Motivated to Protect

What one char­ac­ter trait of your father’s do/did you admire most?

… Con­tin­ued from Get­ting into Trou­ble.

It’s a dif­fi­cult story about a dif­fi­cult time in my life, so I have told it in a straight-forward man­ner few times over the years. I have, how­ever, dis­guised it as a hypo­thet­i­cal fact pat­tern or story about “a friend” and relayed some of the details while lec­tur­ing or teach­ing. With the pas­sage of time, I have for­got­ten many of the details, but I vividly remem­ber the emo­tional roller coaster I rode for the bet­ter part of a year. And, of course, as is so often the case when we sur­vive tumult, the expe­ri­ence not only changed me, but drove me toward the career I have enjoyed for the past 17 or so years.

Ulti­mately, it is a story about for­give­ness, accep­tance, and mov­ing on. And even though I never told the story to my very dear friend, the late Clint Ritchie, with­out real­iz­ing it, he helped immea­sur­ably because, by relat­ing his own story to me, he gave me insight and per­spec­tive that allowed me to quell the last remain­ing bits of anger that I felt toward both of my par­ents about that period of my life, but, pri­mar­ily, my father.

And so, given that tomor­row, Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 18, 2010, is both the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.‘s birth­day, and the eigh­teenth anniver­sary of my father’s death, it is fit­ting that I finally tell, as Paul Har­vey would have described it, “the rest of the story.”

“You gain strength, courage, and con­fi­dence by every expe­ri­ence in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to your­self, ‘I lived through this hor­ror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’” ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~~

I think that con­ver­sa­tion with Yvonne so angered and offended me that I dove head-long into a rela­tion­ship with Reg­gie in order, if for no other rea­son, to prove a point. Yvonne was not the only mem­ber of the hos­pi­tal staff who took notice. One day, I said good-bye to him in the hos­pi­tal lobby as he was con­clud­ing his shift and head­ing home. He gave me a quick peck on the lips. Before I knew it, I was sum­moned into the office of the assis­tant admin­is­tra­tor, Ms. Mont­gomery. I can still see the smug look of sat­is­fac­tion on Yvonne’s face as Ms. Mont­gomery warned me that if I wanted to keep my job, I would not be seen with Reg­gie on hos­pi­tal grounds again. She lec­tured me about the hospital’s “image” and advised that the doc­tors and mem­bers of the board of direc­tors would be hor­ri­fied if they wit­nessed such behavior.

I, of course, knew, when I finally accepted Reggie’s invi­ta­tion to go out on a date, that the rela­tion­ship would not last — it could be no more than a sum­mer fling. I knew that I would never bring him home to Lodi to meet my par­ents, sis­ter, and child­hood friends. In fact, I knew that I would never even speak his name to those folks.

Reg­gie was African-American.

But my par­ents did find out that I was in a rela­tion­ship with him. Dur­ing their first of many con­fronta­tional and abu­sive tele­phone calls, they used a plau­si­ble alibi: They claimed that some­one from Lodi had hap­pened to be at Dis­ney­land the day I went there with Reg­gie. It was a believ­able story because of an old fam­ily joke. When I was grow­ing up, it seemed that every time we took a trip to Dis­ney­land or Knott’s Berry Farm, we always ran into at least one other fam­ily from Lodi with whom we were acquainted. So they told me that “some­one from Lodi” had seen me stand­ing in line with Reg­gie to ride the Mat­ter­horn. And called my par­ents to advise them that I was engag­ing in pub­lic dis­plays of affec­tion with a man whose skin color auto­mat­i­cally made him unwel­come in my par­ents’ home … and, for that mat­ter, in most Lodi neighborhoods.

From that point on, the only appro­pri­ate word is “ugly.” It was an ugly, ugly time in my life and rela­tion­ship with not just my par­ents, but my sis­ter and even my aunt. She actu­ally called me from South Dakota and, with­out even say­ing hello, began bad­ger­ing me: “What are you doing to your par­ents?” And the truth­ful answer was, of course, “I’m not doing any­thing to my par­ents, Aun­tie. They are doing it to them­selves.” My par­ents drove to Orange County and spent a few days stay­ing in my apart­ment, lam­bast­ing me in per­son. I came to Lodi for a brief visit and ended up call­ing our then-pastor over to the house to speak with them, con­vinced that if Pas­tor Bob told them their behav­ior was despi­ca­ble, they would believe him. I remem­ber sneak­ing out of the house to call Reg­gie and ask if him I should pro­ceed with the meet­ing. His response? “Fight for us, baby.” So I did.

By that time, what started out as a sum­mer fling had turned, into a full-fledged war on prin­ci­ples. At stake? My honor, integrity, and beliefs. Truth­fully, my rela­tion­ship with Reg­gie would have fiz­zled to its inevitable con­clu­sion long before that point … if only my par­ents hadn’t tried so hard to exert con­trol over my life and choices in such a pejo­ra­tive, damn­ing manner.

I returned to Orange County, my classes, and my job at the hos­pi­tal after my father stood in the kitchen (of the house I now own) call­ing me a vile name (I will not type it here … you can imag­ine what it was) and said, “Never darken my doorstep again. You are no daugh­ter of mine.”

After all that, my rela­tion­ship with Reg­gie did, in fact, end within a few weeks. But it did not con­clude the way I had antic­i­pated. I told that por­tion of the story in The Sur­pris­ing End of My Inno­cence.

Since I main­tained nei­ther a jour­nal nor diary dur­ing that time period, I can no longer remem­ber how my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents was restored. I don’t recall whether I called them and told them that Reg­gie was out of my life or if, per­haps, some­one else did. Even­tu­ally, we re-established con­tact. I do remem­ber that there were no apolo­gies extended. It was sim­ply a topic about which we never spoke again. Ever.

When I penned The Sur­pris­ing End of My Inno­cence, I wanted to tell the whole story. But I feared that read­ers would see my father (and, to a lesser extent, my mother) merely as a racist vil­lain. And I would never want his mem­ory tar­nished in that fashion.

My father was moti­vated by a desire to pro­tect his youngest daugh­ter. Yes, his behav­ior was wrong. He was very mis­guided. But he was a man who did not know how else to react. He was deal­ing with some­thing he was unequipped to under­stand. Keep in mind that the events I have described took place in 1978 when I was a mere 21 years old. It was a very dif­fer­ent time.

My father’s whole life was founded upon the attain­ment of one goal: Work­ing hard in order to pro­vide for his fam­ily. He was, in that respect, a very uncom­pli­cated man. All he and, to an even greater degree, my mother ever wanted for their chil­dren was a col­lege edu­ca­tion and the secu­rity they believed that would bring. Both of my par­ents sur­vived the Great Depres­sion and they were entirely moti­vated and defined by that expe­ri­ence. In my father’s case, he was one of eight chil­dren. He dropped out of high school in his fresh­man year and began work­ing to sup­port him­self because his par­ents did not have the finan­cial means to care for him any longer.

Iron­i­cally, it was Clint who helped me under­stand my father’s moti­va­tions and release the final ves­tiges of anger about those long-ago events. Being a par­ent myself also enables me to vis­cer­ally appre­ci­ate the ends to which a par­ent will go to pro­tect his/her child from per­ceived dan­ger, heart­break or dis­ap­point­ment. Many times, Clint and I dis­cussed what he felt was the turn­ing point in his long run as “Clint Buchanan” on the ABC day­time drama “One Life to Live.” It came in 1992, 13 years into his suc­cess­ful stint play­ing the upstand­ing cow­boy who would always be in love with just one woman. The writ­ers decided that the fic­tional “Viki Buchanan” would have an extra-marital affair. Part of the rea­son she and her hus­band drifted apart was his reac­tion to their son’s friend­ship with another young man who was openly gay. Clint felt that ABC allowed his char­ac­ter to be “trashed” and was extremely hurt when he received hate mail at the stu­dio for the very first time. Fans accused his char­ac­ter of being a “homo­phobe” and he was dev­as­tated because, as he explained it to me, he never por­trayed “Clint Buchanan” as prej­u­diced and did not want him to be per­ceived in that man­ner. Rather, his act­ing out of the words in the script were from the per­spec­tive of a man try­ing to pro­tect his fam­ily. Like my father, the char­ac­ter of “Clint Buchanan” was deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion for which he was not pre­pared and a real­ity he did not fully com­pre­hend. He reacted from a parental desire to shield his fam­ily from pain.

My con­ver­sa­tions with Clint allowed me to look at my own father’s con­duct from a dif­fer­ent angle. Rather than see­ing him as hate­ful, mean-spirited, and prej­u­diced, I was able to see him as a man seek­ing to pro­tect his daugh­ter and, indeed, his entire fam­ily, from the pain that he believed would result from my rela­tion­ship with Reg­gie. Ulti­mately, he was right when he insisted that the rela­tion­ship would “come to no good end.” Iron­i­cally, nei­ther of us fore­saw the real rea­son: Reg­gie was still mar­ried, a fact about which he lied, even as he encour­aged me to con­tinue bat­tling with my par­ents. In Reggie’s heart and mind, of course, the war was about race. Over the past more than 30 years, I have come to believe that, in my father’s heart and mind, it was about much more than skin color, even though it did not seem that way then.

And I am proud to say that my father grew from the expe­ri­ence, as did I. He evolved into a man who never again used the pejo­ra­tive terms he hurled at me in anger dur­ing those bleak days. Iver time, he became more tol­er­ant of dif­fer­ing view­points and lifestyles, and like so many other mem­bers of his gen­er­a­tion, began to appre­ci­ate the value of diversity.

And what about Dave? Well, five years after the Reg­gie deba­cle, I was again liv­ing in Lodi. Dave had returned to the Bay Area and looked me up. I did not believe that I had any rea­son not to have a friend­ship with him, so we spoke on the tele­phone reg­u­larly and vis­ited each other. He was still not liv­ing as an openly gay man, but was inch­ing closer to his reality.

After spend­ing a week­end with him, I stopped by my par­ents’ house on my way home. When I told them where I had been, they became strangely quiet, exchang­ing ner­vous looks. It was not until that day that I finally fig­ured out who had called my par­ents to tell them about my rela­tion­ship with Reg­gie. It was none other than my pur­ported friend, Dave. Still liv­ing in the same apart­ment build­ing and work­ing together at the hos­pi­tal at the time, I had told him about our won­der­ful day in Dis­ney­land. Since Yvonne was his super­vi­sor, as well as mine, he had also been relay­ing infor­ma­tion about my per­sonal life to her on a reg­u­lar basis. Why he felt the need to med­dle in my life in such a destruc­tive man­ner I will never under­stand. Obvi­ously, when I finally solved the mys­tery, I never spoke to him again. [Many years ago, my col­lege room­mate ran into Dave and his part­ner in San Diego. She said that he seemed well and happy, and asked about me, but she did not pro­vide any details about my life.]

For the first time in my life, I under­stood the old adage about keep­ing your friends close and your ene­mies closer. (Of course, in order to do so, you have to know who your ene­mies are.)

I still con­sider 1978 the year my life changed for­ever … in myr­iad ways. The events of that year are among the main rea­sons I became and have been proud to serve as a civil rights attor­ney. I only wish my father had lived to hear me use those words to describe myself. I firmly believe that he would approve.

A Thou­sand Words: Prompt Num­ber Thirteen

Next week’s topic:

What one char­ac­ter trait of your mother’s do/did you admire most?

WOOF Con­test – Top Picks

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JHS – Moti­vated to Protect

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