Finding Pride: The Process of Becoming

By Hilda Kaphar

Abandoned. Rejected. Ridiculed. Humiliated. I was a glutton for punishment, it seems. Each time I was hurt, I moved right on to the next source of pain. Whether it was the consequence of someone elses actions or a byproduct of my own, pain seemed to find me even when I was not seeking it. With my focus on pain relief and nothing more, I made one wrong decision after the next until I changed my focus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512720648

Hilda Kaphar

A high school dropout at the age of sixteen, Hilda Kaphar now holds four college degrees—an associate of the arts degree in psychology, a bachelor of the arts degree in social science, a master of the arts degree in education, family and community services, and a master of the arts degree in organizational management. The concepts learned while pursuing these degrees, in conjunction with courses taken in early childhood development, have added meaning to the lessons life itself has taught her. It was through these lessons that Hilda was able to find her greatest source of strength, and her growing understanding of Scripture only strengthens her further. As Hilda has come into clearer understanding, she has determined that helping others achieve their own best lives is where she finds her calling. Hilda believes that the best life can only be obtained when one learns how to incorporate biblical standards for living into every facet of everyday life.

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Copyright © 2015 Hilda Kaphar.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-2065-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-2066-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-2064-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015919089

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/23/2015

Contents

Acknowledgement

Dedications

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Though the names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of those people who have made an impact of any sort upon my life, I have done my absolute best to make sure that the retelling of my life story comes as close as possible to one-hundred percent accuracy. While complete accuracy is next to impossible in drawing a timeline of my life, due to the concurrency of certain events, the events in this book have all actually happened as close to the time and actuality as I am retelling them.

All scripture is taken from the New International Version of the Bible.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Westbow Press for affording me the opportunity to become a published author. Thank you to each staff member from my first points of contact Raven Leck and Jona Tate, to my check in coordinator Gwen Ash, and to those I have not yet come to know by name. If it were not for your help and guidance, this book would never have been. If it were not for you all, I do not know how I would have found my way into the powerful world of print. I extend my deepest thanks to you and everyone on the Westbow team.

Dedications

To My Lord and Savior, My God, My All:

Thank you for dying so that I might live. And thank you for going with me even to the depths. Only you knew the story I was to write. You alone funded it. You authored it and allowed me to share it on your behalf. And though I am only now beginning to understand the lessons you had planned for me from the very beginning, I pray I will continue to grow, and that I will make you proud of me every single day that I have left on this planet.

To the Most Amazing Man I Have Ever Met:

I have found the meaning that lies in the Happily ever after, for I am now living my Once upon a time. Thank you for loving me and for so, so much more. Thank you for answering God’s call instead of challenging it. Thank you for helping me through all of my difficult times. Thank you for taking a chance on me, finally, and for trusting me with your heart. I love you Beautiful.

And to My Most Precious Sons:

The hardest thing about being a parent is, well, being a parent. Never knowing what mistakes you are making until they have already been made, trying to do what is right for your children when you honestly have no idea; It isn’t easy. I pray you know that, through it all, you are loved. I have always done my best for you. I know that it was not always good enough. I love you boys. I always will.

Introduction

A s a child, I never could have guessed which roads life might lead me down. I never would have imagined enduring the heartaches I have endured, experiencing the letdowns I have experienced, or knowing a doubt in myself like no other doubt I have ever known. I have been hurt, have watched hurt happen, and have caused hurt to happen. I have lived recklessly, carelessly, and reactively without ever giving a second thought to how I might be harming myself or others.

In my youth, I caught glimpses of a better life; but I quickly learned that that life only existed on television shows like The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, and Family Ties. So I stopped waiting for it to find its way to my house. The Huxtable residence, the Seaver household, and the Keaton home all appeared so abnormally normal that they almost seemed surreal. I had begun to believe that this sort of normal just wasn’t written in the stars for me. And then, when I wasn’t looking, my life began to change ever so languorously.

As a child, I had naively presumed that all people were worthy of trust and that human decency was a trait shared by all mankind. In my mind, altruism was a general human characteristic and sincere empathy led to random acts of kindness all over the globe. This utopian world view opened me up to a world of hurt when it came crashing down on top of me like an Acme anvil on top of a cartoon character. As I grew older, I came to realize that I had been named as the main source of many of the negative outcomes in the lives of those around me. This negative accreditation became a hefty weight that I soon carried with me everywhere I went.

The longer I carried this weight of fault, the heavier it became. The heavier it became, the more burdened I became. And the more burdened I became, the uglier my behavior and my overall outlook on life became. My childlike faith in humanity dwindled. My belief that good would always triumph over evil subsided as well. I learned that people were selfish and that, when life expected too much from them, a good many of them would shift the blame for their actions and reactions elsewhere as a way to dissociate themselves from their behavior and the consequences of it.

Before all of these negative realities had had the opportunity to overwhelm my naïve little brain I had been, for the most part, a happy child. I believed in the simple suppositions that Jesus loved me, that being myself felt good even when I was being laughed at, and that loving others without restraint was the only way to love. At school, I raised my hand often without worry that I might be labeled a teacher’s pet. At church, I sang simple children’s hymns that acknowledged the existence of peace overflowing. At home, I chased ice-cream trucks and played in the mud with my brothers.

During this time, the negative events in my life did not directly involve me. They were just there, happening to others within my immediate environment. Looking back, I can see how all of the negativities in my life floated around me like bobbers on top of a pond. There was never much heft attached to any one of them singularly. However, as more bobbers began to fill my little pond, they became entangled and a greater weight was generated. I eventually carried all of these little bobbers into early adulthood with me.

As the number of negative life events continued to grow around me, so too did my self-esteem and self-confidence shrink, reflectively, within me. As respect for and confidence in myself continued to wither within me, my joy in life decreased. And as my joy diminished, I simply gave up trying to become anything worthwhile. The result of that resignation was nothing short of ugly. This has been the general landscape of the figural battleground I have lived upon my entire life…until now.

Chapter 1

I lost my mother early on in life. I was the oldest of four children she and my father had created together. Of those four, I was the only daughter born. Memories of our time together are scarce and, for the most part, pretty hard to recall. I can only vaguely remember my mother playing her guitar and singing with me as a toddler. Old photographs portray bath time smiles, but I cannot honestly say that I remember my mother tossing a big fluffy towel over my tangled wet hair the way the photos show. I do remember, however, that her hair was never tangled like mine. It is the simple things like this that I am most able to remember.

I can recall things like riding in the front of the shopping cart at the local supermarket and sitting on my knees so I could reach the kitchen table from the Naugahyde seat of a big people chair. The memories that stand out the loudest, however, are not this simple. The memories of my mother that are most vividly recalled are those that my father helped create. Listening from down the block as my mother screamed through tears for neighbors to call the police can sometimes appear to be just as real today as they were back then.

Threats, harassment, and violence were common occurrences in my early childhood home. Maybe my parents did not realize what they were doing to us. Maybe they did not understand that children soak up everything like sponges. Maybe they did not realize that by their leading we would follow. No matter the maybes, my parents’ behavior did indeed pave the way for my own lifelong struggle to find some sense of normalcy.

I believe I was approximately five years old when my mother vanished from the pages of my life story. This approximation is the result of simple mathematics, not remembered certainty. I was born in October 1975, and my then-youngest brother was born in the summer of 1980. My mother had taken my brother and refused to return him home for quite some time. This kidnapping of sorts had become a huge ordeal for our family. I cannot remember which months he was gone exactly, but I can remember that he was still an infant and my family skipped Christmas that year. My father determined that my remaining brothers and I would not be opening our Christmas gifts until my mother brought the youngest of my brothers back home to him.

Christmas came and went and our gifts sat unopened. I do not recall exactly how long the gifts sat untouched, but I do remember Christmas seemed quite far removed. Eventually, we were permitted to open our presents, but my baby brother’s gifts remained wrapped and waiting. I do not know when my mother actually left my father in relation to the kidnapping, but that was the big event that seemingly defined the finality of what would eventually become her full departure. Looking back, I wonder if maybe she was trying to hang onto her children by taking one of them with her, but I was a child then and I cannot say whether or not that was the actual case. What I do know is that my brother eventually returned home and my mother did not.

After my mother left, my father really played up the role of abandoned husband and single father. Many of our most typical everyday needs fell upon the kindness of people who felt sorry for him and his children. Many of those people were young enough to be his children. Though my father was already in his early forties, our home had become a hangout for numerous high school students and young adults he had befriended. This was just about the time that the use of drugs and alcohol in our home became much more apparent.

I never really knew for sure if the teenagers palled around with my father so they had an adult to supply their party favors, or if my father had actually buddied up to his much younger acquaintances in efforts to make himself feel young again. As an adult, I have come to the conclusion that both assumptions were probably more accurate than not. Regardless of my thoughts and assumptions though, the fact remains that there were always too many people, too much younger than my father hanging around our home. And my mother was no longer one of them.

Not counting the times she popped up unexpectedly, as if from nowhere, my mother was now absent from our lives. Except for the place she took in the almost-daily conversations between my father and his company, my mother existed only in memories. My father had turned her into nothing more than the main topic of many character-bashing conversations. With much enthusiasm, my father spoke only negatively of my mother. And that appeared to grow the perpetual pity party his friends were throwing for him.

My father’s young female guests attempted to take on a mommy role whenever they stopped by. They helped brush my hair and played games with my brothers and me. They brought us candy and other treats and seemed genuinely interested in whatever gab we offered up. Sometimes one of the girls, or two of the girls, or even a handful of the girls would walk us down to the corner hamburger stand for an ice-cream cone or a frozen lemonade. Instead of allowing the reality of motherlessness to set in, I just enjoyed all of the attention I was receiving from those who were offering it.

While I was too young to understand it, I was simply too distracted to dwell on the fact that my mother had gone missing from my life. I was too young and too naïve to realize that I had become, in all truth, a charity case. Through numerous donations made by local charitable organizations, and by my father’s like of trash collecting, my brothers and I had every material possession we could possibly need or want.

My brothers and I had an entire fleet of heavy-duty toy construction trucks and a toy box that spanned the entire length of our first-floor hallway. This toy box was large enough that all of us children could hide inside of it, without feeling even the least bit cramped. My father had crafted it himself, and it was comprised of three large compartments: one for each of the eldest children. I could not even begin to guess the exaggerated measurements of this toy box, but to say that it was grand would be no lie.

My father often found bicycles in the trash and used their parts to put together new bicycles for us. Neither my brothers nor I ever went without wheels. We had a row of bicycles and Big Wheels that spanned the length of a parallel wall in that same first-floor hallway. We had so many toys that we never really knew what it felt like to be bored. And on the rare occasion we did not feel like constructing or riding, we created instead.

Mud pies, dirt soup, and grass salad were always on the menu whenever my brothers accommodated my girlish need to play restaurant. During the summer months, my brothers and I played in our humongous front yard until we became so dirty we were hardly recognizable. But every now and again, the four of us chose to simply stay inside with our father and his visitors. Eventually, one of my father’s young friends was lured into a place of permanency within our family.

I am not exactly certain when or how she became our mommy, but Dora was introduced to our home by some of my father’s much-younger acquaintances. And while I am pretty sure my father knew the truth about her situation, we children had no way of knowing that Mommy Dora was a teenage runaway. I am still uncertain of how the relationship between her and my father began exactly, but I do remember Mommy Dora leaving us for a brief period of time before coming back to settle in with us for good.

When she finally returned, Mommy Dora’s name was no longer Mommy Dora; we were now told to call her Mommy Louisa. And when Mommy Louisa returned, she brought gifts with her. I remember feathered roach clips and stuffed unicorns, the kinds popularized by 1980’s carnivals. She wore the feathers in her hair, but the unicorns were gifts she had brought especially for us. While we were told that she had won these stuffed treasures at a carnival, I do believe they were actually gifted to us on or about Christmas that year.

Mommy Louisa brought one unicorn for each of us children, and her thoughtfulness was perfectly apparent as she had matched each unicorn perfectly to its intended recipient. My unicorn had a pink mane; I was the only girl child. There were unicorns of the same size for my next two brothers, with blue and gold manes respectively. My youngest brother, the baby of the bunch, received a much smaller baby unicorn with a white mane and a blue collar. That pink-haired unicorn meant so much to me that I held on to it clear into adulthood. And even then, I did not get rid of it by choice.

As a child, I was not aware of the fact that Mommy Louisa was barely old enough to be a big sister to me. As an adult, however, sifting through a shoebox full of childhood remnants, I learned that when I was a six-year-old in the first grade, Mommy Louisa was a fifteen-year-old confirmand at her family’s church. By the time I reached the third grade, however, she had become the barely-legal signer of my report cards. Regardless of her age, I looked up to her. She called me her princess. She taught me how to wash my hair and how to brush it all by myself. She took me shopping for new clothing and did girly things with me. Until Louisa came along, I had become rather comfortable in my behaving like one of the boys.

A few years later when she began to drive, Louisa hauled us here and there in the smallest station wagon ever made. I can still remember the little brown wagon she drove. Though I cannot recall whether it was a was a Toyota or a Datsun, I do remember that we rode everywhere in that pocket-sized runabout. When she was not driving us around, Louisa was working to instill a basic set of values in my brothers and me. She was the one who sent us to church, helped us learn memory verses, and taught us to thank God for our meals.

I enjoyed learning from Louisa as much as I enjoyed our time together. Even when we did not do anything in particular, I always looked forward to spending time with her. I still remember rushing home after school on Friday afternoons to watch the tail end of one of her favorite soap operas with her. Surely there must have been days she wished to be anywhere other than tending to someone else’s four small children, but she never left. She was always there with us, all of the time.

While Louisa stayed home and tended to all of our home and child related needs, my father was off at work, for the most part anyway. My father was home quite often, but that was because of the type of work he sought. Instead of working a traditional job, like so many of my classmates’ parents seemed to do, my father chose to seek out various cash-paying jobs in order to keep his welfare benefits intact. Throughout the greater portion of my childhood, my father operated carnival rides for an amusement company that hosted many of the carnivals in and around the neighborhood we lived in.

Because of our unlimited access to them, I had probably become more a fan of carnivals than most other kids my age, which actually says quite a bit about my like of carnivals. Several of my childhood summers were spent riding the attractions and scarfing the stick-handled cuisine. Because ride operators acknowledged the family members of their staff by allowing them to ride free while wearing the company logo, my brothers and I were able to enjoy evenings at the carnival much more often than most other children could afford to.

My father owned several work shirts and, though his shirts fit us more like nightgowns, he permitted my brothers and me to wear them over our own clothing to enjoy regular trips to the carnival. This afforded us the opportunity of enjoying our summers for the cost of nothing more than meals. Because my family was pretty much at the low end of low-income, we did not get to do very much unless it was cheap or free or someone volunteered to pay for our inclusion.

Small portions of my summers were spent finding ways to help Louisa around the house because, for awhile, Louisa’s word was mine and my brothers tickets to a night at the carnival. But all too often, Louisa would go about doing her housework while my brothers and I made mud pies and rode Big Wheels, leaving us nothing at all to help with. When she was able to find some space of time that was not filled with housework or child care, Louisa would visit with neighbors.

Louisa had become friends with a few of the neighborhood women. She was a genuinely likable person, so the probability of her not befriending so many of the neighbors was simply inconceivable. Sometimes her friends visited our home, and other times she would visit theirs. There were no more teenage parties at our home, though, and I liked that. Oftentimes, Louisa would bring us along on her visits and we would play with the neighbors’ children or watch television. Sometimes we would just stay in our front yard while she stopped in next door. But she always knew where we were, and we were always just a yell away.

Just about the time I remember the carnival becoming a new and somewhat permanent fixture in my life, Louisa and my father welcomed a new addition to our home. Until my sister was born, life at our house had become quite mundane. My brothers and I spent too much time behaving like children, and Louisa spent too much time trying to be an adult. At some point proximal to my sister’s birth, my family finally met Louisa’s family and had begun visiting with them somewhat regularly.

Louisa’s father, stepmother, and sister treated my brothers and me nicely, but there was an obvious tension between and amongst the adults. It was clear to me, even then, that we did not exactly blend in with Louisa’s people. Their lives did not mirror the type of life my father led. Even as a child, I could see that Louisa’s family was quite different from my own. As far as I could tell, Louisa’s family was closer to normal than any other family I had ever come into contact with. And it was clear that the situation between Louisa and my father was anything but acceptable in their eyes.

Adding to the stress of whatever issues Louisa was already having with her parents was the stress of being a young mother. Trying to manage four very active children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as a newborn, proved to be a bit strenuous for the 18-year-old mother of five. Not long after my sister’s birth, a couple of neighbors told Louisa about a man who might be willing to take my brothers and me to church with him each week. This would get us out of the house for awhile and allow her some time to herself.

Those same neighbors, Pete and Mary, sent us off in style as they generously gifted the four of us leather-bond, zipper-close Bibles to take with us when we began attending church that fall. Our Sunday driver’s name was Brother Joel, and he picked us