Coffee is for Closers

“Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers.”

One of the many lines my father and I used to repeat to each other from Glengarry Glen Ross while we sold insurance together for eighteen years.

As I sit here doing my accounting on this spring like day, March 10, working through QuickBooks, I am still entering revenue from our old health insurance business. I started in insurance with my father right after my glorious quitting at GE. I burned those bridges well and good. Quickly and abruptly. I had my fill of the long hours in accounting. When I figured out how to get ten hours of work done in eight, they simply tried to give me ten hours again. I was done with that.

All these years later, five years after my father stopped working and two years after he passed away, I am still receiving these small commission payments from our health insurance carriers.

They were my father’s commissions. Our agreement was that I would give him half, a deal we renegotiated and argued about more times than I can count. Too many fights, too many battles.

Because of that experience, I am adamant that my kids will never work for me or with me. I can only work for them, so they can fire me anytime they no longer need me. That seems like the fairest way to protect the relationship.

As time passes, the rose colored glasses grow even rosier. I remember the good times more than the arguments. It is a cautionary tale, but it was also my life, and it was good. There is far more to appreciate and be thankful for than there is to regret.

We had big personalities, which meant strong opinions and strong fights. Now, with the perspective that time and death bring, I can see more clearly. My father might have understood my perspective, and I know I was not always right no matter how many times I retell the story in my own head. I was not wrong, but neither was he.

If we could achieve perfect understanding, we could have perfect forgiveness. I know that truth intellectually, but it is hard to feel completely in this life.

I cared deeply for my father and I loved him. I wanted to take care of him, and I did. In truth, I gave more than the half we agreed on in commissions to both my father and my mother. I was happy to do it. They were my parents and I loved them.

Eventually I surpassed them, which is always the plan. Children are supposed to find their own way.

But I still think back to those moments when things were good. When we would joke with each other and throw out lines from the movies. “Kibbits,” he would say to other people. Many of his expressions are etched into the ridges of my mind. They are part of my makeup now, even though I rarely say them aloud. Sometimes I say them quietly to myself and smile.

The inner ghosts of the people who shaped us.

I was proud to work with my father. I was impressed by him. He had gone through so many things and tried so many different businesses before finally finding insurance at around fifty five years old. His previous business had been hollowed out underneath him by his trust in the wrong people.

That experience left its mark. The trust he struggled with after that was always a point of tension between us. I had never betrayed that trust, but I still felt the weight of it. It cut deeper than I ever admitted at the time.

In the end, after all the arguments and the Greek word he loved to use, fouskaries, the nonsense and the noise, I find myself remembering the good days.

The days when it was fun.

When we were selling and laughing and shouting our lines at each other across the office.

So in the end, all I really want to say is this.

I miss you, Dad. I love you.

That is what matters in the end.

And I still smile when I think of you.