Stepdads Rock

My stepfather came into our lives in an unusual way. Like most stepdads, he married my mom, that much is obvious, but the way it came about and the kind of dad he has been is something unique in its own right.

My own father disowned me and my siblings on my fifteenth birthday. I called to tell him about a car I had been saving up for and, assuming I was expecting him to make up the balance, he broke it to me that he had too much on his plate just trying to raise his step-kids and my half-brother and that I wasn’t to call him anymore. He said he was doing his best and that he just couldn’t handle the three of us in addition to all of that.

I was too stunned to speak for a few long moments and then my father hung up on me without saying goodbye. I was so broken inside that I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone right away. Even though you live far away from your father, it doesn’t mean that you stop loving them. I used to think my father was able to just turn that off. Later in life, I learned otherwise but at the time, the effect of that sad news was devastating.

I still had a lot of growing up to do and wasn’t looking forward to not being able to call my dad for advice. He helped me stay grounded when my ideas got too far out of hand. My parents had different approaches to dealing with my big dreams and high hopes. With my mother, everything was “you can do anything you put your heart and soul into” and with my dad it was always, “Don’t get your hopes up.” Well hope left me that day and it didn’t return for a long time.

My mother had been a singer/songwriter when I was younger and moved us to Georgia to be closer to her family for support after the divorce. Jobs were difficult to come by, so mom decided to get back into her singing career. We kids were big enough I could babysit while she was out gigging, and it seemed like the right time to do that sort of thing. Being the phenomenal singer that she was, my mother had no difficulty whatsoever securing a front spot with a working band. Since none of the men in the band had places with enough space to spread out and practice, our house became the place to do that.

If you’ve never had band mates you may not know it, but they can be rather flaky. It’s been my experience that members often come and go, especially bass players. It’s easier for them than other members to flit from one band to another because they don’t have to actually be at practice much to know how to play the songs, so rather than come to practice, they gig somewhere else to keep a revenue stream. I guess it doesn’t occur to them that the other bandmates need their part, so they know what to expect on stage later. Another “flitter” is the rhythm guitar player. They can do solo gigs at the drop of the hat and often do, even more so if they’re songwriters. Apparently, the rhythm guitar guy for my mother’s band was very busy and often skipped practices so, they put out an ad for a new one and then vetted the candidates at our house.

I won’t ever forget the first time I saw my future stepdad, Dean. He had shoulder length black hair, a beard and mustache, and kind of reminded me of a cleaner version of a pirate. He had perfect teeth and a nice smile, but he had a gravelly voice and wore, what I deemed as a fifteen-year-old kid, to be really cool clothes. He walked in the front door followed by a pretty brunette who was carrying an adorable little girl on her hip. As it turned out, the woman behind him was his wife Dorothy and their little girl Samantha.

They came in, shook hands with everyone and mom sat Dean down in his spot in their setup, then offered everyone something to drink. Dorothy and Samantha sat in the living room with us kids while the band started up. Apparently, Dean had been playing since childhood and already knew how to play most of the material they were working on. He was such a good fit, they hired him on the spot.

Over the following two weeks, Dean and my mother began to see that the leader of this band was a little off. He had wild, violent mood swings, swore in front of us kids and demanded a level of perfection that I don’t think has existed since Jesus left and even if it did, he would never admit it.

One Saturday morning, mom was getting things ready for band practice, and she sat down on a chair and sighed. She looked around the room for a few minutes, then called the band leader… and quit. She decided it wasn’t worth it to work with him after everything he put her through. He was so busy trying to achieve perfection that they weren’t working, and she needed to make money.

Later that day, Dean called mom and told her that Gary fired him. Mom congratulated him and the two laughed and began talking.

As it turned out, Dean’s wife had forced herself back into his life after he had started divorce proceedings, by using their daughter as a way to stay close to him. She was a drug addict and had serious impulse control issues, not the least of which was a long line of wild, extramarital relationships with people he had at one time called friends. She had even been abusing Samantha, which was the one thing that made it possible for him to have temporary custody of the baby at least until an investigation could be done.

Mom and Dean fell in love in a whirlwind. Dean had a solid day job, and they started their own band. The two of them made music together for over 40 years. Mom’s parenting was still hinged on the whole “believe in yourself and you can do anything” philosophy, but Dean’s was different. He was this totally cool person. He believed that at my age I should have enough sense to make my own decisions and account for them accordingly. In his mind, that’s how you became an adult. He was totally non-committal. If I asked for something that had a “yes” or “no” answer to it, I never got a straight answer. If he said, “I don’t know”, that was basically a ‘No”. If he said, “I guess”, that meant “yes, but if it goes sideways, it’s on you”.

Flash Forward to my adult life and car situation: I had a little Geo Metro car that died, and I was without a vehicle for a few months. As a single mother raising two boys it was difficult to come up with enough money for things like vehicle repairs. My dad, Dean, convinced mom to let me drive her Saturn one Saturday afternoon to go pick my two little boys up from their dad’s house. This was a total surprise to me because he generally didn’t like for me to borrow their cars. He was always worried I would be in an accident, and they’d be without two vehicles again. Add to the equation that mom had only owned that car for about 6 weeks, and it was a recipe for disaster if I was to let anything happen to it.

As the boys got into the car at my ex-mother-outlaw’s house, they were jibber-jabbering amongst themselves, so I just casually called out to them.

“Seatbelts.”

I heard them click as they continued discussing little boy things. As we rounded a corner on one of the rural Georgia roads heading home, a flood of water about a foot-and-a-half-deep came rushing toward the car. I was too shocked to know what to do and it happened too quickly to respond.

The county had decided to let some water run off from the water tower to save the vegetation from the scorching temperatures and had not posted it anywhere. The water swept the car up, and I struggled to maintain control. Now and again, my wheels connected with the road, and I would gain some ground. Ultimately though, we found ourselves in rotation at breakneck speeds. The brakes failed and it was all I could do to stay on the road. After what seemed like eternity, we met with the road. The car careened across a very slimy surface, and I could see the embankment racing toward us with no brakes to stop.

I told the boys, “I hope you have your seatbelts!”

“We got ‘em!” they shouted in unison from the back seat.

“It’s a good thing.” I answered as I spun the wheel hard to the right. “Because we’re going over!”

The driver’s side of the car slammed into the embankment so fast and hard in the turn, then it went up on its side, and then fell over on its back. The windshield broke inward on me as the asphalt came up to meet us, and I threw my arms in front of my face to keep from eating the steering wheel. After the car teetered for a moment, it finally stopped moving. There was a loud “BANG” from under the hood, followed by an acrid fume. Trying not to gag, I called out to the boys.

“Oh my God!” I yelled. “Are you guys, ok?”

It seemed like forever, then I heard them say “Yeah, mom, we’re ok.”

The driver’s side of the car was smashed against the embankment but the windows on that side were at least large enough to get out of. The opening for the ones on the road were barely the size of a baseball bat.

“Can you get your seatbelts off?” I asked.

In a moment, I heard the seatbelts. My eldest said, “We’re good, mom. I think we can get out your window.”

I told them to come on by, but to please be careful of the glass. For reasons I cannot understand, neither one of the kids got into the car with their shoes on and I hadn’t noticed. In a moment, little bare feet tip-toed past me where I hung upside-down from my seatbelt, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw them exit the window. Pulling my shirt up over my nose, I unclasped my own seatbelt, and followed the same route the boys had. I had a tougher time getting out of the window in the condition it was in, but they both helped me out.

Once I was on the road, I was groggy. It took a moment for me to get my bearings. I checked the boys out and aside from a little seatbelt rub on my youngest son, they had come through unscathed.

My ex-step-father-in-law, (GD), was driving by and seeing what had happened to us, he got out and checked on everyone, then drove us up to a pay phone to call for help. (Only rich people had phones in their cars back then.) I gave the boys some money to get something to drink and snack on while I was on the phone, and my ex-father-in-law kept an eye on them while I called 911. Afterwards, I called my mom.

When I said…

“Mom. The boys and I have been in an accident.” She found out where and said they were on their way.

Still not myself, I sat in the front seat of my ex-father-in-law’s car too stupefied to speak. As we arrived on the scene, so did the police, the paramedics and a firetruck. I took one look at the car and went to pieces. It was upside down on the road and the top of it was compressed almost completely on one side, with at least half the other side down as well. My Father-in-law patted me on the shoulder and told me not to worry. These things just happened sometimes.

I turned to GD with tears in my eyes and said: “Dean’s going to kill me!”

He laughed and responded: “I think they’re going to be so happy you’re alive, that this car isn’t going to mean anything.”

“You don’t know Dean very well, I’m afraid.” I sniffled. Dean loved cars. ALL cars. I had destroyed the brand-new car he bought for my mom after he went out on a limb for me. In my mind, I was dead where I stood. As I contemplated how much it would cost for three tickets to another country, a wrecker drove up. A bunch of men got together and turned the car over. As it came to rest on the warped tires, the top of it popped back into place. After I recovered from the shock of the loud noise, I was encouraged. I looked at my father-in-law with hope in my eyes and said, “Maybe they can save it!

I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“Once a car is rolled, hon, they have to total it. This car won’t ever be on the road again.”

The weight of that statement made my knees go weak. I just dropped and sobbed, holding my boys as they took that car away. Shortly, the EMT's took each of the boys in turn to the back of the ambulance to check them out, and then it was my turn. GD had decided to stay with us until my parents arrived and we all leaned up against his car, talking.

After a little while, my parents arrived. I stood up straight and turned to face their car, ready for them to disown me the way my father had. I had done nothing to my father after all, to warrant him disowning me but this… I had done and probably did deserve to be disowned.

Dean got out of the car. Ordinarily, he would wait for my mom to get out of the car, (she just naturally has always taken her time getting out for some reason), and he came at us in a dead run. I braced for impact, thinking he was going to do a running punch in the face or something, but that didn’t happen.

He swept me up into his arms and said:

“Oh, thank God you’re ok. Where are the boys?”

I was in shock. I didn’t even realize that when they saw him running toward us, they hid behind GD. I shook my head and answered, “I don’t know. They were right here.” I motioned with my hands.

GD kind of stepped to one side and Dean fell to his knees in front of my children. He hugged them so close and kissed them and told them how happy he was that they were ok. The boys immediately began chattering excitedly about the adventure while my mother came and hugged me. She asked me what happened and if I was ok. As I stood there recanting to my parents what we had been through, there was literally no admonition whatsoever for wrecking the car. GD and my stepdad conversed shortly, which is good because GD affirmed what I told them and actually knew which impound yard they had taken the car to.

As we were driving toward the impound yard to get all of our things out of the car, a sense of dread overtook me. Would he be as kind to me when he saw what I had done to my mother’s first brand-new car? As we were getting out of the car, he told the boys to stay with my mom and he and I went together into the office of the impound yard to find out about the car.

Dean asked: “Did you guys bring in a Saturn a little while ago?”

“What’s left of it.” The guy answered. We all had a laugh at the remark, but the counter person was kind enough to walk us out to where it had been dropped off. Once we were alone with the car, Dean opened the trunk so I could get the boys’ things out and he got the important papers out of the glovebox. As he was looking at the inside of the car, he leaned on both hands on the passenger side window and shook his head.

“I’m sorry.” I quickly put in.

“Don’t you be sorry.” He told me. “I’m looking at this and I don’t know how you’re alive. I’m just glad you are!” He took a deep breath, then opened the hood.

The engine under the hood was covered with something that looked like it had sizzled down into the metal.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Battery acid.” He answered. “That bang you said you heard was probably the battery exploding.” He shook his head again, then held me so tightly.

“I’m really sorry.” I reiterated.

“I told you don’t be.” He said. “Roni, we can buy another car. This one has full coverage. But, we can’t replace you and those grandbabies. This isn’t your fault, so don’t try to take responsibility for it. Sometimes life just sucks. Nothin’ you can do about that. You can either forget about it and keep going or you can dwell on it and let it bring you down. Let’s just forget about this one. Ok?”

I cried even harder. I didn’t feel like I was deserving of the kind of love and forgiveness I was getting and wasn’t accustomed to men caring more about people than their prized possessions. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that information but suffice it to say, that sometime while we were eating dinner out that night, I started calling Dean, Dad, (or daddy), and that trend never stopped.

I had the benefit of two “stepdads” in my darkest hour. My ex-husband’s stepdad, and mine. What a gift a stepfather is, the man who loves you as his own child and would do anything for you. Stepdads rock and are truly no joke.