Dream Deferred

Daniel was in his kitchen making his self a turkey sandwich when his father came into the house. His dad was carrying a grocery sack in one arm and a manila envelope in the other. When Daniel saw the big envelope, he let out a long sigh and tossed his butter knife into the sink. His father heard the clang from the sink but was unbothered by it. He pulled a seat out from under the dinner table and sat down. “I think this it Danny boy, I think today is the day that we hit it big!” His dad said while dumping out several sizeable lottery scratch-off sheets onto the table.

This had become a bad habit for his father in the past couple of weeks. Ever since his dad retired from working at the city water treatment plant, he had seemingly been burning through their money on these “scratch-offs.” He was like an addict. He ignored all else except “hitting it big.” It was so odd because Daniel’s father had been so responsible his whole life. They had a modest house in a modest neighborhood and they never made purchases that were outside their means. They were one of the only people that he knew that grew most of their own food and shopped at thrift stores for clothes more times than not. On some level, Daniel felt like this unexciting, sensible lifestyle is what drove his mother away. She often said she, “needed more out of life than just getting by for now and waiting for our time later.” He had heard his parents argue many times and so much of it didn’t make any sense to him. His dad was always talking about this “grand plan” he had and mom always said how “unrealistic” it was. To which he would argue that this plan is “the only shot we all have a happy life for us and future generations.”

His mom had apparently had enough of it all and two weeks after Daniel graduated from high school his mom and dad told him there were separating, and she was moving to Spain for the time being to try to “find herself.” She gave Daniel a hug and told him that he could visit her any time he wanted and that she would pay for his plane ticket. She kissed him and left for the airport with her belongings. Later that night he asked his dad how he felt about it and he shrugged and said, “I love your mother very much and I knew this was going to be a tough journey and I’m happy that she stayed this long but the caged bird always sings Dan. I plan on buying her a plane ticket back one day so she can see how right I was.” Several weeks later she went on a hike with some friends and she died after a rock-climbing accident. Daniel and his father were devastated.

About a year after she left, his father retired and ever since then his father turned into a full-blown gambling addict. He spent a couple hundred dollars or more on scratch-offs every week and had relatively won little to no money in comparison. He certainly wasn’t breaking even. His father always yelped and sang every time he won a good chunk of money but his “big hit” had never come. Daniel didn’t know if this was a coping mechanism for his mom leaving them so soon or some mid-life crisis, but he knew that if his father didn’t get a grip on this he would be looking for a new job soon or worse.

All of these thoughts swam in Daniel’s mind while sat down at the dinner table with his father to confront him about his financial problems. “Hey dad.”

“Hey Dano, what do you got there? Turkey and tomato? That looks mighty good.” His father said while scratching off another sheet. This one was a fifty-dollar sheet. If he could match all of his allotted symbols from the top line, he could potentially win twelve thousand dollars. Daniel sat and watched his father scratch away. Little tiny flecks of silver and black scattered around them, Daniel frowned and pushed his sandwich to the side. “Hey, listen I…” His dad swore out loud and slid the sheet to his side, and he started on the last one. It was the biggest of the bunch and the most opulent. It said it was a one-hundred-dollar sheet on the corner. His father mumbled something under his breath, licked his lips, and went to task. “Dad listen we have to talk about this. I can’t keep watching you spend all of your money on these things. I don’t know what’s going on with you or if…” He trailed off because he realized his father wasn’t listening, he was holding the last sheet up with both hands now with tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “I’ll be John Brown,” his dad said while looking over the symbols and numbers again. Remembering when his father sang and danced when he won four-hundred and fifty dollars one time and almost broke even for a week, Daniel rolled his eyes and said, “what’d you get now dad?” In a removed and monotone voice. “Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.” His father mumbled something else under his breath, looked up and began weeping. Daniel rubbed his neck and said, “That’s fantastic!” His father wiped his tears way and composed his self. His gaze lowered down and leveled with Daniels. He had an intensity in his eyes now. “Now we start working.”

His father pushed back from the table and stood up with force. He marched to the other side of the kitchen and pulled out a well-sized black moleskin journal. He snapped the elastic band back, laid it on the counter next to the phone and deftly thumbed through the pages. Each page was filled with information, hand-written in black ink. Daniel had never seen this journal a day in his life. His father stopped and picked up the phone to make a phone call. After several rings a man’s voice answered on the other line. His father stood tall his voiced dropped and sounded stern and serious. “Travis, it’s me. I just won twenty-thousand dollars on a hundred-dollar scratch-off. We might want to double-check with everyone else but as far as I know this puts us over the top. FREEDOM 45 is a go. I repeat FREEDOM 45 is a go.” Daniel could hear the man on the other line begin to sob his self. His father said one last thing before he hung up. “Hey Travis, do me a favor and go ahead start getting your affairs in order. Today is the third, let’s plan to have this set and ready to go by the end of the month. I’ll call everyone else and tell them the good news myself. I’ll head your way afterward. We did it. We actually did it.” He hung up the phone and started making the second of at least two dozen similar phone calls.

Daniel waited at the table and looked perplexed. He ate his sandwich and watched his father make phone calls and jot numbers down in the journal. He heard names of people he had never met and heard his dad using lingo and references to things that were lost on him.

It was two and a half hours before his father hung up and closed the journal up again. When he turned to address Daniel, he was a new man, a liberated man. From what Daniel did not know yet. “Freedom 45? Dad what the hell is going on? Is this why mom left? Can you please explain?” His father handed him the black moleskin journal like it was a divine decree. Now speaking with a different and more righteous tone he said, “All your answers you are searching for will be found in that journal. I love you with all my heart son, but I must leave now. I’ll see you soon and we’ll go from there.” He then kissed his son on the forehead and floated down the hall and out the back door. Daniel didn’t see his father again for five days.

When his dad showed up again, he had a team of people with him. They came in several different trucks and didn’t appear to be working for anyone. They all greeted Daniel smiling and proceeded to remove everything from his house. Daniel’s father got out of one of the trucks with the same casual second-hand-looking clothes as everyone else and now sporting a short beard. “Hey son, how have you been? I sure did miss you.”

“I missed you too dad. What’s going on?”

“Did you read the journal?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I sold the house yesterday and were loading up all of our stuff and donating to the cause.”

His father looked around and nervously said, “Danny, you can either go with us join us or you can stay here, and I’ll help you get set up somewhere…” His son cut him off, “Dad, I…” Daniel looked around at the neighborhood he grew up in, the city that he lived in. The city that his father worked for years in and his father before him. The weight of it all pulled on his father so much and on him by extension. He was the one with tears this time. “Dad, I already packed my stuff. I can’t wait to go.” They hugged each other and all the people standing around watched and smiled.

When my father was in high school, he and all his friends saw the torment that their parents worked in every day. The working fifty-hour work weeks just to make ends barely meet, the ever-increasing health insurance premiums, and financial debt and diminishing social securities for everyone. They saw that as their future yet to come. This terrified them to no end.

They started joking about buying a piece of land somewhere and them all moving there to live with each other. They half-jokingly began planning it more and more. When Travis’s grandfather died and left him a sizeable piece of land in Colorado, they knew this wasn’t for fun anymore this will be their collected life goal.

This was the plan known as Freedom 45:

My father and all his friends would get trades-jobs, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, etc. It wasn’t until my father went to college and met new friends and explained the idea to them as well that he started gathering Engineers, Doctors, Architects, etc. That’s also where he met my mother. The plan was to get hired on by local or federal government and start saving money and a retirement fund. Live meaningful, modest lives, and by the time you retire after twenty-five years with good government benefits. Each person would take all of that money, plus the money they saved and liquidated assets and move to the shared group property in Colorado. They will effectively be free by the age of 45. Everyone from every faith and nationality would build their houses, make their own little community and take care of each other. They would grow and harvest their own food. They would be completely self-sustained. Then every next generation to come would inherit it and make it better. They would live by example and motivate other people to try it also. My dad was the de facto leader of these people and I never knew it. He lived a sensible, respectable life and he always knew this would happen one day.

My mom tried but couldn’t last. She was the only one that didn’t make it. I like to think that she lived more in those several weeks before she died than most people live in their lifetimes. That’s why when we voted on what to name this place, we unanimously agreed on Hope, my mother’s name.