preacher’s kid

January 30, 1977

Because I’m a pastor’s kid (PK), my father confirmed me – married me – and baptized my children. Every time I stood in front of the congregation and looked into his eyes, tears welled and I teetered on the edge of complete meltdown. I wasn’t sad, just overloaded with emotion. The same thing happens when I think about him now. The memory of my father officiating at CD’s baptism makes me reflect on unique aspects of life as a PK.

When I was two years old (before the Alien Baby[1] emerged, and ruined my life), my father took me with him to give communion to rural parishioners. Halfway through the ceremony, his communicant’s eyes wandered so he turned to investigate what caught their attention. It was me, toddling behind, imitating his words of blessing and passing out imaginary wine and wafers.

CD meets Joyce's dog Kuala or vice versa. — CD meets Joyce’s dog Kuala or vice versa.

We acted out Bible stories to amuse ourselves. The Good Samaritan was a favorite. My father played the battered victim near death by the side of the road. I took on multiple challenging roles ranging from a snooty priest to a snotty Pharisee and a self-absorbed Levite. Basically, I pretended not to see the dying man by the side of the road. At this point my sister Janet, bobbing with excitement, took center stage in the starring role of Good Samaritan. Between you and me, a monkey could have played her part. All she needed to do was hoof it as far as the kitchen and ask Mommy for a glass of water. When she accomplished this feat, dramatic tension peaked. Invariably she paused – and guzzled most of the water, saving a few drops for our dying dad. And I’m the one who got typecast as being selfish?

Sometimes Janet and I played Israelites in search of manna. Confused about what constituted manna – was it vegetable, legume or dairy product? We agreed it probably resembled chocolate chip cookie dough and hid globs of it in the sofa cushions for the Israelites to discover and devour. Who knew about salmonella in the fabulous fifties?

(Future blogs will explore other aspects of growing up P.K.)

[1] See Kathy Vs. the Alien Baby footnote

January 29, 1967

I was far too quick to judge; I grossly underestimated the power of Nice’n’Easy. Under sunlight – any normal light, really – my hair blazed. You’d need to be blind not to notice and both of my parents were sighted. “You took out all the pretty darkness,” my mother lamented. My Wilcox cohorts assured me it was a vast improvement (not so hard, after 15 bad hair years).

To the best of my recollection, I was a natural brunette.

This was my first foray into the new world of multi-hued hair – a world I’d return to often. Addicts claim their first hit of cocaine is the one they chase for the rest of their lives. Likewise, my first rinse of permanent hair dye was the sweetest. Drugs or alcohol would’ve been redundant. Pounding down neighborhood streets on our secret mission was intoxicating enough.

sANDY + Kathy = KANDY — My secret mission ally Sandy Walker (Hegwood)

My Sunnyvale ally, Natalie Nilsen (pigtails, I know. I told you - 15 years of bad hair days.) — My Sunnyvale ally, Natalie Nilsen (pigtails, I know. I told you – 15 years of bad hair days.)

Due to the aerobic work-out we got from running all over town, our endorphins probably maxed out. Stir in the promise implicit in every Clairol commercial – by changing your hair color, you can change your life!- and we became unstoppable, the world was ours for the taking. If that’s not 20^th century alchemy, what is?

Dear me, whatever can I do with my hair?

As far as my parents were concerned, it wasn’t my finest hour. It wasn’t the worst, either. Still, even now – fifty years later to the day – bursts of our laughter and the pounding of our hearts echoes in my memory. We had so much fun it hurt – in an oddly pleasant way.

I remember it so clearly but I can’t recapture the feelings – the roller coaster highs and lows, intense moods and flooding emotions that were part and parcel of being fifteen. I couldn’t live at that fevered pitch forever – but I wouldn’t say no to another taste. After all these years, I’m chasing that fifteen-years-old high.

January 10, 1978

Actually, I suspected my classmate Dick made all of it up because – upon receiving a compliment – my first impulse is to negate it. “This old thing?” “No, I haven’t lost weight, I’ve gained.”

"I'm nervous and high-strung!" — “I’m nervous and high-strung!”

Of course, not everybody regards the qualities Shelly allegedly attributed to me as compliments. In retrospect, “nervous” and “high-strung” sound unhealthy and problematic. “Intense” was my favorite word. I don’t know how universal the desire to be “intense” is, but to me it seems more interesting than mild or calm. “Conscientious” was flattering but I was too secretly slothful for it to apply to me.

"I'm intense and conscientious!" — “I’m intense and conscientious!”

All my life, I’ve struggled with owning “ambitious”. My Midwestern Lutheran brain conflates it with greedy and ruthless. Anyone who attended Bible school knows the meek will inherit the earth. Ambitious and meek don’t go together.

"I'm ambitious but that doesn't make me a bad person." — “I’m ambitious but that doesn’t make me a bad person.”

When I was younger, I tried to hide my ambition. It seemed incompatible with feminine or being a good person. However, I’ve changed my mind. Ambition isn’t inherently “bad” – it depends on how far you’re willing to go to realize your ambitions. When ambition functions as a driving force – a means of powering the passion required to realize a dream – I think it’s a gift.

December 30, 1963

Of all my diary entries so far this is the one I most longed to rewrite. In my defense, it’s entry #7 of what now totals over 15,000 entries. When I wrote it, I was a 12-year-old amateur but that’s just an excuse, not the problem. The problem, obviously, is the stilted, cloying, artificial prose. “Anticipating lovely things of the future?” Please, who talks like that, outside of terrible Victorian novels?

The one redeeming quality in these early journals is my penmanship. My writing was larger, rounder, loopier with robust capital letters. This made it significantly more legible, which was darn lucky because for the first two years I wrote with a dull smudgy pencil – sheer torture to decipher fifty years later.

Reading the Diary of Anne Frank was my inspiration. I aspired to be as talented and profound as Anne, oblivious to the distance that separated my pedestrian prose from hers. Her diary inspired empathy as well as suspense due to her horrible (but historically significant) circumstances. Given my diary details the plight of a preacher’s daughter in suburban Santa Clara in 1964, the only thing our two diaries really have in common is they were both written by teen-agers.

My little town made history after I left, when Santa Clara became Silicon Valley. Even though most of my friends’ parents worked in electronics, I remained blithely oblivious to what that meant.

My world wasn’t much larger than my friends and family. As much as I loved Anne Frank’s diary, I couldn’t be her. I lacked her talent and the sweep and scope of her canvas. That said, what matters more in life than your relationship with your friends and family?

So even with my limitations, maybe I’ve got something to say – if that prissy judgmental twit who wrote today’s entry gets out of my way.

December 28, 1967

My father rarely talked about himself; he preferred listening. He had a gift for asking questions people wanted to answer (maybe all clergymen or psychology students master this technique).

Invariably, when a boy came calling he found himself seated opposite my father, awaiting my entrance. My dad charmed them all. “Your father’s a great guy!” they’d enthuse – surprised, because he was so much more amiable – so much easier to talk to – than they assumed a religious figure might be.

None of them realized how skillfully he drew them out, inspiring them to excited monologues while he revealed nothing. I like to think I learned from his example, although self-publishing my diary entries argues against it. If this isn’t talking about myself, what is?

He didn’t dwell on himself at home either, preferring to draw my sisters and me out about our feelings and interests. On those rare occasions when he did, I wrote his stories down in my diary. This one had a profound effect on me.

I miss his calm wisdom and understanding more than I can express. Publishing my memories of him is as close as I can come to letting him live again.

December 24, 1983

By “one big pregnant blur” I meant seven more months. Little did I know it would be fourteen more months. What the hell happened?

A month prior, I took a pregnancy test at Verdugo Hills Hospital as opposed to a do-it-yourself pee stick. Why? Because I didn’t trust my ability to read the results accurately. I wanted professional eyes.
After the positive test, I packed on pounds like a sumo wrestler.
I quit nursing Sam to ensure adequate nourishment for the new baby.

Sam contemplates munching on her rag doll some more.

Let’s back up. Three children weren’t part of John’s or my master plan. We were satisfied (and exhausted) by our current two, a boy and a girl. We convinced ourselves this third child was meant to be.

Delighted CD meets his little sister Sam - two children, a boy and a girl. Perfect. — Delighted CD meets his little sister Sam – two children, a boy and a girl. Perfect.

Our childless friends mocked us mercilessly. “What did you do, mount her on the way out of the delivery room?” they taunted John. Truth be told, back-to-back pregnancies struck me as a tad trailer-trashy and unseemly but I waddled on.

In March, at my monthly appointment, my OB couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. (This was the first time she tried.) Alarmed, she ordered an ultrasound and – surprise!

Despite looking ready to drop, I wasn’t deep in my fourth month – not even close. I was two weeks pregnant. In other words, months ago – when I fretted about how 1984 would be one big pregnant blur – I wasn’t even a little bit pregnant. Instead of giving birth in July, as everyone I knew now expected, I’d deliver in October.

How could such a mix-up happen? The hospital stood by their initial positive pregnancy test, suggesting I subsequently miscarried (without noticing it) and promptly conceived again. I thought it far more likely they screwed up the test and – under the delusion I was already pregnant – I quit nursing after which I conceived for real.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. By now, John and I were fully adjusted to the prospect of three children. The fact he or she would be a Libra rather than a Gemini was no reason to reconsider.

I have another more fantastical theory about what happened. It has no scientific basis in fact. In my myth, Alex and Sam knew each other in previous incarnations, different lifetimes. Maybe they were lovers, maybe one parented the other, maybe one saved the other’s life. Regardless of what bound them, their connection ran deep. In this lifetime, Alex wanted to be close to Sam – this time, to watch her grow up. The strength of his love and the sheer force of his will powered him through time and space and created that magical mishap with my pregnancy test all to bring them together again – this time as siblings.

Sam and Alex reunited in this lifetime as siblings.

Watching them grow up together might make you a believer too. I never want to spend two years pregnant again, thank you very much. But if I was required to be pregnant for ten years to bring Alex into the world, I’d do it. No regrets. It was meant to be.

November 26, 1966

She didn’t wait till the next day; she called my father long-distance that night. She made Natalie trade rooms with her and didn’t let me out of her sight. I was supposed to meet Alan for church in the morning so we could exchange phone numbers and contact information but it was impossible. Since he thought my name was Natalie, I figured that was that.

Kathy and Natalie - which is which? — Kathy and Natalie – which is which?

Back at home, my father expressed mild disappointment but he didn’t make it into a big deal. I was home free.

A week later, my father knocked on my bedroom door. “I got an unusual letter at church.”

He unfolded a sheet of paper. “Dear Pastor Knutsen,” he read. “My name is Alan Sorenson.” He glanced at me. A surge of adrenalin left me shaky. He resumed. “I’m a Luther Leaguer from Pacific Palisades Lutheran who recently attended the “Get a Light” convention in Palm Springs. I’m trying to locate a young lady I met there named Natalie. She’s tall, around 5’9”, with shoulder-length brown hair.” He stopped. “Sound like anybody you know, Kathleen?”

Natalie and Kathy - which is which? — Natalie and Kathy – which is which?

Uh-oh. He called me Kathleen, not Kathy. “A little like me, maybe?”

“That’s what I thought – but your name’s not Natalie.”

I couldn’t concoct a plausible lie. “All right, Nat and I wanted to try being someone else. But it wasn’t to be mean.”

The right corner of his mouth turned up. He wasn’t angry – he was amused.

Although I am the pastor's kid, I couldn't help getting my halo slightly tarnished now and then — Although I was and still am the pastor’s kid, I couldn’t help getting my halo slightly tarnished now and then

Alan was not even slightly amused. He was mortified that he addressed his letter to my father. He didn’t appreciate being lied to, especially about being a PK, the likes of which he’s not really into dating. Tough luck for him, I’m a PK for life. So what if league sponsors spied on me and concerned parishioners gossiped? As long as the pastor in question was my dad, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

November 18, 1985

I met Gene Simmons for the first time in Gary Lucchesi’s TriStar office. Gene was wearing leopard boots, a multi-strand choker with colored glass beads or gems and some sort of mesh bracelet. I’m pretty sure I looked like a PTA president by comparison in my dress and pantyhose. (What was I thinking???) He liked my spec script and wanted me to write his movie project about groupies.

His plan was for me to attend a lot of rock concerts, go backstage, and soak up the scene. For those who read yesterday’s blog, Simon and Garfunkel’s empty dressing room at the San Jose Civic in ’67 was as close as I’d come to getting up close and personal with a rock star. (Not actually true. I met some heavyweights with Cindy Williams in 80 – but that was more of an “Industry” event, not a groupie scene).

I love rock music and I’m fascinated by the “secret society” that surrounds it – the novel I’m working on right now, in 2016, is set in the rock world. The prospect of safely immersing myself in that world was enormously appealing – but so was my hope of adapting the Moonflower Vine, a novel by Jetta Carleton I’d loved since I read it in the sixties.

It seems as if good things (such as opportunities, rewards, and kudos) as well as bad things (failure, rejection, and financial stress) tend to come in clusters. Either there are two or three projects I want to write or I can’t get arrested. Two guys ask me out or I’m home alone on a Saturday night. I’ve always assumed it’s the same way for everybody (“buses always come in threes”) but I’ve never asked. Is it?

Actually, I don't mind spending Saturday nights alone if I've got something to read. — Actually, I don’t mind spending Saturday nights alone if I’ve got something to read.

Don’t bother looking up either of these projects on the internet. Another party already purchased all rights to the Moonflower Vine – forever – so there was no hope of optioning the underlying material. I wrote a draft of the groupies’ project for Gene and TriStar at which time it died, never to be resurrected (at least not with me as the writer). In this case, these days of indecision – ripe with intoxicating possibilities – were as good as it gets.

October 28, 1964

To say my sisters and I adored my father would be a huge understatement. In our all-female household, he was the sun we all orbited around. The reason I started writing stories in the first place was to please him. Before I trotted off to school in second grade, I placed the latest pages of my first novel – printed in pencil on lined paper –on his pillow. It was titled “LOST” (yeah, the TV series stole it from me.) It told the thrilling tale of twelve children of a “steamstress” (ibid), all kidnapped by two evil guys. Instead of escaping however, these children opted to convert their kidnappers to Christianity. Yes, I was definitely the daughter of a Lutheran minister.

I'm not sure which Bible story this is, but Jani and our dog are getting a ride. — I’m not sure which Bible story this is, but Jani and our dog are getting a ride.

We used to act out Bible stories for entertainment. The Good Samaritan was a favorite. Daddy played the victim on the side of the road. I must have been a Pharisee since Janet was definitely the Good Samaritan. Daddy was hugely amused when – after retrieving a glass of water from the kitchen to save his life – she invariably stopped and drank half of it herself before offering it to him.

The more worldly side of my life at school was all about me and Sandy. We combined our names and gave our friendship a name – Kandy. We loved to create things, in this case our own dictionary, although I’m pretty sure we never used a single word from it in real life. In addition to our dictionary, we made drafted plans for an elaborate campaign to make ourselves popular – needless to say, a total failure – but I’ll get to that in another diary entry.

September 14, 1965

This entry fails to convey the overwhelming confusion and excitement of my first day in high school. If my memory serves me well, Cabrillo Jr. High and the now defunct Jefferson Jr. High fed into Wilcox High, effectively doubling the student body and ensuring that at best any student might recognize half of the student body. Naturally, the structure itself needed to be twice as large to accommodate approximately 2000 pupils. To me, it seemed huge. I’d never gone to school in a two-story building before.

I harbored many illusions about high school, gleaned from movies, TV and the Scholastic Book Club. Classes didn’t loom large in any of these narratives. Instead they focused on sock hops, meet-cute flirtations, proms, football games, gang warfare (West Side Story) and popularity.

I longed to be popular and, in my own misguided way, I tried. I didn’t succeed. I’m not sure how the chosen kids in the In Crowd reached their exalted status. Was their success due to their self-confidence or was their confidence due to their success? There seemed to be no objective criteria although good looks, athletic ability and the means to buy bitchen’ clothes and hot wheels didn’t hurt.

There was no category for Most Popular, but these categories were owned by the popular kids so I've selected a sampling. — There was no category for Most Popular, but these categories were owned by the popular kids so I’ve selected a sampling.

I’m not saying Soc’s were stupid but being known as brainy was not a plus. Neither was being a P.K.(preacher’s kid), not to mention an introvert. Aside from Carrie, no introverts ever got elected King or Queen of the Prom. My parents, however, were elected King and Queen of their high school prom. Unfortunately, they failed to pass their popularity gene down to me.

According to Ralph Keyes (Is There Life After High School), popularity comes with its own set of problems. It’s hard to hold on to, for one thing – not only in high school but afterward. The adulation accorded a high school football star fades after graduation. It’s not that easy to duplicate – let alone surpass – high school glory days when the bar has been set unrealistically high. If you’re addicted to applause, withdrawal is painful and it’s hard to hook up with a new supply in the real world.

In 1965, I would’ve gladly shouldered these burdens for a seat at the In Crowd’s table, proving how easily I forget who I am. I don’t like groups, for one thing. I’d rather watch from the sidelines than be the center of attention. And I’d hate to lose the perks of membership in the Out Crowd – the freedom to be silly and screw up (when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose). The fierce drive to prove myself to people who rejected me.

I’ve heard it said that for a writer, a lousy childhood is the gift that keeps on giving. So is being on the outside looking in during high school.

preacher’s kid

January 30, 1977

January 29, 1967

January 10, 1978

December 30, 1963

December 28, 1967

December 24, 1983

November 26, 1966

November 18, 1985

October 28, 1964

September 14, 1965

Search

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archive

Categories

Administrative