Capt. R.E. Ludlow expected five-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow to get up and have milk with coffee with him, and of course snuggle right down in his lap and go to sleep, any day and every day. Sometimes seven-year-old Amanda also got up and joined – “I don't want any coffee, but I hear from Rob that the snuggling is elite,” she said one day, and had her grandparents going in and out of fits of laughter all day about these two little Ludlows who knew how to use elite in a sentence more or less correctly, that early in the morning! Six-year-old Grayson's mastering the vocabulary to win the first-grade prize for the Lofton County Virtual Spelling Bee had several aftereffects!
Meeting ten-year-old Andrew, who tended to sit up late and be thinking even after going to bed, was a surprise after tucking Lil' Robert and Amanda back into their beds.
“So I had a question, Papa, about today,” he said.
“Well, did you want some milk with some coffee?” Capt. Ludlow purred with a smile.
“I think I just need some water, because I'm probably going back to bed,” Andrew said. “But I need to know: how are you going to feel tomorrow when you hear about 'The Ludlow Bubbly,' and you are still the Ludlow, but you can't say 'I am the owner'?”
Capt. Ludlow thought about this.
“Well, I don't walk around saying that anyhow,” he said. “I don't think I've ever started or ended a conversation that way. I kind of lean on what we have in common: the Ludlow part.”
Andrew considered this with a smile.
“Well, yeah, that is the strong part, Papa,” he said, and gratefully received a tousling of his sandy brown hair from his grandfather. “And I know your favorite title is Papa. I was just asking because Eleanor and I were reading abut business people and how proud they are to own stuff while other people don't, and after tomorrow you won't be able to say that any more.”
“Here is the problem, grandson: comparison. If you can't have what you have and let go of what you have unless you check and see what somebody else has or doesn't have, you are in a trap you built yourself.”
“Oh,” Andrew said. “I was just checking because a lot of those people didn't come out well.”
“Of course not,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Trying to play God compared to other people does not end well.”
“Oh, is that what's going on with racism, sexism, and classism too?” Andrew said.
Capt. Ludlow heard half his bloodline shrieking at him from beyond the grave – and cut the line anyhow.
“Yes, it's all coming from people like me wanting to feel more like God than people like our friends and business partners – and that is encouraged by Satan, who wants to replace God. It's all going to fail. Now, there may be ways we choose to live and choose not to live that we see others adopting or are part of their culture. There may be things out of our family or national or ethnic heritage we want to preserve. But we do not have the right – and I say this as a recovering, born-and-raised racist and sexist and classist, blue-blood to the core – to presume we are just better than everyone else and that our way should be imposed on everyone else. That's God's right only – and even He is allowing people to be different from one another and come to Christ as He calls them, and stay different, still. Since He likes variety, and since we are supposed to conform to Christ only, we better get to liking it.”
“Is that harder for you because you were kinda old when we watched you figure this out?” Andrew said.
“Well, in the Army I had it, because I had to focus on the unit,” he said, “and then Grandma really is having no foolishness out of me, being the liberal San Franciscan she is. Is it naturally harder? Sometimes … but I also grew up on the mountain for half my childhood with my Lee-of-the-mountain grandmother and all her friends and their children, and it never was a problem there. But, yes, Andrew, I grew up in a time in which continuing the lines of men like me being better than all women and everyone else not like me was the expectation and not pushed back on openly until 1974. I was almost a grown man by then, because civil rights came really late to Lofton County. So, I've gone back and forth, depending largely on whether I was thinking straight, or not – but I am done wobbling. I have learned my lesson. Christ flatly forbids me to raise you as I was raised, which means no more wobbling for me. But it begins, grandson, no matter who anyone is, with refusing the temptation of pride and comparison.”
“Is this also why you will not allow us to be getting mad over little comparison type of things and picking on each other and fighting?” Andrew said.
“Yes,” Capt. Ludlow said. “That's natural human nature and in adulthood it goes on under many guises, but it is like I tell you: we are one family, and we had to fight to be together, so we're not going to mess it up fighting each other. There is also one big family in the world: the human family, so we're not going fight different humans just because they look different or believe different things except if self-defense is needed. We're also in the family of God, and God will not have His children out here fighting each other when the job is to represent Him so well other people want to be adopted into the family.”
“That stuff works, too, because Glendella came right down the road looking for us and hasn't even thought about going back,” Andrew said. “She fit right in and loves us and we love her.”
“That's the whole idea, demonstrated at our level,” Capt. Ludlow said. “And I do not have to be a big businessman tomorrow to live in the wonder of all of that – that's enough, and a blessing beyond comparison.”
“Thanks, Papa,” Andrew said. “I can go back to sleep now. Understanding is like a big, soft blanket for my brain.”
“Let me just wrap it for you, nice and tight,” Capt. Ludlow said, and smiled as he glimpsed his grandson's pre-hug grin before giving his grandson a big hug.