Growing up I didn’t attend church with my parents. Occasionally my sister and I would go to Sunday School, yet we didn’t have a church family but that was okay, because I had my family.
My immediate family included my older sister Lynn and our parents, Walt and Caroline. We also had grandparents, although technically our two grandfathers were step-grandfathers, as my mother’s father had died when she was a little girl, and my father’s parents had divorced when he was a child, and I never met his real father, despite the fact he died when I was about thirteen. But our step-grandfathers filled the void, and I loved them both.
We had aunts and uncles, and cousins that we got together with for the holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. I felt loved.
Growing up, there was also our schnauzer, Fritzy, and our three cats, Mother, Gypsy and Walter (named after my dad), and our canary, Dicky. The cats were outdoor cats, but Mother Cat did make it her life’s mission to come inside to see Dicky.
I turned seventy this last November. My parents, grandparents, all the aunts and uncles, and some of the cousins have moved on. I keep in touch with a few of the cousins, but it’s been years since we shared a holiday.
As a child I used to idolize my sister, Lynn. She’s four years older than me. We were roommates during my first year of college, sharing an apartment our parents paid for. I was her maid of honor when she married, and she was my matron of honor when I married. I had children first and it was around the time my eldest was born that I stopped idolizing her. Instead, she became one of my best friends.
Growing up, she was always Dad’s favorite. In our family, she was called the Princess. Oh, it didn’t mean he loved her more, but as my paternal grandmother once said, Lynn was easier. I was a persistent, relentless child. My mother’s best friend, Aggie, told my parents, “Only tell Bobbi no if you absolutely have to.” In other words, pick your battles.
Had Dad embraced the practice of spare the rod and spoil the child, I probably would not have survived childhood. But Dad was not a violent man. That didn’t mean I disrespected him. Dad didn’t need to hit me for me to respect him. I simply never feared my father. I knew he loved me and wanted what was best for me.
Both my sister and I grew up never wanting our father to be disappointed in us. That would have been far worse than being hit. In truth, both my sister and I had Dad on a pedestal from childhood until adulthood. He eventually fell off the pedestal, but that’s okay. No one belongs on a pedestal.
I was close to my mother my entire life, until she passed away three months ago. She, like my sister, was one of my best friends. When I was younger, maybe during college or later or sooner, Mom nicknamed me the Dutchess. I think it was her way of compensating for Lynn being called the Princess for most of her life. For clarification, Princess and Dutchess weren’t nicknames used on a daily or regular basis. They were simply titles used during random conversations throughout our life.
During my childhood our parents always presented a solid front. They freely expressed their love for each other, and Lynn and I always knew they were a team. They were not parents that manipulative children could pit against each other.
Having never been part of a “church family” I never truly understood the concept of a patriarchy. That was something I was exposed to about three years ago when I first joined TikTok and started watching videos from young women deconstructing from a strict Christian upbringing. For me, it was like watching people from another culture. I suppose that is exactly what it was.
While Mom was a stay at home mom up until we moved to Havasu Palms when I was thirteen, my parents always approached their marriage as if they were a team. They managed their money together; she helped him run his general contractor business. While Mom clearly did most of the domestic labor during this time, Dad often did the grocery shopping, and he enjoyed cooking.
Yet looking back, I realize in many ways it was a patriarchy, yet not as rigid as those portrayed in the videos I watched, where women described men who treated their wives like children, telling them what they could or couldn’t do. But it was a patriarchy in the sense it was Dad’s dreams our family ultimately pursued, not Mom’s.
Dad was born in 1928, so he naturally held some old fashioned views. Yet he never once made me feel boys were inherently superior or smarter than girls. Although when I mentioned wanting to take shop in high school, he thought it was ridiculous. I suspect it wasn’t really something I wanted to do, because considering how persistent I was growing up, when I wanted something, that would have not been the end of that conversation.
Mom once told me Dad thought girls should pursue more feminine sports, like snow skiing, water skiing, swimming and skating, as opposed to sports like baseball or basketball. Looking back, I find her observation amusing and inaccurate. Those happened to be all the sports Dad enjoyed. Dad built a swimming pool in our first Covina house, making sure it was deep enough for the diving board he installed. Both my sister and I took swimming lessons, and Lynn went on to water ballet. We had a boat when growing up and went on water skiing trips along the Colorado River and Lake Havasu, before moving to Havasu Palms. Dad took us snow skiing, and as a kid we went to the ice skating rink in West Covina. I don’t remember Dad ever watching football or baseball on TV. Although one season Mom got hooked on the Dodgers.
Mom also used to tell us Dad never wanted a son, he always wanted girls. As an adult, I began to doubt that too, considering how close he was to his nephew, Rod, and how he adored his first grandson—my eldest child.
I don’t recall my parents ever telling me it was my duty or destiny to marry or have children. In fact, Mom told us to never have children for her. While she was a doting grandmother who adored and spoiled her grandchildren, I think her message was that having children was a choice, and not something a woman had to do.
Although my father may not have totally shared Mom’s sentiment on the possibilty we might decide not to have children, considering how excited he was to become a grandfather. While I haven’t really patterned Walt from my Haunting Danielle series after my dad, although they share names, there is one way Walt Marlow is like Walt Johnson, and that is how Walt Marlow wanted children, and how he would likely react to grandchildren, and how protective he is with the women in his life. That’s my dad.
My parents also never told me I needed to go to college, yet for some reason I always knew I was going to college. Always. And my parents paid for it, as they paid for my sister’s college. They weren’t rich, and they hadn’t started a college fund for us. But this was pre-Reagan era, when college tuition was affordable in this country.
After watching many of those TikTok videos I mentioned—many of which were made by women the age of my own children—it made me realize there were many parents from my generation who actually taught their daughters they had a specific role in life, one different and subservient to their sons’.
On one hand, I was shocked at my own generation—I thought we had progressed. But then I remembered an incident I had with my boyfriend when I was fourteen years old. And then I realized, ahh….he probably grew up to be a father to one of those daughters whose videos I’ve watched.
The incident occurred at my parent’s home at Havasu Palms. Close friends of my parents were visiting, and the wife started up a conversation with me while my boyfriend was off somewhere. What neither of us realized. He was close by, eavesdropping.
She asked me how school was going, and then one thing led to another, and I found myself sharing with her my dreams for the future. About going to college, about wanting to be a writer, all sorts of things.
I’m not sure how much I said after opening up to her, but what I remember most is my boyfriend later taking me aside and scolding me. He told me he had overheard the conversation, and found me being very full of myself, uppity. And in his own way was attempting to put me in my place and squash my dreams.
How did I respond? I’m not really sure if I said anything. I probably thought he was a jerk. This was the same guy who once told me, “No girlfriend of mine will ever have her own car.” I didn’t respond that time either, I just remember thinking, “I guess we’re not going to be dating when I’m 16.”
Over the years I’ve often thought most young girls date at least one jerk. Either they learn from it and move on to date better guys or get stuck in a bad cycle. I am happy to say the guys I dated after that were nice guys. And I don’t mean “nice” in the negative connotation way some women on social media use it when describing men.
I’m seventy now, grateful for having parents who always made me feel loved and gave me the freedom to be whatever I wanted.
As for that friend of my parents who I shared my dreams with, if I’m not mistaken, she is the same friend of my mother’s who reads my Haunting Danielle series today, and whom I occasionally exchange emails with.
(Banner Photo: From left to right, Walt and Bobbi; Caroline and Bobbi; Walt and Caroline; Bobbi, Lynn and Fritz)