I am the youngest of the three children of Albert Earl Davis
and Bess Davis. (Yes, my mother was a Davis before her marriage to my father) My siblings are visiting Southern California
to spend time with my wife Ann and with me and to attend the New Year’s Day Tournament
of Roses Parade in Pasadena. I thought
that it would be interesting to do a blog entry in which I “compare and
contrast” myself with my siblings. I
want the world to know about them and the wonderful people they are.
I will write mostly about my siblings only and not their
spouses in this blog post. I acknowledge
that much of who my siblings are today is the result of their long term
relationships with them. But I want to
focus on just my siblings. (I have
written about Tom’s wife, Janeen, in a March 2012 posting.) For the record, Tom and Janeen have been
married for 56 years. Darlene has been
married to Bill, my brother-in-law, for 52 years. I love both of my in-laws, and appreciate
their love for Tom and Darlene.
Interestingly, between the three sibling couples, there are 142 years of
marriage—with no divorce in sight!
My brother, Thomas Charles Davis, was born on May 6, 1937,
in Salt Lake City. He is the first born
and displays many characteristics of a first born child. More about that later. He was raised in Salt Lake City and a couple
of other towns in World War II times (one was in San Francisco, on Haight
Street one block from Ashbury) by newly married, young parents. Our parents were raised by blue collar
parents, descended from blue collar people, two being immigrants from Denmark
and Wales. As such, Tom, and for that
matter, Darlene, were raised in an era of modest income and living. For most of Tom’s formative years, my parents
were not active in the LDS Church.
Tom made a decision to not serve a mission for the Church but
to marry Janeen, his high school sweetheart.
In high school, he had begun to show “first born” leadership characteristics,
and served as the president of the Boys/Men’s organization of West High. He attended two quarters at the University of
Utah but opted to pursue a business career.
It was during a time in which post-high school education was not necessary
to earn a meaningful living, and Tom was blessed with a strong sense of who he
was as well as his blossoming leadership abilities which served him well even
at a tender age.
For example, in his late 20s and early 30s, he was given
great responsibilities in companies. He
and Janeen and three of their eventual six children were sent to Peru to be in
charge of operations for a mining and drilling company when he was but 27 or 28
years old. He also was responsible for
sales in a multi-state region in the eastern United States soon
thereafter. Tom believed in and was
respected for his abilities and confidently went about using his talents in the
business world. He provided a
comfortable living for his family, a white collar lifestyle unknown to
generations before.
His abilities only increased the older he became. He and two others started a large modular
home construction business and generated considerable wealth. Because of his abilities, he was called to
several leadership positions in the Church.
He was confident of who he was and was blessed with wisdom. It was his kind and loving wisdom and
direction, in fact, that directed me in some major decisions of my life—choosing
to attend Brigham Young University rather than the University of Utah, and to
marry Ann.
He has lived in the same split entry home for over 40 years
and has successfully launched his six children: Caren, Ann, Leslie, Tom Jr.,
Steve and David. He has served two LDS missions
with Janeen in his retirement years and is always willing to serve in whatever lay
positions he is assigned. He lives a
contented life. He still loves his
sweetheart (and she is a sweetheart!) after so many years.
Darlene Davis was born March 29, 1942, in the middle of
World War II, in Salt Lake City. Like my
brother, she was raised by young, blue collar parents who had the energy to
interact with her. She had my brother to
socialize with, and although there were five years between them, they lived in
the same house and interacted. Unlike my brother, she evolved to become in some
ways the “anti-Tom.” I believe that occurred
because of who she was as a person and because of a poor relationship with our
father. It might also be that Tom was
perceived as the achieving, obedient child and set the bar very high for
her. It could be said that in her
formative years she displayed rebellious “second child” tendencies. Not that she was a party girl or got involved
with the wrong crowd, but life was not pleasant for her, especially with our
father, and she got married to Bill right out of high school.
She and Bill eked out a living in their early married years. She chose to be a stay-at-home mother with
their six children: Jeff, Natalie, Tamra, Mark, Jill and Mike. They had to live modestly, but she became a
great homemaker, always making her home comfortable and attractive, even when
she didn’t have a lot of money to work with.
One of my early childhood memories was riding my bicycle to her tiny
apartment (located next to the home in which my mother was raised) parking it
in the back behind it, and seeing Darlene as I attended 7th grade at
Jackson Junior High School, spending a little time in that little attractive
apartment. She always treated her little
brother in a loving, kind way.
In my early dating years, we kept in touch. Upon my graduation from high school, she
threw a great party for me in the back yard of her modest home. Her house
always felt comfortable and I felt accepted there. She seemed to take pride in her home and it
seemed to have fervor as a homemaker.
She kept the home fires burning while Bill worked long
hours. He worked as a journeyman glazier
for many years and then formed a partnership with his brother to create
Mollerup Glass Company He worked hard
at building this business with Darlene’s support, and the business
flourished. Meanwhile, she attempted to
be a good mother and to serve well in lay callings in the LDS Church. Like Tom, she has a flair for creativity and
art and has used that through the years to enhance her home and her Church
callings.
After a number of hard-working years, Bill sold his business
for a good sum which has afforded him and Darlene to live a comfortable, white
collar lifestyle. They have stayed in
their lovely home for many years as well.
It is wonderfully decorated inside and out. She has continued serving in Church callings
and loves being a grandmother and now a great grandmother. Like Tom, she has aches and pains and
challenges of advancing years, but like Tom, does not act her age.
My upbringing was very different from my sibling’s
upbringings. The parents of my youth
acted old. As best I can remember, there
was very little of the interaction with me that my siblings speak of receiving
from our parents. I recall wanting to do
fun things with them but that rarely occurred.
Since Tom had married when I wasn’t quite three (I was in his wedding
reception line!) and Darlene had married when I was still five, I had no
siblings to play or interact with, or to develop my social skills. In this environment, I was left on my own and
in my head. A quiet and obedient boy, I
didn’t talk much, and while I had a few neighborhood friends, much of my youthful
years were spent alone.
I believe that out of a lack of sibling and parental
interaction, I had limited awareness of who I was and what my strengths
were. I always felt “less than,” and
while I knew I had some abilities and talents, I always felt unsure of myself,
perhaps from the lack of feedback. But I
was a pleaser and always tried to be the obedient boy. I was always grateful for the interactions
that I had with my much older brother and sister.
Education was not stressed at all growing up, other than
getting some money for As and Bs. I just
knew that I needed to continue my education after high school. At length, with the help of my “brother/father,”
I enrolled at BYU, and continued there for some two years, until I did
something that neither my brother nor any of my male progenitors had
done: I served an LDS mission. Upon my
return from two years’ service, I continued my studies at university. Sadly, not really knowing who I was or what I
wanted in life, I never felt passion for a major, and opted to give myself
options after graduation to utilize the Spanish language skill I had acquired
by majoring in Spanish and minoring in Teaching English as a Second
Language. Again, this was done in a
vacuum; no direction, no real passion, no real understanding of who I was.
Upon returning from living in Japan as an English Teacher (living
in Japan was a daring move to be sure that afforded me experience in achieving
and becoming), my mother encouraged me to become involved with my father doing
what he had done for 34 years—selling rags.
Being obedient, and not really knowing what else I could do to support
my family at the time, I became a rag man.
I still am a rag man. I was somewhat
enthused about the rag business for the first 10 years or so, but always was
looking for something to excite me and to use the talents I was beginning to
see in myself. I think that I settled
into a line of work that provided modestly for my growing family, but which did
not really evoke passion.
I accepted callings in the Church along the way but it was
not until well into middle age that I received responsibilities requiring
leadership. I always tried to be obedient, both to God and
to my parents.
Financially, my married life for the most part has been one
of having “sufficient for our needs” but not much more. While I have been in white collar jobs for
most of my adult life, our finances have barely been white collar. It was only after Ann went back to school,
got her Master’s Degree, and was hired as a Community College math professor,
that we have had more than sufficient. Because
of our age disparity, both Tom and Darlene are retired and both have financially
comfortable retirements. Obviously, Ann and I aren’t quite there yet
and continue in our late-blooming careers.
I must admit to having felt envy to some extent in my middle age at the
comfort both of my siblings and their spouses had worked so hard to obtain. But we are doing well now—it was just a
matter of timing.
In 1994, Ann, I and the kids, left the cocoon of the Salt Lake
Valley and moved to the Los Angeles area where we have lived to the
present. This represents another
deviation from the Davis sibling norm in my journey. It has been a challenge to live apart from
them, both for my children and for us, to physically be away from those
face-to-face family gatherings and connections.
Ann obtained her Doctorate from UCLA and I received my
Master’s Degree in Psychology in 2009, representing further educational deviations
from my sibling norm (not Ann’s family’s norm).
Finally finding my passion in
doing psychotherapy, I am doing something vocationally that is quite different
from my siblings, although Tom has done much pastoral counseling in his
leadership roles. I am finally passionate
about something, and it is something that is making a difference in the lives
of people.
My sense is that I am quite different from my siblings in
many ways. On the other hand, I do believe
that we have many similarities because of parallels in our upbringings. And while
the miles and our ages separate us, I feel very connected with them. I love and care deeply for them, and I sense
that those feelings are reciprocal. I
feel accepted by them and their spouses.
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