(10pm) It has been interesting spending time with Faye and Larry.
Finding out about Edward’s death has Faye thinking about the past. (We dug through old photo albums. (I picked out a few, scanned them and emailed them to myself and my sister.))
Faye told me the story of why she feels indebted to dad. (Things had been bad growing up, but they got worse during her teens. Her sisters got married and moved out, leaving just Edward and Faye at home. My grandparent’s marriage was disintegrating at the time and Faye was feeling the impact. She had starting running with a wild crowd and dropped out of high school. On some level she knew she was in trouble, so she called mom and dad, and they came and got her. They provided her with a place to stay, motivated her to go to a business trade school, and then helped her to get a job. Then, through that job, she met Larry, who was a grocer back then.)
She told me the story of how my parents met. (Dad and his brother Isaac and mom and Faye used to go to the old Egyptian Ballroom in Topeka, and they met on the dance floor. (They did love to dance and went out a lot until mom went crazy. (From the old photos and what memory I have of the time, it’s obvious they were very much in love.)))
Mom and dad had tried to help Edward also. (My grandparents had separated soon after Faye left home. Edward had been given the choice of who he would live with. Since living out at the speakeasy with grandpa meant hunting, fishing and doing the things he loved, he chose to stay with their dad. (The price for being able to do the things he loved was that he had to deal with a father who was one of the meanest sob’s in town.)) (Mom and dad reached out to him and dad became a role model for him. (Like dad, Edward went into the Navy and then into accounting.))
Back in those days everyone who knew him called my dad Dutch. Faye says she always called him daddy Dutch back then, because of the help he provided to others. (One of my core philosophies is to never end a day without doing something to help another. (That is one of the many positive things I got from my father.)) (It can be a problem though. (My dad’s desire to help coupled with his over powering personality can suffocate a person.) (In his later years, Edward was hostile towards dad, feeling he had been forced into accounting by dad. (That may, in part, have been Edward’s need to blame others for his failures.)) (I can relate a bit. (Dad influenced me to go into accounting also. (On the one hand I wouldn’t have chosen this field for myself and don’t love the work. On the other hand I am reasonably good at it and it has kept food on the table most of the time, and, except for the six months I lived on the streets, it has kept a roof over the table.))))
Part of why I moved to Montana was to get away from my dad, so I could become myself. (Financially, it has been a disastrous choice, but I have no regrets.)
My mother’s sisters and brother left Topeka to get away from their parents and my mom’s downfall was not getting away. (Tis sad when people have to run away from parents to save themselves, but it’s an altogether too prevalent phenomenon.) (I still think the solution is to redefine family. We need the interconnections of a family, but with the growing complexity of society the traditional concepts of family simply don’t work for many of us.)