I’ve written elsewhere that I grew up in what I consider lucky circumstances in that my family was loving, stable and we enjoyed a degree of material prosperity that meant there was never any significant want or deprivation.  But this was the same for a great many people, I imagine, whose childhood took place in west Los Angeles in the 1970s.  I think the thing that I value now looking back at my growing-up years was the way in which my parents interacted with each other and towards us.  There was something like a big vibrating tone of acceptance and love noiselessly buzzing throughout my childhood and adolescence.  Home, it was continually made known to me, was a place of safety that I could count on.  And what a marvelous gift to be given. 

My mother could be found at her desk writing a newsletter for a missionary organization, or helping my father with a lesson plan of his, or crafting something to help me or my brothers with a school project.  She would do these things with a spirit of love but also with great attention, as if anything that had come our way that was a project must be something important and worthy of care and serious attention.  It was in fact this constant lifting up of our existence, when I think of it now, that created layer after layer of feelings of worth in me and my brothers, that created a sort of thick, hard to tear down self acceptance. 

Mornings came and there would be my parents readying themselves and us for the day.  My father’s electric razor signaled I had no more time in which to be in bed if I was to make it into the car going to school.  In earlier years I remember the radio being part of our mornings in our small home at 3446 Barry Avenue, crackling with Paul Harvey’s optimistic take on the world.  In the kitchen, where the radio was, there was an olive green, pine breakfast table, probably little more than a painted piece of ¾" plywood. 

It was at that table that my brother Peter, when I was four years old, asked me if I wanted to accept Jesus as my personal savior.  And I, not finding any reason not to, said, “yes!”.  I recall that we had recently returned from visiting Melodyland, which was near Disneyland, and many children, including my brother Peter, were given a plastic glove with each finger a different color, representing the need for salvation and the steps to attaining it.  So Pete showed me what he had learned, he was six years old at the time, his hand in the glove, and me probably wondering if I would get one of these gloves as part of the deal.  It was a beautiful, simple time.