The Overcoat

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

My friends, the retired Utah Trappist monks now all living in Salt Lake City, always have understood that not having much money is only one way to be poor, and that a far worse form of deprivation is the absence of a generous spirit. Me? Not so much.

At Christmas time, and throughout the year, people constantly give the monks things. I delivered Trappist beer to them just this week. My Irish Catholic mother regularly made or bought cakes, cupcakes, cookies, or brownies for their birthdays, vow anniversaries, saint feast days, etc. Many visitors donated cash. Friends and neighbors of the monastery donated food and even equipment for making food, including bread.

The monks were skilled at being generous themselves, but they also excelled at behaving generously. They not only knew how to give with kindness, they also understood the importance of receiving with a kind and gracious spirit. I often have lacked such knowledge.

Perhaps I suffered from a common malady that Pope Francis identified in 2013. He has said, “It is more difficult to let God love us than to love Him! The best way to love Him in return is to open our hearts and let Him love us.” For example, I have only had one formal overcoat in my life. It is tan, with a soft interior lining, and was purchased many decades ago. Now it is quite well-worn. It hangs on the back of my office door as you read these words. I will never get another one.

The story of how I got my one and only overcoat is one of my most cherished life lessons and holiday memories.

One day I was at the Ogden City Mall (which no longer exists) Christmas shopping with my Mom near the end of my law school years. I was about to start my first job as a new young lawyer. Mom steered me to the men’s clothing department at Nordstrom and announced that I needed a winter overcoat. Keep in mind that my mom was a single mother who worked mainly service, blue collar, or clerical type jobs, and never earned much money. She also gave away most of what she earned. 

Orphaned at an early age, not supported much in school, and not wanting to be anything other than a mother, she never went to college and never acquired a profession. Then she was thrown into the workforce unexpectedly after her twenty years of marriage ended in a divorce. She had an exquisite, but expensive sense of fashion, the classic example of champagne tastes on a beer budget. Of course, as we shopped together at Nordstrom, she picked out the finest and most expensive overcoat she could find and insisted on buying it for me.  

With my new job at the law firm, I easily was earning twice as much as her, perhaps more. I resisted and said, “I don’t want you to spend your hard-earned money on me.” She countered, “What is the point of working so hard if you cannot do good things with your money? I would really like to do this for you.” I saw my position as being quite noble and even generous and kind. She did not see it the same way. I was being stubborn. She was stubborn, too.

Imagine two stubborn Irish people facing off in the men’s department at Nordstrom. A loud fight ensued, she got angry, and I did not let her buy me the coat.

At the time, I was dating my future wife Vicki. She watched all this play out at the store. Amazingly, she did not run away from the crazy O’Brien clan as fast as she could. Instead, a few days after the incident, she mentioned, “Your mother really wants to give you that coat. It would be really nice if you let someone give something to you.” I replied sharply, “She cannot afford it.”

I did not voice my other thought, which was something like, “Mind your own business.” Undeterred, Vicki gently said, “You should let her enjoy the pleasure of giving you a gift and of being generous.” This was just the first of many bits of wisdom Vicki has shared with me over the years.

I had never really thought about things that way. I always have been a better giver than a receiver. It was a conceit. I thought I was being the good guy, the stand-up guy, the generous guy, by making sure Mom did not “waste” her money on me. I wanted her to buy herself something nice, because she deserved it.

The now obvious point I had missed was that I probably was being selfish. I was refusing to let someone care about me. I was refusing to let someone else feel the joy of giving. I was refusing to let someone show me that she loved me. I repented and relented.

I talked with Mom, this time in more quiet and measured tones than we had managed at Nordstrom just a week before. A few days later, we went back to the store together, and, wearing a large smile, she bought the overcoat for me. I have worn it proudly since then.

I was reminded of an important life lesson that day, one the monks also had regularly shown me by their own example. A truly generous spirit not only gives love, but also accepts it. 

I have worn my overcoat to court and to many meetings since the day long ago that Mom gave it to me. Her spirit walks with me each time. Her coat and her love have kept me warm and have made me feel safe for many years; not a bad return on investment.

This memory is even more poignant at Christmas time, as my thoughts inevitably turn to another mother from more ancient times, who with limited resources in a faraway land, tried to keep her own young son warm and safe in a humble manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.

Two of the most important deeds we can do in this life are to love and to let ourselves be loved. There are no greater gifts that we can give or receive. 

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.