Re: Chris Gardner Story

I wanted to follow up my post regarding the Chris Gardner Story with a story of my own.  It is the story of how I was raised by a single mom and came out on top.  I won’t focus my daily postings on this topic alone, but will frequently post in this Bulldawg Mini-series titled, “No Bull”  about my life growing up as a kid.

Previously I wrote:

“Basically a rags to riches story about overcoming obstacles and knowing who you are to get to the top.  I love these stories because they are very similar to what I went through as a kid with my mother.  I mean we never stayed in a BART bathroom and we always had the same house, in fact to this day my mother still lives in the same house I grew up in.  I remember waiting in the car alot while she went to get things, sometimes even digging through dumpsters for arts and crafts supplies.  These supplies were usually blocks of wood and other textiles that we then would cut up and make things with.   I remember going to FISH closet to get clothes and government cheese.  We went to church every Sunday.  I am so grateful that my single mom raised me with integrity, trust and confidence.  Maybe more on this later.”

Well, now is that time.  If this bores you, my apologies in advance.  If not, good.  I am very proud of my mother and how she raised me.

Dad

I was born to a Welleslyan mother and a self made, self taught electronics engineer that held big roles in developing the first reel to reel video tape player and in developing the infrared scope on the M1 Tank.  I have trade journal clippings framed of him on my walls in my office at home.  My mother recalls having Gordon Moore from Intel over for dinner parties back in the day.  My dad was apparently a heavy hitter until the engineer recession of the 70’s hit.  Then, during those years, along came me, the bulldawg puppy.

My parents had been married for just over ten years when I was born and things were zipping along quite nicely for them from what I can gather.  My father had his pilot’s license and drove a 1962 Corvette.  My mother drove a 1964 Buick Riviera that we later called “Bessy”.  They had just purchased the model home in the housing development where my mother lives to this day and eventually my father bought his own plane. 

When I was two, as my mother tells the story, my father came home one day and sat down in a chair and said he wanted a divorce.  They were divorced that year and he left.

I don’t remember any of this.  I was too young.  What I do remember (I remember all the way back to when I was 4) was not seeing him too much.   At age 4 I remember looking out the panes of glass in our front door after my father rang the doorbell twice.  He was there because he had “visitation rights” as I learned later on.  I tried to open the door, which was locked, but just couldn’t quite get the handle to turn and open.  My father couldn’t see me from beneath the curtains that covered the door.  My mother yelled, “I’ll be right there!”…..and within 1 minute my father left.  Either he didn’t hear my mother or he didn’t care to wait around.

I still remember that to this day.  It really hurts to this day as well.  It for a while contributed to my fear of being left, which I have long ago overcome.  I also swore that when I was a father, I would never have my children feel the way I did as I watched my father turn around and leave on that day.

Despite my mother’s efforts to coordinate time with my father, there were only 4 visits between the ages of 7 and 12.

The next visit was when I was seven.  I remember that visit.  He took me to Shaky’s pizza parlour on a bright Saturday afternoon.  We were there for an hour or so and while we were there I asked for his phone number so we could “talk more later and see eachother again another time.” He declined to give it to me, saying, “he just had a new one and didn’t remember it.”  It was here that I saw many baseball teams with other kids my age having a great time playing the video games, eating pizza (with their dad’s of course) and an overall comraderie was in the air.  I thought that day I would like to play baseball.  I played that next year all the way through college.

The next visit was when my father came to the house and we all ate lunch on the back patio.  I was 9 by then, according to my mother and all I remember was that we ate ham sandwiches and my father gave me a lego set.  My parents talked for hours and then my father left right before dinner.

More tomorrow.  nighty night.