Come, Part I

Cedar Newsletter No. 1

I

I plucked the phrase coming to the nuisance from the annuls of English common law. The principle first emerged in land use disputes during the Industrial Revolution when regular folks, I picture gentlemen farmers with messy English gardens, started complaining about the smoke and noise (fair). The plaintiffs were the homeowners and the defendants were the owners of the new factories belching out the black soot and clanging all night long, interrupting dreams of clotted cream.

Common law established precedent on both sides of the argument actually. But it was when the court thought that the plaintiffs should have seen it coming, should have assessed things more carefully and assumed some risk associated with these new neighborhood entities (and not bought property right next to them!), that they would adjust those curly white wigs they had to wear and send their gavels down for the defendants. This is when they would turn to the plaintiffs, explaining that they had simply ‘come to the nuisance’. Those Brits can be stern, no? Like a tough-nut mom at the playground!

But I’m no lawyer. I heard about ‘coming to the nuisance’ because I married one and then had three boys in rapid succession. It got rowdy --- fast. Various kinds of interventions were necessary and my husband, James, regularly leaned into the philosophical underpinnings of law when solving disputes among the brood. They might still be teething on one of those tiny square books as he waxed poetic in rhetorical reverie. Strangely, it was quite effective.

Here's a memory plucked from the early, blurry days:

I see my boys with wet hair after baths and their perfect little square bare feet and Hanna Andersson cotton pajamas. A small skirmish has erupted during Fish Cup ---- a longstanding, almost nightly indoor soccer tournament that took place in our living room --- the fireplace and open kitchen French doors were the two goals.

Fish Cup focused on winning a wooden fish on a dowel that my oldest, also James but we called him Jamesy, had painted a spotted black and white, like a Dalmatian, in art class. For years the small wooden structure sat as a coveted prize, half fish/half dog, on the mantle, representing the ongoing cup. But that night during Fish Cup, one of the boys decides to play the ball up the right side, near the dining table, and the ball sails through. Goal!! But as it does, it hits a large magnatile structure one of the kids had built the day before. It’s leveled. Great cries erupt. I can’t believe I can remember all this!

Big James just then walks in from work. He’s keeping the calm and standing alongside the boys in his Brooks Brothers pin-stripe suit near the fireplace, as they listen, rapt, for a call on both the unlikely goal and the fallen tower.

I was busying turning out near-constant meals and snacks, so I’m otherwise occupied but when I hear him say the words I walk over to the open French doors, my dish gloves dripping.

What did you just say? I asked.

And that was the beginning of my love affair with coming to the nuisance.

---

II

If I remember correctly, initially my husband didn’t go into the 19^th Century land use stuff when he first described the principle of ‘coming to the nuisance’ to the boys. Maybe it was too close to bedtime for tort. Instead, he made up a proxy story about a backyard hole and a neighborhood boy to get the idea across. The story-boy gets curious and wanders over to the hole, breeches the tape and fence the neighbors had erected around it and he falls in, breaking his foot!

My firstborn, Jamesy, is staring right at his Dad with laser focus as he spins the tale; my second, Peter, is looking off into the middle distance, seeing the story-boy and the backyard hole in his mind’s eye; my youngest, JJ, is staring directly at his two older brothers. They’re all eating their Fagé at our round, scratched Crate and Barrel kitchen table with a schmear of either strawberry jam or ketchup on it.

Whose fault do you think it is? Dad asks them. Is it the neighbor’s fault that the boy broke his foot ---- for having that hole in their backyard? Or….do you think it’s the boy’s fault for trespassing —— breaching the tape and fence?

I don’t remember if there was any real discussion. But I remember that they decide together if fault is to be assigned, it should probably hover over the boy for breaching the tape and fence. Their Dad thoughtfully nods and says that a real-life judge would likely agree. Because the boy had, you guessed it, come to the nuisance.

Now that he’d laid the logic down, Dad was ready to make a gentle ruling on the goal and the fallen tower --- The goal stands, he advised them. And if you guys want to build a tower, just remember, it might not last that long if you build it on the pitch.

Whew! Dispute resolved.

Yogurt snack, check. Jurisprudence, check. Teeth brushed, check. Nighttime prayers, lifted heavenward. Lights out. Another day. Exhausting? Yes. It staggers me how much I miss them though.

But this is what I wanted to get to: the story-boy and his dilemma --- it stuck with me. In those early years, I took it as a solemn duty of motherhood to consider from my post in between the sink and the fridge, in between turning out chicken tenders and the over-cooked broccoli and something with peanut butter on it, how I might translate the deeper lessons of the neighbor boy and the backyard hole: how would I teach my own boys to identify a true nuisance from afar, how could I show them not to be caught flat-footed in its gravitational realm, how might they learn not to be tricked or seduced by their own desires or impulses, not be overtaken by feelings and emotions but learn to use their budding sense of reason and logic and exercise self-control. The lesson for me centered on those two rocks of enlightenment philosophy: reason and self-control.

But as time wore on, life itself seemed almost a stress test for the idea that nuisances could really be avoided. Even a simple mid-morning soccer tournament would be a massive nuisance mitigation effort. Inside one of those enormous open totes I used to carry, I’d have packed in the bag for the day: snacks for a handful of half-times (nuisance: hunger), water for everyone in the car (nuisance: thirst, dehydration), nike slides for right after the games (nuisance: wearing cleats on the pavement causes some bad thing to happen to your shins…), antibac’ wipes (nuisance: invisible bacteria on surfaces everywhere including your own hands), sometimes I’d pack bug spray too (nuisance: bugs – mosquitos might have West Nile; but check for tics too! nuisance: Lyme), first aid stuff like Advil (nuisance: pain) and band-aids (nuisance: abrasions, a definite at a tourney), sunscreen (nuisance: UV rays from the sun = sunburn, also, what about cancer?! nuisance: melanoma.). But don’t forget, if you cover up your kids too much with sunscreen, they won’t get enough Vit D. (nuisance: vit D deficiency. JJ, my youngest, got that and it causes gobs of other diseases and syndromes which, along with their symptoms, are also all nuisances!). My head was spinning.

I think you get my point --- the nuisances were everywhere. For crying out loud, even the air and the sun were a problem. Then, when we’d arrive home from the tourney, if I’d mitigated all of those ---- there were dishes, laundry, dinner, email. I began to see that in many of our most basic human activities, we’re all coming to the nuisance all the time. When I woke up in the morning, I’d already come.

Then real trouble came. I went through a season of deep trial when both my mom and sister were very ill. There was nothing for me to put in the tote for this. The boys were still pretty little then --- now in elementary and middle school. For a period of two and half years as my boys grew and played soccer and horn instruments and studied science and read Harry Potter, my mom and my sister were dying together. In April of 2016, my Mom finally passed away; six months later, a week after Thanksgiving, my younger sister died too.

On a frigid, gray day, standing absolutely shocked in a tailored black dress and heels on a patch of frozen grass a stone’s throw from the Hudson River, we buried my sister a few feet from the still upturned earth where we’d laid my Mom.

I wasn’t sure then how I’d survive it. I can tell you this: it wasn’t pretty. I guess I did not have the gene for poise-in-grief. In the aftermath of it, I crashed around like a pinball from one numbing, avoidant habit to another. I was mentally batty and suffered various forms of physical illness too. I had a Texas-sized crisis of faith, made worse for my inability to fess up to it. These are all topics I’d like to return to in more depth from my new cedar walk-in closet-office. But in emerging from that absurdly long season of grief and perplexity, I find myself, more gently now, back at this simple concept and question with a heart that almost burns to understand --- when should we come and when should we run?