Paul Trapp's Songs

Life-Changing Decisions - Three of Mine Changed Everything

 A Memoir by Paul Trapp

INTRODUCTION: MY MESSAGE TO FUTURE GENERATIONS 

Hello! If you are reading this, I expect that some of you are friends or relatives who know me–or knew me if I have already passed away. However, some of you may only know me as a distant relative, or perhaps a friend of a friend. You may have never known me when I was alive. Whoever you may be, my purpose in writing this memoir is so that you may know what was most important to me as I lived 
out my life on our fallen earth because I believe it may help some of you as you live out your own life. 

I think of my life as having two major parts: before I chose to trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and after I chose Jesus. The turning point for me was discovering that I needed to be saved from my dumb choices. That discovery was connected to my understanding that I was unable to become the person I wanted to be on my own. I kept messing up my life, and there seemed to be no remedy. My life was full of things like selfish desire, fear, envy, shame, regrets, resentment and a myriad of other forms of darkness. Trying to fulfill selfish desires had only led to frustrations because things I thought would make me happy, one after another, failed to do so. I also came to see that doing things just to make myself happy, even if successful, would not make for a very meaningful life. I have come to believe that until someone recognizes and owns up to their sinful selfishness and willful rebelliousness against God, they will probably not be able to experience the need for a Savior or a Lord. When I finally surrendered my struggle to live life on my own, it was because I had come to the realization that I was wholly unequipped to do life well with me in charge, making up the rules along the way. I needed saving. I needed a savior. I needed to trust in God through the gift Jesus offered. 

For me, that realization came when I was in my mid-thirties. I hope that you can come to this realization earlier in your life rather than later. And I hope you’ll find my story to be inspiring, encouraging, and at least a little entertaining. My prayer as I wrote this was that you would be able to see God’s hand on my life at every turn and that you might become more aware of His hand on your life.

ROOTS AND FACES: SOME FAMILY HISTORY 
“Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past…” (Deut. 32:7) 

My immediate family was made up of a father, mother, brother, sister, and me, with two pets sprinkled in over the years.

Though there were good times, and I hold onto some happy memories, the reality of some regrets, hurts, and disappointments permeated our family life. A significant root of most of the difficulties was my parents’ unhappy marriage.

My dad was Frederick Ernest Trapp, and he was of Austrian descent. Fred was born in 1904 and grew up in Pennsylvania. When he was in the eighth grade, young Fred dropped out of school to go to work for his dad. It seems that the family tile business needed him more than he needed school, so he became a tile setter by trade. Fred worked hard and did his part to help make the business successful and continued in this work until the late 1950s. At that time, contracts were changing in the construction industry and it didn’t sit well with my dad. More and more he was required to pay union wages to his helpers which he either could not or would not do. Once he got out of the business, he had a series of mainly sales jobs, but didn’t enjoy a happy career and grew bitter towards his work until he finally retired. 

My mom Natalie Velma Casgrain came from a much different background. Her family immigrated from France to Eastern Canada before settling in the states. Her father was an inventor who worked for a company that built machinery that made shoes. He created several designs for the company’s equipment and secured patents for them. With his know-how and this opportunity, he grew to be a wealthy man and bought his family a big, beautiful house near the ocean in Beverly, Massachusetts. That’s where my mother grew up and later graduated from Emerson College in Boston with an education degree. She became a teacher.

Though I never learned how my parents met, I do know this: My mother’s family did not like that she got swept off her feet by a tile setter from Philadelphia! In fact, they were so upset about her choice of husbands that her family all but legally disowned her. Her older brothers never called; her mother didn’t call or visit. As a result, I grew up knowing no one on my mom’s side of the family (or my father’s for that matter).

Not long after I was born, my parents "followed the work" for my father and moved us from Florida to Houston, Texas, while our relatives remained in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, respectively. The literal distance created by that move only further encouraged the relational distance already put in place by my parents’ union. I never met my paternal grandparents (my dad never talked about them), and my maternal grandfather died when he was only 54-years-old in the early 1930’s. I remember visiting my mother’s mother when she was quite old and living in a long-term care facility in Florida, but essentially, she was a stranger to me. 

I was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 11, 1947. When I came onto the scene, I joined two siblings–my brother Richard who was eight years older than me, and a ten-year older sister, Debbie. I was the “baby” of the family by a good margin. Debbie helped take care of me as an infant and young child, and, as I got older, Richard came through as an attentive older brother and good friend. Debbie, too, became a friend, but more on those two treasures later.

My parents’ relationship and eventual divorce had a profound effect on me. From a young age, I was conscious of my mother’s dissatisfaction with her life. My parents’ unsteady start to their marriage remained until they separated. A chasm was present in their relationship from the beginning, it seemed, and instead of healing, it just got worse until my mother finally filed for divorce. I can’t imagine their breakup was a surprise to my father. He was aware of the gap between them, and gaps are never one-sided. 

I believe my dad was intimidated by my mother in several ways. One issue in their relationship that resurfaced from time to time was work. Through the depression, my mom continued to work. As a teacher, she had job security, but my father did not. Educators were still in need because children continued to go to school, but no one was building houses during the Depression and World War II. My dad’s work was dependent on how the general economy was doing. So, off and on during their marriage, my mother was the main, if not the only, breadwinner. This was a tough pill for a man (especially a proud man in those days) to swallow. And, to make matters worse, my mom resented not being the one taken care of financially or having the advantages that two incomes could supply. 

I don’t think it took long for my mother to begin to question her decision to marry my father, though she was smitten for a while, and they remained married for a good number of years. At 6’1” my dad was tall and handsome. He worked with his hands and was strong. But if the majority of her attraction to him at the beginning was physical, it clearly wasn’t enough to satisfy her for the long haul. So, my mom, it seemed, never felt very comfortable in her life sometime after she married and felt she had missed out on a great deal. Growing up in Beverly, her family was part of the wealthy community there. She always thought she should have been invited to come out as a 
debutante in Boston society, though her family was not part of the “old money” crowd. If that ever was to be her reality, her decision to marry my father (a man outside her circle) changed the trajectory of her life. Yet, for any regrets she held onto over the years, she had two sons and a daughter, and I’d like to believe that was enough to bring her a measure of satisfaction and peace about her choice. I always knew she loved us kids and wanted the best for us. 

A Snapshot of My Childhood 
During my childhood and even in the seriousness of my parents’ issues, I was still just a kid, living my life and dealing with “kid stuff.” I loved sports even as a child and participated in swimming, baseball and football. One humorous memory I have–a simple snapshot of my childhood–is a typical scene from one of our family dinners. As an adult, I captured this scene on paper as part of a writing class I took some years back. I decided to publish it in this memoir because it provides a specific picture of me as a child in my family setting. 

A Memory of Dinner 

I grew up from age five in a small house on the corner lot of Swarthmore and Academy in the West University area of Houston. I remember the dining room table in our home was between the living room and kitchen. Some of the meals were great; some of them weren’t.

My parents had a rule: whatever was for dinner would be eaten. That rule even applied to canned spinach. Some of you more fortunate readers won’t know that spinach even comes in cans. Perhaps all you’ve ever known is fresh spinach straight from a garden. Lucky you.

Whenever I saw canned spinach on the table, heated on the stove, and piled into a serving bowl, I shivered (just a little, invisibly). I knew I couldn’t eat the spinach. I'd have to fake eating it, then take steps to remove it, and it wasn’t going to be comfortable. My mother would serve me the spinach, and I wouldn’t be permitted to leave the table until I had eaten all of it. 

I had tried to feed the spinach to our wire-haired terrier, Ginger. She was no help; she would have nothing to do with the warm green slime and left me to deal with it by myself. I would pretend to eat some of the spinach, little bites. Mom or dad would remind me of the rule at 
least a few times. They would eventually tire of watching me squirm and leave the table. Often they would go into the living room and turn on the little black and white TV and start watching whatever was on.

I was always the last one at the table, and the spinach was always the last thing on my plate. I had to be careful no one was watching. I would begin putting the spinach in the front pocket of my jeans, little by little. I would pretend-chew some imaginary spinach as I did this. It was uncomfortable, the wet warm glob of spinach growing in my pocket, but it was my way out of table prison. I usually went right from the table to the bathroom, where I made the glob disappear forever with one flush. 

THE FAMILY FRACTURE 

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world, but a world lives in you.” Frederick Buechner 

My dad left after the divorce. I was 14-years-old, and the only child still at home. By this time my siblings had gone off to college and started their adult lives. After Richard got his degree, he joined the Marine Corps and would end up serving three tours in Vietnam over the next several years. I remained living with my mom in Houston. My sister Debbie was teaching in Denver. My dad packed his bags and moved back to Jacksonville where he had spent some of his childhood.

To continue reading, and to see the pictures that accompany the text, please go back to the top of the page and access the PDF file  by clicking the CLICK HERE hyperlink. I hope there is some value to you in this memoir! - Paul