Decisions, Decisions

By Robert W. Foster

A family crisis sends young Jim Fletcher away from home, alienating him from his parents, Thomas and Jean. While Jean grieves, Thomas continues on with his business providing engineering services in the land development industry of eastern Massachusetts. After three years on the West Coast, Jim makes what he calls a life-faith decision, returns home, and challenges his father. But a disinterested Thomas is preoccupied in a large project for Simon Steele, an important client, and an intellectual debate begins between father and son. The cynical Thomas, it turns out, has had a surprising history that puts him at odds with his proselytizing son; it becomes a classic struggle between the generations. In the meantime, Sally, Jim’s high school sweetheart, has had a bitter experience that sends her not only from Jim but from her own parents as well while the heartbroken Jean mourns the loss of the two people in the world she loved most.

This story of family division is told by Thomas, confused in his own conflict of doubt and belief. His refuge is in his work where he is confident in his technical and business ability and is able to turn his attention from family turmoil to the planning, permitting, and development of Steeleworks Communities—until he is forced to consider the schism between himself and his own father. “How could it be that this lad had forced me into a position where I must confront my own denials and the gulf I had created between myself and my own father?” Thomas asks himself.

And what is the meaning of decisions made long ago?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638443636

Book preview

Chapter 1

A Phone Call

I share a conference room with a CPA and two lawyers on the third floor of the Majestic Building in Smithville, Massachusetts. We have agreed to book the room two days in advance of any scheduled conference, and the system works quite well. While I am conducting a conference, usually with a client planning to build something in town or in the surrounding Jefferson County, my understanding with my office manager/secretary/receptionist/computer operator/PR director person is that all calls are to be held or to be returned later. So it was a surprise when the highly efficient Mrs. Ralston interrupted my meeting with Simon Steele to inform me of my wife’s call on line 2.

Simon Steele is of that generation of land developers and home builders who remember the good old days before planning and land use regulation became a religion in Massachusetts, rivaling the righteous authority of the Roman church. Steele’s father started with a shovel and a pickup truck in 1950 and in the next two decades went on to build at least two thousand homes between Worcester and Boston. By 1965 Simon was well into the business, continuing to build in the rush to construct homes in the suburbs of Boston during those exciting decades following WWII, when veterans were finishing their education on the GI Bill and starting families in homes purchased for $12,990 also on the GI Bill. Now he was seated in my conference room with his lawyer, a realtor, a mortgage lender, and a building official for the Eastern Massachusetts town of Lestor. The realtor was holding a signed purchase-and-sale agreement for the Webster Estate in Lestor, 240 acres of land that was once a dairy farm but was now overgrown with pine trees and oaks on about 75 percent of the land; the rest was covered with wetland vegetation.

The realtor was rhapsodizing over the market for half-million-dollar homes in the area; the lawyer was assuring us all of his ability to shepherd the project through the local approval process; and the town’s building official, whose presence at this meeting was strictly off the record, was reviewing the personalities of the planning board, board of health and conservation commission members in the town of Lestor. The banker, of course, was salivating over the thought of all those Fannie Mae-backed 80 percent home mortgages after having financed the construction of roads and infrastructure for what Mr. Steele was sure would eventually be ninety new half-million-dollar homes.

Now it was my job to inform this eager company of the realities of development in Lestor on this proposed scale from an engineer’s perspective. In the past five years, the largest subdivision approved for actual construction of homes (there is no provision for commercial or industrial development in the Lestor zoning code) consisted of five house lots on five hundred feet of road and that only after an administrative appeal of a conservation commission ruling that would have made construction impossible. The lawyer, whose expertise was in wills and estate planning, was aware of that case but turned to the building official for support of his contention that the enabling legislation in Massachusetts makes it virtually impossible for a town to deny approval if all the local codes and requirements are met. (A Massachusetts building official issues building permits for new construction, monitors and inspects construction in process, and issues occupancy permits upon completion. A town or city building official also makes decisions on matters of zoning as to interpretation and compliance.)

The Lestor building official had just cleared his throat and was beginning to repeat his careful recitation about the town officials and their personalities when my assistant came into the room with the message that my wife was on the line and that I should speak to her now. It was very important!

I picked up the phone, but before I could speak, I heard, Thomas, listen. Jimmie called… Are you listening to me? Jimmie just called! He is well, he said, and is really happy. His life has changed. He will come home soon to tell us all about it!

This was stunning news, and for a moment, I forgot about my ongoing conference with Mr. Steele and the others.

That’s fantastic, I said. What did he mean his ‘life has changed’?

He said he has found Jesus.

He found what?

He said he has found Jesus, and his whole life has changed. He is a new person. He has been ‘reborn,’ he said.

All I could say was, Jesus… At that point, I realized that discussion in the room had come to a halt. Five staring faces were turned my way. Look, Jeannie, I’m in a meeting, and I can’t talk now. I’ll be home by eight, I promise. I want to hear all the details then.

Chapter 2

A Focused Mother

For once in our married life, I got home when I said I would. Jean was on her feet and at the door as I came in. She was talking before I could say a word as she grabbed the coat from my hands and hung it in the closet, all the while urging me into the kitchen where she had prepared dinner, surprising in itself since she always insisted we sit down together at the dining room table no matter how late I came home.

Jimmie’s call, his first in over six months, had come in at three o’clock. The first thing he said to his mother was that he was sorry for behaving the way he had for the past three years. He had been mean and unfair to us, his parents, and he loved us more than he could say and couldn’t understand what had gotten into him except that it was surely a devil in his heart. Now he was a new man, born again into the arms of Jesus. Could she forgive him? Would we ever forgive him?

You mean, I said, the day before yesterday he stumbled into some West Coast cult of Jesus freaks out there in California and is all coked up in this newfound religious experience. I hope it doesn’t wear off before he gets home.

I don’t think so, Thomas, and don’t be so cynical. He told me he had been attending services and studying with a group of ‘real Christians’ for over a month now. They are wonderful people and ‘solid in the New Testament,’ he said. I think it is probably real, but in any case he is talking to us at last, and he is coming home!

When James was born, it was our fourth attempt at childbirth. Three times Jean was pregnant only to lose the baby, the first time after only a month. The second failure occurred a little later in her pregnancy but still too soon to know what it would have been or to have gotten used to the idea of parenthood. But the third time was a real heartbreaker. In the sixth month, her doctor informed Jean that the fetus was no longer viable. She suffered the excruciating experience of carrying this failure for several weeks until it was naturally expelled from her body. Jean avoided an emotional collapse, but we decided we would just never have children of our own and stopped all the special procedures and preparations we had been following for several years. It was a surprise, then, when Jean discovered she was pregnant once again, quite unexpectedly. We braced ourselves for another unhappy time, but now, for some reason, everything worked the way it is supposed to work, and James was born full term, as they say. I was overjoyed to have a son, of course; but for Jean, the joy and wonder of it all was beyond mere happiness.

Jean vowed from the beginning that somehow nature had prepared her for this child by those repeated failures, lest she not fully appreciate the wonder of a new life, and now she must respond with unconditional dedication and determination. No one could say why it had happened this way, but she knew in her heart that she had been given something special, and she must do something special with the opportunity. She would devote herself completely to this child. She would be there for him at every turn in his life. There would be no priorities to come between her and her duty to her son. She would protect him from every risk in his childhood but would encourage him and support him in all his efforts to live a meaningful and useful manhood.

In all this, there was the unspoken thought between us that this was it: We had one child from four pregnancies, and there would probably be no younger brother or sister to join this one. I was satisfied; Jean was challenged. To me, it was one of those realities of life to be dealt with. For Jean it was a personal miracle and one not to be wasted.

I was concerned about the mama’s boy syndrome, but I knew enough about Jean’s ferocious determination not to stand in her way. Besides, I was preoccupied at the time, building a consulting practice during those years of rapid growth in the communities of Eastern Massachusetts and had little time for doting fatherhood at the end of my typical seventy-hour workweeks.

Jean was as good as her word; she did, in fact, give herself completely to the child from the first day home from the hospital. But as the years passed, her attention was mostly on the boy’s education and cultural development rather than, as I had feared it might be, on protecting him from every danger, imagined or otherwise. He began walking and talking earlier than the average child, I like to believe. Then he began to learn the alphabet and a recognition of words. By the time he entered the first grade, he was already at least a year advanced beyond his peers and was soon dealing with numbers and simple arithmetic.

Jean surprised me by introducing the boy to sports at an early age; she taught him the meaning of games, how the players cooperate in order to be a winning team—she had no patience with the idea of scoreless contests. Life is a contest was her observation, and it is foolish to pretend there is no score card. To my relief, she did not try to shelter the boy from the usual falls and bumps; learning to ride a bicycle was not without a few scrapes.

Later, when he was about eight, Jimmie was invited to participate in Pop Warner football; but no, football is stupid for little boys and grown men alike according to Jean. He would play lacrosse or soccer instead, and he did, finally concentrating on lacrosse. Jean knew nothing about lacrosse; in high school and college, she had played field hockey and favored soccer. But Jimmie liked the idea of stick handling and chose that sport. Typically, Jean, herself a lifelong athlete, studied the sport, read the rules, and interviewed coaches. Soon she had acquired proper shoes and the baggy uniforms favored by lacrosse players and a goalie’s stick. For hours she and Jimmie would practice at the high school field, she defending while Jimmie charged at the net. Watching Jean’s long-legged lunges back and forth, making heroic stops while Jimmie was developing his skills, I fell in love all over again.

I watched all this with some admiration and eventual respect for my wife’s guidance of the