Childhood issues and Oliver Trenchard

These are coming up as I embark on my 49th trip around the sun...and probably always will.

Well, I keep thinking about the damage done to me as a child. Why? There's a lot of what-ifs that will never be resolved because we can't go back in time to repair them. But I still dwell on them, try to make sense of them, and maybe, in my way, come to grips with how to deal with the fallout.

When I was young, I was told I was very smart. Repeatedly. I had a high IQ. Was even told I was the smartest kid in my class all through elementary school. My stint in the spelling bee reinforced that. High school did little to change that. The first brick wall I smashed into was my rejection from Deep Springs. Then going to St. Olaf—where many Minnesota kids went as a good in-state school—and flailing there revealed a huge gap in my growth. On Christmas 1996 in Prague, I wrote, "After a full childhood being considered somewhat of a wunderkind, now the reality hit me: I ain't half as great as they said I was." And somehow, I had a weird premonition of this on my (second-to?-)last day of high school...hanging around the gab lab in the choir room, I felt like I was missing some major bit of training and was unprepared for the world outside. There's a lot outside the gab lab, outside the choir room, outside Littleton High School, outside Littleton, and outside Colorado, and I was about to hit it.

Nowadays, I feel like being smart doesn't cut it. I have the brains and book smarts. But to be successful in this world, you need business and social smarts. My brother and sister have proven that a lot. Chad in particular: He's a great businessman, socially extremely adept, and great at providing for the family...not just his, but all of us in general. Kim has been a great mom and a great pediatrician throughout her whole life. Her diagnosis with MS last year after a few years of struggling with random neurological symptoms pretty much ended her medical career and came toward the end of her active mom duties; Riley is graduating in just a few months, leaving an empty nest, three great adult daughters, and a lifetime of memories Kim should treasure and be proud of for life. (We'll leave Fraser out of this for the time being.)

Meanwhile, my life professionally has been a lot of zigging and zagging with scattered success. Doctor? Eh...kind of. Never could make it profitable. Spelling coach? What kind of career is that? At least it was profitable, though. Academic director and pronouncer for Spelling Bee of China? Pretty impressive, though for a business with questionable success. And now...copy editor? For a year or so. Work for one journal that folded through no fault of my own. And now I wonder about my future. Where can I join up with the people who value what I bring to the table? Where are my people?

Anyhow, what would life have been like if I had been confronted more with a view that being smart is good and all, but being socially adept and good at business things will serve you better over the long term? More to the point, if this lesson had come from Dad, would I have listened? I listened very little to what he had to say anyhow. We viewed each other as opponents.

A Parallel

I watched Belgravia recently, and found myself identified with Oliver Trenchard, a son who feels himself equal parts misunderstood and disappointing to his father because of who he is not: a son interested in his father's line of work as a supplier to the Duke of Wellington and a social climber. Oliver is highly sensitive to the fact that this is, in the eyes of the world, who he should be. (Or at least, this is his perception.) Oliver has married well, but his wife Susan, seemingly barren for their 11 years of marriage, has grown tired of trying and has begun to wander. When she unexpectedly becomes with child after her dalliance with the scoundrel John Bellasis, Oliver realizes that it is he who has not been "man enough" to supply his wife with children, adding further insult to his situation. Fortunately, Susan takes the opportunity to reassure Oliver that they will treat this child as their own, and reasserts her loyalty to him. (There's another storyline here that contributes to her sentiment, but this is good enough for now.) Moreover, Oliver's mother Anne recognizes how he thrives outside of London, at their country estate a three-day carriage ride away, and arranges for the couple to move and live there for good. He can be a country gentleman there...whatever that involves. Certainly not business.

Oliver Trenchard, the Duke of Windsor...it's interesting to see the people I identify with here.

Well, I went on a tangent there. Things to consider.