Dreams of My Childhood

I was in second grade when Mom took us out of school, but the seeds of rebellion against the penitentiary for innocent children were already sown within me. Even as a child, I sensed that any deviation from the norm nurtured something unique within. I was an avid reader of Landmark Books featuring big shots from Joan of Arc to Davy Crockett, each of whom stamped their names in the history books by rejecting the standard path.

I was the youngest son, and not happy about it. Adults, my mom’s friends in particular, would cry, “You’re the baby!” when they found out I was the youngest. I would turn red and sputter back, “But I’m not a baby!”

To make her announcement, Mom called her three boys into the living room. My oldest brother, Tyler, wore thick glasses and memorized long passages from Les Misérables, reading in Costco while shuffling behind Mom’s shopping cart. He was also slightly on the spectrum. As a child, he had difficulty understanding emotions and went through a phase of holding me down and kissing me continuously as I kicked and screamed. It was not an outpouring of unreciprocated love that led to this unusual scene, however, but calculated torture. One day, fed up with kiss attacks, I grabbed a log from our wood pile and smashed his glasses while they were still on his face.

But Tyler was also prone to periods of genuine love and affection for us and the animals that grew steadily in number as our childhood went on. While we were still in school, my mom bought two chickens that we named, in an example of groupthink’s downward effect on creativity– “Cluck One” and “Cluck Two.” Tyler would spend hours after school rubbing Cluck One’s stomach as it splayed its head back in pleasure. They became best friends before a Possum attack ended the union.

Evan, on the other hand, was the silent assassin, poking us under the table and crying helplessly when we retaliated overtly. But he was also a peacemaker and a helpful son. My parents gave us each an allowance of ten dollars a week, and I started paying Evan to do my chores. One morning, Mom saw Evan carrying my laundry up the stairs.

“Chores are for building work ethic, not making money!”

“But isn’t the point of a work ethic to make money?” I asked.

“Just do your chores.”

Mom was careful to dole out unconditional love when appropriate. “I would be happy if you lived under a bridge as long as you were happy!” she told us on many occasions. And she would sing us to sleep many nights: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray…”

“I had a meeting with the school principal about Tyler,” Mom said, opening the meeting. “He’s been having some issues at school, and the principal told me that ‘smart kids just have to get used to being bored,’” she said, nodding to Tyler, then in fifth grade. “I decided to take your education into my own hands, so you will be homeschooled from now on.”

The three of us cheered and clapped, and Mom smiled, relieved at our rapid acquiescence. The principal’s words, “Smart kids just have to get used to being bored,” were branded on her psyche as a mantra to rouse the furious energy needed to implement her novel education system.

The second purpose of our meeting was to make clear that School Mom was to be obeyed. More than once, I goofed off too much during school hours before being silenced by the forbidding “wait until your father gets home.” One day things devolved unusually far, aided by our Holland Lop bunny, Puff, and the trail of pellet-sized droppings he’d deposited around the living room. I’d collected them and spelled Tyler’s name, calling him over to reveal my creation, at which point he grabbed the poo and started force-feeding me before my screams sent Mom rushing into the living room.

A few hours later, Dad walked up the steps to the house after a long day and slumped down his bag as if it were his own body, only to face the imminent duty of paddling his boys “with their pants down” (for our particularly naughty behavior). Having been absent for the original offense, it was a task he completed hesitantly and with a light enough hand that I feigned cries to satisfy my mother, who was standing with her arms folded in the next room, and to encourage extra softness on the part of Dad.

Despite his soft paddling, Dad was an effective enforcer. Capable of swinging from jovial chatter to plate-smashing anger at the careless spill of a water glass. He was the primary source of financial stability and emotional instability in my childhood. He worked hard, but was often overwhelmed by the enormous pressure of being a sole provider for a family of five. I became an expert at assessing his emotional state by the sounds of his steps as he approached the house: heavy, and I would run to my room; light, and I would come up to greet him. The way the door was opened was the great reveal: aggressive, and it was best to not be seen; light, and good money had been made that day.

If hungry, which he often was when he came home, even a poorly worded question could light the fuse. At meal times, he would grow steadily happier as the food hit his stomach, and my shoulders would relax, confident that the evening would pass in peace.

The power that Dad’s anger had over the household was awe inspiring, and probably addictive—we would do anything to appease him if a storm blew in. When he raged—at one point smashing up much of the kitchen, including several plates (dinner was late, and he was hungry)—I hid in the living room and whimpered while my mom tried to stop the rampage.

Around the age of seven, I began having a recurring dream, a fantasy, in which his anger finally went too far. Dad would drag me out into the street and stand over me, holding my shirt with his left hand and pounding away with his right. Women would scream and the cops would come, tackling him to the ground, cuffing him and taking him away. Afterward, I would be free.

But when Dad was at work, I relaxed. We lived in Sunnyvale, CA, and had a small house on a quarter-acre lot with a big avocado tree in back whose produce we would use as baseballs to the consternation of our parents. Tyler and I would walk around the block, using sticks as “wappers,” mowing down any plant that came in our path. We got into one neighbor’s flower garden and heard shouts from the window.

“What the hell are you kids doing??”

Tyler and I took off running, turning our heads to catch sight of a middle-aged man in a bathrobe chasing us off in his slippers.

In addition to her teaching, Mom had a habit of infusing her every endeavor with a grandiosity that greatly exceeded her capacity. She would declare an intention to write books or start great businesses, and then weeks would pass.

“How’s the book, Mom?”

“Not good, honey. I have all these incredible ideas in my head, but when I put them on the page they turn to mush.”

The great exception to this was her children, where she rose to the level of her own grand ambitions. Her teaching style was warm but sensible, firm yet open. I loved spending time with her, and with the exception of the occasional poop calligraphy, she was generally delighted by us.

Six months after being taken out of school, a diesel dually pickup arrived in our driveway and was joined the following day by a Lance sit-on-top camper. My brothers and I excitedly piled into the cab as the “for sale” sign in front of our house was taken down. We pulled out of the drive and headed north for Alaska.

“How long will we be gone?”

“Five, maybe six months,” Dad replied, “and forty-nine states.”

I was in an exalted state. I’d been born with a road bug, and the series of dramatic moves that year, from Mom taking us out of school to my dad leaving his job, had culminated in the ultimate adventure. Any change was good; monotony the enemy.

Soon my senses adjusted to the buzz and rattle of the freeway, and the adrenaline of the new adventure dissolved into a stable new medium of existence. Dad was the driver and map reader, maintaining a usually light-hearted chatter of facts and figures.

“Some of these Redwoods are over 1,000 years old, boys.”

“Almost as old as you, Dad.”

“That’s right.”

He was at his most pleasant on the road, at home in moving space with a mission to the day and a team to lead. His temper had virtually evaporated without the stress of work, and so we all relaxed with him. Mom was teacher and keeper of the peace.

“Can you quiet them down back there?” Dad would ask after a thigh poke gone awry.

Mom would twist to the backseat. “Would you boys like to do math right now?”

“No, Mom.”

“Then settle down.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Tyler was a Game Boy player who maintained a monk-like equanimity in the face of natural wonders and three-hour traffic jams. Evan was Dad’s buddy, chattering along with him about the national parks and local flora and fauna. I was a restless troublemaker trying to get my share of attention in a family of elders.

“Mom, Tyler is farting back here.”

“That’s okay. It’s natural.”

wack

“Mom, Tyler hit me.”

“Tyler, don’t hit Dean.”

wack

“Mom!”

“Okay, that’s it! Evan you sit in the middle. Any more trouble and we’re replacing the Game Boys with math books.”

We drove through California and saw the towering redwoods, whose fallen branches served as wappers for Tyler and me to chase each other with. At our campsite I stole off alone, finding a gun-shaped stick and hiding behind fallen logs as Davy Crockett, picking off Indians. I must have killed thousands of them. I was a legend.

We stopped at Crater Lake, where we all earned our first “junior ranger” badge, a pursuit which quickly became a centerpiece of the homeschool curriculum. The badges were awarded after completing a worksheet based on information in the visitor center, filled out under the watchful eye of Dad.

“What did you put for B?” I would ask Evan.

“I’m not telling you.”

“I’ll give you my fries the next time we stop at Burger King.”

“Deal.”

Some badges were prized more than others, the crème being “BIG HOLE” (all caps) National Battlefield in Montana, whose badge I pinned to my shirt for an entire week.

From Crater Lake, we drove northwest into Western Washington to take the ferry from Seattle to Juneau. The first night Mom got seasick and gave us $20 in quarters for the arcade so she could vomit in peace. In Alaska we visited Dad’s old Ocean Beauty cannery, where he had served as packer and then plant manager in a twenty-year career that largely preceded my birth. It was part nostalgia, part networking, because after the trip ended he took a job at a remote cannery on Kodiak Island. From Alaska, we descended south through Canada and into Idaho, then due east through Montana toward the eastern shore. Once a week, we would go out to eat.

“Dad, why can’t we eat out more?”

“Too expensive. This trip is costing us too much as it is.”

“How do I make a lot of money when I get older?”

“You work hard and get a good job.”

As we stopped at over one hundred national parks, I failed to find the wonder that clearly filled the soul of my dad. His face, along with Evan’s, would slacken in awe at a waterfall or compelling tree.

I preferred to sail around the world in my mind rather than focus on the reality of the rolling ocean on the ferry to Alaska or the vast landscapes of the American West. And in the woods I was the invincible legend of battle. I wanted to be a hero, someone whose accomplishments were impossible to ignore. Waterfalls did nothing for me.

Three months in, we stopped at my grandfather’s property in Upstate New York. He held court in his living room, wisely rocking in his chair and attempting to engage his three prepubescent grandchildren in conversation.

“What do you boys want to be when you grow up?” He directed the question to my oldest brother, Tyler, then nine.

“An underwater photographer!” Tyler answered smartly, beaming with the fresh inspiration of a recent visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I pondered my answer. Not president. That’s boring.

“I want to be…” Evan began.

“A billionaire!” I blurted out, cutting off Evan.

Everyone at the table laughed.

“I’m serious! When I grow up I’m going to be a billionaire.”

“Why wait?” My father said, smiling down at me. “You can be the first eight-year-old billionaire!”

“We believe you, honey,” said my mom reassuringly. “Then you can buy all of us everything we want.”

I smiled.

Years later, I read Bad Blood, the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who dropped out of Stanford at nineteen to revolutionize blood testing before being sentenced to seventeen years in jail for securities fraud and medical malfeasance. When Holmes was eight, her parents asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“A billionaire!” she had replied.