I learned a lot from my step-dad

It’s all what you make of it. Way back, shortly before I started kindergarten, my parents divorced. Dad kept in touch with me when he could but he was always bouncing all over depending on where the work was and he eventually ended up in Alaska. So my times with him were sporadic at best. I stayed with Mom in Washington State. Almost immediately following the divorce, my mother re-married.

He was a huge man. A 6-foot, 4-inch Swede who was built like a heavy tank, smoked black More cigarettes and drank copious amounts of Rainier. Contrary to the stereotype, he was also very smart in terms of math, writing, grammar, etc. My mother had met him at work where he was the personnel executive for the county. Before then he had been a bank officer and had operated his own car lot for time. Shortly after they married, he quit working for the county and began his own business as an independent contractor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Seattle Times. It was a very lucrative business and it did quite well. We had a large house on several acres and were never wanting come Christmas and birthdays. You could almost say I was spoiled. Almost.

I’ve never been entirely sure of the reasons. Maybe I was a reminded of my mother’s former husband (I was the spitting image of my dad and we shared the same name). Or, perhaps I just got in the way of his new life with my mother (he had also just come from a divorce). Whatever the reason, he sure as heck didn’t like me.

Mom was usually off at work and since he was running his own business, my step-dad was usually home during the day. This meant that when I got home from school it was just he and I for a few hours. And those hours were often pretty scary. Getting slapped, punched, kicked and otherwise treated like no elementary school-age child should ever be treated was the norm. But the verbal abuse was worse. Even though the physical stuff had pretty much waned by the time I was in late junior high, there was never an end to the emotional and verbal nonsense. It was a relief to finally graduate and leave home.

I wished all kinds of hateful things on that man. I hoped that when he got older, he would be helpless, in a wheelchair and it would be my turn. And for the last decade or so...that’s exactly where he has been. A series of strokes has left him unable to walk and think very quickly. So have I had my revenge? No.

Somewhere between graduating high school and now, I got tired of living with the hate. I figured that spending my days with a dark cloud hanging over my head only meant that this man “had won.” I remember the day when I literally looked in a mirror and decided to just “let it go.”

As I help my children work on their car, I realize that I wouldn’t know how to do that if it hadn’t been for my step-dad. We were a big “car family,” he was always collecting cars and I removed the head on a car at only 5 years old. I grew up wrenching and learning from him how to do that. He helped me with all my school papers. He was amazing at writing and taught me almost everything I know today. He was a very talented presenter and because of him I can easily stand up in a room full of people and speak.

I never would have known how to do any of these things if it hadn’t been for him. Does it excuse the way I was treated as a child? No, it doesn’t. But when you try to focus on the good you got out of a bad situation, it helps to get over it and heal. Forgiveness is good for the soul and when you learn how to do it right, you also learn how to admit your own mistakes and seek forgiveness for your own mistakes.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.