To recap: My parents were both brilliant and gifted people who were greatly admired by the outside world. But in private my father was out of control - yelling and lashing out at those closest to him. There was frequent verbal abuse and (on rare occasions) physical as well... And my mother was the quintessential drama queen. She vastly overreacted to everything and required constant reassurance and praise (and unfortunately, constant change of location). Any word or action could potentially trigger one of her "I should have never been born" diatribes...Yeah - I don't think she had any idea what kind of emotional burden she placed on those around her (me in particular)... And I'm not even going to talk about my sister :-)
It would be safe to say that my life was a constant struggle to find sanity amidst chaos... That was my "normal" - until I moved in with the McDaniels.
It turns out that Stella and Dewitt were were genuinely happy people - completely at peace with themselves and each other. There was simply no anger or negativity in them... And given everything I had been through that was equally surreal :-) Here's a picture of them together not long before Dewitt passed away:
For some reason the first thing that I remember about living with them involves laundry... Now (if you recall) - during high school I got sent to the office multiple times because someone complained that I smelled bad. And it was not so much a body hygiene issue as it was the fact that my laundry only got done once every month or two (if I was lucky).
So - the first morning after I moved into that room in the McDaniels' garage I left my dirty clothes lying on my chair and headed off to classes at North Texas. And when I got home from school they were clean and neatly folded in my dresser drawer... At first I thought it was a fluke (must've been laundry day) - but it happened again the next day - and the next. And I finally said to Stella "You know - you don't have to do my laundry every day... I could do it myself for that matter." And she told me she didn't mind at all. She always did a load of laundry every morning - it was part of her routine. And since the machine was never completely full it was no trouble to add mine... Yeah - it was downright weird :-)
Then - every Sunday morning Dewitt would get up early and make biscuits and gravy... Don't know why that made such an impression on me ... Probably because I can't envision my dad ever doing that :-)
The next thing that comes to mind was the level of respect and trust. For example: When the family Oldsmobile started running rough Dewitt asked if I would rebuild the carburetor for him... I mean, who the heck asks an 18 year old kid with no mechanical training to do that? ... BTW: That was the last time I ever touched a Rochester (GM) carburetor. Those things are a nightmare compared to the Autolite (Ford) carbs I was used to... (Freaking Rube Goldberg choke linkage.)
But the most pronounced difference from anything I had ever experienced was how they dealt with their children. As I've mentioned before, Steve was a bit on the wild side. So it should come as no surprise that Dewitt got frustrated - and exasperated - and sometimes he even raise his voice a little bit. But he never really yelled or lost control... He always tried to come up with a constructive way to deal with every situation.
BTW: Dewitt once confessed to me that he had a really hard time disciplining Steve because he was secretly amused by a lot of the things Steve did.... Still - as a parent he couldn't just let it slide.
As the years passed I became a husband, a father and a grandfather. And in all that time I never gave much conscious thought to the kind of man I wanted to be (other than not wanting to be like my dad).
But after writing this post it is clear to me that Dewitt's example was always in the back of my mind...
I can't think of any other explanation for the similarities between the man he was and the man I've tried to be.
1 comment:
Even before I got to the end of this post (where you say this yourself) I was thinking how fortunate you (and we, your children) were to have the McDaniels' example to follow. I can't imagine how you would have developed into the person you are without exposure to what was, basically, the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from what you had lived up to that point.
Post a Comment