On a Monday last September, after my employer had decided to eliminate my position but three and one half weeks before the Zoom meeting they scheduled to tell me, when the calendar hinted at autumn but the Vermont weather did its best to convince you it was still summer, I sat outside in a circle with ten coworkers on the first day of our annual staff retreat. With sunglasses on to block the sun and our respective opinions of the retreat, we listened to the instructions of a storytelling workshop trainer before taking ten minutes to draft our personal stories to share with the group.
I followed the trainer’s storytelling prompts down the hall to the left and straight back to my childhood. To Q-Bert on the Atari. To candy cigarettes and baseball card bubblegum on the walk home from the local pharmacy. To two new outfits for school every fall. To made-for-TV movies about nuclear fallout. To family road trips to campsites or grandparents’ houses. To the day our family bought a CD player and my sisters and I each got to pick out a new CD. To the black and white TV in my parents’ bedroom that had 13 channels—14 if you counted the UHF channel. To the Dukes of Hazzard.
I was most definitely a child of the 80s. And as a child of a minister and a child care provider, I was also a member of a lower-middle-class family. The family that only bought used cars, whose vacations were only ever road-trips to campsites or grandparents’ houses, who could only afford two new outfits for school every fall. The family whose budget meant superfluous gifts were out of the question, even if I desperately wanted to upgrade my generic orange Chevy Corvette Matchbox car with the official Dukes of Hazzard General Lee one—that gorgeous, orange 1969 Dodge Charger featuring the Confederate flag and all of its implications none of us white suburbanites yet understood. My parents did their best to provide for us, and come Christmas time and our birthdays, we were certainly more fortunate than some children. But I still went to school every day feeling unprepared to face the gauntlet of abundance and judgment.
When my classmate, Jacob V, bragged about Super Mario Brothers and asked me if I also got the new Nintendo console for Christmas, I said I was more into baseball cards while silently convincing myself that Q-Bert and Pitfall 2 were as good as video-gaming would ever get. When Jacob teased me for wearing the same pair of jeans as the day before, I lied and said he was mistaken. When he called my bluff and said I should mark the jeans with ink so I could prove the next day that I owned more than one pair of jeans, I agreed, and then spent the evening trying to remove the ink mark from the denim. When the boys in my class started playing Dukes of Hazzard with their respective orange General Lee matchbox cars, I pretended not to be crushed after Matt W. told me I couldn’t play with them because my Generic Lee wasn’t enough.
The storytelling trainer’s prompts were so powerful, it seems, that with my sunglasses now blocking watery eyes, I ultimately landed in a childhood moment I hadn’t thought of in over 30 years: a quiet time of independent play with my Cabbage Patch Doll—as I said, my parents did their best to provide for us. I’m roughly 8 years old and through the powers of imagination, I have stepped into the shoes of a lower middle class parent struggling to provide for his child/doll. It’s Christmastime and I’m explaining to my child/doll through very real tears that all I can afford to give her is a small pillow.
“Simply having a shameful Christmas time.”
This repressed memory has no doubt been lurking in my subconscious for at least the last 7 years, feeding my parenting insecurities, nudging me almost daily to diligently save my pennies so my family is never without, while also quietly pushing me to give my child as much as I possibly can so that he’s never without. So that he has enough.
When it was my turn to share my personal story and these memories with my coworkers, I struggled with how to conclude the story. We all struggled, really. Ten minutes isn’t a long enough time to draft a personal story that’s both compelling and cogent. This was my rationale when I ended my story with a punchline about striking out Matt W. on three pitches in a Little League baseball game. And this was the rationale I told myself when my boss’s personal story about ensuring a healthy work–life balance ended with her seemingly advocating for an unhealthy work–life balance. And so I left the retreat that day, eager to finish crafting my personal story, completely baffled as to how to end it, and wondering if my boss was maybe trying to tell us something. And then.
Three and one half weeks later, I signed on to a Zoom meeting where I was told “it’s not us, it’s most definitely you,” and I found myself staring down the barrel of unemployment, cursing the can of repressed memories the storytelling trainer had opened up, and fighting off visions of giving my child one small pillow for Christmas. On cue, my old friends, anxiety and depression, showed up for an unannounced visit; they truly are the worst houseguests. And I became terrified the ghosts of my unknown future were going to send me spiraling into a melancholy state of Generic Lees and ink-stained Levis and of never being enough. But … a funny thing happened on the way to my 40s.
At some point during the trials and tribulations of my younger Benchly (see nearly every previous blog entry), I managed to snag myself a healthy relationship with an extraordinary woman. How, you ask.
Well, dear readers (read: reader), while I was busy lamenting gifts I did not receive as a child, I overlooked the ones I had been given: compassion, honesty, respect, and love. Each of these gift-wrapped treasures from my parents laid the foundation upon which I’ve built my entire life. They enabled me to cultivate and nurture a relationship with the Mrs. for the last thirteen years so that, as I lay there on the cold, hard gurney transporting me to joblessness, Mrs. Benchly’s calm and confident bedside manner eased my worries, evicted our uninvited houseguests, and, faster than you could say “Possum on a gum bush!,” nursed me back to confidence and straight to LinkedIn.
On a conscious and oft-subconscious level, these presents have also been at the forefront of nearly every parenting decision I’ve ever made. From how to talk to Baby Benchly about his adoption, to listening to and valuing his opinions, to cautiously allowing him to interact with the world and find his place in it. And combined with the gifts of storytelling, creativity, and curiosity my parents also bestowed upon me, these presents helped me face this career transition head-on and to quickly land a new job at a righteous organization four weeks and four days later. (Thus far, the work–life balance has been appreciated!).
I still don’t know how to end this story. I suppose that’s OK. As a parent, I have really good days like when my son is given a gift and offers to share it, or when he volunteers to donate some of his toys so less fortunate kiddos can enjoy them. And then some days I don’t necessarily want to write home about, like any day he’s had a case of the “Gimmes” and I’ve been short with him in response.
Fortunately, no matter what, each day always ends, a new one always begins, and with it an opportunity to start over. It’s calming how episodic parenting can be. You just have to make sure you freeze the frame every once in awhile so Waylon Jennings can help you appreciate the parenting challenges you’ve overcome, the loved ones who helped you along the way, and the moments when you can admit to yourself that who you are and what you have to offer are enough.
It was snowing gently the night I left you at the hospital.
Benchly'sword 
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