orange trees, along with a Satsuma and three Meyer lemon trees in our yard. One of them is huge and was there when we moved in. It was obviously never cared for. It took me several years to get it blooming and bearing fruit. It’ll never be right, though.”

  Jones tilted his head knowingly but asked the question anyway. “Why do you say it will never be right, Kelli?”

  As she answered, Bart and I eased back in our chairs. Kelli said, “The big tree won’t ever be what it could have been because the previous owners of the house never took care of it. The tree just grew kind of . . . well, uncontrolled for years before I ever had a chance with it. It’s fine now. Or okay, I guess. But that tree is huge and doesn’t produce nearly the fruit of my other two trees, and they are barely more than five years old.”

  “And they’re the same kind of tree?” I asked. “Hybrid Meyer lemons? We have citrus trees in our yard and have several of those too.”

  Kelli nodded. “Yes, same kind of tree. The two Meyer lemons that are doing so well were just small, staked plants when I bought them from Home Depot five years ago. Only cost me fifteen dollars apiece, but last year, we got more than a hundred lemons from each tree.”

  I was impressed and told her so, but Jones, always delving deeper, had another question. “Kelli,” he said, “why did the young trees turn out so well? How did you know what to do?”

  Kelli was excited and a bit proud that she had been the first to understand the point of the old man’s story. She had also figured out how it linked to what they had already discussed. Slowly, as if revealing the location of a treasure, she said, “I knew what to do with the trees . . . because . . . I followed the directions! I never thought about it this way, but when I took my tiny lemon trees home from the store, I carried with me a sheet of paper that Home Depot had provided. Printed on that single page were specific directions. They are the same directions everybody gets when they buy a Meyer lemon tree at Home Depot. They are the same . . . because they work. And they work every time. The directions basically say that if you do this, you will get that. Why? How do they know for sure? Well, I’m guessing it is because all the Meyer lemon experts in the world have spent years and years sharing information and figuring out the very best way to grow Meyer lemon trees . . .”

  Kelli stopped speaking and with a huge grin added the final piece of the puzzle. It was the whole point of Jones’s diversion into trees, then lemon trees specifically, in the first place. She had understood it and now wanted to make sure that Bart and I were on board as well. “Based upon years of great results, citrus growers have now agreed upon a single standard. That one standard, having been in place and adhered to now for many years, is responsible for generations of incredibly productive trees.”

  Growing serious, Kelli narrowed her eyes in thought. Pointing her finger approvingly at Jones, she said, “This man is telling us that at least one reason our society does not consistently produce awesome results in the lives of its children is because we have not agreed upon a standard by which they will be raised.”

  Satisfied, Kelli dipped her head once at us and sat back in her chair to face Jones. “Very nice,” Jones nodded with approval. “Very nice.” Then, with a new intensity, he said, “Now . . . I want you to think carefully here . . . At the very beginning of the initial quest for a standard on raising Meyer lemon trees, what was the first decision that had to be agreed upon?”

  Concentrating, Bart quickly threw out an answer. “Somebody had to say what they were after.”

  “Go on,” Jones urged.

  “I’d suppose the first thing someone had to do was to agree on the lemons . . . the actual fruit. Did they want big lemons or little ones? Did they want their trees to produce bitter lemons, like those already sold at supermarkets? Obviously that answer was no because
if you eat a Meyer lemon, there’s no bitterness in the flavor. Instead, there is a recognizable hint of sweetness. Meyers aren’t horribly sour like most lemons. So, from the beginning, someone had to state for the record—and convince others to agree upon—the particular result they wanted to achieve.

  “And so it follows,” Bart said with a new respect for the old man in front of him, “that when we set out to accomplish something without a specific, agreed-upon result, that lack of a common target yields results that are unpredictable at best.”

  “That is correct,” Jones said. “By the way, there are eleven minutes now until the sun touches the water. We have just enough time to answer the third question.

  “What results do you want with your children? Ten years from now . . . or seven years or fifteen years . . . when your children become adults . . . when at last you inspect the fruit of the tree you have pruned and fertilized and watered for years . . . what fruit do you want to see?”

  “Can we make a list?” Kelli asked and, not waiting for a reply, answered herself. “Yes, you can make a list.” Digging a pen and small pad from her purse, she said, “I am putting down a great education as number one.”

  “Consider that answer carefully before you write anything in ink,” Jones cautioned, and Kelli looked up with a frown.

  “As important as a great education may be,” Jones explained, “that is not an end result. We all know highly educated people who are deep in debt or even unemployed. So while an education might lead to a result for your child, it is not the result itself. I urge you to list the actual results you want for your child.”

  “Physically? Mentally?” Bart probed. “Emotionally?”

  “Yes,” Jones replied. “What results in every one of those areas do you desire for your children when they leave the nest?”

  “To have a job,” Bart offered.

  “To be able to get a job if they want one,” Kelli said, amending the definition somewhat. “And I say ‘if they want one’ because Art is twelve and already talking about owning a business.”

  “He’ll need common sense. Wisdom. And he’ll have to be confident,” I said. “Put that down.”

  “Confident, yes,” Kelli clarified, “but not arrogant.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “Add humble.”

  In no time at all we had added financially astute, good manners, and quite a few others. We grew increasingly excited as we reexamined and prioritized our results and began to understand that we were producing an excellent diagram of the adults we desired our children to become.

  Our ideas were just beginning to slow when Jones announced, “I will be at this very place one week from this evening. Again, we will start at seven o’clock. We will discuss how to choose and implement the specific processes that will produce the results we’ve listed this evening. Any questions?” There were none, so he said, “We have ninety seconds until the sun meets the water.” He stood, gestured to the west, and said, “Let’s enjoy this.”

  Jones moved toward the pier’s wooden railing but stopped several feet short of it, standing instead in the middle of the structure with his hands on his hips, looking out across the bay. We joined him but moved all the way to the railing, dazzled as always by the incredible sunset happening before our very eyes.

  I knew the tradition, of course, but was delighted to hear my new friends do the sizzle sound as the sun “touched” the bay. I laughed and sizzled, too, caught up in the moment and happy to be there.

  When the sun disappeared, I shook hands with Bart and told Kelli that my wife, Polly, would be with me next week. When I asked which room the class was held in, they gave me a funny look and explained that the addition of my wife the following week would increase our enrollment by 25 percent.

  I must confess that I was having a hard time fully grasping the concept of a “class” with only four people in it. Nonetheless, I said my good-byes and almost laughed out loud as the Porters turned to go. Realizing Jones was no longer there and unavailable to thank for what had turned out to be an interesting evening, Bart and Kelli were surprised by his disappearance. Me? I had expected as much and had noticed the old man was gone the instant we turned around.

  I stayed at the pier’s end, with my back and elbows resting on the railing, as they walked to the gazebo, stopping there to collect Kelli’s purse. Polly and the boys were out of town; therefore, I was in no hurry to get home and thought I would stay awhile to see if any speckled trout showed up after dark. Most docks and piers on the bay had floodlights aimed at the water from mounts under the structure. Many nights the anglers who fish the lights see the trout and redfish long before they ever catch one.

  As I watched, it became apparent that something had captured the Porters’ attention, for they had stopped in the gazebo. From my vantage point it seemed as if the couple was staring at the chairs. They stood motionless for a long moment before stepping close enough for Bart to reach out his hand, extend his forefinger, and touch the seat of the chair.

  Actually, he had touched something on the chair, a fact that became clear as first Bart, then Kelli reached out, each delicately picking up a tiny item from the seats they had occupied a short time earlier. Both used a thumb and forefinger to hold an object up into the light for examination. Whatever they had, I thought, was too small for me to identify from the railing.

  I didn’t walk over but continued to watch carefully. I could see that neither of them knew what to make of this tiny object. Bart looked around to find me and held something up in his hand. With a big grin, he spoke loudly, saying, “It’s a lemon seed!” and shrugged. Pointing to Kelli, he added, “She has one too.” Kelli held it up for me to see, and Bart added, “Now that I think about it, I will bet you every dollar you have in your pocket right now that it is a Meyer lemon seed.”

  We were still the only folks on the pier. Bart took a few steps toward me and said, “I’ve got to say . . . this Jones guy is very different. I like him. I like him a lot. But he is very . . . ah . . . different.”

  You don’t know the half of it, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Yes, he is,” and laughed lightly.

  I stayed by the rail while the couple gathered their things and, after promising to see me the following week, waved good-bye. Before getting too far down the walkway, Kelli turned around and addressed me in a loud voice. “Hey . . . you have one too. A lemon seed, I mean. It’s on your chair, so get it before you leave, okay?” I said that I would and waved my thanks.

  When at last I was alone, I stared out at the bay and barely saw the swirls of darkening color in the sky. Feeling the goose bumps rise on my neck and arms, I wondered, What now? Where is all this headed? I said a quick prayer and turned. The pier was deserted, darkness encroaching across the salty water. I looked up. Only the glow of a sodium-vapor bulb cut through a night made thicker by the mist and humid air. It all seemed too familiar, of course.

  At my chair I stopped to pick up what had been placed in the middle of the seat. Cupping the object in my palm, I studied it carefully and thought about how much I valued this one tiny seed simply because Jones had left it for me. It seemed an amazing representation of the first seeds the old man had planted in my life so many years ago.

  I smiled to myself, eased it into my pocket, and walked into the night.

  Nine

  One week later

  A principled process—one that produces as it is intended every single time—can be created only when the final result desired is clearly defined.”

  “So a person should always focus on the result?” the young woman asked.

  “No,” Jones replied. “Not at all. I am saying only that the end result must be determined before an effective process can be put in place to achieve that result. However, once that process is in place, one has only to adhere to the process—those daily steps—that lead inevitably to the final result.”

  Christy Haynes was naturally talkative, and the old man she had run into was not short of anything to s
ay either. In her early thirties, she was the young wife of a minister and the mother of three children. Having arrived early for what she had determined was a networking opportunity, Christy walked the grounds of the Grand Hotel and met an old man with a charming personality. He had called her by name, which was not really surprising. After all, she worked as a photographer and often accompanied Brady, her husband, on church youth trips. A lot of folks knew Christy, and every one of them loved her greatly.

  She was tall and thin with long, dark hair. She was beautiful, but Christy’s bubbly personality was the first thing anyone noticed. As a photographer who never posed anyone, her ability to connect immediately with the people she photographed created a relaxed, joyful atmosphere that was always visible in the final product. It was her talent, however, that made Christy’s clients gasp when they saw themselves in her photos.

  Christy had a gift with natural light. She not only didn’t pose her clients but also never used extra lighting or flash equipment either. Whatever it was that Christy was able to see wasn’t visible to anyone else . . . but the camera caught it. Her photographs were proof of some sixth sense that never seemed to fail.

  Christy enjoyed her work but knew she needed better equipment to produce the magic she really saw. One reason she wanted to produce the very best was her love for people. Because she loved people and saw her work as a way to encourage others, Christy wanted her clients to see themselves the way she did. Consistently her subjects would gaze at a photograph knowing they had never looked better in their lives.

  Though her talent was huge, Christy’s business was not. As the wife of a minister, she was used to starting over in new towns. As the mother of three children, she was often involved in more than the ordinary person could handle, but Christy was not ordinary, and she was determined to wring every last drop out of life. If that meant helping Brady with the youth group, photographing clients while the kids were in school, and being transportation for art and soccer, all the while searching for new business, so be it. She was happy, and her family was happy too. The only real challenge they faced was financial. Money, as was the case with many young families, was tight. Money, for a minister’s family, was tighter than for most.