Growing up with money isn’t about being superior, better or smarter than others, it’s mostly about different lessons.
Looking back, I can pinpoint the start of my troubles with two innocuous, lower-case letters in the alphabet. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the fourth and twenty-first letters in their small, non-commanding form resided at the beginning of my last name; the one I was born with.
Being young, at first it seemed that it was just a peculiar name, with a spelling that was different from the average. As time went on, I came to understand that the name duPont was perceived as something more than just an unusual spelling for a last name.
From the time I breathed into existence, duPont was a filter coloring my life. It was like wearing lenses from day one, so that you are unaware of them until others point them out to you. Later, you find you are treated differently because of them. This filtering was not only from without, but also from within the family structure. Both sides working away efficiently building and strengthening the gossamer perceptions until an unseen barrier was formed. There were those in the family and those who were not.
A friend once pointed out to me that I always referred to the family, not my family. And The Family it was, large and important, like The Business, The Corporation, The Vatican. We even had a matriarch, my grandmother, (in this family, women were the strong ones). But all of this understanding of the mystery and workings of life as a duPont was years into my future.
My current challenge was learning to read and write. In the schoolroom where I learned the alphabet, the letters marched the length of the wall on a banner with little pictures under them. Below, the vowels were repeated. It made perfect sense to me. Words were made of hard parts, the consonants, and soft squishy parts in between, the vowels.
Our teacher was elderly, stout woman with a large hook nose that dragged down at the corners. She was always saying, “sit up, you don’t want to grow up to be a hunch back, do you?” Later she’d tell me, “If you keep picking your nose like that, it will be all misshapen when you grow up.” I figured she knew from experience.
After memorizing and mastering the alphabet, the first thing we learned to write were our names. The teacher had us practice, our first and last name in big and small letters. That afternoon, when Mom picked me up, I showed her the yellow paper with my name carefully spelled out.
“Oh, honey. Your last name isn’t spelled starting with a capital,” she said. “The first two letters are small, and the P is big. A large D means the company. We are the family, and it is always spelled with a small d and u.” She was emphatic, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you to spell it the other way.”
At a tender age, with those two little letters, I began to carve out my individuality, strengthen my stubborn will and at times butt heads with the world. I was taught to be proud of my name and, with Mom’s coaching, take the spelling seriously. As a small child, though, I had a hard time convincing teachers and form-fillers that I knew how to spell my own name. I insisted on using the small du, and they insisted on correcting my misspelled name. “All proper names begin with a capital letter.”
The name duPont, was well known in that part of the country, near Wilmington, Delaware where my great ancestors originally settled. At the time I was too young to wonder why so many adults seemed befuddled by a name that began with two small letters and had a capital plunk in the middle of it. I diligently stuck to my form of spelling. I thought it was kind of cool to have a last name that didn’t follow the ordinary.
Mostly I associated the effect of my name on others with annoying clashes over spelling, but there was a much greater impact that I was gradually waking up to. The name duPont seemed to have a giant ship tethered to it that others could perceive, yet I had remained unaware of. This ghost ship, a mirage of their own making, was laden with a bounty grown from their own imaginations.
Wherever I went, the apparition went with me; a child towing an ocean liner of possibilities. Later, I learned to recognize the glazed look in eyes as the tumblers fell into place at the mention of my name and family connection. But, as a youngster I couldn’t make sense of the suddenly gushing niceness from some people, or the angry, smarting remarks of others. People who, a moment before, had been in the pleasantly neutral position of someone just met.
I don’t know what people saw as they looked at that ship, I can only guess from their responses. There were those who hoped that by proximity, the abundance would rub off on them. Some felt that maybe, if they tied themselves to my ship, theirs would come in. Others, trying to make me feel guilty, believed that would earn them a ticket to board. Then there were those who thought that by association they could be transported to a lifetime cruise. There were some pirates, and out and out attempts at sinking by the envious; those who felt that no ship of any sort would ever dock for them in their lifetime.
One of the first times I became aware of this was around seven years old when I was invited to a birthday party of some child I didn’t really know. I think she went to the same school I went to, but was not a friend, and she is no one I remember.
The apartment building sat at the top of a sloping, tree lined drive. On the way there and climbing up to the third floor, Mom kept assuring me this girl was a friend.
The mother of the Birthday Girl met us at the door with a big welcome. Mom stayed for a few minutes, then beat a hasty retreat saying she had things to do, as did many of the moms of the house full of yelling kids. The grownups that did stay at the apartment had been nominated to keep the cake off the walls and the kids from turning into a mob.
I had to be taken to the birthday girl – I didn’t know her well enough to even know who she was – and gave her the little package Mom had wrapped. We looked at each other like total strangers and she said, “thanks.”
Looking around the room I saw some kids from school, but none that I knew or played with. I wasn’t alone for long, Mrs. Birthday Girl’s mother began to usher me around from room to room to meet any available adult telling them, “This is the little duPont girl, she’s come for the party. Isn’t that nice?” I wasn’t introduced to the kids running around, they didn’t give beans about my last name. But the adults really marveled and looked approvingly at Mrs. Birthday Girl, who must have felt her esteem rising by the minute.
All of us kids attending the party were given some sort of little gift as we left. I don’t remember what it was. I put it away later and never looked at it. Riding home in the car I remember Mom saying how nice it was to go to a party and receive a gift. It felt hollow and empty to me.
I was trying to get my head around the awareness of being invited somewhere with a bunch of kids I didn’t really know; to be introduced to a bunch of adults who were pleased with my presence, but not at all interested in me. Mrs. Birthday Girl’s mom was not someone who had ever previously come to our house for coffee or dinner. Nor did she ever visit after her daughter’s birthday. I attended a few parties like these, until I was old enough to say no and throw a tantrum to go with it. I imagine Mom had been pleased to think I was so popular. She kept telling me these were my friends, my classmates.
I did have a couple of true friends, children I liked and played with. But not in the numbers that matched the invitations. My mother, when she was in school, was very popular on her own charisma and magnetism. She had married into the family and did not completely understand the draw that the name had for people. Years later in high school, a teacher explained about people wanting to make a certain kind of impression in the world. They drove cars such as Mercedes and Cadillacs and had fancy gadgets and visibly expensive jewelry. Their “things” implied a certain status, and so these things were called status symbols. I realized then, that was why I’d been invited to so many of those birthday celebrations. I, with my small d and u, had been a status symbol, a living hood ornament on the automobile of those parties.