I remember the back seat of my Uncle Gail’s Ford the summer after my junior year in high school, my 14-year old cousin sitting next to me, Dad in the front passenger seat. Country hits on the AM radio. The grasshoppers spraying off the pink gravel road in waterfall waves in front of us. Dust clouds behind.
That Dad and Uncle Gail were ever in the same place going in the same direction seems odd to me now. These men have always hated each other. Yes, hate. My uncle’s marriage to my dad’s sister, and the two men’s shared fierce loyalty to family, is all that kept them in the same space for more than a few hours, and even then, as physically distant as possible. It’s comical to watch and sad to behold.
My Uncle Gail. A long-haul truck driver. A real hillbilly, his father abandoning his mother to raise my uncle and his siblings alone, in an honest-to God shack in the West Virginia mountains. A born-again pentecostal Christian who gave up drinking, women, and all other vices when he married my Aunt Eileen. Honest. Hard-working. A strangely good cook. And boy... opinionated. If it was in the Bible or the newspaper (at least in the 70s and 80s) it was true. All other reading was a waste of time. An excuse not to do real work.
And my dad. First person in the family to go to college. Two younger sisters who never did. The oldest son in an Irish Catholic family who kept their oldest sons polished and sitting on the highest shelf, right next to the good booze, the crystal, and the picture of the pope. A photographer. A businessman. A hard-drinking storyteller who could hold is own in any room full of frat boys, executives’ wives, or old cowboys. A man who went to graduate school to avoid the draft. A divorced lover of lots of women. A father sometimes — sometimes even a good one. Often funny as hell, and one hell of a horseman.
It was that last thing that put these two men in the front of my uncle’s Ford on a hot dusty day in Sedalia, Colorado, my cousin finally convincing her father that the horse fever she caught ten years earlier could only be cured by one thing. It was the one topic where my uncle was willing, begrudgingly, to ask my dad for advice.
And my biggest-personality-in-the-room father put his disdain for his brother-in-law aside for the sake of his niece, stayed quiet, and let my uncle lead the conversation.
It’s odd that I don’t remember the horse. I’d caught the same fever when I was a little girl. I know I saw her. A young mare. I must have ran my hand along her neck and told Deanna how pretty she was. I’m certain I would have taken a deep sniff to take in the smell of her horse scent, one of my favorite things.
I don’t remember the drive to the back from the barn where she was boarded. I imagine Dee jumpy with excitement, leaning forward, grabbing my arm, smiling wide. Or the conversation, surely all about what Dad thought. Was she healthy? Was she a good fit for Dee? Was the price fair?
What I do remember are thunderclouds building over the mountains, blue-black, and skyscraper tall. I remember the first coin-sized splats of rain hitting the windshield. The strange timing of “The windshield wipers, tapping out a tempo...” playing on the radio and no one noticing but me. I remember my dad’s arm draped over the back of my Uncle’s seat, blonde arm hair and silver watch band. I remember that Dad wouldn’t make eye-contact with me. I remember not saying a word on the ride back and no one seeming to care.
I remember wishing that Eddie Rabbit would shut up, that I could go back to Oregon now, and that my suddenly polite father would go back to his sucking-the-air-out-of-the-room self and own the conversation again.
I’m an oldest child. Oldest grandchild, too, on both sides of my family. I grew up loved. I know what it is to be cherished. I was Daddy’s girl from the moment he first saw me. I am the daughter of an adopted mother who once told me with actual tears in her eyes that I was the first blood-relative she ever met.
My little brother came along and following family tradition, should have taken his seat next to Dad on the top shelf, but our branch of the family was always a little off. We moved away from the rest of the clan before he was born, leaving the shelf behind. My parents drank their good booze. They didn’t display their crystal, photos of the pope, or their children. They were young, educated, different.
My brother and I ran and played and fought and made up stories. We rode horses and watched Batman and raced our bikes. We built lego houses for Barbie and GI Joe, then we were the tornados that made Joe and Barbie have to rebuild yet again. Sundays were for reading anything with words on it.
Our renegade branch of the family moved a lot, dragging horses and dogs and books and cameras from house to house, state to state, until finally my parents realized they couldn’t out-move their baggage and divorced. Dad went back to his clan in Colorado, eventually climbing back to his saved safe space on the top shelf.
My mom went back to school, then became a professional working mother. Little brother and I became latch-key kids and learned to cook and do laundry and take care of the dogs and do our homework on our own, mostly without being told. We read and argued and grew up. Soon I found myself in an all-girl prep school where my parents’ frequent declarations about my ability to do anything were affirmed —with the caveat that I might have to actually work at it.
Annual summer trips to Colorado to visit my father were a mixed bag of excitement and confusion. The time I spent alone with Dad was filled with riding horses and motorcycles and funny stories and his patience and encouragement for my adolescent knowledge level debates about politics and music.
But the mandatory clan gatherings were a different matter. I looked like an awful lot like the rest of the people in the room, but I never seemed to quite fit in: I read too much. I was too quiet. I didn’t paint my fingernails or wear lipstick. When the time for political debating started, Dad would give me a nudge as my grandmother said, “Sweetheart, come help your Aunts and me in the kitchen while the men talk.” My brother would try to follow, as confused as I was and less willing to keep the peace. Then it was the inevitable, “Stay here, sissy!” from my grandfather.
Alienated and alone, I soon entered a new world of:
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I go to an all-girl school.
“When do you want to get married?” I’m 16.
“It’s never too early to start thinking about these things.” I want to go to college.
“Well, yes, but you’ll want to have a family, too.” I have to go to the bathroom.
The summer Colorado trip in 1984 was about more than just Dad-time. I was about to start my Senior year in high school, and one thing both my parents not-so-subtlety hoped for was that I’d pick Regis College in Denver, their alumnus, as my first choice school. Or second. CU Boulder would be acceptable, too. So, in a rare moment of collaboration, they planned college visits for me at both schools, and threw in Denver University for kicks. In between motorcycle tours, horseback-riding, and clan dinners, there would be college visits. It was a heady moment for them. The first child of the only children of two families to go to college would be going to college. Mom beamed with pride. Dad started dusting a spot next to him on the shelf.
Dad forgot he was a renegade who came home where it was safe. And girls never sit on shelves, just pedestals.
Back in the Ford, Uncle Gail looked in the rearview mirror and asked me what I’d been up to this trip. I rattled off tails of horseback riding, motorcycle tours, and dinners. “We went to Boulder yesterday and toured CU.” I said, happy to get a little attention from my uncle whom I secretly adored. He had always been kind to me, even asking about my mom when no one else was in the room.
“We’re looking at Regis on Monday.” I said. “That’s where Dad went.” I swear I saw my father actually get taller and glow from the front seat.
Then Uncle Gail laughed. “Jack, you must have money burning in your pocket to waste it on putting a girl through college. All she’s gonna do there is look for a husband. It’d be cheaper to let her live with you and work full time. She should get a job until she gets married like your sisters did.”
I wish I could tell you exactly what happened next. In my whole sheltered life, no one had ever said anything like that to or about me. Not going to college had never been presented to me as an option. I thought everyone went to college. Women were equal, right? I remember feeling hot and cold and shame and anger. I remember my dad mumbling something about me being smart and being able to do both. I remember that he wouldn’t (couldn’t?) look at me when he said it. I remember my cousin staring at her feet and turning red.
Did we talk about it on the way home from dinner? We must have. Every visit always ended with “Gail is an asshole...”
But here’s the thing. He wasn’t. He’s not. There’s so much I’ve come to learn in the years since that summer in 1984, not the least of which is this. I was a fortunate, entitled, girl raised by parents who thought the world grew up like they did. We all do that at some point. Privilege. Paternalism. Misogyny. So many things that I didn’t understand then, and still strive to work through now. Things are never simple, linear, black and white. Privilege begets privilege, and doesn’t like to share. If you’re not paying attention, you can be driving down the road in the back of your uncle’s Ford, and suddenly find yourself back in time in a world you thought was gone.
I have a wonderful uncle who really loves me and tells me so. Three years after that ride in the Ford, cousin Deanna started her undergrad at CSU. She told me years later that I broke her glass ceiling the day I finished my first year of college, her father giving her his blessing to pursue her education, though she’d have to pay for it herself. Our branches of the family don’t agree on much: politics, religion, ...fashion, and our fathers still can hardly tolerate each other. But they both raised daughters who love words and horses and dogs and their fathers and uncles. I find a little bit of hope there.
And that shelf? It’s long gone, along with the pedestal, the crystal, and the picture of the pope. And I still drink the good booze.