Starting a proprietor business has never been an easily done task for any family. There is the usual risk of money investment and those halting feelings of “What’s gonna happen if we fail to make profit? Could we lose everything?” All these daunting problems never fail to scare most families away from establishing their own businesses, and our family was not an exception from the norm. My father had a steady job as a professor at a university while my mother took classes at the local community college. We lived in a nice town in rural Georgia. Surrounded by our Southern amenities, a business just didn’t seem imperative.
It all started during my junior year in high school when I had the impromptu idea of wanting to go to medical school. Usually these whims never last longer than a few months before I would take interest in some other vocation. But this “whim” stuck around and eventually I was fully convinced that this was my destiny. I wanted to be a surgeon. My parents were ecstatic at the idea and fully supported me in pursuing the course. It hadn’t then occurred to me what kind of effect my decision of going to med school one day would have on my parents, but I would eventually learn that this was the reason wh
y my father started to plan a whole new way of life for us.
For a while I was living in a teenager’s worst nightmare. Dad was a zealously persistent person and Mom was not much different. There was talk of divorce and many times the night would end in something being slammed or tattered. Often I would wake to the sound of shouting and screaming. I attempted to act as a mediator, trying to reason with Mom then Dad. Rarely do I succeed and most of the times I end up nodding to whatever they’re saying, trying only to soothe their anger instead of fixing anything. “Don’t ever get stupid like your Mom. Stupidity is DANGEROUS!” Dad would say to me. I never felt comfortable listening to him say this, but it was tacit that Dad was just an ardent man and his acerbic remarks about my mother were not aimed to belittle her but to warn me of the perils of imprudence.
Daddy never gave up a dream. Not during his turbulent childhood when his family became the victim of the depraved communist nor when he struggled to enter college after he had been forced to labor on a farm for four years. When I learned of his idea for a business and desire to bring it to entity, I knew and never doubted that he would do just what he said he would. But we had both overlooked one impediment, Mom. My mother was the light of my day. The single most precious person