For this goofy kid, Ellen Miller was such a person.
I was, beyond question, a goofy kid.
I mean, what other kind of kid would entertain the notion that we might all be cows instead of people and never know it because, being cows, how could we know the difference?
Picture me with a milk smile back then on a billboard that says: “Got sense? Not really.”
And there were other telltale signs of goofiness.
I was the kid always stepping on his glasses, so they had to be held together with tape for extended periods of time. It was a shortcoming aggravated by my poor taping skills.
Later in childhood, I caused Mrs. Bandy, the receptionist at her husband’s orthodontic office, utter “Oh, dear,” when informed that Mr. and Mrs. Stafford’s son had left his retainer on the lunch tray and thrown it into the trash … again.
Ellen liked me anyway.
True, she liked kids in general — one reason she’d become a teacher.
But in the run up to the holidays when I was in early high school and my brother was away at college for his first quarter, she was particularly nice to me.
With the Thanksgiving menu in the works and, no doubt knowing I was missing my brother, she asked me, as though I were to be an honored guest, what I wanted for Thanksgiving dessert.
I was a goof, not an idiot.
And because Ellen was as much a great cook and baker as I was a goof, I asked for the cheesecake with the graham cracker crust and cherries on top.
That led Ellen’s husband, Jack, to start giving it to me like a kid who was going to wait for me out on the playground after school.
“Young man, you know that means I don’t get my pumpkin pie,” he said.
Ellen rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t worry, little boy, you’ll get your pumpkin pie, too.”
And as warm laughter mixed with the ever present smell of coffee in their kitchen, I felt all kinds of good, knowing they both like me.
Before they adopted first daughter, Jennifer, then, son, Tim, the Millers put their love for children to a test. They followed through with a plan they hatched with my parents over coffee around the same kitchen table at which the dessert question had been asked.
The two of them spent extended amounts of time in a Volkswagen mini-bus, driving through Europe with my mom, dad and two teenage boys: my brother and me.
He was 15, and that summer I turned 13.
That means I was at the age when I was both goofy and annoying.
I’m pretty sure my brother and I disappointed the teachers who had such high hopes for the educational aspects of the trip when we fixated on one cultural and linguistic twist of fate: That German words for entrances and exits to the famous Autobahn were einfahrt and ausfahrt.
I can only imagine that our delight wore thin for them after, say, the first 30 seconds or so.
The poor Millers had no off-ramp (ausfahrt) for that escalating crisis.
I still remember Ellen looking back at me from the co-pilot’s seat after I pushed a smart-aleck remark a bit too far and shaking her as my face betrayed both shame and pride at my boldness.
Fortunately, either a planned separation of the families or an impromptu one called after an encounter with the Autobahn provided the kind of break mental health professionals call a respite.
That was back in the summer of 1967.
Ellen died about a month ago, after a persistent illness revealed an underlying fatal problem. Last week, I flew to Florida to drive my parents to the memorial service.
It was a wonderful, restrained and not overlong ceremony in the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Greenville, S.C. A modern structure with a high wood ceiling, it featured a single, large cross with artfully designed lighting that projected large shadows on either side of the main cross against the front wall of the sanctuary.
The symbolism suggests the possibility that shadowy figures walking the earth might aspire to such heights.
In the seven years since their daughter, Jennifer, died, Ellen, Jack and son Tim have been raising her son, Jackson, with Tim as his adoptive father. The affection father and son have for one another is obvious.
Now in middle age, Tim has grown into the person who ably welcomed guests to the post-service reception in a Greenville Deli whose Jewish owner joked about the quality of the ham.
Using his mother’s love for needlework as a jumping off point, Tim thanked all who were there and suggested their connections with her and through her had been the highest expression of her embroidering skills.
As I listened, it struck me that Tim once had been a goofy kid, too; that, as adoptive parents, Ellen and Jack had chosen to love him; and that, after his sister’s passing, he had chosen to do the same for Jackson.
It further struck me that to have that kind of relationship with a child, biological parents must adopt as well. They must adopt an attitude to love the child born to them.
And many who do that learn how to love others as well — to the benefit of goofy kids everywhere.
About the Author