The Greatest Inheritance
What My Parents Gave Me Had Nothing to Do with Money
My father never yelled at me. Not once. Yes, there were times when he was disappointed in me. He would get quiet at those times, and I can tell you that it dug more deeply into my heart than any other punishment he could have dished out.
As I’ve gotten older, the fact that he and I never fought, that he never raised his voice to me, and that I never stomped off angry at him feels more remarkable than it did when I was young.
He was born in 1926, the second son of a woman who desperately wanted a daughter. His own mother so obviously showed her displeasure after his birth, her doctor lectured her about pulling it together and being grateful to have a healthy baby with all ten fingers and ten toes.
It didn’t matter. My gran doted on her first son. My father always seemed to occupy a different place in her heart. Years later, when I was born, Gran dismissed me in a letter she wrote after visiting me for the first time. She wrote that she thought I was a brat and unruly (I was two months old) and said she’d never want to be left alone with me. I think my dad had hoped that my being a girl would bring them closer. We do that with our parents when we are denied their love fully. When it seemed to make things worse, I think something solidified for him. Perhaps because he knew what it felt like to be overlooked. Perhaps because he understood what it meant to long for approval that never quite arrived. Whatever the reason, he made sure I never doubted his love.
What I cherish most is that he listened. Really listened. Whether I was talking about school, skating, work, writing, or some crisis that felt enormous at the time, he gave me his full attention. He never made me feel foolish or looked at his watch or dismissed me as silly.
As a competitive figure skater, I spent years getting up before dawn for practice. More often than not, my father was the one driving me. That meant getting up at five in the morning, getting me to the rink, and arriving at work at six-thirty, at least two hours before the rest of his team. Then working until 6 pm or so before returning to pick me up and get us home for dinner.
One of my most cherished memories is those drives. Forty-five minutes to an hour with just the two of us. Sometimes we talked about life. Sometimes we talked about nothing at all. What mattered was knowing I never had to perform, or impress, or earn his affection.
I could simply be myself. And somehow, that was enough. Even in those years, I struggled with my value in the world, I always felt safe and loved around my dad. He also treated me as an equal to my three brothers. He never suggested there were things I couldn’t do because I was a girl. He told me I could be anything I set my mind to, and more importantly, he believed it.
Even if I didn’t always realize it or remember it, that belief became part of me.
When I began writing, he was my first editor. He read carefully, asked thoughtful questions, and tried to understand not just what I had written but what I was trying to say. He took me seriously. Looking back, I realize what a gift that was.
Don’t get me wrong, my mother loved me too, though in a different way. She was my champion, but she also dolled out the lion's share of the discipline in our childhood as the stay-at-home parent. That can create a different dynamic, and I freely admit that I could be a challenge. Like many daughters, I spent part of my teenage years trying to convince myself and everyone else that I was nothing like my mother.
I even told her so. More than once. Dramatically, I am sure! She never took her love away. She never withdrew. She never stopped showing up. We had our differences, but she stood up for me throughout my life when it mattered most. She defended me when I needed defending and loved me through difficult seasons. And as I got older, we came to understand one another in ways I don’t think either of us could have imagined when I was sixteen.
I always knew she was there. I always knew both of them were.
I grew up in an upper-middle-class family in a lovely suburb of Detroit. We never worried about having enough food on the table and were fully supported in our extracurricular interests. My parents paid for college so that none of us entered adulthood carrying student loan debt. They helped when needed and provided a level of stability that I now recognize as a tremendous privilege.
I am grateful for all of it.
But when I think about the inheritance that shaped my life, my mind doesn’t go to money or stuff. It goes to those early morning drives, long conversations around the dinner table, and being called Sweetie when I was 37 years old.
It goes to having two people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself. That kind of love created a foundation that made it easier for me to spread my wings and move to Chicago after college. It made it easier to move across the country to Los Angeles. Their love and support gave me the confidence to take risks, try new things, and build a life that felt true to me.
I knew that if I stumbled, there were people in my corner. That knowledge gave me courage.
Over the years, my family experienced its share of heartbreak. My third brother, Paul, was killed in 1985. The loss devastated my parents. My two oldest brothers drifted in and out of relationships with our family over the years, often due to tensions stemming from their adult lives and choices. There were long stretches when they didn’t speak to my parents.
I struggled to understand it then. I still do. Watching my parents lose one child and become estranged from others made me fiercely protective of them. I wanted them to know they were loved. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone.
And perhaps because I understood what they had given me, I became even more determined to be there for them. As an adult, they weren’t just my parents, they were my friends.
Some of the best friends I have ever had.
When they died, I lost more than my mother and father. I lost the two people who had spent a lifetime reminding me who I was. For a long time, I thought the greatest gift they gave me was confidence. Now I think it was something deeper. They gave me a sense of being cherished. Not because I was perfect or successful or had somehow proved myself. But simply because I was theirs.
And yet, life has a way of testing even the strongest foundations. After my parents were gone, there were times when I forgot what they had taught me. There were times when I tolerated treatment I should not have tolerated. Times when I compromised too much in order to preserve relationships. Times when I looked for validation outside myself.
I always knew I was loved. But knowing I mattered turned out to be a lesson I would need to learn again and again. That has been part of my work these last several years. Not proving my worth but actually, on my own two feet, remembering it.
As I grow older, I have become increasingly convinced that relationships do not need to be defined by blood to be meaningful. Some relationships endure. Others run their course. No connection is meant to last forever. But the healthiest relationships have something in common.
They make room for you to be fully yourself.
That is what my parents gave me. Not perfection or certainly. And certainly not a life free from heartbreak. They gave me a place where I was loved without performance and valued without condition.
The older I get, the more I realize that inheritance is about far more than money. For me, money and stuff are nice. But those things are empty. The inheritance I treasure most is my mom and dad’s unwavering belief in me. It carried me through childhood and across the country. It carried me through loss.
Even now, years after they are gone, it continues to shape the woman I am still becoming. That is the greatest inheritance they left behind. I carry it with me always.
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