Every child has dreams. My own were many and varied, and some were enormously lofty. From a tender age, I knew I was going to be a great movie actor. My mother, a flapper from the ‘20 and a jazz piano player in the pit at silent movies, was enthusiastic. “Oh, how fun!” she would say.
I must have been 6 or 7 years old when my parents and I went to see the movie “Boom Town,” with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy as oil-drilling buddies (Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr were in it, too, but they weren’t part of the action I was interested in at that age). Gable and Tracy whooped and hollered when the gusher hit, and frolicked around covered with oil, and I was mesmerized. With the garden hose the next day I set up my own gusher on the back lawn,
I whooped and frolicked, too, but somehow my performance wasn’t as riveting. Gable and Tracy would have been amused. Nevertheless, I knew I wanted to be a movie actor. My father was less than supportive.
“Acting is a very stupid way to make a living,” he told me. “Go put on some dry clothes.”
Being a great keyboard artist and singer was stupid, as well.
My father was a dream squasher. Although I’m sure he meant well, he had clear aspirations for all growing boys in general, and me in particular. By the time I was 12, my closet was piled with sports paraphernalia he had bought me — a football for Christmas, a bat and ball for my birthday, boxing gloves somewhere along the way. He had attended a small high school; there were perhaps 20 in his graduating class, and I guess every male student participated in every sport known to boy or man at that time. This meant, I suppose, that I was to do the same — to be an even greater athlete than he — a cloning exercise which served to heap disappointment upon him and bring humiliation to me.
He used his influence as a school administrator to thrust me into high school junior varsity football at 110 pounds — a brutish experience calculated to destroy my self-esteem and disfigure me for life. I entertained serious doubts that I would ever walk again. On the scrimmage line the first day of practice, as I looked into the eyes of a tackle the size of an Amana freezer, I speculated mournfully that maybe I could still be in the junior play if the script called for a paraplegic.
Fortunately, at the end of the second day of practice, the coach informed my father that if he didn’t get me out of there, I would probably die. My father seemed resigned to the fact that I would not become a football player, but his obsession with athletics was by no means behind us. There would be many other sports for me to enjoy.
I was adopted. At age 7 it was all explained to me and I was OK with it, except for the lingering realization that someone didn’t want me. Moreover, I kept thinking, if he wanted an athlete so badly, why didn’t he just pick out a bigger kid. Surely, he had a choice.
My car in high school was a 1935 DeSoto convertible I had bought for $150. In those days we all got drivers licenses at 14. I had been driving on back roads since I was 11. (My mother taught me to drive; my father didn’t know about it. Talk about parental support; she was a gem.) The DeSoto wasn’t a very good car, but it kept me in the mainstream of a popular pastime among my friends. We met in our driveways and worked on our cars while my father seethed. He was not a car person.
I once overheard him say to my mother, “Well at least he’s out of his bedroom.”
The greatest car of my entire life never really materialized. It was my grandfather’s 1925 Pierce Arrow rumble-seat coupe. I loved riding through his fields in that car as a child, and when his failing eyesight put an end to his driving, he gave it to me.
My father now found a new way to strip-mine my spirit.
“There is no way that piece of junk is going to sit in our driveway,” he said. “You need to be out throwing a ball around.”
It was the same with the 1923 Essex and the 1929 Oakland. A great operatic singer named James Melton was an antique car collector, and one bright and shiny day, that’s what I would be.
Not to happen. One dream after another into the tank. And when friends prevailed upon me to join their church, my father’s reaction was Oscar quality.
“A church?” he shouted. “You will not join a church.”
And so I didn’t.
I emerged from all this with the clear awareness that all my hopes and dreams were wholly inappropriate. I decided that I would never factor this into my own parenting style, except by its absence. I have let my own kids know, as well as 15 foster children, that there is nothing they cannot achieve, and the choices are theirs to pursue.
There’s a gender thing that plays into this. Imagine a family — mom, dad, Max and sister Emily — who loved to attend ballet performances. Perhaps, thought these parents, Emily would decide to study ballet. Imagine their surprise (or chagrin) when Max announced that he wanted to become a ballet dancer — and Emily wasn’t interested at all. Mom and dad were now on the precipice of a critical decision: To support Max, or thwart his goal. Thirteen years old and embracing the template of manhood, there must surely be more appropriate careers for Max to pursue.
But wisely, dad took Max aside.
“Mom and I are behind you all the way on this, Max, but you may have to put up with some teasing at school,” dad said.
Max opted to follow his dream and, indeed, his schoolmates made fun of him. Dad then pointed out that ballet was a grueling athletic pursuit, and Max should be proud to be engaged in it.
Emily went out for football. The irony here is that most of her peers supported and admired her. It is an anomaly when we tend to disapprove of boys who follow a goal that is traditionally girl-oriented, but we don’t look unfavorably upon girls who become auto mechanics (Perhaps the “Rosie the Riveters” building ships during World War II had something to do with this).
But it is far more than honoring dreams that are already there. It is also our responsibility as parents to expose our kids to as many hobbies and career opportunities as possible. Wise parents reach back into their own experiences, positive or negative, which by their presence or absence, shape their parenting styles today. But we can only suggest, or cajole, or subtly expose children to hobbies and interests. We have no right to force our own passions onto the delicate shoulders of our kids.
