Mentor, Father, and Memories: A Memoir Sketch
Posted: Sunday, November 23, 2008
by Tex Norman
King Odysseus, leaving for war, asked his friend Mentor, to look after his young son. A mentor is someone who helps another learn the ways of the world or specific tasks. . . . Many successful people are open to sharing with a protg. . .
Bridges out of Poverty by Ruby Payne, Philip DeVol, and Terie Smith
Every kid needs a mentor. Everybody needs a mentor . ~ Donovan Bailey
I guess this is why I have been so unsuccessful. I haven't had too many mentor's in my life and have learned to distrust just about everyone I encounter.
My parents had a lot of problems. The way I grew up it felt a little like the asylum was under the control of the inmates. My father always felt like it was going to be better somewhere else, that just over the next hill, or county, or state line, life was going to be great. We moved constantly. I attended 33 schools before I graduated from high school. I was always a stranger, always the new kid. I had no friends because until I was 16 I never lived anywhere long enough to have any friends. I learned how to not have friends. Why bother with friends if you were just going to move away and never hear from them again. The biggest challenge I found in school was finding where the restrooms were and how to avoid the people who liked to brutalize the new kids.
Like many boys my father was not a mentor to me. My father was a sometimes fundamentalist preacher who ruled his children like we were incompetent slaves. He believed firmly in the scripture:
Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. ~ Proverbs 23:13
I don't remember any rod, but I have vivid memories of the belt, and the fist. I feared and then hated my father.
How Do We Forgive Our Fathers? By Dick Lourie*
How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?
Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?
If we forgive our Fathers what is left?
This poem is read during the last scene in Smoke Signals a movie based on the great Native American writer Sherman Alexie and based on his book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight In Heaven.
In 1966 we moved to a little town in Kansas , east of Wichita , and two great things happened:
1. I got a driver's license, and
2. I went to the same school for an entire school year.
With a license I could sometimes get away, and be free within the confines of the car. For the first time in my life I could get out of the house, and go to school plays, band concerts, and stuff like that.
The usual four schools in a school year pattern was finally broken. I got my first close friend, Flip Fields. And Flip introduced me to a man named Richard, Burston (name changed to protect his family). Mr. Burston became my mentor. He was a man in his early 50s and he liked me. He took an interest in me. He asked me questions and listened to me talk. I liked to read and he gave me books to read, and we talked about them. When Mr. Burston found out I wrote poetry he really encouraged me.
Mr. Burston ran a Christian Camp outside of town called the Kansas Bible Camp. He was a minister in a tiny denominational group called the Sanctified Gospel Chapel. Mr. Burston organized poetry readings and had me give readings of my work. Later he invited me to stay free at the Bible Camp in exchange for doing little poetry workshops with the other campers.
That was when, while sleeping in a bottom bunk, in a barracks full of sleeping boys that I woke up with Mr. Burston kneeling by my bed, kissing me, rubbing his stubbly face against my cheek, and his hands searching under the bedclothes. I made enough noise resisting that he left before the other boys woke up. It happened again another time, and again I resisted and told him he needed to control himself.
Things between me and my mentor were not the same again, although he did teach me a powerful lesson. The mentor taught me that no one had any interest in me other than what they could take from me.
The only constant in my life has been my wife, we have been married 37 years, and to a lesser degree, my son, who was with me until he left for college, and of course, the point of being a parent is to let the children go on as prepared adults.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Tex,Thanks for writing this piece. I understand you better each time you pen an article. J.B. Phillips, in his book, "Your God is Too Small," said that our concept of God is derived from our father figure. He may have a point. My Dad was a raging alcoholic and it took a long time to grieve the loss of what he wasn't to me and my family. I can't imagine what it would have been like for you to have moved from school to school on a constant basis. How in world could you ever build trust in people or a God who claims to be loving? I hope you keep writing because it helps me get to know you better and assists me in exploring my own journey. Thanks and Peace, james
Hi Tex.My home life as a child was positively rosy compared to yours. I did at least feel loved, but a lot of it was conditional.I would like to know how you made the connection and commitment to Kathie. Did she drag you kicking and screaming into it? :) Seriously, I am curious about that part of your journey.You show great strength in sharing yourself as you do with so much raw honesty. And you do it with such great talent. You keep on bringing me in with your words even when I think that maybe I should just move on to another article. That maybe this one will make me feel something that I do not want to feel; remember something I would rather forget. Do not stop writing, please. Continue to make me think and feel and wonder.Dianne
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