The Great Encourager

December 2, 1018

Growing up, my father was the great encourager. While Mom was the nurturer and the nesting influence, Dad was about the world beyond.  He seemed to recognize early that, despite being born a bookish introvert, I was also born with an irrepressible drive and curiosity, and found his work as a structural engineer ultimately more interesting than being a wife and mother. The few times he brought me to work, I happily occupied myself with the tools that I found on his drafting board: tracing paper, rulers, pencils and protractors.  Thus began a lifelong interest in drawing and structures.  My other great passions were horses, books, and cars, not necessarily in that order.  So I copied and drew horses; collected plastic, fold-up cities for matchbox cars; and built ranches, corrals, the occasional horse diorama and toothpick houses.

As I matured, though, I found to my dismay that I was a reluctant and inept rider.  Mind you, this was the era of Secretariat and breaking the Triple Crown drought that went back 25 years to the great race horse, Citation.  It was also the era of Walter Farley and the lesser known Logan Forester.  Both wrote wonderful race horse stories, but always with male protagonists.  So I decided to abandon my ambition to be a jockey (!), and instead become a writer of Walter Farley-style race horse stories for girls.

However, from a very early age, I also decided that writing would be my avocation.  I needed something more practical to put food on the table.  Before long, Dad was telling me I could be an architect – or anything I put my mind to. It was a given that I was on a college-prep track.  I never considered anything else.

But mine is a very curious mind, and I wanted to major in liberal arts, if there had only been such a thing.  During my freshman year at W&M, my major varied by the week, depending on the class.  I considered geology (for gemology), art history, religious studies, psychology, history, and English.  Architecture went by the wayside (too much math).  Dad suggested accounting, trying to convince me that accountants did not just sit in front of figures all day.  But I kept coming back to English.  And taking courses across the liberal arts, adding philosophy (ethics), sociology and anthropology to this list.  So much to learn!  So little time!

Dad had always felt cheated by his college experience because the engineering curriculum focused early on the limited and practical.  So he advised me to learn: 1) a little about many things; and 2) how to communicate clearly.  His advice at the time: “They [business] will train you to do what they want you to do.”  So I focused on reading and writing, always doing better in subjects there were not in my major.

In then end he was proven correct, although it took several years to develop.  After graduation, once ensconced at W&M (after forays into the corporate world of Xerox and Colonial Williamsburg),  I was always in a hurry to take on additional responsibility and leverage it into the next promotion or job.  Eventually I got my big break – a promotion significantly beyond my experience – and I made the most of it.  I never planned to stay at W&M for 30 years, but before I knew it the first 15 years had gone by.  I curtailed some of my choices to support changing personal circumstances.  And then another 10 years slipped by before I knew it.

In the meantime, Dad was writing Christmas cards telling his engineering colleagues and friends how his daughter worked in capital construction.  I was very proud to be following in his footsteps.  And proud that his liberal arts encouragement had served me so well.

Along the way, I learned to write (again).  I was taught to write dispassionate, reasoned entreaties to the state, requesting funds for capital projects.  I wrote densely, packing facts with exact verbs in order to convey as much specific information as possible.  I also learned to write for myself in personal journals that now stretch back over forty years.  And eventually I moved from writing short stories to experimenting with poetry. All along the way, Dad shared his insight and pride.  “You could go into real estate…” he’d suggest.  “Send me some poems to read.  I bet they’re better than those in the New Yorker.”  Dad never stopped encouraging.

I wish I could share this time with him now.  I’ve fulfilled my obligation to do something practical to pay this bills; now is a time of great creative freedom.  I try to think of what he might say.  One of the last things he told me was “You are your own person now…”  And I would like to think the sky is still the limit.