Well, Bully For You!

When I was whisked off to boarding school in the summer of 1973, it was done so quickly and in such an impromptu manner that I felt much like Dorothy must have felt in that spinning house.   I was a pretty sheltered fourteen; a small island country girl.

I could only take with me what would pack into my small, turquoise Samsonite suitcase, battered  from years of serving a military family.

Most of my scanty tropical wardrobe would not be suitable for the cooler and more formal expectations of southern California, so all my favorite cut-offs, halter tops and tanks were left behind.

Only dresses would be allowed as school wear, so the one dress I had long enough to  reach the two-inches-above-the-knees-hem was quickly supplemented by two more homemade dresses Aunt Barb helped me sew.

I tried to squeeze in as many of my books as I could, but there just wasn’t enough room for nearly enough of the things that defined me: books, photos, shell collections, stuffed animals and the like.

It felt something akin to an amputation without anesthesia to leave my life behind and fly 3,000 miles; to pack that suitcase and travel to a place I didn’t want to go, where I knew no not a single soul.  

Well, no on but my bigger-than-life super-popular step-sister, Blythe, who would be a senior there.  She would have afternoon classes; I would have mornings.  She would live ‘in the village’; I would live in the dorm.  She would be graduating at the semester; I’d be there for the duration…  So basically, our paths would never cross.

On my virgin flight to California, we changed planes in Puerto Rico and again in Miami, and then flew on late into the evening, landing in Los Angeles with the dry August Santa Ana winds.

I pocketed the deck of cards and the little, complementary bottle of rum they passed out on the plane.  Blythe told me that  both would be considered contraband at school, but I would need some sort of special treasure from home for times when the homesickness became overwhelming.

Well, California was all new to me.  Boarding school was all new. The Seventh-day Adventist religion of the school was definitely all new to me.

There were two more things I inherited that I didn’t ask for – both of which stayed with me the whole four years I was there and caused me grief to no end.  Both were related.  The first was a blessing, the second a curse.

The first was Endymion, a huge, seventeen-hand ex-racehorse.  He was my step-mother’s horse, boarded at the school’s stables, and was Blythe’s status symbol.

The second thing I inherited, unfairly so, was Blythe’s reputation.  Completely out of my control, Blythe and I showed up at school at 11:00 p.m. our first night at school.

Blythe knew full well that was well after 10:00 curfew, but she also knew that rules didn’t apply to her.  They never had.  

So instead of presenting ourselves at the front door, like any normal person, and waking the grumpy dean, Mrs. Nicholas, she snuck us around to the back of the dorm and convinced a friend (was it Ariane?) to let us climb in her unsecured basement window.

Blythe went through first and I handed through first her, and then my suitcase.  I was in the process of handing in my guitar case when the door flew open, the light flashed on, and I was introduced to an irate Mrs. Nicholas.

“I should have known Blythe Cutler’s sister would be a trouble maker just like her!” she expounded, and I was branded with a scarlet letter on the spot.   No matter what I did or who I was, she forever painted her picture of me with the tainted paint pot of Blythe’s character.  I was a no good trouble maker.

But back to Endymion, or Dimion, as we called him.  It’s really about him.

Blythe did graduate at the semester, and I really didn’t see her at all after she hauled me through that basement window into the bad graces of Irma Nicholas.

She left to a life outside and I inherited Dimion.  Well, at least his board bill.  For the business office simply started charging me now for his keep.

The school was set up in such a way as to give the students the learning benefit of a work ethic. Dorm students, especially, were expected to go to school half of the day and work four hours a day toward helping pay for their schooling.  Even those who didn’t need to financially were expected to work in one of the jobs on campus.

When it became obvious that my trip to boarding school in California was a one-way ticket and I was going to have to support myself and earn my own way, I worked more than most.

Most kids worked every other weekend as well as their 4 hours a weekday.  I often had to work every weekend.  And when others went home every six weeks for long weekends, I usually stayed behind and worked.  (Although, my friend, Andrina, occasionally swept me home to Santa Barbara with her!)

By the end of each school year I would always be behind on tuition, no matter how hard I worked, but I would work eight-hour days through the summer and just catch up by the time the time the new school year came around, so I could start with a clean slate.  So they would let me register and we’d start all over again.

Each year the tuition went up and I cringed. (Okay, sometimes I cried.)  But I managed. 

By my senior year, I had to get creative with balancing my education and work.  The tuition jumped again, (it had doubled since my freshman year) and this year I would have to find a way to break even by June instead of September.

In the end, the only solution was to CLEP (College Level Examination Program) out of the classes I could and work six hours a day instead of four.  It was a little lonely and I felt like something of an outsider in my much beloved group of classmates,  just taking two or three classes.  But I did what had to be done.

I busted my butt, but by the time it came around for finals, I had failed to reach my goal.  I had not managed to pay off my entire tab.  

Sitting in Bible class in early May, I was called to the business manager’s office. 

I had been anticipating this call.  I didn't know what I was going to say.  I just promised myself I wasn't going to cry!  

I still owed $600 and the rule was you couldn't take your finals unless your bill was paid in full.

I broke my promise.  I cried.   

But not before I told Mr. Rau he knew I was good for it.  I had worked harder than anyone in the history of this school.  

 I’d worked weekends, vacations, summers, and still managed to keep a B+ average.

I would work all summer if need be to pay off the last $600.    

And then in desperation, I stated matter-of-factly, “After all, that’s not even my debt.  That’s a year's worth of horse board for a horse that isn't even mine.”

It wasn't a complaint; I’d long since realized how useless that was.  I was just stating a fact.

But he cocked  his head and asked what I meant. I explained that in addition to paying my own way the last four years, I had been also supporting a hungry ex-racehorse that wasn't mine as well.

He scratched his head then picked up the phone.  After an interesting conversation with the stable manager, he smiled, picked up a pen, and scribbled an exam pass.  He commended me on an my outstanding accomplishments at the school then sent me back to class.

The solution to the dilemma of Dimion and the unpaid school bill was this:  Since my stepmother had basically, legally abandoned the horse at school, the school was required to notify her before selling the horse at auction.  She knew he would not go for more than $200 or so at auction and she would save some big money buying him at auction rather than just paying the bill.

My boss, the stables manager, said it wasn’t cost effective for us to take him to the auction ourselves, so she called a horse trader named “Bully” from up in Thousand Oaks to take Dimion when he went to the auction the following Thursday.

It would be her day off so I would have to be there to hand Dimion off to Bully when he came to pick him up.  No problem.

I admit, I was teary-eyed and nostalgic as I brushed Dimion down for the last time and readied him for Bully.  Then I waited anxiously.  Bully always made me nervous.  He wasn't called Bully for nothing.  He was big and tall and loud and gruff - all the things I wasn't.

He knew horses and when he saw Dimion he said we were crazy to sell this horse at auction.  He’d buy this $#%* horse right here and now and save the trip, he said (in very loud, colorful language.)  I told him that we couldn't do that, digging my hands in my pockets and the toe of my boot in the dust.  The horse had to go to auction.  

Bully growled at me.  Who the hell was I to make that decision?  He wanted to talk to my boss!  Or the business manager!  Not some damn kid!

I finally explained the story behind Dimion and why he had to be sold at the auction.  That the school had decided they would take whatever he got at auction as payment in full - even though that wouldn't be nearly what I owed.  And that I knew Marilyn was going to be there picking him up for a fraction of what she owed on my school bill.  He was really livid  now – for a different reason.

The next day he stopped by the stables with an envelope from the auction company and a great story to tell.  He was so indignant over the story of the woman who stuck her step-daughter with the horse’s board bill all those years and refused to pay it, that he made it his own personal mission to make it his business.

When Dimion came up for auction, he waited to see who the cold-hearted lady was bidding on this horse.  

Then he started bidding her up.  And up.  And up.  And he didn't stop until she wound up paying the full $600 for that $200 horse! 

When he came back to school, this big, intimidating old bully of a man smiled at me and was proud to say that I could graduate with my head held high because that bill was paid in full.

I find an interesting parallel in life.  (If you've read my blog at all, you know I can't help but muse and draw correlations!)

No matter how much we humans pray, or how hard we work at doing good deeds, we can never pay the high price of life’s ‘final exams.’ Only accepting the free gift of Jesus’ redeeming love will pay that fee in full.

You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.

                                --  Lamentations 3:58

I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.                   --  Exodus 6:6

And the Dominoes Tumble - or Sins of the Father

The verse in the Bible that says that “the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children for generations and generations” always bothered me.  It even angered me.  It hardly seems fair.  And it certainly doesn’t mesh with my concept of a loving God.

But this week (while washing my hair, actually) it came to me - better understanding of that concept.  I’d had lunch with my son the week before and he’d told me he’d been shocked to see that I had posted a photo of Eddie and me on a Facebook page for Camp Cedar Falls. 

I’m not sure which shocked him more; that I had posted the picture of his father and me, or that we had truly been that happy once.

And I was pondering this conversation with my son when the “sins of the father” concept came into my shower and into my head, and eventually into this week’s Friday Night Story/blog.

If you’ve read my blog for very long, you will know that my life has not been run of the mill, to say the least.  But the first nearly decade of it was fairly Leave It to Beaverish, if in more exotic locales. 

We had dinner around the table where we said grace before meals.  My mother read us stories at bedtime and sang to us as we drifted off to sleep.  My parents never ever fought - or even raised their voices - and had a very amicable relationship.

And all that changed forever, and drastically, with the death of my mother and the appearance of the wicked step-mother – or so I thought.

And this spiraled into a series of events that left me pretty much to tend for myself throughout my teenage years.  I did pretty darn well at it, I thought, working to support and educate myself through high school and then college.  And then my last quarter in college, I married a man with whom I was very much in love.

It’s funny in hindsight, but many have told me they thought that our relationship was the ‘perfect marriage.’  They had all kinds of pleasant adjectives for us.  So when our marriage fell apart, everyone was stunned.  I can’t count how many people who said, “Are you sure?  I always thought of you as the perfect couple!”

Of course, in early years, that was easy to think.  And in later years, I worked hard to make it continue to look that way.  What they didn’t know (for it was my carefully guarded secret) is the reasons I married Eddie Rosas.  Yes, I was madly in love with him before he began to truly show his colors.  And for the first few years we were happy.

 

But besides being crazy in love, I also had another reason for marrying him.  For the first time in my life that I could remember, somebody loved me and wanted me.  And I never ever thought anyone would ever ask me to marry them (never dreaming that not one, but two men would propose to me in the decade after he left.)  

After all, I was the one nobody ever wanted: the step-child banished to California; the girl all the boys liked well enough in high school who was just not pretty enough to date…  So I was shocked (along with deliriously happy) when Eddie asked me to marry him.  I was finally good enough to be loved.

Looking back from a mature place in life on a more stable footing, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry or die of embarrassment that I can say that out loud (or in print.)  But now that I better understand all the psychological ramifications behind it, I am not at all ashamed to say it.  And I hope that maybe it will help others.

You see, in retrospect, I probably married Eddie to fill a void in me – the hole left by my mother’s death; by being abandoned at boarding school; by being always second best.  And yet in spite of all that, for a while we were very happy.

But once kids came along, he really resented not being the sole recipient of all my time and attention and energy and love.  He no longer had sole control over my life.  He didn’t like to share, and resented me loving others too – even if they were his own kids.  

And I am afraid that with the destruction of marriage, the dominoes tumble on downhill to leave scars on our children.  Maybe even scars deeper than mine, much to my chagrin. 

So maybe I can blame it all on my wicked step-mother.  Our lives were fine until she came along…

But in truth, the roots go back even farther.  She was just a symptom of the problem.  The reason my father married my step- mother is because he was also trying to fill a hole.  Not just one left by the death of my mother, but one I never knew about left over from his childhood.

I knew my father didn’t marry until the age of thirty-three.  I always assumed it was because he just hadn’t met the right woman.  Or that it was the way of all Carson men.  After all, his father hadn’t married until he was 30.  

But I didn’t find out until long after he died that there might have been a more deep-rooted reason.  Unbeknownst to any of us, he had his own childhood sorrows.
  

Yes, his father was a lawyer and his mother was the only daughter of one of the wealthiest and most well-respected men in town.  And he grew up in a nice house next door to the mansion of his grandparents who doted on him.

But I found out that the nice house he grew up in was actually a wedding gift to his mother.  Cool deal, huh?  

Not really.

  
The reason her father built that house for his daughter was because he didn’t trust that devilishly handsome, fairly-successful attorney who wanted to become his son-in-law.

He was worried that the charming, handsome man was a cad – for that’s what they called a man whose behavior was less than honorable back in those days.

  
 So he built her a house right next door so that he knew she would always have a roof over her head.

And I’m sorry to say that my grandfather didn’t let her father down.  After a few years of marriage, he took to drinking more and more and working a little less, and catting around a little.  I guess you would say he was your stereotypical handsome, alcoholic womanizer.

So my grandmother, bless her heart, was a humiliated, money-strapped, single mother in an era where single mothers were looked down upon with scorn. She wasn’t divorced – though maybe that would have been a less scandalous burden to bear.

And my father grew up with that sort of shame behind him.  You never would have guessed, to know him.  He was such an amazing man: kind, extremely popular, talented, professionally successful, honest and faithful. The facts of his childhood made his successful marriage to my mother all that more amazing.

But when she died and he was left with six children, I imagine all the old insecurities returned.  The amazing life he led in the military (as an aide in Roosevelt’s White House, as a Naval liaison to the House of Representatives, as an agent for the CIA) with all of the famous and powerful men he’d known, all came to nothing with that hole reopening in his heart.

And so he married Marilyn (my step-mother,) For Marilyn thought that good looking, retired Navy commander in the five-bedroom house on the beach was an amazing catch. And I imagine he was hoping that marrying her would make the pain of the loss of his wife, and the shame of the hole from his childhood go away.

  

And I think that is why he fought so diligently to hang onto that marriage even after realizing it was such a colossal mistake – because his father had cheated and slept around on his mother, so he would never ever walk away from a marriage.

And thus the dominoes began to tumble… 

Because he married her, I was sent off to school to fend for myself at 14, widening the hole already in my heart.  And that hole grew in the next eight years making me feel unloved and unlovable.

So when Eddie proposed to me, I felt like the most fortunate person on earth.  I wouldn’t be alone all the rest of my life after all; I’d been chosen!  (Kind of like the kid who’s chosen second-to-last for a dodge ball team – I was so pleased I wasn’t going to be the last person standing alone.)

If I’d had a loving, supportive family network, I’d likely never have married Eddie.  (And yet I can’t imagine ever missing out on my three kids, so not all is lost!)  I would have felt more secure in myself and held out for someone more secure in himself who would have treated me better and cherished me, not wanted to own me.  But alone and so lonely, and trying to fill a void, I made a bad choice. 

And thus the dominoes began to tumble… 

My mistakes were passed on down to the next generation.

After fleshing this all out for this week’s blog, I went back to find the exact wording on that “sins of the fathers” verse before I started writing, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken in my premise.

"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me..."

Wow!  That still sounds very harsh, with Him saying it’s because He is a jealous God.  Maybe I was way off base after all.  Maybe I got a little too much soap in my eyes in that shower…  I was about to scrap this week’s whole blog, but felt compelled to stick to it.  So I researched further.

Thus comes the history lesson.  As you may or may not realize right off the bat, the verse from Exodus 20:5 is from the Ten Commandments.

Researching some biblical scholarly stuff, I learned that the Ten Commandments are written in a very specific format that was commonly used in the king/servant covenant pattern of Moses’ times.  

It was common for agreements between a king and his vassals, or a superior and his servants - to be formalized with contracts specifically stating:

1)The title of the one making the contract  ( in this case, “I am the Lord, your God”) 

2) The historical connection/relationship (“who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery”)  

3) The stipulations/laws   (the ten commandments.)

4)The blessings if contract is kept and curses if it isn’t.

Exodus 20:5 contains a part of the contract’s maker of #1 (“am a jealous God”), a part of the laws of #3 (“shall not bow down to [them]”) and part of the stipulation of #4 (if the commandments are not followed, the ramifications will tumble down like dominoes upon the generations that follow.)

Because, you see, God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments as guidelines to keep them away from sin.  He knew they’d been compliant slaves so long in Egypt.  

They had no idea how to think for themselves or to follow God’s will, so he gave them ten simple rules.  By following those rules, they would avoid sin (which is the only thing that can separate us from God.)

And if they (or we) choose not to follow the simple rules of God, but instead choose to sin, we separate ourselves from Him.  And that causes the holes that cannot be filled.  Sometimes the ‘sin’ is simply in turning away from God and looking for human love to fill that void that only He can fill.  

And when we separate ourselves from the pure love of God like that, if unchecked, the separation and emptiness can tumble down on the following generations.

Because the hole that each of us (my father and I – and so many others) tried to fill with grasping at unhealthy love can only truly be filled with allowing God’s love to heal that breach.  

And until we allow His love and assurance to pour into us and fill in all the cracks and crevices of self-doubt and emptiness that sin has put there, we will never be whole.

And thus the dominoes begin to tumble… 

Our ‘holes’ will tumble down like those dominoes upon the generations to follow until the problem is remedied. 

So it is not so much that God is saying he wants to punish the children for the sins of their fathers, as much as He is saying that the natural consequences (for all sin has natural consequences) of our choices often will tumble down like dominoes onto the heads of our beloved children.

 

And thus it is with the breaking of any of the commandments.  If we hold onto those sins, instead of letting God’s love in to erase those sins and fill our ‘holes’, we will never heal, and will indeed pass those issues down to generations to come.

Liz Carson Rosas
26 February 2010

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; 

your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.      Isaiah 59:2