Meet the Greens

[Successful Love]

“See here. Look in my refrigerator. I don’t buy anything that don’t require cooking. That way, my husband stays healthy ‘cause he can’t just come in here and get a bag of something filled with grease, fat, preservatives and God knows what else! He’s not eating anything I don’t cook. He doesn’t like the grocery store, so I only have to worry about him eating junk from the gas station or from some drive through, but he doesn’t do that because I make sure he has healthy snacks in his truck that’ll keep him full till he gets home in the afternoons. And you know Mr. Green is a man of his word, so if he says to me that he won’t buy from the convenience store and he won’t stop at the McDonald’s, then he won’t.” Mrs. Green was in her mid fifties and Mr. Green was nearly sixty. They had been married for more than thirty-five years and
 they were living the dream. They had a gorgeous home in a very expensive neighborhood, and they’d paid the mortgage on it years ago. Mr. Green owned an HVAC services company that he’d started after he’d graduated from technical school. He was a Vietnam War vet and his wife had been his high school sweetheart. Mrs. Green hadn’t worked for 30 years outside her home and Mr. Green had always wanted it that way. They had three children and six grandchildren and they spent summers driving their camper all over the U.S. and Canada, most of the time with at least two of their grandchildren in tow. Their six grandchildren ranged from three years old up to seven years, and they absolutely loved being with G-Pop and Nana.
I loved being around them because they had always been such an inspiration to me. Mrs. Green never drove a car that was more than three years old and she hadn’t been to a gas station in over 20 years. Mr. Green never let her tank get below half full and riding in her car was always like pulling a new Lexus off the lot. She got nearly anything she wanted, which in the case of her latest car was an LS Lexus- the flagship. I envied her children and grandchildren for having such a strong foundation to be tied to, but they were all great people and they had not squandered their bounty. Their two oldest children had been boys and both of them had attended college on athletics scholarships, though their dad had prepared since they were babies to pay for college. The oldest son was a lawyer and the younger son was a Certified Public Accountant and manager in one of the big four international audit firms. Their youngest child was a girl and she was the apple of her dad’s eye. She went to private school from the time she started school until the time she finished college, and she met a great guy who she married a day after graduating in a lavish wedding her father was more than happy to pay for. These people had a lot because they worked hard. Mr. Green was a sober man and he had a deep and abiding faith. I liked that he was never in-your-face about his beliefs, but if you asked him, he would tell you exactly what he was all about. He was the embodiment of reliability and fidelity and he always told any young man who was interested in knowing that every man has the choice to be anything he wants to be. Surprising to many of those same young men was Mr. Green’s firm belief that that included everything, from his being faithful to his wife for thirty-five years, to being a millionaire if one so chose to be, which he also was. Mr. Green admitted that nothing he’d done was easy, but he believed that if a man had a sense of his purpose and if he had values he firmly believed in and could stand for, nothing could stop that man from being a success. He had been around the world in his youth and had run women and drank until drunkenness and so on, but he was a simple man and he learned what he needed to learn about what he wanted in life early on. Seeing the things he saw in Vietnam grounded him and he promptly married his wife after returning from the war. She was younger than him and after graduating high school, she had gone to work as a seamstress working in a local textile mill. She wrote him letters during his three tours in Vietnam and she had never really gotten involved with another man after he had enlisted in the military and left her behind in their high school. They started out very poor and she worked while he worked and went to technical school. He was always the hardest working laborer on any crew he worked with, and the mostly white supers would always tell him that he need never be concerned about the security of his job. But Mr. Green was never satisfied. He didn’t like coming home in the middle of the night to find his exhausted wife awake, always waiting for him with a hot meal, a smile, and welcoming arms. She really loved the man, and he always credited that with being one of the primary reasons he was successful; that and the many blessings he’d received. He promised her babies and better. They scraped and saved so that he could buy a truck and start a home repair and handyman services business, and within five years, the business was thriving. They had their children, and by the time Mr. Green was 30, they were homeowners and Mrs. Green was at home full-time, tending their flock. They had remained on that course for more than 25 years up until Mr. Green had a heart attack about three years ago. He was a very healthy man because his wife made sure of it, but Mr. Green was by nature simply a hard worker. Through tears at his hospital bedside, Mrs. Green had extracted a promise from her husband that he would start winding down his work so that they could enjoy their coming retirement together without further health issues plaguing him. “Honey, I don’t know what I’d do if something worse happened to you. We have received so many blessings from the Lord; I just want you to be here as long as you can so we can enjoy what He has done for us. It don’t make no sense for you to be out there working like you was one of them young men that work for you. This heart attack is a sign you’ve paid your dues and your body is tired. I love you and I’d like to see you at home more. These grandbabies would be so happy for G-Pop to be around when they get home in the afternoons, and you could do homework with them, or read, or whatever.” Mr. Green took great pleasure in satisfying his wife, which he cared to do more than anything else. He smiled, “Mrs. Green, if that’s what you want, then I’ll be glad to do just that. This ole heart of mine ain’t what it used to be, but I can still pull my load just as good as any of these young bucks. I guess now that I have more than 20 of them crews out there every day serving our customers, I can afford to relax some. You know me, I’m a ole coot sometimes and you’d think nobody else knew air conditioners in this world but me, if you let me tell it!” Mr. Green cracked a wide smile and laughed heartily. Mrs. Green was quick to tell you that God made her a real man and dropped him out of heaven and into her heart. She discharged her duties to him accordingly.
I had worked for Mr. Green when I was in college after my freshman year and he had taken to me like one of his own children. “I just don’t know Mr. Green. I’ll be honest with you, I’m very different from you. I’ve never been a man of great faith and I certainly have not been lucky enough to find a woman as good as Mrs. Green to help me settle down.” Mr. Green had a look of incredulity on his face. “Boy, don’t you know you can’t expect a woman to cause you to settle down? That’s a situation you have to work out in yo’self. Y’all boys today are dreamin’ too doggone much, an ya ain’t doin’ enough work. You gotta unplug from the TV and the computer in order to see what your real, everyday situation is. You ain’t settled cause you always worried if you choose one, you’ll miss out on another. Well, fact is you will. You just gotta ask yourself what it is you’re really afraid of when it comes to choosin’. Are ya afraid that you’re gonna be missing something you need? Something you want? You had a nice girl. I done forgot her name, but me an the missus thought she'd be a fittin’ match for a kid like you.” Mr. Green was talking about Shorty. She had loved the Greens just as much as I did. She spent hours in that kitchen, learning Mrs. Green’s cooking techniques. Mrs. Green liked her because she was an apt pupil and Mrs. Green said Shorty had an old soul, a new mind, and a golden heart. “That girl will help you make it in this life son,” she’d told me one day on the phone when I’d called to check on her and Mr. Green. Mr. Green had been having difficulty with his wireless internet router, and he’d asked me to come by at my leisure to check it out for him. “You think so huh?” I’d said in response. “Listen to me, she really truly respects you. I can tell you this too, me and Mr. Green have been together more than forty years total, an I’ll tell you that you can’t afford to have no woman who has contempt in her heart for her man, and that woman don’t have an ounce of it. She had a good daddy and a good mama, and that makes all the difference in the world. Now I will say this, I care about her too. If you know you ain’t prepared to cherish the gift God put in that woman’s heart for you, then let her be. It don’t do to hurt a fine creation like that, an I know you’ve got quality enough in you to appreciate doing the right thing and preserving the good she has to offer to someone who’s prepared to receive it.” Those words had hit me hard, though Mrs. Green’s advice was always welcome. My mother was really the only woman whose opinion had more of an impact on me than Mrs. Green’s. The Greens were the only people I knew that had nearly exactly what I wanted. If it weren’t for the fact that Mr. Green was such a religious man, I might have simply emulated his behaviors outright. I don’t think Mrs. Green’s words accelerated the demise of my relationship with Shorty, but they sure as hell made me feel a sense of accountability that was otherwise easy to disregard. Shorty was with me of her own volition; she could have chosen any guy, but she chose me. I was also pretty sure that I had not given Shorty less love, care, respect, or consideration than would another man, but I understood that Mrs. Green was cautioning me to recognize where I was in my individual development and not waste Shorty’s time. She had been married to Mr. Green for years, borne three children and was already a homeowner and small business owner by the time she was Shorty’s age. Being a woman of her time, she felt Shorty was behind the curve, and I was partly to blame. I needed to either shit or get off the pot, and I was neither ready to take a dump, nor did I want to move.
Obviously, I ended up letting Shorty go, but Mrs. Green had another revelation for me. “See, by letting her go, you proved you’re a man who has integrity. You showed her and everyone else that you have character. I didn’t want to tell you what to do, but since you did the right thing, in my mind, I believe you’ll have another chance to claim that woman when the time is right for you, cause I know she’s a one-in-a-million kinda girl. You weren’t ready for her- not all young men in this world are like my husband was, and I wouldn’t wish for anyone to have to go through what he went through to be what he is. But I am thankful for him, Lord knows I am. Mr. Green suffered a lot because of that war. The things those boys saw over there were things humans were never made to see. We got souls you know, and they’re all connected. When you take a life to save your own, it leaves you askin’ God if he wanted it that way and whether or not you took away a piece of his creation that he loved more than he loves you. You can win the battle, but ‘cause of what it takes, you can never win that war. There were no winners in that situation, and my husband is no exception. He had a heart attack because he’s constantly trying to pay his dues and deserve the life that God spared for him and let him have. Why do you think he gives so much of himself to everybody in his life? I swear if sometimes I don’t worry my husband’s gonna come home naked out of the streets ‘cause his heart’s so big. I know that girl would be good for you, because you need somebody who wants to take a stake in you and all you’re about. In some ways, I’m here to protect my husband. I ain’t physically strong like he is, but I ask God every day to surround my husband with His protection so that no other plan but God’s plan will be at work in it.” I choked up and started sobbing when she said these things to me, but she just took me over to a chair in the breakfast nook and served me a piece of her famous lemon pound cake. She knew I meant well and that I was lost, and she reassured me that all would resolve in time. Between her and my mother, I don’t know why they continued to advise me to pray, but they always did and I never found time to heed their entreaty.