A Brief History of An Orphan

Visiting the REAL Santa

2008-12-25T22:43:00.003-05:00

When I was little I wanted to visit Santa Claus. There was one a Grant’s department store and I wanted to go. My parents were into it and we went. We waited on the line with the other kids and parents and as we got closer and closer I became more and more nervous. By the time we got to the ‘next’ position on line I was a wreck. Though I loved Santa more than I could express, I was terrified of actually meeting him and having to speak to him. As many kids do, I freaked. We left the line and went home. I was madly disappointed in myself and that I had come so close to meeting the man, the myth, the legend and yet couldn’t bring myself to do it. We never tried again. They would have brought me, I’m sure, but I couldn’t face backing out again.

When I was 24 I was talking to my mother about the Santa situation. Still a big fan, I never miss his appearance at the end of the Macy*s Thanksgiving Day parade, I still felt the sting of failure at having never sat on his lap.

My mother asked if I wanted to go now. It struck me as an hilarious thing to do, to have my mom take me to see Santa at 24.

"We could see the real one this time, the one at Macy*s on 34th Street," she coaxed.

That was it, I was sold. We went. We stood on the endless line at Macy*s Santaland with all the other kids and their parents. I was quite a bit older than the others, but I was cool with it. We went in, and although I was still nervous, for obvious reasons (we looked like kooks!) I actually sat on Santa’s lap (he was probably the same age as me) and told him I wanted a Quisenart Food Processor. We opted to pass on the proffered photo with Santa and left. Now I wish we’d sprung for the photo. It was a hoot and I felt I’d tied up a loose end.

That year my mother bought me a food processor. Not the Quisenart I’d wanted, a junior version, as usual, but I still have it and I hold it dear because ‘Santa’ got it for me.

The Bike

2008-12-01T20:46:00.000-05:00

I was twelve years old when I learned to ride a bicycle. I taught myself, it was my only option. Riding any bike other than a tricycle was something I had been forbidden to do, but it was something I wanted to do so I did it. What exactly was the point of raising a kid in the suburbs if not that they had room to ‘run around in’ and possibly, just possibly now: ride a bike. But logic and my parents were never very good friends.

On a visit to my aunt’s house in New Jersey I found a wobbly, messed up, very nearly unridable, red bike. It belonged to the previous owners of the house my aunt and uncle had recently moved into and they either hadn’t noticed it or just hadn’t yet had the opportunity to put it out with the trash. The house was enormous. It was on at least an acre of land. The house itself took up a quarter acre, at least. Keeping out of sight wasn't too difficult. While the adults were inside getting loaded, the typical family gathering, I spent hours falling off a bike going up and down the insanely long driveway - praying nobody would see me. Because of the enormity of the house, surrounded as it was by giant trees, I was able to practice my novice two-wheeler skills safely out of traffic. And the flowing liquor going on inside the house kept me safe from the prying eyes of my ever-encouraging family. I wasn't concerned about being seen because of the embarrassment of my clumsiness, though of course that was part of it, but rather because my parents were masters at mocking me. I did not want to hand them the ammunition.

I don’t think I had felt any greater high up until that time than that first non-stop, non-falling ride down that driveway. I felt like an Olympic champion. I felt completely free. More than that: I felt like a normal kid. It was like a miracle.

When I had the mechanics of balance down pat, I went inside and casually mentioned that I had learned to ride a bike. My parents, still in the cheerful stages of drunk, actually came outside to watch me do it - and no one was more shocked than I that they did not attempt to tear my little accomplishment down. And when I say little accomplishment, to me it was huge. All the kids I knew learned to ride a bike somewhere in the first grade or thereabouts. And someone, a parent, an older sibling, someone had taught them. Someone held the bike until they found their balance, someone encouraged the process. I was twelve and did it alone.

I had wanted a bicycle for so long. Of course because I was not allowed to ride one it was foolish to even think about it. But once I had proven I could in fact ride (as if it were brain surgery) it seemed like a dream that might have some possibility of coming true.

After much begging, not hinting, but outright begging, for a bike for Christmas (which did not happen - shocking) for my 13th birthday my parents actually took me to a bike store and let me pick out a bike. I spotted what I thought was the single most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, a dark green three speed boy’s bike. Nobody, but NOBODY rode a girl’s bike back then. It was the height of uncool. So this $39 treasure was my 13th birthday present and I was quite literally over the moon. Until we got it home.

You see despite the fact that my parents had not mocked my bike-riding skills, had in fact finally gotten me my first bike, they would not allow me to ride it. Yeah, it’s true. I was allowed to ride it - and I could not make this up: in the house or in the back yard on the grass. Considering my birthday is in January and the snowfall back then was always at a minimum of 6 inches, bike riding was not the big wintertime activity. One might think they meant ‘for now’. For now you can ride it in the house - which is a riot given that the biggest room in the house was at most about 3 bike lengths long. Essentially I was allowed to 'sit' on the bike. Wheee! But then thaw came and the green of spring had beaten back the white of winter, and guess what? I was still not allowed to ride the bike any where but in the back yard or in the house. Until I was 14.

Of course I found a nice passive aggressive way to even that score (in my head any way). When I got my driver’s license a few years later, on those occasions that my father would let me borrow the car (miracle!) I would drag race with my friends. I always won. 120 mph in a purple Duster. Try doing that in the house.

Nervous Much?

2008-05-06T05:22:00.004-04:00

I do so enjoy doing things that scare the hell out of me. OR I should say I enjoy them after they are done. It's the nyah-nyah syndrome. But before I do 'em, oh lordy lordy do I suffer with the anxiety. And therefore everyone I know gets to suffer too! Ah, lucky them! Lucky YOU!

On Sunday, May 11th little miss tough-stuff over here is going to be having an anxiety-attack to beat the band. I'm going to be performing something I wrote... in front of people... who paid... money. I intend to wear black to avoid any pesky worries of tomato stains when the audience starts throwing the rotten veggies at the vegan onstage.

I have never read aloud, performed or otherwise 'done' my own material for an audience. Unless you count every poor soul I run into on any given day who I do my 'act' for 'an audience'. It's usually more of a one-on-one thing. I have no fears of being on stage - as long as someone else has put the words in my feeble little mouth. Doing my own stuff? Someone pass the xanax, and keep it coming!

Of course the point of all the blogging I do in its various incarnations is to actually voice my own opinions and stories and blather. But I'm alone in front of a toasty computer screen, usually in my jammies, with a bottomless coffee cup, a/k/a SAFE when I do it. This time, not so much. This time, real live people. AiiiiiiEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

My tendency towards self-deprecation makes it difficult to simply be excited at the prospect of telling one of my silly stories to people like this - that nagging "what if they hate me" voice just will NOT be quiet! The truth is there's a part of me, the part that's hiding out right now looking for a pillow and a blankie to go sleepies with (since that's what I do when I'm a-scairt) that really IS excited about this. Because this is a sort of meeting point of acting (which I love) and writing (which I love) and talking about myself (which, let's face it: I blog, you do the math). It's an opportunity to be a real-live storyteller. Which is what I'd love to be, so I should just be THRILLED! Instead I'm thrilled AND covering myself with nerves because I'm terrified of failure. And, of course, people throwing rotten fruit.

Despite that terror I'm actually advertising here! Hellllllll-llllloooooo crazy. Of course the show is on Mother's Day which allays my fears somewhat as I'm thinking that most of the people I know will not be able to attend *huge sigh of relief*. It's always easier for me with strangers. Though having friends in the audience is fabulous - if things go well. I'm conflicted. Shocking, isn't it?

Information on the show is below. If you're around, please come! Just leave the produce at home, would ya? Thanks.

SEE ME, HEAR ME: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
is back at the Magnet for a special Mother's Day show on Sunday, May 11 at 6:30pm featuring five original pieces all inspired by one image. This month's show features:

Swaha Devi (Body & Soul, Alternative Medicine)
Michelle Fix (Off-Broadway, No Filter)
Joy Keaton (Off-Broadway, A Brief History of An Orphan)
Kate Tellers (Off-Broadway, Rag Hag: Songs from My Closet)
&
Brian Tunny (ESPN Magazine, managing editor DigBMX Magazine)

This Sunday!
The Magnet Theatre
254 West 29th Street
(Between 8th & 9th)
$5
Reservations are recommended!
Call: 212-244-8824

First Meme

2007-11-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've never responded to a meme - not that I've had all that many, but still. I also tend not to use this blog for current stuff. It's not the theme, so to speak. But the lovely Salty Miss Jill popped this tag over here so I'm going to do it here. For Miss Jill. 'Cause she's salty. (I'm also posting it on my other blog just because I'm super-duper lazy about blogging lately because I'm working on a novel and so many thanks to Miss Jill for giving me an excuse to procrastinate as well as something to post!)

Here are the rules for the meme:

1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random [?] people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

I'm not comfortable forwarding memes (this being my first) so I'm just going to ignore those last two 'rules'. Watch as I defy authority!

FIRST FACT:
Fear makes me sleepy. I have chronic insomnia but am able to fall asleep quickly and easily and sleep for really long periods when I'm afraid of (or anxious about) doing something or going somewhere.

SECOND FACT:
I find spitting the most repulsive thing. Spit near me and I might just throw up. I actually did vomit on the playground in the 4th grade when a friend spit and it landed on my sneaker. Talk about a chain of events.

THIRD FACT:
I love to play video games. Puzzle games especially because it gets me into a Zen head - while my mouse is clicking away my brain is somewhere else entirely. I also like stuffing envelopes for the same reason.

FOURTH FACT:
I have been coloring my hair since I was 18 (17 really, but I was only 'allowed' to when I was 18). I am no long sure at all what my natural color is. When I'm cranky, tense, or feeling really ugly I grab a bottle of peroxide and tint and switch it up. I highly recommend it as therapy.

FIFTH FACT:
I wanted to be a dentist when I was a kid. I love going to the dentist and my dentist is really great about showing me her new equipment and explaining what it's for - does that make me a dentist groupie?

SIXTH FACT:
I don't have a driver's license any more. After a head-on collision with a drunk driver (at 10 a.m. on a weekday morning) I let my license expire.

SEVENTH FACT:
I have no luck with reptiles as pets. I've had lizards and snakes and such and cannot seem to help them thrive. I'd love to have another iguana, but would rather not cut its life short by having it live with me. My favorite part of the movie Terminator was the pet iguana running loose in the house. So cute!

Mother and Daughter Senior Year

2007-08-02T10:27:00.000-04:00

For a time, maybe two weeks, after leaving my father the weekend of my Yale audition, my mother stayed at her sister’s house where we had gone after the first escape attempt so many years before. After those two weeks she apparently felt she was in the way, or it may have been that her family was pushing her to return – as they had ten years previously. Whatever the reason my mother needed to get away from there and the only place to go was to me. At school.

Because I had a single room, one of the perks of being a senior, it wasn’t going to bother a roomate if I had my mother come visit for a few days so naturally I went and picked her up at her sister’s place and brought her back to the dorm with me. It was kind of fun to have the company, and I was so thrilled she was away from my father that I wasn’t actually thinking of the ramifications of having my mother staying with me in my dorm room. Obviously I wasn't thinking clearly.

Along with the single room I had my own bathroom, which was a dream come true after years of having my father banging on the bathroom door while I was spending endless hours trying on makeup. So the room situation was really ideal for having one’s mother visit… IF you were the mother.

She stayed with me for maybe two weeks. Which is a REALLY long time. A really long time especially as they were the last two weeks of my senior year. This was supposed to be a time of unbridled partying and fun amidst the final exams. Having my mother sharing the room put something of a damper on the ‘party’ aspect. Not that she was a problem, really. She was a lot more open minded than other mothers might have been, but I did feel I should at least attempt to not go out and return home sodden in alcohol and praying to the porcelain god. So I basically had a conscience living in my fabulous dorm room with me and spending my final carefree college days watching my every move.

Of course, in retrospect it becomes clear that her support of my going away to college was to set the stage for her own escape. Once I was 'out there' she would have a safe haven. Was I happy she’d left him? Of course. Was I resentful that I had to suffer for it? Absolutely.

Old Eli

2007-08-01T11:48:00.001-04:00

When I was 23 my lifelong dream came true. As per usual it was not the way I’d anticipated.

The crazy idea of getting a Bachelor’s Degree was nearly coming to fruition, I was in my senior year at Marymount and had pushed my goal a little further. I was going to pursue a Masters in acting!

The only place that seemed worthwhile was The Yale School of Drama. Three of my teachers at Marymount had attended, and my then-idol Meryl Streep was also a graduate. I was overly confident in my ability to get in or I would never have applied. But as the day of the audition arrived I became more my old self and the terror set in. I decided I should return home for the weekend before the audition to focus and work on my monologues. Given that I had a private room at the time I don’t know why I thought going home would be more secluded. I suppose at the time I was thinking my friends at school would be too much distraction. How different things would have been if I had stayed, I cannot imagine.

I had grown somewhat used to weekends that were free of terror, and suppose I felt things at home would be okay. Wrong. It was a hum-dinger of a weekend. One of the all-time best of a lifetime of insanity. My father was on a most extraordinary tear, topping all prior performances.

But I knew freedom now, and I had a car. I was no longer trapped in that hell. I got my stuff together and put it in the car, pronouncing that I would never return.

My mother apparently finally found a real escape. She came with me. It was exhilarating to have her finally make what seemed to be a real decision; though after the Florida debacle I didn’t know how much to believe her. It did seem that she was truly ready to go, I think having spent the better part of two years alone with him without me there for the little support I offered had put her over the edge. And it seemed she really was leaving my father at last, and that was at least the realization of a small dream… a decade later than would have suited me, but still a positive event. Although in retrospect it seems all too calculated. Her push to have me go away to school appears to have been part of a master plan of escape. Stalag 13 redux.

We drove back to Tarrytown and went back to my dorm room where I attempted to work on my audition pieces, but given the trauma of the weekend it was a futile attempt. That Monday morning, my mother came with me to New Haven, Connecticut and after getting lost in the Bronx, my sense of direction as pristine as ever, we finally found the Yale campus.

I did the best I could under the circumstances, but I know that my auditions were essentially, well, let’s put it kindly: Cold CRAP on a wet plate. Oddly enough I was not invited to attend the prestigious school of my dreams. Go figure.

It was a bit of a blow, but it was nothing compared to the fun that was to come.

Taco Bell or The Job of a Lifetime

2007-07-31T18:10:00.000-04:00

After dreading and despising school for 12 years it shocked no one more than me how very much I loved and even thrived in the college atmosphere.

I think it was due to the fact that I finally felt I was doing something worthwhile. I finally felt I had a purpose and it was my choice not my obligation. So when I completed the two year theater program at Suffolk County Community College I wanted to continue and transfer to a four-year school that would give me a Bachelor’s degree and further my acting skills. Unfortunately I was still plain awful at auditions and I was terrified to even apply to a school that had a program that made auditioning a requirement. I don’t regret going to Marymount College, but I do wish I’d had a little more gumption and chosen a more career-oriented school. If only, if only. Well, c’est la vie.

The big problem with furthering my education was, naturally, money. Not that my parents couldn’t afford to help me out, but getting my father to dip into the dough was like getting a vicious dog to drop a kitten appetizer. Not so easy.

So I had to take a year off from school to work. Again, it was my misfortune to be in an area where jobs were scarce. But I did manage to secure a dandy position at one of the many fast food places my home town was lousy with. Luckily for me it turned out to be one of the best jobs I had ever had: Taco Bell.

Now extolling the virtues of working at a Taco Bell may sound strange as fast food work has such a stigma of slave labor, but I suppose I hit it at just the right time. And more important ever than the job itself is the people with whom you work. The cast of characters at Taco Bell when I was there were really plain old NICE people. I cannot recall one of them who was mean or power hungry or cold. It was a very lucky break for me to have stumbled into that place just then.

I worked the morning prep shift and it was a gas. I loved prepping the lettuce, olives, and cheese. Olives and cheese, were never foods I loved, but they soon became my favorites. The first time I was set the task of prepping the onions I was crying my eyes out. Streaming rivers of painful tears were literally pouring down my face. It was horrible! Then one of the other workers there gave me two fabulous tips. One was to wear contact lenses if possible – it works! Try it! And the other was to run into the walk-in refrigerator for a few minutes, it stopped the sting, pardon the pun, cold. Plus, while alone in the walk-in you could snag a handful of shredded cheddar. Loved that. I thought of it as the reward for the torture of burning eyes.

I learned to cook at Taco Bell. I had learned a bit in a Home Ec class, but I learned about cooking quickly and precisely at Taco Bell. The fact that every item had to be perfect or be chucked appealed to me and my vague, and somewhat distorted, sense of perfectionism. Of course, the workers got to eat anything that was imperfect. When we were hungry an inordinate amount of taco shells seemed to crack. Hmmm. Not sure how THAT could have happened. Oddly enough I lost weight while working there despite the dozens of imperfect tacos and burritos. How could I not love that place?

After several months of Taco Bell mornings I got an application to Marymount and worked out that in addition to my savings and financial aid I would STILL need an additional $2,500. As I had exhausted all other sources this left only my father and his highly guarded bank account. Looking at that figure now I see how very little it was, of course at the time the mere thought of asking my father for that much cash was terrifying. I do not suffer humiliation fondly. Who does?

My mother, however, was determined that I would go and finish my degree. I found it strange that she was so in favor of me going away, but she really was. I saw it as possibly the most unselfish thing she had ever done. My leaving would leave her alone with my father, perhaps she thought it would be better with me gone, but I think she knew it wouldn’t be and she wanted me to go regardless. Later I would see that her plan to get me out of the house was less unselfish than I'd imagined. That however is another story.

When it came to that last $2,500 I wanted my mother to ask him for the money, but she refused. Perhaps she was right. It took me weeks to work up the courage but I finally did it.

As there was less than no communication in the house he actually had no idea that I planned to continue my education. When I explained to him that I wanted to go on for another two years his disgusted response was: “More college? I thought you were done with that?”

I explained that a B.A. degree required four years and I was only half-way through despite having gotten an A.S. from Suffolk.

“And what are you going to do after that?” He said. “You’ll only end up working at Taco Bell anyway.”

With encouragement like that it’s amazing I ever tried to make anything of myself at all.

The slightly amusing irony is that it seems my father had the last laugh any way.

When I checked my credit report some 20 years later, though my address was now listed in Manhattan and I had held many, many, waaay too many jobs in the interim, the report still had my occupation as working at Taco Bell in Centereach.

Father's Day

2007-06-18T07:52:00.000-04:00

My dear friend Gary, wrote a really sweet post about his dad yesterday. I just popped over and read the comments on that post and it hits me that there may be an awful lot of people who have these memories. These feelings of safety and security and being taken care of... me? Uh. Not so much.

In fact I'm trying, really actively browsing through my extensive, steel bear trap-like memory to find a time when I felt safe. Not having much luck there. And falling asleep listening to my parent's voices? That would be the very last thing I'd do to feel 'safe'. In fact, it is as if Gary and I are from complete different universes because my entire life-long insomnia problem relates DIRECTLY back to the sounds of my parents voices.

I was 6 or 7 (it was the first grade at any rate) the first time it happened. I woke up from a dead sleep and heard, for the first time, the fighting that would be the most reliable part of my family life.

Now this may have been happening my whole life, (such as it was) but this was the first time I heard it. The worst part is that it wasn't screaming, yelling fighting. It was whispered fighting, don't wake the kid fighting - but the intensity was enough to jar me out of a sound sleep. I have not slept well on anything even close to a regular basis since then. My inability to sleep is rooted in that one childhood moment. Sleep = bad things happen. So no sleeping. A shrink once referred to it as 'hyper vigilance'. That's me. Hyper Vigilant. Great. It's why I find it easier to fall asleep on an empty subway train at 3:00 a.m. than in my own bed. Strangers on a train are safer than my family ever was; I think that's backwards for the majority of people, but for me it makes perfect sense.

Certainly sleeping is better now than it was when I was a kid - sleeping in the house I grew up in was (you should pardon the expression) a nightmare - especially on weekends when it was a veritable golden gloves at my house. Needless to say the whispered fighting went the way of the dinosaurs and was replaced by re-enactments of great military battles. But it took years of living alone to reach a point where I could fall asleep in my own bed and occasionally sleep through the night. I don't know that I'll ever learn to sleep in a normal way.

I wonder what it must be like to have felt cherished, to feel the sort of trust that someone would be there to protect you while you slept. I think that must feel remarkable.

Predator

2007-05-15T17:15:00.000-04:00

I apologize in advance for this post as it is not in any way amusing. And I find the subject extremely serious.

When I was in the Fourth grade I met my favorite elementary school teacher, Mr. Leo Fucci. This was my first male teacher and the nicest, funniest, most down to earth guy you could ever want teaching your kids. In fact, the year before I was in his class a neighbor of mine had him and she, who would not tolerate reading, learned to read. For Mr. Fucci. He was good.

Mr. Fucci would sing to us at least once a day - and on more than one occasion I was left curled up on my desk in tears from laughing so hard. Trust me, this was not the school experience I was used to. I simply adored Mr. Fucci. And I got lucky, because when the end of the fourth grade came and we were so sad that we would be leaving this atmosphere where school was not only bearable but FUN, Mr. Fucci announced he was moving up with us and would be our teacher in the Fifth Grade.

For a kid who had precious little happiness going on at home, this was crazy good news. I had never looked forward to September more than I did that year. Another year of the wonderfully kind Mr. Fucci singing Sweet Caroline to us in the hallways and making us laugh while sneaking in the learnin'. And not only was he kind to us and funny - he also made it clear that he was the teacher and we were the students. At the end of year 'field day' (one of the usual horrors I endured in elementary school) we had made banners calling our class team "Fucci's Leo Lions" ... you know because his first name was Leo... Leo the Lion? Hey, Fourth graders, remember? While Mr. Fucci liked the idea of the name he was adamant that we insert a "Mr." in front of it. Sure "Mr. Fucci's Leo Lions" doesn't have the same ring to it, but you know what? I'm glad he did that. Because he WAS the parental/teacher/role model. I am not good with authority figures - unless they have earned and deserve my respect; Mr. Fucci absolutely did. Please note, 3 decades after the fact I am unable to refer to him as anything but MR. Fucci. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fifth Grade started out, as I'd imagined it would, on a high note. My best friend was in the class with me again and Mr. Fucci was there too: the transition from 4th grade to 5th was gorgeous.

I was too young to have really caught on that good things were not in the cards for me. I was a pessimistic child, given my life at home it was hard to be anything else, but Mr. Fucci had the ability to make me laugh and feel almost, dare I say it? Confident! You'd think I'd have realized there was no way that would last.

For reasons that were never disclosed to us (mere children) Mr. Fucci left us not long into the year. At first we thought it was due to illness, but it went on and on and eventually we understood that he was not going to return. Personally, though I have no proof, I always felt it had something to do with his being active in the teacher's union which had gone on strike. Bastard administration.

While Mr. Fucci was gone we had a few substitutes come in. When they announced to us that Mr. Fucci would not be returning, the current substitute became our permanent teacher (though god knows that bastard does not deserve the title "teacher"). His name was Barry Luna and he should never have been allowed anywhere near children. He was a sick, sick man who made my life a living hell from the day he arrived until the end of the 6th grade when I moved on to Jr. High School.

He was younger than Mr. Fucci and at first we thought, oh he's really nice. Kind of accessible and crap like that. NO. He was a monster. Clearly very early in his monster career, but a monster nonetheless.

It started within weeks of his arrival. My best friend and I became the targets. Why I have no idea. Eventually he left her alone to focus on me. Lucky me.

It was all 'minor' inappropriate talk at first, such that we didn't even process it. We were giggly 10 year olds, what did we know? We had all had the "don't talk to strangers" filmstrips and assemblies beaten into us for years. What they didn't explain to us was what to do if the monster was also your teacher. The one adult in a room full of children with a locked door. yeah. Try that showing a filmstrip on that one.

There was a small closet in the hallway near our classroom which was used to store the communal filmstrip projectors and other media equipment, screens, overhead projectors and the like. It was appropriately named The AV Closet. Audio Visual. Yes, imagine that sort of clarity in a school on Long Island in the early 1970s. Go figure.

The Monster began his torment in earnest one day when my best friend and I were getting some filmstrips out of the closet. "I'd like to get you two in the AV closet one day" he said to us (and repeated it endlessly). We may have only been 10-11 years old. We may not have gotten the signals before this, but we were not idiots and the light bulb went on. To say we were creeped out would be understatement. Today if a teacher said this to a child they'd be fired - instantly. But back then? Please. Even if we told someone, we knew he'd talk circles around us and make Lillian Hellman's Children's Hour look like fluff. So we kept quiet. And we kept as far away from him as possible.

Good luck girls.

He would lean over us at our desks. He would stare, lick his lips, continue to make comments that I have effectively blocked. In my elementary school the Fifth grade was the year of the 'the big class trip'. This meant we would be gone longer than the normal school day. We were studying the American Revolution so in keeping with the theme we going to Philadelphia - Liberty Bell time. I dreaded this trip more than I can say. Not only was it to be close to 12 hours with the Monster, but it was in another state.

On the bus heading home the Monster sat on the seat across the aisle from me and said, "you want me. Your mother called me and told me you were moaning my name in your sleep." That's a direct quote. It's not the kind of thing you forget. From a grown man to a 10 year old girl. A teacher to a student. Just remembering this is enough to make me want to vomit. I was not only horrified that he would say this - I was absolutely terrified that it might be true. I cannot even describe the range of emotions from disgust to disgust that I felt. I was at the beginning of puberty, it started early for me, and I had no idea what I might do or say in a dream. I was so upset by this that I finally had to ask my mother.

Talking to my mother about anything even remotely like this was tantamount to outright calling her the alcoholic she was. You didn't do it. But I felt I had to - and I was scared: I wanted my mommy. I wanted someone to make this Monster leave me alone.

Too bad my mother was not into being a protector. In fact even though she exhibited extreme overprotective behaviours, when it came down to really needing protection she had an uncanny knack of not giving a damn. When I was about 7 I had been playing on the front lawn. I wasn't allowed off the lawn (overprotective) but at least I was allowed in the front from time to time. This particular afternoon a car pulled to a stop in front of me, a man leaned over and opened the front passenger door and motioned to me "I need some directions, can you help me?" he said as he tried to get me to come into the car.

I mentioned earlier: not an idiot.

The hair on the back of my neck went up and I knew down to my toes that this guy wanted far more than directions. You don't need to open a door to ask if you're heading the right way. And last time I checked 7 year olds are not the best bets for giving directions. I ran like hell into the back yard and heard that car skid away - the passenger door slammed shut after he hit the gas. Yeah. Directions.

I was so shaken I ran to my mother and told her what had happened.

You'd think the Queen of Over-protection would have freaked out. Nope. "Well, it's good you came in," she said taking another drag on her Kent 100. Thanks Mom.

Needless to say the thought of broaching the topic of the Monster's comment on the bus was a scary proposition. When I finally was able to choke it out... "did you call him -- did I say that?" She assured me that No, I had not said his name or anything else in my sleep and there was certainly no way she would call him.

This was precious little comfort. I was sure that she would have pursued this - that she would understand how horrible my day-to-day was in this classroom, in this school. But that was as far as her intervention went: assurance that she didn't call him. Again, Thanks Mom.

I dreamed of the last day of school. I lived for the last day of school so I would never have to encounter the Monster again. I only wish that had been the end of it.

My sixth grade classroom was directly across the hallway from the Monster. Upon arriving on the first day of school, when I saw where the room was I went stone cold and broke out in a sweat. When our seating assignments were done I ended up directly in line with the door to the classroom. The solid wooden doors with a small glass window. Still, I was safe in this class - because the Monster was not there. My sixth grade teacher was another good man - he was no Mr. Fucci, but he was also no Monster. But the Monster was across the hall. His classroom was set up so that his desk was not near the door - until the seating arrangements were set in my class - suddenly the Monster rearranged his room so that when he sat at his desk he was facing me. A direct line. I shudder when I think of it. It was so clearly calculated, so clearly predatory - to watch the prey. He would catch my eye and wink and grin that wolfish 'you can't do a thing about this' smile and all I could do was wish I were invisible.

Eventually my new teacher saw what was happening. You'd have to be a dolt to miss it. The Monster was anything but discreet. So my new teacher put a sheet of construction paper in the window - he also kept the door closed as often as possible - and for the time I was in class at least I was safe from the Monster. While I will always appreciate what my sixth grade teacher did for me, I will also always wonder why he did not do more. He was no fool, and he saw what was going on, was it some 'thin chalk line' that kept him from turning in the Monster? I'll never know. What I do know is that after I started Jr. High the Monster was transferred from my elementary school to another elementary school in the district... and then a couple of years later he was transferred again. My guess is that it was not unlike Catholic priests being moved quietly from Parish to Parish. And I have no doubt in my mind, none whatsoever, that the Monster upped the ante and stopped just staring, stalking and talking and started physically abusing the children in his charge. I know how lucky I am that it was early in the Monster's career because it never became physical - but I also know that I was traumatized nonetheless by the relentless attentions of a budding pedophile.

I hate that the adults around me did little to nothing to stop this trauma that went on for a year and a half. But more than that I hate Barry Luna and I can only hope that some other child's parents had him arrested. I'm only sorry I was too young, scared and naive to have done more to stop him myself.

By the way, in this post: the names are real. Guard your kids.

Covering for me – OOPAH!

2007-05-08T19:42:00.000-04:00

One job I had for Enchanted Parties was done on a barter system. I’m not sure what Uncle Marty got in return for my appearance that evening, but I sure know what I got. A date. And a little bit more.

I was to appear at the grand-opening party of a marble showroom in Queens. Marble, you know, tiles. I was to stay for the entire party and be in costume and in character the entire time. Cool with me: I was making a mint that night. And the costume was easy, in that it was Pierrot clown – always a good choice for those elegant parties remember. And a good gig for the actor because it required only white face paint and a little black teardrop – no head, fuzzy or latex. We could breathe! Thank YOU!

I drove over an hour to the party, in full costume. When I found the showroom/store, the store owner showed me where to set up (I was also blowing up and handing out black and white helium balloons, again with the elegance.) I expected the owner to be a middle aged man in a bad suit with a cigar (why? who knows). What I found was an extremely sexy (like drop dead hot) young guy. If I weren't already done for, the minute I heard his accent I was sunk. He was Greek.... he was smoldering. I was a puddle.

The party was really very nice, the people were really very nice and the showroom itself was gorgeous. Little display 'rooms' were set up all throughout so you could see how the marble would look in a real setting instead of just single squares. It was quite luxurious. When the party was over I checked out with Bobby, the Greek’s name, though ever after I have referred to him as THE Greek. He asked me if I would see him, for a date. I played coy for about 25 seconds. Then it was all: HELLO MAMA YES! We arranged to get together in a few days. I would meet him at the store and we’d go from there.

It should have occurred to me that he had never seen me without the makeup and clown costume. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me that when he said I was ‘his type’ he was talking to a woman in a CLOWN COSTUME. Can we say red flag. Anyone? Yeah. Small aside of advice here: Should you ever meet someone who wants to date you, but has never seen you except in clown face – politely decline unless you are truly adventurous. Trust me on this. No really. Trust me.

We ended up having wild sex that first night – never even got out of the marble store. Nice. And I do mean NICE. Holy Hell the accent was not the only thing hot about The Greek. And we continued to have a flaming hot affair for precisely 9 ½ weeks – leading me to think that although Adrian Lynne might not be the best filmmaker in the world, he did get the timing right.

Bobby lived in Queens and at that time I had graduated from college and was staying temporarily with my father because my best job choice was full-time Enchanted parties plus part-time party secretary. So I would drive that hour-plus to Queens in under 45 minutes every day to meet my frighteningly talented foreign lover.

From time to time I would stay the night at his place, but not all the time because I was working an hour back east and the morning was never a good time for me. When I did stay over I would either call my father to let him know so he wouldn’t worry or I’d tell him in advance if I knew I’d be staying. My mother, who was living in the city by that time, knew all about the Greek because I TOLD her all about him. The amusing thing was that my father, probably rightly so, felt that my mother was a bit too prudish to handle the idea of me staying overnight at the Greek’s house to indulge in passions of the flesh. Not that I discussed it with him, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. Apparently he felt it was his duty to protect me from my mother’s Puritanism.

She told me when she’d call on a night I was staying at the Greek’s my father would lie to her and say I was asleep, out with a girlfriend or staying over at a girlfriend’s house! I found this both sweet and slightly hilarious in a closing the barn door after the horse is out sort of way, as I would call my mother in the mornings to tell her what a fabulous night I’d had! There was something evil about my desire to torture her with details of my sexual exploits (not full-out details, but still far more information than she needed to hear). Still, Dad was covering for me which I think was awfully Father Knows Best of him. I guess he felt it was a good thing SOMEONE was actually getting laid for a change... even if it was his daughter.

Ooopah, Pa.

Why Isn’t it an A+?

2007-05-08T14:00:00.000-04:00

My parent’s theory on child rearing can be boiled down to one sentence: Don’t let her get a big head. It was unlikely that I would ever become conceited with the kind of overwhelming praise and reassurance I received, so they were successful there. Unfortunately they also managed to impart an enduring lack of self-esteem that even after 4 decades has yet to be repaired.

Being an only child carries many stereotypes that children with siblings do not have to address. The spoiled brat being the primary stereotype. I can safely say that I was not spoiled. I may have had a lot of toys, but that was a result of my father’s Christmas fetish more than a matter of my onliness. And the toys I did get were almost always ‘almosts’ - you know, knock-offs - not the original toy… I would get the baby, junior, or any other lesser versions of whatever toy I had asked Santa for. This continued my entire life (not toys but other things).

But the oddest part of my upbringing has to have been my parents' view of my education.

When I started school I was already reading. My mother always liked to say I wouldn’t go to school until I could read, because I needed to be prepared. Which may be true, it’s a trait I still have. So I began kindergarten at an advantage and due to some genetic fluke I was smart. Smarter than was good for me. I missed a lot of school – a lot. I was always anxiety ridden, which showed itself as nausea. It’s interesting to note that my mother would let me stay home with very little effort on my part, but the day of the ice storm she insisted I go.

So I missed a lot of school, and yet was still bored in classes. But I got the grades, despite the ever-present teacher comments on my report cards “Joy does not participate in class”. But they couldn’t fault me too much for it because I had straight As across the board. But while my teachers couldn't complain on my actual performance, my mother, naturally, found a way.

One report card day I came home and handed the green folded card to my mother for her signature, proof I’d shown it to her, so I could return it to the teacher the next day. I was happy that I’d gotten another set of As and thought maybe THIS time I might get the praise that other kids got. I knew I’d never get the incentive some of my friends got which was cash. Some made as much as $5 per A! (And they thought I was the spoiled one?) In what I can only imagine was her attempt to ‘better me’ my mother looked over the perfect report card and with a disappointed look asked me, “Why aren’t they A+s?”

It wasn’t long before I gave up in school. Getting the highest marks was not enough to warrant my parent’s attention or praise so I went the opposite way. In Junior High I got my first F. I believe my math teacher was in shock when I asked if I could show my friend his grade book in proof of the fact that I’d finally managed to get an F. I guess it seemed odd to him that anyone would want to show that off, but my friend had the good sense to praise me for it. That's all I was looking for, thank you.

Family Picnic or Thank God for Popcorn

2007-05-06T12:13:00.000-04:00

Reluctant though he was to make the enormous drive from Centereach to Tarrytown (you’d think it was a drive across country) my father drove me to college. Even after two years at the local community college, where I finally began to overcome my overt shyness in public, I had never lived away from home. And I had certainly never been in a situation where I would be living in a place where I would share a room with a total stranger. I was trepidatious to say the least.

That first day when all the girls were being dropped off with their small stash of worldly goods the school had a ‘Welcome’ picnic out on the lawn of my dorm for the girls and the families who had come to drop them off and help them unpack. Given my discomfort with eating in front of strangers, I was as nervous about this singular picnic as I was about how I was going to manage to live for two years eating with total strangers in a cafeteria; but it was part of this intriguing new experience and I wanted to go. I also wanted to be normal, and do what everyone else was doing.

I wanted to fit in to such an extent that I had gone so far as buying a new school wardrobe of preppy-styled clothing, which I had never before worn in my life. I mimicked my friend Noreen’s style as she was about the preppiest human I knew. I was not comfortable in the costumes, but I thought that was the uniform of choice at this school and I was going to do this right. I found after only a few days that I had made a grave error. To be sure there was a contingent that did in fact dress in button down Oxfords under boring sweaters with boat shoes, but there was also the contingent that was more cutting edge, more punk, more art-school. I wore the pink Oxford once. After that I was cutting up tights and wearing paper clips for earrings: I was much more comfortable that way. The first time I cut into my black tights with a scissor you could hear my soul's inner sigh of relief: this was more like it. You really do have to be true to yourself, no matter how much you may want to 'fit in'.

So after my getting copious stuff, consisting primarily and most importantly of boxes of books, music, a mini-refrigerator, and most important of all a coffee maker and hot-air popcorn machine out of the car and into my dorm room. I thought we’d go to the family picnic. I mean my father was always ready to eat. But not this day. He had no intention of sticking around a minute longer than was necessary, even if it meant free food. The fact that he so wanted to get out of there and leave me put a knife in my heart. My mother didn’t seem to thrilled with the picnic idea either, but at least I didn't get the feeling she was hotfooting it to leave me there. But try as I might there was no convincing him to stay.

My mother encouraged me to go to the picnic any way after they were gone. Right. I’m sure I wouldn’t have felt like a total loser. I could see little groups of parents and their daughters, as well as their siblings who had come along to say good-bye, eating and laughing. There were returning students catching up with old friends and felt like I’d made the worst mistake of my life coming there. Day one and already I was an outsider of the highest order: my own parents wouldn’t stay to eat dinner with me. Why this was a shock to me I will never know. I guess I really was an optimist. Fool.

The best course of action for me was to pretend not to be interested in the dopey picnic. I “wanted to settle in”. Yeah. I was also starving. There was no meal service in the cafeteria as it was the first day and the picnic was in lieu of the cafeteria service. There began my great college love affair with hot-air popcorn. I put up a pot of coffee, started a batch of popcorn and while my new (and as I would find later, LOONY) roommate and her parents chowed down on fried chicken on the lawn, I sat on my newly made bed and ate dry popcorn and drank coffee alone.

Then again, I've never been a big fan of dining al fresco.

Enchanted Parties... I'm an ACTRESSSSSS

2007-04-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

When I was in my second year of college one of my fellow students introduced me to the lucrative world of party entertainment. She was working for a guy who called himself ‘Uncle Marty’. His company, Enchanted Parties by Uncle Marty, was a gold mine in the 1980s. People seemed to have tons of disposable cash, not me, but people, and they seemed determined to spend it as extravagantly as possible.

Uncle Marty was more than ready to help them part with their cash. God love him.

Enchanted Parties was a party company that offered pre-planned picnics for companies and Bar Mitzvahs, anniversary parties, kids parties, store openings, any place you could imagine, anything you might need or want: we were there.

My audition for position of costumed entertainer took place in Uncle Marty’s living room. The company was run out of his garage when I first joined, later they moved to actual offices and I worked there as a part-time secretary as well. The audition was possibly the strangest I’d ever been on.

First I was given some sort of big fuzzy head, possibly a Care Bear, I’m not sure now as I was so nervous. Could I pull off the mime required to be a costumed character? Well, of course I could – after all I was a student in a theater program!! I was AN ACTRESSSSSSSSSS.

I did well enough in the fuzzy bear head to be given a second, far more important head, one of a much beloved character known for her somewhat outrageous behavior and dare I say it? Chutzpah. It was Miss Piggy. Happily I pulled off the voluptuous and flirtatious diva pig with aplomb. God knows why, but for some reason I 'got' the Pig. I understood where she was coming from. Okay, okay, I was an ACTRESSSSSSSSSSS.

Passing the Pig test I was given the final and toughest costume of all: the gorilla.

The female gorilla head was nothing if not claustrophobic – it was a serious test of miming skill and ability to deal with latex. Luckily by the time I got to do the gorilla I was in the zone. I popped the tight-fitting skull cap that was the girl gorilla over my head and only then wondered how I was supposed to breathe. Oh to be young and foolish and willing to risk suffocation for a job again!

I went into heavy ape activity, even grooming Uncle Marty and his wife for nits, as gorillas will do in the wild… on a sofa from Levitz.

Apparently they thought I had ‘it’ and I was hired on the spot. I happily tore off the latex monkey head – I believe I lost a little hair with it as it became so hot and sticky inside that it became part of the wearer’s head. Later I learned you had to wear a cotton cap over your hair or go bald.

I actually loved doing the costume character work, for the most part, as it was, as I said, wildly lucrative. Wearing the costumes earned you an average of $60 per ¼ hour. Definitely a great supplement to Taco Bell’s minimum wage. This job could definitely pay my college tuition. Additionally I felt I was ‘acting’ at least in some form.

I attended birthday parties as Big Bird, Minnie Mouse, and Care Bears. I worked picnics as the gorilla, in full fur with an apron for modesty - nobody wanted to see Mrs. Gorilla in the nude!. I was also Mickey Mouse, Pluto, and often a clown doing face painting. Painting dragons on kid’s arm’s was a specialty of mine.

I worked weddings as an elegant statue Pierrot clown. Uncle Marty would wheel us in on hand carts as if we were statues and then place us strategically around the party. We would do freeze mime for a while and then pose for pictures. Part of the party work was getting people up to dance. Always easier to convince people to act foolishly on a dance floor when one is in a costume with a giant head. Dunno why, but it’s a fact.

One of my special acts, only a couple of us did this one, was to be Miss Piggy at an anniversary or engagement party.

The set-up was that the wife or bride-to-be was in on the gag and the husband or groom-to-be was not.

Miss Pig would enter the party wearing a pink off the shoulder gown held together via a Velcro strip up one side; it had sort of a Grecian feel... but, you know... pink with a feather.

She would sashay her way in, make her way to the groom, sit in his lap and generally flirt.

After a few minutes of this the wife/girlfriend would ‘get jealous’ and pull me (Miss Piggy) away from the fella and the cat fight would ensue ending with the woman tearing the dress off Miss Piggy who was left standing naked in the midst of the party!

Now this wasn’t a strip show by any means! Trust me on this one.

The costume had another part which was a full-body stocking painted to delineate the various cuts of pig: loin of pork, pork chop, ribs, etc. as a butcher’s diagram might.

Oh the humiliation for Miss Piggy! She would grab her dress back, pick up her boa and stalk out proudly or run out in tears (depending on my mood... this was serious improv people!)

The skit was always a big hit. I made a lot of tips with the Pig act and it took all of 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes was about the max you could wear the latex heads, like Miss Piggy, without dying of asphyxia. So it was an all-around good gig.

I got to be Darth Vader AND Yoda doing a day of the opening of a new strip mall. (The very same place I'd spent my errant youth shoplifting from. Oops!)
I really wasn't right for either character. I’m only 5’ 4 ½” tall. So what? So I was the shortest Darth Vader in history. I was also the tallest Yoda! Being Vader was fun in that it really showed the impact STAR WARS had had on the culture. People of all ages were clearly frightened of me when I was in the black capes and shiny black helmet of the treacherous Darth Vader. Conversely they were warm and affectionate towards me in Yoda gear, which was delightful.

But not nearly as delightful as being Darth.

For someone so invisible as myself it was a treat and a half to have people step aside when I passed menacingly through the stores. Sure they may have been more scared by the fact that some lunatic was wandering around in a Darth Vader costume in mid-July, but I prefer to think I was channeling the Dark Side of the Force.

And you know... it was a helluva lot more fun than waiting tables.

Camping... or How I learned to pee in the woods

2007-04-07T18:32:00.000-04:00

As part of the ‘scout’ experience, many troops would go camping. This was anathema to me.

First, not so much for the outdoors.
Second, not so much for the outdoors in the WILDERNESS.

So I was not nearly as thrilled as the other girls in my troop when the announcement was made that in a month's time we would be heading out into the grand wilderness to spend two days and nights in ‘nature’.

I thought I’d vomit.

We spent the preceding weeks making something called a situpon, which was literally something to sit upon. Get it? Uh. Yeah.

We each had to make our own, (do I get a badge for this?) and it was vitally important that we had these items for the trip.

My thought was, why would anyone want to go somewhere that requires you to chop up a vinyl tablecloth into squares, stuff it with a pillow and sew it together with yarn just so you can have a dry spot to sit?

We were also required to procure a ‘mess kit’ consisting of a canteen, a metal dish, fork, knife and spoon (when I would ever have use for such an item again I could not imagine). God knows my father was not about to lay out money for this nonsense. But a neighbor had one I could borrow. Looked like no one was going to help me dodge this bullet.

The only thing that interested me in the least about this horrifying outing was a campfire treat I had never before heard of called a s’more.

Now there are s’more breakfast cereals, s’more protein bars, s’mores ice cream, but back then it seemed to be some mystery food only campers knew of and when I heard it consisted of graham crackers, a Hershey bar and a toasted marshmallow... I really didn’t need to hear more.

If I was going to be forced on this abomination of a camping trip: I was going to eat s’mores.

One thing (of many) that I didn't understand about scouting and the camping mentality was the seeming inability to pronounce words correctly.... situpons? s'mores? What's up with that? Maybe it's due to everyone's teeth chattering because they are freezing IN THE WOODS so everywordslurstogether? Maybe.

The weekend of the great outing was gray and dreary. Rain was predicted but we were assured that we would be sleeping not in mere canvas tents but in wooden tent-shaped contraptions built up above the ground. Rain should be no issue for us stalwart Girl Scouts. We were no longer childish Brownies, but full fledged-grrrrrl scouts in our green uniforms. Ready to brave the elements.

Right.

By the time we arrived at the camp site Noah had gotten half the ark loaded.

There would certainly be no fire on which to roast the marshmallows for the s’mores, so as far as I was concerned the trip was over.

It was freezing cold, we were out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, mud, bugs and no fire. The supposedly waterproof platformed cabins leaked from the roofs, the situpons would be of absolutely no use, and the worst thing of all was the bathroom.

Oh I had checked beforehand that there was at least some primitive form of restroom, I was NOT going to pee in the woods. No way. Never have, never intend to. And I was standing by this - I didn't care if my mother threatened to beat me to death with her always ready wooden spoon. I will beat you with the wooden spoon! she'd threaten as she reached menacingly into the kitchen drawer when I drove her particularly nuts. Luckily there would be no spoons broken over this issue because there was, in fact, a slightly modernized outhouse at the campsite. It even had a roof that did not leak, praise God.

BUT... oh there is always a but... there was only one, count it, one roll of toilet paper.

There were at least 20 girls who would be using this outhouse.

You do the math.

Our leaders decided on a truly bold plan to solve the tissue-issue. One square per person. Now I’d like to suggest an experiment. Get into a raging shower, fully clothed, then step out and without drying off in any way, make use of the toilet. Now use one square of single ply toilet tissue to tidy things up.

Good luck with that.

And may I recommend that you never go any where that requires you to make a situpon without bringing your own stash of Charmin.

cookie house

2007-04-05T17:50:00.000-04:00

Although I had wanted ballet lessons, music lessons, anything creative, I never got to join or participate in anything of my choosing, other than the ill-fated drum lessons in the 6th grade.

When I was 8 I got exactly what I did not want.

My mother announced that I was going to join the Brownies.

I was devastated. Terrified. I felt like I'd been drafted into the army... or a cult.

I had NO desire, absolutely NO interest in joining the little brown dress squad. The beanie was a horror. Of all the things she could have chosen, this was the last thing I’d have ever wanted. In fact, it wasn't even close to being on my wish list.

Unfortunately two of the neighbors were troop leaders, one of Brownies, the other did the older group, Girl Scouts. I was trapped. Add troop meetings to religious instruction classes, school, and the weekend home parties of drunken fun, and I was pretty much in hell wherever I went.

I endured two years of Brownies. During that time I learned precisely one useful skill: how to tie a tie. The delightful orange tie emblazoned with a leaping ‘brownie’ was part of the uniform. Clip-ons were not available. Even if they had been I'm sure they have been considered non-uniform.

After two years of brown dress hell I ‘flew up’. That's what they called the graduation ceremony from youthful brownie to more adult girl scout. Yeah. We walked over a garden bridge that one of the neighbors had and you’d have thought we’d crossed the Equator. Where's my tattoo, ladies? Should we pierce each other's ears now?

It was fabulous.

I had little but disdain for the entire process.

In addition to the weekly meetings we were to work on getting badges. Let's get BADGES!

All I could think was: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges! But I was a jaded child.

Badges were little cloth patches embroidered with designs that indicated what we had done to earn it. A little campfire if we learned to make a fire, for example.

Joy: give me a book of freakin' matches and I'll show you how to light a fire.

Our badges were earned by a careful process of fulfilling tasks in the OFFICIAL Girl Scout handbook – needless to say I acquired few badges. I went for the ones that required little other than answering questions posed in the book.

Once a badge was earned, and paid for, your leader ordered it and you received a lovely little badge you then had to sew onto your sash. You could get a sewing badge too, thus doubling up on the badge points! Whee. The torrent of badges on your sash would show all the world that you now had some passing knowledge of first-aid or street signs or how to cure cancer.

Of course, in addition to badges and meetings we had the one thing Brownies and Girl Scouts are lauded for: the great cookie sale.

One thing I am not, never have been and never will be is a salesman. Yet I was pressed into the sales force of the Girl Scouts USA selling cookies door-to-door.

Back then it was a once a year event, thankfully, as more than that would have killed me. It was tough enough banging on the doors of strangers attempting to get them to purchase boxes of Dosie-Dos. Of course then, as now, the cookies were pretty fabulous and people did buy them, but it was torture for me to have to approach so many strangers and ask them for the favor of purchasing cookies. Absolute torture. I didn’t sell many.

In my second Brownie year my mother volunteered us to be the cookie house.

This meant we would become “cookie central”. After all the orders were placed the company that made the cookies (sorry, they aren't made by little elves, brownies or girl scouts in a tree) would deliver the required number of boxes to the cookie house where they would be dispensed to the various girls who would deliver them to their customers.

It was overwhelming to see cartons upon cartons of cookies stacked up in the living room. It was also difficult for a child with a sweet tooth and the start of a big weight problem to have so many cookies right there just waiting.

Remembering that this was just a cookie way-station and not their final destination was also hard and the temptation to grab boxes and run to my room to scarf ‘em was almost impossible. C'mon, I was 9 years old! It seemed a particular form of torture.

When all the cookies were finally gone, which took more than a week as some girls were not chomping at the bit to get them delivered, I breathed a sigh of relief. And also regret that the cookies were not mine for the eating.

I only did one year as a Girl Scout and I imagine my unhappiness with the organization was finally too apparent, and possibly embarrassing, for my mother to continue to ignore so she let me quit.

I never missed it for a second.

Frank, Wayne and I would never be popular

2007-04-04T17:17:00.000-04:00

Although I thought my parents were fairly hip because they had a stereo - and used it, I did not realize that the world of music, rock and roll in particular, was a whole other animal to which I had little to no exposure.

I grew up listening to music, Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton, The Tijuana Brass! We played records all the time and when we went to my maternal grandparents home we would listen to the Clancy Brothers and even dance! My mother’s sister Kathleen had taken Irish step dance and Scottish sword dancing classes and she would give us a few steps and we’d be off. The dancing usually ended up being nothing more than these steps and then circling the room, but it was a party as far as I was concerned.

So I thought music was wonderful, I just had no idea that what I listened to was not what other kids my age were listening to. I mean I thought Lilli of the Lamplight was a big hit. And I guess it was… in 1945.

When I got to junior high school I had my eyes opened for me, but it was too late. The societal damage was already done.

In the first week of school where five elementary schools joined into one junior high school we former top-of-the-heap 6th graders were now bottom feeding 7th graders cast into an ocean of new faces. We had all gone from kindergarten knowing only one another. It was overwhelming, yet exciting to meet so many new people. Sadly I had no command of the required social skills that would lead to the elusive popularity which was so prized from the ages of 12 through 18. I realized I was fated to the lower realms of junior high school hell one day in science class.

A girl from one of the other schools, an adorable petite blonde thing, who you could just tell had gotten "cheerleader" stamped on her birth-certificate, and I were learning to use a Bunsen burner together. In getting to know each other she asked what kind of music I liked. I was ready with a snappy response that I thought would impress anyone and show just how knowledgeable I was about music.

“Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton, The Carpenters, I like a lot of different music,” I said knowing I was in my element.

She looked at me as if I’d grown a second, even uglier head.

We finished the lesson. She never spoke to me again in the next 6 years. Need I mention she became one of the popular girls and if memory serves she did in fact become a cheerleader. Though I can state with some authority that she was never what one would refer to as 'bright'. I'm not being hateful, it's the truth. I don't think she really knew what books were for. Though I understand they were good props to drop in the hallway for basketball players to pick up for you. I swear I'm not being hateful!!! I saw this routine happen!!

Any way. After this incident I went home and tore a Columbia House music club order sheet out of a that week’s TV Guide. I got a yellow transistor radio as a free bonus gift when I ordered my LPs, which I hoped were a good cross section of current popular music as I was unfamiliar with all the music - though I had heard of the bands.

I spent the next 6 months absorbing FM radio and buying albums. I became a music whiz and a die-hard Beatles fan as it seemed they were the jumping off point for all that came after; plus I thought Paul was cute. At least in the beginning.

But in spite of my quickly learned yet encyclopedic knowledge of music of the recent past and present, it was far too late. I’d blown it that first day in science. Still, I discovered a love of music that sustained me through the horror years of high school so that moment of blowing my chance at popularity was good for something. And you know, I still think Frank Sinatra is killer and I have a weakness for trumpets. So there.

April Fool

2007-04-01T12:50:00.000-04:00

My mother loved a joke. A practical joke was best, though hard to come by, but on April Fool's Day she was in heaven. At least when I was very young. As the years passed she seemed to take less and less pleasure in it. But then, she took less pleasure in everything - except maybe wine and crossword puzzles.

When I was in elementary school she was still trying for the ultimate April Fool's joke. I don't know if she ever felt she'd achieved it, but there was one that we both liked. It's a little mean... but that's of the way of these things isn't it?

Our kitchen window looked across the back yard to a neighbor's house that was positioned so that their utility room faced us. My mother hatched her diabolical plan while hanging clothes on our clothesline which was only feet away from this room. The neighbors had their washer and dryer in the utility room, ours were in the basement though we were only allowed to use the dryer in emergencies as it cost too much to run it. My father saw no need for the convenience of a dryer when he had put up a perfectly useful clothesline. The clothesline didn't cost him anything. 'Nuff said.

My mother's prank was done over the telephone and went like this:

Alice: Hello?
Mom: Alice? Do you have your drier running?
Alice: No. Why?
Mom: (frantically) I think you might have a fire! I see smoke coming out of your back window and I thought it was just exhaust from the drier... get out of the house, I'll call the fire department!

She'd hang up and we would run to the window to watch the fun.

Sure enough Alice would come running out the back door, around the back of her house and check the window the smoke was supposedly coming from. My mother and I would be laughing like idiots watching her running and checking frantically to see where the smoke was coming from.

As there was nothing even resembling smoke, Alice would turn to our house with an expression of "huh?"

This is the point where my mother, in her robe, cigarette in hand would throw open the back door, step out onto the stoop and yell across the yard "APRIL FOOL'S"!!!

Then Alice would laugh, the two women would have a little chat and I stayed in the house rolling on the floor. Hey I was a kid, it was funny.

Granted this was not the most amazing April Fool's prank ever pulled, but 365 days later it came close.

The very next year my mother pulled the exact same joke. On the exact same woman.

And you know why it was twice as hilarious?

Because she fell for it again.

Yes, she really did.

April Fools Day.

Comic Books... but you're a GIRL!

2007-03-31T17:21:00.000-04:00

Dolls, and the religious statues we had around the house that I used as dolls, were my favorite toys as a child.

I didn’t have much opportunity to play games, board or otherwise, so "make believe" was my mainstay. Dolls were a great way to play make believe with others. Yes, the others were inanimate objects, but an only child finds a way.

I had a fair number of real dolls, but I also engaged the services of the occasional statue if it fit the bill. My mother had an Infant of Prague on her dresser that I particularly liked to work into the program as it was wearing a long red cape. Oftentimes the Infant of Prague played the part of Superman.

One does what one can with the iconography available, okay?

Superman first came into my life via the black and white TV show starring George Reeves. I was also a huge I Love Lucy fan... essentially from birth.

My mother loved to tell how she would plop me in front of Lucy reruns when I was an infant and toddler as it kept my attention like nothing else and gave her some breathing room. But how it may have been a bad move as I had trouble with certain words when I was small. Fizzeeakeyatrist for psychiatrist being the most pronounced example. Well, what do you expect from someone who learned to speak English watching Desi Arnaz playing Ricky Ricardo? Needless to say George Reeves's appearance on Lucy was a high point for me. No less exciting was when GONE WITH THE WIND was shown in theaters when I was in the fifth grade and I saw that MY Superman was playing a redheaded Tarlton twin!

That's him on your left. So dreamy.

Synchronicity, it’s a beautiful thing.

But of course, once I got my hands on the real thing, i.e. the comics, I was truly sunk.

My mother had read Wonder Woman as a child, my father read that and everything else. My father’s greatest childhood lament was his mother throwing out his Action Comics #1: the first appearance of the Man of Steel, while he was away in the Navy.

This lead to his inability to throw away ANYTHING after that. Our attic and basement were testament to the damaging impact of his mother’s need to purge.

My mother though not a huge comics fan, was a big believer in teaching reading via comic books. Had she the opportunity to have gone to college, instead of dropping out of high school, I think she would have made a great teacher. She taught a couple of the neighborhood kids, who were having trouble reading, by pulling out my comic books and catching their interest. She even had a job for a short time (another story altogether) as a Teacher's Aide, where she would meet with students who needed reading assistance. She'd pull them out of their classes, sit in the hallway with them and a pile of comics - and damned if those kids didn't start to improve their reading. She told me she had done the same with me, though I was too young to remember and by the time I was old enough to hold memories I was already reading on my own.

Back then comic books cost just about fifteen cents, a bargain! I was allowed to get them infrequently, (which means it was NEVER enough for me!). I did up my collection count slightly by trading, but usually the other kids were trading something lame like Archie. There was no way I would part with a Superman for an Archie. Noooo way.

The only place to get comics when I was very young was at the 7-11 store, about a quarter mile from home. When we’d go there I would furiously turn the spinning display rack that held the comics searching for Superman, or any of his relatives, first. If there were none on the rack I’d go for a second choice of Batman, Wonder Woman or Aqua Man, who was even harder to find. I was always a DC girl first and foremost. But sometimes all that was available on the rack were Marvel comics and though I liked the Hulk and Spiderman, it wasn’t really the same. X-Men did nothing for me as a kid, I liked my heros to be … well… Superman! But I did like the horror comics that were sometimes available, though I wasn’t always allowed to have them. I guess the covers seemed a bit too lurid, or too adult. But the best, the very best thing about the rack at 7-11 was that they sold pre-packaged comics.

See, I was only allowed a certain number – sometimes I was allowed to get one comic, sometimes two on a really good day, but there was always a limit.

The way I got around the arbitrary limit was to choose the packaged books! Three to four books to a pack! It was harder to choose when they were pre-packaged because sometimes there would be a Thor (good) with a Turok (bad) but depending on the ratio of good to bad I’d choose and feel I’d beaten the system. I’m not sure if the packages were a bargain or if they cost the same as the individual issues. They must have been a sweet deal or my parents would never have fallen for it, but at the time I felt I was a pretty savvy shopper.

As I got older the dolls got put aside, but the comics... well, I try to keep it under control, but even now I do have an account at Midtown Comics. And I still enjoy a lurid cover from time to time.

Slow Eating and Dish Washing....

2007-03-11T19:56:00.000-04:00

I was a frequent dinner guest at my best-friend Noreen’s home while we were in Jr. High School. Always stressed about my weight and having little experience eating with others - meals at my house being solitary activities - had made me self-conscious about eating in front of people.

I loved going there after school or on the weekends. It was a safe place to escape to, a place where there were people who SPOKE to each other – and frequently. They were the family I’d always longed for with brothers, sisters, and parents who seemed to actually like each other. Though I always knew I was an outsider, I still liked the fantasy that I belonged somewhere, even for just a little while.

I'd get nervous when we’d eat something that required a fork and knife, the example that comes to mind is chicken breast; which Noreen could actually cook herself. I was no end of impressed that she could do this, without a cook book and with great ease and success. The use of cutlery made me anxious, in that I always felt awkward and always ate extremely slowly trying to be polite and keep the food from falling out of my mouth or onto the floor, or worse, my chest.

One particular dinner everyone else was done eating and left the table and I was only half-way through the chicken breast. It took perhaps another ½ hour for me to finish and they teased me about it for years after. I took no offense at the teasing. It made me feel like I was one of them and it was oddly comforting.

I also loved the idea of household chores. I had no such responsibilities at home, structure was not something my family was into, and all the other kids I knew all had some chore or other that they were required to perform at home. I longed for a chore that was 'assigned' rather than what I would take it upon myself to do. I'd hunt for things to do around the house, things my mother either had no time for or no interest in, like cleaning out the bathroom cabinets or taking the dining room overhead light apart and washing it so that I could feel like I had something I was needed for that didn't involve sleeping with a knife under my pillow and being prepared to call the cops.

When I ate at the Sheridan’s I always offered to do the dishes. I actually loved washing dishes and still do. I don’t have much interest in automatic dishwashers. I like the activity, it makes me feel useful and it’s a fairly instant gratification of a job done. So I got to do the dishes and whichever kid’s chore it was for that week was always happy to let me take over. After many such sessions of dish-washing Mrs. Sheridan thought to take advantage, not in a bad way, of the crazy girl who wanted to wash up and gave me the special treat of cleaning her copper pots.

They weren’t dirty, it was just a matter of clearing the tarnish and making them pink and lovely for display. I was enthralled! I loved shining up the beautiful pink pots and pans. When I finally bought my first set of pots I naturally had to have copper bottoms. I still relish the opportunity to polish them to a pink gleam. It reminds me of when I felt I belonged.

Ricky Martin Funeral Music

2007-03-07T00:51:00.001-05:00

When it came time to prepare for my mother’s funeral I did what most grieving daughters do: I made a compilation tape.

I was in New York, the funeral would be on Long Island and I needed to DO something or go mad. The thing I came up with was to make a tape of music to play at the wake. One thing about my mother was that she really had been a party girl. It may have been stifled by marriage and the suburbs, but deep down it remained as was evidenced by the times she’d go out with me, to bars, to see bands, to get on stage and sing with the band (granted that was with people we knew, but still… my mom the rocker). So it seemed perfectly right to me to put together a selection of music she liked and that meant something to her, and would hopefully mean something to those who came to pay their respects. She had always said she wanted her funeral to be a party – and I was going to do my best to make that happen in whatever way I could.

I spent 48 hours putting the music together in order. I think she would have loved it. There was a lot of Frank Sinatra, her favorite, and Dean Martin, and some Louis Prima and Keely Smith. There were also a few Clancy Brother’s songs for that Irish flair, songs I remembered playing when we danced around my grandparents living room. And then there was Ricky Martin.

I think it might have been the Ricky Martin that caused the biggest, shall we say, shock.

My mother thought Ricky Martin was a hottie. Well, c’mon. He is. And she loved Livin’ La Vida Loca when it was out and being played endlessly. But she REALLY liked The Cup of Life and so did I. …Here. We. Go… ole ole ole… She would go nuts when that song came on and clap to it and sing along. It was a party whenever she heard it. So it was absolutely the song that had to be on the funeral mix for Mom. Also the words were great and uplifting, “the cup of life” a celebration song, not a dirge! I know she would have laughed her ass off and LOVED hearing that song. So I didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought.

I made two copies of the tape in case one was eaten by an unruly tape player. I brought a boom box in case the funeral parlor’s sound system was wonky. The funeral director put the tape on for me and it worked fine, and played in a continuous loop for the two sessions of the wake. The people at the funeral home told me that it was a first for them. They’d never had anyone play music like that at a wake. I thought that was wonderful, and I know my mother would be happy to know that she was made memorable even in this small way.

Ole, ole, ole Mom.

Magic

2007-03-07T00:36:00.000-05:00

The day my father died I bought sheets. A full bed set. Comforter, sheets, pillow cases... in leopard. At a Walmart in the town where I'd grown up. It hadn't always been a Walmart, in fact I was long gone from that crummy town by the time it grew its own Walmart. When I was growing up it was a Masters... which became a Modells (before they switched to all sporting goods they were basically like K-Mart, Walmart, Target et al.)

When I was in Junior High, Masters was my favorite shoplifting spot. It was a playground of easy-to-lift stuff. My specialties were jewelry and magic tricks. Jewelry because it was SOOO easy, and it was the only way I was going to get any. Magic tricks because I loved magic, and there seemed a special significance to using slight-of-hand to steal slight-of-hand kits. To me, shoplifting was like doing magic tricks. I stopped lifting just before I turned 16. I never got caught, but I knew if I did I had better not be over 16... that's when they'd call the cops. Under 16 they just called the parents.

I had not been in that store for years by the time my father died. So it was a surreal experience to be there, shopping, an hour after I paid for his burial arrangements at the funeral parlor down the street. I had a lot of memories wrapped up in that store's location, if not its current identity.

When I was in the 7th grade, a friend of mine and I got loaded on really sweet red wine we found and drank at another girl's house, and we decided we'd had enough of the day-to-day shit of living in violent and alcoholic homes. We were going to run away. Sadly we were so sloshed were only able to get as far as the Master's shopping center. My father, of all people, found us there and dragged us home. Funny, really, the irony of 12 year-olds being so drunk.... running away from drunks. Not to mention the hilarity of my father coming to find me. He barely spoke to me, or acknowledged my existence except at Christmas, but I guess I was part of the chattel and he was not one to let anything go.

So thirty-odd years later my father is dead. And I'm in that same store. Buying leopard sheets.

I had taken the train, that godawful train, out to Long Island from Manhattan to identify the body and arrange the burial. I was now two for two on identifying bodies and paying for funerals. It's interesting to note that when someone dies whether in a nursing home or hospital, you have to identify the body once it is delivered to the funeral home - in case there is a mix up during transport. Good times. My mother was first, now my father. The only difference was this time I was alone. When my mother died my father and his sister were there. I had to fight my father to have my mother cremated, it was what she wanted but he wanted the traditional hermetically sealed coffin. I had to play the money card to win that fight.

"It's what she wanted!" I said.

"I don't care," he said. That was the truth, he never did care what she wanted.

We back and forthed those two phrases until I was exasperated. My last recourse was a magic trick. I turned to the stunned, and uncomfortable funeral director and said:

"How much is your least expensive coffin?"

"Around $2,000."

My father's eyes popped out.

"And how much will cremation cost?" I asked.

"$250"

"Well... it's what your mother wanted," said my father.

Abracadabra. Sold American. I knew who I was dealing with.

Unfortunately I had to pay for the cremation. My father was old school. One credit card: Sears. No checking account. Cash or money orders - that was his deal.

I had a credit card with me. But I swear it is not fun to sign off on your mother's cremation. It's not a receipt you want to save in your memory book.

But it was a little less stressful when my father died: there was no more fighting. He wanted to be buried and that's what he got, though part of me wanted to go with cremation just to give him a dig. No pun intended.

What was stressful was that train ride. Knowing I was going to have to go identify his body, get the funeral arrangements made and then go to his house and start the daunting task of cleaning it out. Overwhelmed doesn't really describe how I felt... but it comes close.

I take care of things, it's what I do, it's what I had been doing my whole life. I may have been falling apart, but I was going to get it done. And then there was a little magic.

I was sitting at the same table I'd sat at three years earlier when the funeral director said someone had come to see me. "HUH?"

My best friend, Gary, walked in. He had driven out to Long Island from New Jersey because he didn't think I should have to do this alone. And that was when I started crying.

Being unable to cope with kindness is a curse really, it means I break down crying whenever someone does anything sweet for me. I'm always shocked, because that's the real magic.

He stayed with me until everything was done and then drove me to the Walmart. We were going to buy cleaning supplies, trash bags, bins for the things I might want to save when I went through the house. But there was something about being in that building that had been one of the few places of my youth I could get to and was allowed to go on my own, with my zany best friend... we spotted the leopard sheets and somehow buying them seemed the only thing to do. There was something about the celebration of life amidst death... or maybe it was just a little magic.

Black Corsets and Joe Franklin

2007-02-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

Given my feelings of teenage alienation, of course I'm the only one who ever felt alienated as a teenager, it followed naturally that when THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW began being shown as a midnight movie that I should attend.

At 16, after some pseudo-whining and begging, my best friend’s older brother agreed to take the two of us to a showing. I was sure this was going to be a turning point in my life. I was right. It may sound corny to say, but that movie truly spoke to me and all my inner pain and outer quirks. I was amongst my people and I was in heaven. My high-school best girlfriend, who was in fact my polar opposite, was not so impressed. But that didn’t deter me. She didn't need the validation I did, she was not an outsider, she fit. I never had.

Some months after that first viewing I managed to convince a small circle of friends to go to a showing. I loved being the only one in the group who knew what to expect and was very precise with indoctrinating them as to the various props we would need to bring.

I assigned each of them one or two props to gather and we met, fully stocked with shopping bags filled with the necessities: water pistols, lighters, rolls of toilet paper, rubber gloves, toast, a bell, newspapers, etc. If you’ve been, you know the drill, if you haven’t, you should try to find a showing and go. Though I honestly have no idea if it's anything like it used to be... I hope it still is. For kids like me.

We went, not in costume, but that would come later. For the most part my little social circle was enthralled. I’m not sure they felt the exact same emotional impact that I did, but they definitely enjoyed it and we ended up going nearly every week. Granted, there was precious little else for us to do on weekends, Long Island... the late '70s... 'nuff said, but I was glad of it as the movie was nearly a religious thing to me and I needed to go. It's part of my excessive/obsessive personality. And it was less dicey than shoplifting. But that's another story.

Eventually when we’d been going for many months we were allowed to borrow parents’ or siblings cars and got there on our own steam, but in the beginning what with it being a midnight event - and only a couple of us had driver's licenses at that point - my father would actually drive us and pick us.

Yeah. Go figure.

We’d drop off the last of my friends and then it would be just him and me. That's when it got nerve-wrecking. We were alone... we might have to speak! Me in the passenger seat wearing a slightly garish lingerie-type costume, white pancake, tons of eye-liner and lipstick with hair frizzed out courtesy of my mother’s many tiny braids made in the morning to get my dead-straight hair to match the character of Magenta in time for midnight -- and my dad driving.

It was surreal in that I went from living out my fantasy life with my friends to sitting with my dad in virtual silence, we spoke so little, listening to Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane show on the radio and sometimes discussing old radio shows. I went from the '70s to the '40s in the time it took to drop off my last friend.

Though it was odd, I always found it admirable that my dad would do that drive. Granted he was a night owl so the hour was no problem for him, but it was funny that he was seemingly unfazed by the situation. As if a cult midnight movie was something he had ‘been there-done that’ and was no big.

I can admit now that part of me actually liked the transition. Somehow old-style crooners and chat about the Golden Age of radio seemed appropriate after Rocky Horror. It was also on one of those rides that I heard Louis Prima and the amazing Keely Smith for the first time. “That Old Black Magic” was on the radio, an appropriate title after Rocky Horror.

"Do you know who that is?" I asked tentatively. You had to be tentative with my father because you never knew if he'd be cranky or civil... it was always a gamble. One had to be brave to make the effort. After Rocky Horror I tended to be braver.

"THAT’S Louis Prima and Keely Smith!"

He knew I’d heard of them, he and my mother had told me about them whenever Sonny and Cher were mentioned - they liked to explain how Louis and Keely had set the precedent of the chill-chick, wacky-guy shtick decades before, but I never actually heard them until after Rocky Horror. I might never have heard them at all if not for those midnight drives home. I became a profound fan in later years and managed to see Keely live three times, (so far!) once even being bold enough to get her photo. And I was only bold enough for that because my friend Gary was with me and during the show she spoke with him... Apparently Keely is like me... she likes the boys, girls are sort of superfluous. She went right for him, had him sing a little (she also had Rex Reed sing a little... and you know he's really not bad) she nick-named Gary "hoppy"... which is, of course, appropriate because he IS hoppy. And so is Keely... oh she's still chillin', but she's also rockin'. And to think, were it not for Rocky Horror I'd never have known.

The girlfriend they loved

2007-02-20T00:11:00.000-05:00

After having developed my strongest friendships with men in my first two years of college, I decided I wanted to bond with women. I felt I needed a shot of Estrogen-laced friendship, thus my choice of school was clearly to be a place where the temptation of masculine friendship would be limited at best. I chose Marymount. An all women’s college on the Hudson River in Tarrytown, New York.

What I was not prepared for was that after the luxury of having sex every day, sometimes twice a day... three times on a good day... with a very energetic and adventurous partner, that I would go through withdrawal. Boy did I.

Now never having been one to be a prude about sex, and having had a brief attraction to a woman the year before, the discussion of which was a thing of pure joy to Tom, boys do love their cute lesbians, I should have realized that going to an all women’s college was bound to lead me down a new road. Granted it was not a long traveled road, but it was a nice hike.

Dottie was a freshman, I was a junior transfer student, so despite the difference in our classes we were on the same footing in terms of the newness of college life. Dottie was quite simply a firecracker. She was cute as button and CRAZY, in the best possible way. Once we went out drinking... once? We were perpetually out drinking. We went to a local bar and Dottie was wearing a black mini-skirt and my black satin corset (a Rocky Horror inspired gift from my mother, of all people!). She decided she NEEDED to dance on the bar. Dottie was a fairly voluptuous girl, and a good 5 inches taller than me... the corset was a stretch. A stretch that didn't survive much of her dance.

The wonderful thing about the bar incident was that it happened in the early part of the fall semester... so for the remaining two years of my time at Marymount we all drank free. Thanks to Dottie's impromptu dance/strip tease. God bless.

She also enjoyed stripping down completely and running through the dorms for no apparent reason. It was utterly hilarious. Yes, I have a weakness for people who get naked in public. What can I say? I just love that kind of ballsy, fun confidence.

And for some reason still unbeknownst to me, she had a crush on me. We spent all our time together, with a group, or just the two of us, didn’t matter. And it was she who pursued me – this was a switch for me – on all levels. And as I have absolutely no gaydar - none. Zero. I really didn't have a clue. Until I finally had a clue.

And I was attracted to her, possibly because of her attraction to me, but nonetheless, we got together. And though it was a scary proposition given that I really never saw myself as a lesbian, what’s a libidinous, college girl to do? Plenty.

We had a wonderful time and I thoroughly enjoyed our sex life which was frequent and fun and hello, experimental. And she was so good to me that I determined I must be a lesbian and we would be together forever. But you really cannot fight biology and I really did miss the male body... a LOT. Much to my new found lesbian chagrin.

The thing that was so surprising about my relationship with Dottie was just how much my FATHER loved her! He was simply nuts about her. She and I would joke that my father and I had the same taste in women. Oy, there's a terrifying notion!

Dottie ended up acting in a play with me although she was an art major, not an actor, (though she was very good - and very funny). When my parents made the trip up to see it, my father brought HER a box of chocolates! Needless to say he brought me nothing. God. For all my parents hated Tom, mostly due to the fact they just KNEW I was having sex with him on a ridiculously regular basis, they loved Dot, who frankly, I was busy with as much - if not more - than I had been with Tom just due to the mere fact that we practically lived together.

I wonder if they’d have been so crazy about her if they’d known. Eh. Probably. She really was a great girl. The daughter they never had.

Trust

2007-02-19T22:40:00.000-05:00

I've never been a very trusting soul. You grow up in a house full of drunkeness and violence and cruelty and you learn that trusting people is not always a wise option.

It also closes you off from a lot of life experiences.

As I got older I wanted to learn to trust, to take those big leaps, to have faith in people and learn to trust my own instincts instead of using a blanket policy of "trust no one". Because I studied for an acting degree in college, from time to time, I was forced to trust. You know, you're on stage with these people you have to depend on them, they have to depend on you, you need to trust each other... and there you have the birth of the actor's 'trust' exercises.

May I state for the record, here and now, I DESPISE trust exercises. They invariably involve some sort of falling. Is there no other way to earn someone's trust than having them catch you in a backwards freefall? C'mon people, it's nuts. You get someone like me, with a fear of heights that makes doing sit-ups on a big ball scary and you want them to trust a bunch of other 20 year old theater students? Actors? Oh puh-leez. I didn't trust my own MOTHER for cryin' out loud!

The first two years of college I managed, though how I do not know, to escape doing the dreaded trust exercises. I was well-versed in faked trust, so it worked out. But when I transferred to a new school my d-day arrived. I was cast in a play which required me to be in a wheelchair for all but 2 minutes of the performance. It was a great part, and I was all about learning to use the wheelchair convincingly.

One afternoon in the early days of the rehearsal process our director decided to put us through a trust exercise. And this time there was no escape. I decided to be a grownup about this and simply explain that, no offense meant, I would not participate. But before I had the chance to do so he explained the exercise. It was not the usual fall backwards and let the group catch you deal that I was familiar with... from watching, not doing.

The exercise we were going to do involved wearing a blindfold (this I was well-versed in... though not in public) and simply walking around on the stage. The director would sit in the audience and watch, the other actors were on stage, watching and the deal was that if you got too close to the edge someone would warn you long before you would step off. Granted there was about a 3 1/2" foot drop from the stage to the audience floor, but it certainly seemed less risky than falling backwards and being caught by a bunch of people who might, or might not, be able to catch you. So I put on the blindfold, feeling very proud of myself that at 21 I was finally going to bravely go forth and establish some 'trust'.

I was tentatively wandering around on the stage, occasionally someone would tell me to turn left "you're about 2 feet from the edge" and I started to feel what can only be described as trust! Holy Shit! This was working! I started walking with a more confident stride, trusting that I would not walk into anything or fall. This was great! I kept going. It was a high. I heard the back door of the theater open, I heard the stage manager come in and start talking to the director about costumes or some such, and yet I boldly continued walking as if I were on a country road with full use of my eyes and feeling on top of the world!
All the while thinking:

"This is trust, this is what it feels like to really trust people... wow...this is the best feee...

OUCH! OH. MY. GOD!!!"

I was in a pile on the audience floor, my foot twisted under my ass in a most unpleasant and searing pain sort of way.

It seems that my trust was ill-advised. Everyone was watching the discussion between the director and stage manager, the director sure as hell had stopped watching me and true to form there I was on my ass. With a severely sprained ankle. So much for trust. But that wheelchair really came in handy.

The boyfriend they loathed

2007-02-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

Though I continued to see Jimmy after we started college, and truly was heartbroken that he had gone to MIT so far away in Massachusetts, I could not help but be attracted to someone else. My sexual urges were not sated by any means - I was 18 for cryin' out loud - and it didn’t hurt to look, did it?

The second semester of my freshman year of college I took an Oral Interpretation of Literature class and learned that what I had attempted to do in my elementary school's ill-fated talent show with Mr. Poe had a name, and was a legitimate activity. I was delighted. Though I hadn’t acted in anything yet, I knew I could read aloud – effectively. Hell, I read to my mother while she sun-bathed all the time. Naturally I chose Edgar Allan Poe, again. If at first you don’t succeed and all that. This time I chose a poem, as that was the assignment and I chose Annabel Lee. So sad and mournful.

In this class there was a guy that just irked the hell out of me. Sure he was really cute, he had long, gorgeous brown hair, a beard - he was three years older than me! Oooh, older man! He was half Irish and half Italian and I swear to God that is really the combination that makes the best looking people. At least in my opinion. I'm a sucker for that combo... and charm. And he actually bore a strong resemblance to Al Pacino as Serpico. Look, I admit it, he was hot. But he pissed me off!

He was always eating and drinking tea from a Styrofoam cup, during class. To me this was the height of rudeness. Eating in class? B’ah. I see now of course that he irritated me so much because I was attracted to him and I didn’t want to be as I was a faithful girlfriend whose fella was away. But at the time all I knew was God this guy is irritating!

The day I performed Annabel Lee I was literally shaking in my boots. Red suede, cuffed, ankle high boots to be exact. The eighties… time of fashion wackiness. I did my dramatic best with the material and when I finished there was a hush. Oh Christ... it was elementary school all over and I was waiting for the crickets to make an appearance. But after an interminable 30-40 seconds of dead silence there came APPLAUSE! Not polite applause, real "THANK YOU" applause! Quelle shock! They liked it. REALLY. I got an A on my performance as well as my proper use of various markings that were required to show we knew what we were doing not just winging it (I hated that part - a lot.)

After the class two amazing things happened.

One: the teacher, a really smart and astute woman, who later would become so special to me for her amazing support and belief in me, asked me to join the Forensics team. Me? On a ‘team’ of any kind, especially by invitation… this was monumental. And utterly foreign.

And Two: this IRRITATING guy with his tea in hand, came up to me and told me I was amazing. And that was how I met Tom.

So there I was, on a team. I was entered into a competition. I was entirely out of my element. I rehearsed every day with my Oral Interp teacher. I found a piece, we cut it and edited and she directed me in the performance of it. I had never worked so hard on anything in my entire life. It was one of the most satisfying and fulfilling things I had ever done and to this day it remains such. She quite literally taught me to act with that one piece and she molded my voice and each character in the reading into a fully formed individual. I came alive in her tiny office with the book in hand, performing the piece. I never knew such excitement, and I never wanted to please anyone as much as her. Because unlike any other person in my life, she truly believed in me and she told me so. Talk about a new experience. I needed that more than she could ever know.

Her praise was instrumental in giving me the confidence I never could have found without her help. I think she knew that she created something with me, but I don’t know if she ever realized how much credit she was actually due. My guess is that she would never believe it, but it is the truth. Those rigorous rehearsals - and they were exhausting, don't be fooled into thinking 'reading out loud' is easy - not like this it's not. Especially for someone as shy and insecure as I was, trying something new and absolutely alien. She was the best teacher I ever had.

When we went to the Forensics festival we had been working towards, I found that the irritating tea guy was also going. He did not have a prepared piece, his event was Improvisational Speech. Something I could never do.

I had the shock of my life when I won first place in the competition. I got a trophy. ME? A trophy? Talk about a brave new world. And irritating, yet attractive tea guy was impressed. Oh. Really?

After weeks of ‘being in the right place at the right time’ a skill I’d perfected with the elusive bass player in high school, it finally occurred to Tom to ask me out. And that was the beginning of three years of absolutely wonderful sex. I'm positive my mother hated Tom because unlike Jimmy she knew damned well I was sleeping with Tom... if she knew the full extent of it her head would have popped off.

I think too that I loved him, as much as I was capable of at the time, but I found that the things about Tom that I didn’t like were things I hated about myself and I just couldn’t be with him any more. I tried to break up with him in our second year, but he was heartbroken and I couldn’t bear it, so we stayed together because I am one soft touch. Also our sexual rapport was pretty perfect, this was never the problem and there was never a time when attempted oral sex elicited the response of ‘what are you DOING?’ I should have realized how good I had it in that regard.

But after another year I knew we really weren’t right together, despite the fact that I was still attracted to him and I did care for him very much. I knew the only way I’d be able to end things was by going away to college. And that’s what I did. I ran away. Coward.

The boyfriend they loved

2007-02-08T13:52:00.001-05:00

All my childhood and adolescent crushes culminated in finally securing the affections of my first. First real boyfriend. First real date. First serious kiss. And the very welcome loss of my virginity. Did I hear an "amen?" . . . oh, that was me. Never mind.

The senior I had stalked, albeit innocently, and who held my heart all my junior year without even knowing I existed, had graduated. Going to school became a more barren experience than it had been before I discovered him. But after the October of my first bout of Depression I met Jimmy*. He was a what was called a super brain, he was in fact voted smartest and most likely to succeed in our class of apathetic underachievers. But he really was smart, and good with the math and such. He was also the fastest typist in the school – which rankled me a bit as here I was toiling away in these stupid secretarial classes when this Piker from the academic regions comes in and steals the typing thunder. Of course the fact that he played piano was in large measure responsible for his typing success – strong fingers, and dexterity. Oh, and did I mention: ADORABLE? Because he really was, just the cutest thing. . . even without the big-boy nose I love so much.

I met Jimmy through my friends who were staying the academic path toward college. We were a group of loose ends with no clear peer clique who found each other at the last moment as seniors. We spent that year and the first years of college together and it was quite wonderful. Made more wonderful by the fact that Jimmy and I had an attraction. He was cute. Really cute. And sweet and polite and every possible thing a parent could want for their daughter.

Had they known that the reason I wore such obscenely short shorts whenever Jimmy and I went to the drive in was so he could finger me without me taking my pants off or that on the day after our Prom we had no intention of going to the beach (please, was I going to the beach?) but rather had procured two kinds of birth control so we were both equally responsible and had reserved a room at the Holiday Inn in Hauppauge (just down the block from the theater I hit every weekend for Rocky Horror) so we could at last, in peace and undisturbed, do away with the annoyance that was our mutual virginity. (I may have wanted to do it, but I absolutely refused to have the first time be in a car. . . besides we had a lot of 'incidents' with police, some rocks through windshields. . . any way, the car was never going to be 'the place'). I doubt they would have loved him so much as they did if they'd had any idea. In my parent’s view, particularly my mother’s, Jimmy was perfect and SAFE and wonderful. Yeah. An angel. Get the halo and pass the condoms!

Actually Jimmy was a great guy and I cannot imagine having a better first experience than we did. Truth. It was GREAT. I hear so many unfortunate 'first' stories that I realize just how good we had it, and then some.

Unfortunately, we really didn’t have much in common except our hormones. Even more sadly, I was a lot more experimental than he. When I attempted to initiate fellatio one night while we were parked in a dead end street and he stopped me saying “WHAT are you DOING?!” I knew that was the death knell of our youthful relationship.

See? Cars. Never a good idea.

Mary Poppins Strikes Again

2007-01-31T07:15:00.000-05:00

My maternal grandmother had been a movie fan. No doubt about it. My mother told me how she would bring her to the movies and they would stay all day long. They’d watch newsreels, shorts, cartoons and features. Though my mother was star-struck, she was never really a FAN the way I was, or the way her mother was, or the way my father was. I believe my grandmother was about the escapism. My dad was about the fantasy. My mom was about the celebrity, the gossip, the fame. Still, when MARY POPPINS opened she dutifully took me to the Centereach movie theater to see it. As with many things that started out good in my childhood, the eccentric and fun-loving magical nanny became my personal reference for "bad".

I do not remember the movie itself as much as I remember coming out of it, singing (despite my mother's cringing) Chim Chim Cher-ee, (I still think Dick Van Dyke is cute) and seeing my father standing next to the car that was parked not in the lot but right at the curb in front of the theater. It was strange because we were supposed to call him when the movie was actually over, but he was already there. Right then I knew something was wrong.

He took my mother aside and she went pale.

We got in the car, but did not go home. As we drove they told me that my maternal grandfather had had a severe stroke; we went directly to the Bronx to see how he was. We believed at the time that he was not long for this life. It was the first time someone I knew was near death. I didn’t understand exactly what a stroke was and it was my interpretation that he must have been struck by lightening - though it was a very clear day. I had no conception that other areas had different weather but it was the only ‘strike’ that made sense to me at the time.

When we got to the house in the Bronx my grandfather was laying in a lounge chair in the downstairs family room, not far from his beloved boiler room. He had lost the use of his left side and was quite frightening in that his speech was indecipherable. I remember hiding behind a half wall watching as my mother, father, beloved grandmother and my aunts all hovered around him. My grandfather, tough old Irish, thick as a brick that he was, would not go to the hospital. So the doctor had come to him. Back then I don’t believe they had things like MRIs and CAT scans. The doctor just diagnosed a stroke and suggested physical therapy.

My grandfather, ever proud, refused the therapy. He also lived another 10 plus years. He eventually walked with a cane, well enough to walk my mother’s sister down the aisle at her wedding wearing a full tux and top hat (the man was nothing if not a sharp dresser); but his speech never improved enough for me to understand him very clearly. If you spoke with him daily, then you’d learn to understand him, but I never had that opportunity and thus lost possibly the greatest story teller my family had.

I recall many stories before the stroke, unfortunately I was too young to remember them well enough to repeat them, though as a child I tried to remember them by reciting them to my stuffed animals and imaginary friends. I never could remember how they ended or how he managed to convey them so well. But he was an Irish teller of tales of the old school and knew how to spin a verbal yarn holding his audience in rapt attention. He told stories about the village he grew up in, Sligo, in County Sligo; land of poets and story-tellers. Stories about the village man who saw the ghosts in the cemetery or the story of the man who was taken to the Little People’s hidden home a young man and returned old and wizened only days later, because time moves differently in the faerie lands, you believed him when he said every word was true. You believed and you wanted more. Everyone always wanted Fred to tell more stories.

My grandfather had been a voracious reader and luckily the stroke did not stop him from that particular pleasure. Many years after the stroke when I was in my very early teens he told me to come to his room, he had a present for me. This was unusual and highly intriguing. Not to mention terrifying. I was always afraid I wouldn't understand him when he spoke and thus prove myself to be a dolt.

When I tentatively went to his door and knocked, I couldn’t imagine what he had in store. It turned out to be the only thing he could have given me that would truly matter: it was a book. Myths and Legends of Ireland. It was a book about my ancestry, about a green island full of warriors, giants, little people and magic. These were stories I’d never heard, that weren’t taught in school, but they were about ‘us’ and it was his love of his homeland that gave me the pride of the Irish.

He was keen on me reading the story THE SPECKLED TROUT… but I’ll never understand why. It didn’t grab me. I hope someday to understand if there was some significance I was supposed to have gotten from it. Some secret message. But regardless of the Trout story it was an important book he gave me and I felt honored that he'd gifted me with it. I still have it, it sits on a shelf alongside the more well-known myths of ancient Greece. Everyone knows the Greek stories, everyone knows Mary Poppins, not everyone knows the Speckled Trout. It makes me feel special. Of course it does, I have that Irish pride too.

Boy Crazy

2007-01-29T17:48:00.000-05:00

I was nothing if not a late bloomer. I had desperate crushes on boys from my first day of kindergarten, Timothy M* was the first. All black hair and lots of lashes. The first grade brought a boy named Fred whose last name I can never recall who went to a different school from second grade on due to rezoning. But Fred was a move up in that we actually were friends and we swapped books and hung together. Second grade was the ticket however when I met George a/k/a “Rusty” so called because he had red hair. Not just the usual red hair, but hair that would go from red to brownish red in the autumn, he was like a leaf. I was nuts about him, likely because of the red hair which reminded me of Billy Mumy from Lost in Space who was, in my young world, the living end!

George and I had what amounted to a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, albeit we were 7/8 years old. We had a class trip to Radio City Music Hall to see MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN. I saw little of the mountain myself as I spent the entire movie with my head on George’s shoulder. Brazen slut! I was boy crazy, and I didn’t care who knew it!

Sadly my Second grade love affair came to a traumatic end in the Third grade.

I’m not proud of my behavior, but I was EIGHT! George had an ‘accident’ in class. The poor child wet his pants. We were in the Third grade and I was humiliated.

Of course I look back now and of course there was more to it than a lack of potty training. Clearly he had either not been allowed to use the restroom when he needed to or had some sort of kidney issues; but at the time, being the strict kid I was, I was just embarrassed. Our relationship was over. I was saddened, but I had to move on.

After George there was nothing but a series of crushes, most predominately on another George, a blond this time. One of my very rare times I was attracted to a blond. Like me he was half Irish and half Polish and I felt the similarities in our names somehow made us the perfect couple. The things kids think of, huh? Well. My undying love of George the second ended with a cold. His. He sneezed. There was, shall we say, mucus, and I was over it.

My crushes were over. I knew all the boys in my class from kindergarten. There was no one who called to my grade-school heart. Alas. Doomed to spinsterhood at the age of nine.

When we moved into junior high school a huge crop of new kids were thrown into the mix and it was then, in my seventh grade French class that I first came across a crush that would last until the 11th grade.

John had thick, curly, deep auburn hair, freckles, black eyes – so dark they looked like all the were all pupil and he was so thin that sitting behind him, as I did because we sat alphabetically, I could actually count his ribs through his shirts. I was in LOVE! Actually, John was an incredibly nice guy, smart and kind and there was more to him to worship from afar than the eyes and hair. But he was on the basketball team and therefore popular and there was no hope that he would ever be mine. *big sigh*

I did, however get to see and interact with him more than I would normally have had the opportunity because we were in the same religious instruction class. The dreaded religion classes that took up my Saturday mornings. That I dreaded and despised, especially by the time I was in Jr. High, because I felt NOTHING but disgust with the Catholic church. This torture of indoctrination suddenly became something to, at least partially, look forward to: because John was in my class! woo-hoo!!

At 13-14 this dream boat of mine had two career options in mind. Basketball player or Priest.

My heart skipped when he told me this.

I had had an absurd 'priest fetish' since I was a little kid and had wanted to become a nun. All for the costumes and the theater of it. Picturing this tall, skinny drink of water in a priest's black uniform with roman collar pretty well did my raging hormones in for good. I don't know how I managed not to drool in his presence.

In French class in the Eighth grade we had an auction. The exercise meant we had to bring in an item from home, keep it a mystery and then describe it in French to entice other students in the class to ‘bid’ on it with play money. When John kept bidding on my item I was in heaven. But I could not imagine how he’d react when he saw what I was auctioning. If he hadn’t already, he would have won my undying affection by what happened when he eventually won my item.

He came to the front of the class to claim it, opened the box and found he was now the proud owner of a pair of my mother's old '50s pink, pointy-toed, high heels and being the incredibly good sport he was, he tried them on in front of the class.

Was The Rocky Horror Picture Show waiting for ME? Oh yes. So very Yes.

But John paled compared to my 11th grade stalking phase. Of course back then we didn’t know what stalking was, and I sincerely feel that my behavior was not out of the ordinary for an 11th grade girl with raging hormones and a tremendous lack of social skills.

It started with the school’s talent show. Yes. Another talent show. This time I had the good sense to stay in the audience. To drum up business for this annual event the school held a brief assembly during which the school’s ‘jazz band’ performed.

The bass player in this band was…. The bass player. He was a senior. He was tall and thin and had a fabulous large nose and skin so perfect I swear he must have used Estée Lauder. He looked very much like the bass player from Queen and I was hooked.

I found out his name, I found out through my connections in the high school band what kind of music he liked and because of him bought a Stanley Clark album and had a very revealing scoop neck t-shirt made with a very subtle “Stanley Clark” emblazoned across my chest. Because despite incredibly low self-esteem, I knew that I had two decent assets. Okay four. My legs were awfully good too.

If nothing else I was broadening my musical interests because of my crush, so you know, positive outcome.

I also found out where his locker was and would drop notes into it. Balloons, unblown up.. though for the life of me I cannot remember what I thought that would mean to him. I remember there was some significance... but it totally escapes me now. Frankly, I'm a little afraid to remember!

I knew his schedule and found ways to be where he would be at least four times a day even though it meant I would have to race from one end of the building to the other to avoid being late for my own classes. Essentially I stalked the poor guy his senior year. If he even noticed me, which looking back on it would have been tough to avoid noticing, but then … boys. Who can say if he knew or not?

I believe he spoke to me all of twice. Nothing of any consequence, something more along the lines of ‘excuse me’ or ‘huh?’ Funny how at the time I thought I’d never forget those words and now I can’t even remember what he said. But I can remember how it felt. OOOOH BABY! That’s a feeling you don’t forget. Ever.

*not their real names. OF COURSE!

Christmas Coffee Part II

2007-01-24T18:38:00.000-05:00

This is not the actual coffee-maker,
pictured here is the current model
but it is similar to the one written about here.

The Christmas of the coffee-makers was one of those times that sticks with you. It was one of those holiday memories they write stories about (like this one) or make movies about ... on Lifetime.

My father had arrived at my studio apartment bearing the great blue and white geese coffee-maker.

Not to be ungrateful, but it was so much the antithesis of my taste that I actually considered switching to tea. Still, I was in need of a way to make coffee other than filtering it through paper towels and my father attempted to fix that problem for me. So I should shut up... but I can’t because of my mother’s part in the story.

She arrived at my place because the three of us were heading to her sister’s home for dinner and my father was not allowed to know where my mother lived. You know, in case he decided to try to murder her. Which was not unlikely.

My father was driving us up because there really is no other way to get to the suburb my aunt lived in. So to travel together meant my mother had to make one of the three trips to Brooklyn she deigned to make in the five years I lived there. Despite our familial dysfunctions, and there were many, the three of us were spending Christmas together.

When she arrived at my apartment I showed her the coffee-maker and sort of apologized. Why I apologized is beyond me. Except that I knew she had gotten me the serious coffee-maker of my dreams and that it was by no means inexpensive and here I was with the ‘geese’. I didn’t want her to think I was in love with the geese pot - though clearly I was not. I felt bad that they’d doubled up on the same gift and didn’t want either of them to feel put out about it. I figured my father would take it much worse than she would, because clearly my preference for the Krups machine would be difficult to hide. Also I had been raised to apologize for everything. “I’m sorry” was not a phrase my parents used to me, only I was ever “sorry”. Sadly that set a precedent for my entire life, apologizing for everything to everybody... whether I meant it or not.

“Don’t worry about it,” my mother said.

I figured we would leave the Krups box unopened until my Dad was not around, that way he never needed to know. Good plan! No hurt feelings! Merry Christmas!!

I noticed my mother had a large Macy’s shopping bad with a large wrapped box in it. This was the coffee-maker. I had gone to Macy’s Cellar and stared at it often enough to know it’s shape intimately, despite the Frosty the Snowman wrapping paper. My heart was actually beating fast at the thought of opening that puppy up and making my first espresso!

After everyone was settled enough to pull it together and actually get in the car and haul it to my aunt’s I noticed that my mother was bringing the Macy’s shopping bag with her.

“That’s weird,” I thought. “Why drag it there just to bring it back?” But I couldn’t say anything or it would open the discussion and the café would be out of the bag so to speak. So okay, Mom’s a little toasty with the white wine, I’m not going to make waves. Let her bring the box, we’ll bring it back... and then, oh then, the java would flow!!

At my aunt’s it was the usual uncomfortable gathering of bigoted relations (through marriage), the weirdness of having my father there at my mother’s sister’s place when my parents were separated, the incredibly disgusting man from next door who everyone thought was so nice - who shoved his tongue down my throat while his wife was in the next room, and of course, all the good times of the holiday season.

After the meal we sat in the livingroom and opened gifts. I worried about how I was going to handle opening the Krups box and not hurt my father’s feelings. It was clear I’d be opening it there. Why hadn’t I found a way to make my mother leave it at my apartment?

After various scarves and bottles of booze (always a good gift choice in a family of alcoholics) were opened my mother reached for the snowman covered Krups box.

“Oh here we go,” I thought.

“Barbara,” my mother said to her sister. “This is for you and Ed.”

I felt like one of those actresses at the Oscars. You know the one who everyone is sure is going to win, the one who starts to get out of her chair just as they announce the name of SOMEONE ELSE. That was me.

So my aunt and uncle open the box and sure enough there is my gorgeous Krups coffee-maker... in its shiny red, black and white box...

“This is nice,” they said in the same tone used for the various scarves.

They didn’t make coffee!

Alright that’s not entirely true. They used instant. And when they had company, like now, they would make a pot of such weak tan-colored liquid that to call it coffee was like calling soy milk ice cream. They actually opened the machine and made a pot. I had to show them how. It was all I could do not to burst into tears as I explained what a gold filter was.

I was not only broken hearted but confused.

When we got back to my apartment I asked my mother what had happened. Had she bought two Krups machines? How could she manage that? And where was mine any way, back at her place, should I come get it....

“It was such a good idea I got it for Barbara and Ed,” she said, clearly delighted with herself. “You know how I never know what to get them.”

“They don’t even LIKE coffee!” I said.

“So? It was a good gift.”

“Yeah, for ME, not for them,” I said. “You told me you were getting it for me.”

“Well, too bad,” she said. “You can’t always get what you want.”

As if I hadn’t learned that already. Thanks for the refresher course Mom.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Coffee Part I

2006-12-20T17:17:00.000-05:00

A large, truthfully far too large, portion of my life has been spent with a cup of coffee. If it were heroin I’d have died by the time I was 19, as it is I’m merrily addicted to a legal and tasty substance that smells like heaven when it’s fresh.

As a young child I craved it, but was not, naturally allowed to drink it. My maternal grandmother was kind enough to pour me a mug of milk and add a teaspoon of the brown and yummy good stuff. Not nearly enough caffeine to harm a kid, but more than enough for me to know I loved the stuff. It was a natural that a woman who grew up downing gallons of tea would feel it was safe to give me the milky coffee - my mother disagreed, but then, she was not all that bright on what was and was not good for a person.

My mother believed you could not eat enough butter. Have a bit of toast with your butter dear? The fact that I ate the toast without the butter and still managed to gain weight while she stood at her heaviest at 110 lbs might make it seem like she knew what she was doing, but her death at 71 weighing less than 60 lbs proves her wrong.

But the coffee, oh how I loved the coffee. When I went away to college the most important things I could bring with me were a tape player for my music and a coffee machine. I was pretty serious about the java, and the music.

I’ve owned a series of coffee makers from the cheapest Sears special to a Krups deluxe combination espresso and regular coffee machine. Given the import of the ‘joe’ it is not surprising that there were two incidents, one for each parent, in regards to the making of the stuff.

One Christmas I was broke (okay, I was broke on MANY Christmases and any other assorted days of the year) but this particular year my coffee maker had died. I was boiling water on the stove and filtering it through paper towels to make a cup. Not a recommended method. Juan Valdez was spinning.

Both my parents were aware of my desire for a new machine, and it was simply a given that was what I wanted, no, it’s what I needed for Christmas. I even had a cut out, a pin up if you will, of the Krupp’s machine of my dreams - the espresso combo machine - on my refrigerator. I would look at it longingly as I waited for the brown foam to sink through the paper toweling into a mug and dream of better days.

My mother had seen the picture on a rare visit to my little place in Brooklyn and guaranteed she was going to get it for me. She said it outright. "Good, now I know what to get you!"

I was delirious with thoughts of making espresso, cappuccino, lattes all at home - any time I wanted them. These were in the pre-Starbucks days, and really the only places you could get such extravagant and delightful coffee drinks were little coffee/dessert bars in the village or good Italian restaurants. So to have such luxury at home, on my own kitchen counter, was more than a penniless coffee addict could aspire to.

Christmas came. And my father came to visit. He too knew about my need for a coffee maker and had taken it upon himself to find the perfect machine for me. Sadly, he really had no clue. I opened the box and nearly choked when I saw it. It was white... it had blue ribbons and geese stencilled on it and on the glass pot.

"Oh it's great!" I gushed.

God I really CAN act! I knew my mother was getting the Krups, what to do? Feast or famine... I would now have TWO coffee makers. One hideous and suburban the other sleek and urbane. I thought of returning the geese ... but I had no choice but to use the machine right then and there. I couldn't exactly make the paper-towel coffee in front of my father, not with the spanking new machine sitting there.

Oh well, I thought. It'll be a back-up. I'll put it in the cabinet after the Krups arrives and I'll have a safety net, a spare. All was fine. Except of course for the fact that my father thought I would like a coffee maker with GEESE and RIBBONS on it.

.... to be continued

Good-bye Santa

2006-12-20T16:36:00.000-05:00

Given the high regard with which Christmas was celebrated in my home and my deep and abiding need for fantasy and illusion to escape the other 364 days of the year that were NOT Christmas, I don’t think it’s at all unnatural that I believed firmly and resolutely in Santa Claus until I was 12 years old... actually only weeks away from turning 13.

For some reason there was much talk at school that Christmas about the 'myth' of Santa Claus. I voiced devout belief, the last devout belief I had left, on my opinion of his existence. I had to fight hard and long to defend it. It was easy for me, because I had no doubts, none whatsoever. I had the fire of an evangelical on the topic. I felt my non-believer friends were complete heretics to entertain any thoughts to the contrary; but I believed enough for everyone.

When I recounted the heated exchange to my mother that afternoon after school she turned from the pot she was stirring (it was boiled spare-ribs with sauerkraut... god help us all) and gave me a condescending look.

“What?” I said.

“Aren’t you a little old to still believe in Santa?” she said and continued stirring.

I was appalled. But I finally got it. I got the lie I had believed my entire life. I got that the reality of anything I couldn't see, or put my hand on, was suspect.

I was devastated, inconsolable, and I became as hard nails and colder than ice. And the smell of betrayal became the smell of grey boiling spare-ribs and saurkraut.

When my father found out what had happened he chastised my mother.

“WHY DID YOU TELL HER THAT?!”

“She’s too old to still believe.”

What she didn’t understand, but strangely, my father did, was that I needed to believe. I needed to believe in something. He understood because he needed to believe. Why my mother did not I will never understand.

Harrows

2006-12-14T04:15:00.000-05:00

Despite the personality conflicts we had as a family, things would iron out at Christmas. This was generally due to the fact that it was my father’s favorite holiday. He managed to be verbal and friendly at Christmas even after endless months of not speaking. We were really well-versed at the silent treatment at my house; but at Christmas it was truce time. That’s probably why it became my favorite holiday as well and why so many memories are tied to it. Better memories than the rest of the year.

My mother was not quite so into the truce as my father was, we referred to her as Scrooge but given that the barometer of fear and control was wrapped up in my father’s moods it's pretty sick that we picked on her. But I went for the peace and the illusion that we were a family like normal families. It was a short-lived illusion and sometimes took an extra dose of denial to maintain, but it was a dose I took every year.

I do not actually recall having a traditional Christmas tree, though I have seen home movies that show clearly that my parents did. By the time my memories kicked in we were deep into the blue and silver. My mother had decided that other colors were somewhat crass, meaning red and green, and she demanded, and for a change, got what she wanted, a tree decorated ONLY in blue and silver. We had blue balls, blue lights, silver garland, silver tinsel and with some protest she allowed a pair of white doves.

I came to hate the blue and silver tree.

I longed for a red and green traditional tree with ornaments of Santa, angels, toys, candy canes – anything but blue balls. No comments on that phrase, please.

For a time my father, who was the keeper of all things to do with the tree, except of course the color-scheme, would deign to allow me to place a bulb here and there or to carefully drape tinsel on the lower branches. Mind you I often caught him removing the strands of tinsel I had placed so carefully (as he had taught me) and replacing them in a more aesthetic manner. Perhaps I didn’t do it quite right, I did learn good tinsel technique though, despite his ‘fixing’: never toss, always place and drape carefully. But eventually it came to pass that I was no longer allowed tree-decorating access. I felt cut out, nothing new there.
But then one year my father came up with a solution. It was clear I had inherited at least some talent for design from him, and that I wanted desperately to decorate a tree. In a burst of generosity brought on by the spirit of Christmas itself, he took me to Harrow’s. It was the local pool store during the summer and it became a Christmas wonderland during the off-season.

We picked out, and he bought me, a small artificial tree that I would put in my room and could decorate in any manner I saw fit. Certainly it was one more thing that relegated me to my room and further separated me from any sense of family, but on the other hand, I had a tree I could do with as I pleased and I put that puppy up every year until I moved out and could get a real tree of my own.

I have no love of artificial trees, I love the smell of a fresh tree and the process of picking a really fresh, well-formed one. I even love the mess of pine needles after the tree dries out. But I did love my little 3 foot artificial tree.

Part of the tradition of Christmas became the great excursion to Harrows that my mother joined us for in the beginning but then became a father and daughter only deal. We would slowly go up and down the aisles of decorated artificial trees looking for new and exciting ornaments for my little tree. I believe my father was no greater fan of the strict blue and silver rule than I was and buying the figures and baubles for my mini-tree was an outlet for him. We found fabulous things like tiny red birds with real feathers and wires coming out of their feet so you could attach them to branches and they appeared ‘real’. We found the aforementioned white doves, also with real feathers. We came home with tiny golden cherubs, a flocked white and silver cardboard train with a Santa at the helm, brilliantly colored jewel-toned butterflies with glitter encrusted wings, strings of lights designed to look like poinsettia, several types of Santa Clauses, various elves, reindeer, boots, drums and angels. I no longer have the tree, but I still have the decorations and I use at least a few of them on my tree every year.

Despite my recovering Catholic status, and the fact that I have no faith in organized religions, I still celebrate the parts of Christmas that meant peace in my family, if not on earth.

Every year we would go and get a few more ornaments, but the real fun was the trip itself, the fully decorated trees, the new ornaments. They would even put up a display of automatons that were, much to our sorrow, not for sale. Sometimes it was a Santa village, sometimes an outdoor scene, or kids decorating a tree. The automatons moving in endless repetition of a wave or the placement of an ornament on a tree.

The year they finally did have the moving dolls for sale was the easiest year my mother and I had buying a present for my father who was notoriously difficult to buy for. The first year we got him a little girl about three feet tall dressed in blue velvet holding a candle, the following year we got the matching boy. They were not cheap, and they were quite beautiful. Many years later such items became so mass-produced that you could buy them in your local drugstore; and they were not nearly so well-made. He was smitten with the giant moving dolls.

I loved those trips to Harrow’s and the Ellwood nursery who also hopped on the Christmas season, off-season for them as well, and they did many fabulous Christmas display scenes as well. We’d go there to look for a tree and to look at the displays. When we stopped going I felt an era end. Now I take myself to look at store windows in Manhattan every year. The only time I didn’t go it alone was the year I took my father. I think it reminded him of those long-lost forays into Christmas fantasy too.

John Lennon

2006-12-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

I am proud to note that as a baby I was given a Beatle lunch box for Christmas. What in the world a two-year old was going to do with a lunch box I can’t imagine. I no longer have the lunchbox, nor do I have any actual memory of the item, but I have home movies that show me with it under a Christmas tree. My parents did not listen to the Beatles... Sinatra ruled in that house (not that that is a bad thing!) It seems it was a prophecy gift of sorts.

At 12 I 'discovered' the Beatles, and I was hooked for the next 20 years.

At first I listened to the albums blindly just absorbing the music. I had a crush on Paul, naturally the non-threatening, non-dangerous, feminine looking "cute one" would be the first to appeal to a pre-teen and started listening to discern which Beatle was singing lead on which song. It only took about four weeks to determine that the songs I liked best were not sung by ‘the cute one’ but rather by the ‘smart ass’. And that set a precedent for me for the rest of my life. I can't help it. I love a smart ass. So I became a John Lennon fan and everyone else paled in comparison. Guys who weren’t quick-witted, funny and fast with a wisecrack really didn’t appeal to me all that much. They still don't. Thanks Mr. Lennon.

I read every book I could find on the Beatles, I wrote a high school term paper about them. I went to my first Beatle convention at 13 (yes, geek, I know, I know) and there I picked up a Yoko Ono album for the wildly inexpensive price of $3.99. APPROXIMATELY INFINITE UNIVERSE (double album) quickly became one of my favorites. Let me state here that despite the disdain Yoko Ono has received from the public, I believe she was much ahead of her time. Though perhaps not a musical genius, she was an artist and she went for her ideas with a bravery I found admirable. Plus, if the great John Lennon thought she was something special, who was I to doubt it? And in truth, I really dug her songs. So what if I was the only one who wanted to listen to it? Go Yoko, I say.

I dreamed of getting my hands on an original TWO VIRGINS album with brown paper wrap intact. Although I knew it didn’t actually contain much ‘music’ per se and was fairly experimental, I wanted it for the personal insight into my favorite artists as well as its rarity. It was music that began my collector’s habit in earnest. I had a decent comic book collection as a kid, but it couldn’t compare to where I went with music. Primarily because the comics were doled out by my parents, while the music I bought on my own.

I can remember how thrilled I was the first time I heard Alice Cooper’s School's Out, and the excitement Bohemian Rhapsody caused. I remember the first Prince single I Wanna Be Your Lover and thinking how powerful it was musically and how daring lyrically (it was the 70s.. remember?) I also recall being extremely pissed off when I was a senior in high school and my soon to be boyfriend received a 45 of the song from some junior chick on Valentine’s Day. What gall! How DARE she!! What a brazen little hussy…and why didn’t I think of it first?

Music was tremendously important to me – and it was all played on vinyl LPs, which I still own along with my small 45 collection. CDs and MP3s are superior in sound quality and ease of play, but I regret that today’s teenagers will never know the thrill of a turntable, the dexterity required to place coins on the needle arm to ward off skips, a 12" x 12" album cover and the unbounded joy of finding that there was a lyric sheet inside, or even a poster! Albums were a total experience, visual, aural and tactile. And in the case of some album covers, delights of design, such as the Rolling Stone’s STICKY FINGERS cover (with real working zipper) or Lennon’s own WALLS & BRIDGES with it’s changing flaps; which I finally found at a convention and carried home with great care lest some portion of the cover be bent.

I remember how happy I was to find that my friend Sandy, whom I met my freshman year in college, was a Doo-Wop fan. And knew who the Big Bopper and Gene Vincent were. Of course, with all the joys music brought me in my teens there was bound to be sorrow to balance it. Unfortunately that sorrow was nearly unbearable, not only for me, but for millions around the world.

In the weeks before John Lennon was murdered, the local radio station was playing a song from his much anticipated, soon to be release first album in YEARS. Excitement was high for fans and I was floored when I turned on the radio one morning and heard that beloved voice: singing something I had never heard! It was the first taste of the new album, Watching the Wheels. I listened in rapture and I DID love it. The DJ asked people to call in with their opinions. It was one of the only times I ever got through to a radio DJ. The other time was in the 6th grade when during a sleep over my girlfriends and I endlessly called the radio station asking them to play Paper Lace’s one hit wonder, The Night Chicago Died. (They refused.) So I was a nervous wreck, first just for placing the call, as I dread the telephone to this day, and second because I would be voicing my opinion.

The DJ did not share my enthusiasm for the new song and I found my voice quite surprisingly and quickly.

"WHAT?" I said. "It’s WONDERFUL!"

"It’s not the Beatles," said the loser Long Island DJ.

"It’s better than THE BEATLES! IT’S JOHN LENNON – and it’s GREAT!"

I was proud to stand up for myself, and the music of a great man.

The night of the December 8, 1980, the night of the shooting, was one of the rare nights I’d gone to bed early. I slept through all the news stories. My friends from High School, even my boyfriend, were afraid to call me, they all heard about it that night and no one wanted to speak to me.

My mother actually came up to my room to tell me the next morning. It was devastating. I went to bed in one world and woke into another. It was a world wounded and broken, and I mourned with everyone else.

I put the black and white poster of John at the piano that came with the IMAGINE album in our front window in imitation of the red stars I’d grown up seeing in windows in memory of fallen soldiers. My parents were actually cool about it, which I admire. Though they were not fans, they understood the enormity of the loss – at least in how it pertained to me. Though they drove me nuts, sometimes they could surprise me.

Weeks later, after the shooting, all the radio stations were playing Watching the Wheels and praising it. It was a bittersweet vindication.

Radio Shows

2006-12-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

My father distanced himself from me when I was around seven, when my parents marital problems began; or at least that was when I became aware that there were problems. Seven is the age of 'reason' after all. There were a few things, in addition to Christmas, that we shared a common interest in.

Whether I developed my interests in order to have something to say to him or to ‘make him like me’ or whether it was the direction I would have found on my own is hard to determine now. Nor does it matter.

My father loved the radio. He favored the radio over television, even up to his death. Of course he enjoyed movies, but television as a medium left him cold except for occasional shows. This may have been due to the fact that he worked nights and when television was still relatively new, daytime television was the domain of soap operas. He had grown up in the golden age of radio, it was THE thing, and when he was young radio truly rocked (it started rolling a couple of decades later).

My father heard the original, live broadcast of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. He loved to recount how he and his twin brother were sent to bed that Halloween night – after they heard the start of the Mercury Theater of the Air’s announcement that tonight’s show was to be War of the Worlds. They were as bummed as only small boys deprived of science fiction can be. The radio remained on in the other room where his parents and some friends were listening. They, being adults, had been talking during the opening of the show and did not catch what was going on.

My father said it was great fun knowing that it was all a fake, just a clever conceit that the 'story' was happening in real time, and hearing his parents become increasing distressed as the news broadcasters ‘interrupted’ with details of the Martian Invasion of New Jersey. Only a breath away from Queens, New York!

Thankfully the adults didn’t panic in some drastic, horrible way as so many did that night, they just got a scared... and a little frantic... until they finally heard that it was merely a realistically done show. Nonetheless my father’s boyhood ‘revenge’ was sweet – knowing how frightened they'd been - after they had the audacity to send a small boy to bed early on Halloween.

He told me this story for the first time when we obtained an LP of old radio shows, the star of the collection being War of the Worlds. I listened in rapt attention to both the story and then the radio show itself. We had turned out the lights and played the entire album. I was amazed at the skill and the story telling, and excited that I was touching history by listening to my father’s story. I had always heard him say how wonderful radio shows were and that television could never compare. His stand was that nothing anyone could put on film could ever compare with what you would see in your imagination. When I heard War of the Worlds I finally understood what he meant.

Over the years we built a small collection of various shows that were available on LP and later on cassette tapes. I would give them to him as gifts and then we'd listen to them together or when I was older and had moved out of the house, he’d let me borrow them. Arch Obler’s Lights Out! was fun, but not all that scary, The Inner Sanctum, one of my father’s all time faves, was more frightening.

The Shadow was also a special favorite of his. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! When the film version of the Shadow came out in the late '90s my father saw it, on tape – he had long since stopped going to movie theaters. He was disgusted. There was no way to capture Lamont Cranston clouding men’s minds on film. It required the allure of the radio.

So we had Christmas, comics, radio, horror movies, science fiction and some nostalgic stories of how the world used to be. It may not have been the typical father-daughter relationship, but it’s what we had and it’s okay. Maybe its actually more than some.

Thanksgiving at the E.R.

2006-11-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

Dreams of family holidays as it seemed others had them are always with me. My mother was not the Martha Stewart type. That’s not to say that from time to time she wouldn’t get a domestic urge or two; but on the whole she was less into the ‘home’ thing than I was.

When I moved out on my own I decided I could at the very least attempt to make holidays the way I wanted them… to a degree.

When I was 26 I prepared my first full-out Thanksgiving dinner in my studio apartment in Brooklyn. I had a single guest: my father.

I slaved over that meal and frankly it came out divinely. I’m not much for cooking on a daily basis, but when it comes to spectacle I’m there. This puppy was a spectacle.

The turkey was surrounded by greens and grapes and looked like something out of a magazine. I was stunned by my own success, as was my father. It’s funny that at the time it didn’t seem strange to me that I managed to do it owning only two pots which I continued to wash and reuse throughout the cooking process. It was my father who pointed it out.

"You only have two pots?"

"Uh… yeah."

"Pretty good."
He may as well have handed me an Oscar.

Since that first Thanksgiving meal had gone so well I decided to take the holiday as my own. I continued to make Thanksgiving dinner for the next eight years straight. It was always a hit. Of course, I should have realized that a streak like that had to end, and needed to end on an equally spectacular note.

The last time I made Thanksgiving dinner for my parents I had moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. The thrill of not having the bed in the livingroom!! I had by that time acquired a full set of pots, copper bottoms naturally, and I admit it did make the preparation somewhat easier. Two pots was tough!

I had both my parents coming to dinner and they were both going to sleep over. The whole "happy" family together in one tiny apartment. I should have known it would lead to no good. But I was blinded by my past successes. Foolish woman!

The dinner itself went very well, my anorexic mother actually chowed down and even made some headway on seconds. After dinner we sat around and were civil and yes, even friendly with each other. A great rarity which should indeed have clued me in to the fact that a stupendous cosmic amusement was heading our way.

My father took the couch and my mother and I shared the bed, with the dog, of course. Around three o’clock in the morning my dog Basil, who was then just under a year old, woke me up with nudges and frantic whimpering. Highly unusual behavior for him. I woke up and thought he must need to go out badly, got out of bed and attempted to make him calm down as I dressed to take him out.

He would have none of it.

He was whining at a high pitch and now began poking his pink nose into my mother’s side. I didn’t want him to wake her and was about to shoo him off the bed when my mother began to twitch and convulse. I had never seen anyone have a seizure, but it didn’t take but a second to figure out what was happening. I made sure she was on her side so she wouldn’t choke on her own saliva: perhaps that stupid girl scout badge in first-aid finally was coming to some good use.

I ran to the living room to call an ambulance, Basil stayed with my mother and I woke my father as I was talking to the 911 operator.

I’m always amazed at how calm and organized I become in a real emergency. I got her medical cards out, my shoes on, woke my father and all the while was giving the operator detailed information about what the situation was in a clear and concise manner.

Ask me to order a pizza on the phone and I freak out from stress: ask me to call an ambulance for my seizing mother, I’m a pro. Go figure.

My mom continued her seizure for at least 5 full minutes, possibly longer. It was terrifying, and yet I remained calm as I let the EMTs into the apartment and explained what I knew of what was going on, and answered their questions about her medical status. Her seizure stopped while they were there, thankfully as it seemed it would never end and they packed her tiny body up onto a chair and carried her down the single flight of stairs to the street. A stretcher was unmanageable in the hallways of a brownstone. The EMTs commented on what a pleasure she was as she was so incredibly light. For once her slimness was a virtue.

As all this was happening my father remained in the living room, ‘waking up’. It’s amazing how an alligator in the bed with him made him move at the speed of light while his estranged wife’s first seizure did nothing to increase his speed.
The EMTs took her down the stairs and I told my father that he should hurry, we had to go with her to the Emergency room. He looked at me blankly and said, "I gotta wake up first."

He was not going to come with us.

I was furious. I was also scared. I did not want to do this alone. I wanted my daddy. But this was him, and that meant I was going alone. This was not a shock... but like I said, I craved the 'ideal' family. Would I ever learn?

Off I went in the ambulance with my mother who was, while conscious, not at all herself. Small wonder after a massive, grand mal seizure.

She was talking, but not aware of where she was, who she was or what was going on. She was actually hallucinating, but I didn’t realize it until later.

We got her situated in the ER, no waiting! And I had to explain over and over again that this was abnormal behavior for her and that she did not have Alzheimer’s disease. It turned out that what she did have was an electrolyte imbalance, probably brought on by never eating enough. My mother, the new Karen Carpenter.

After several hours she was settled, checked in and being given intravenous solutions to balance her out. I was able to run home to walk the poor heroic dog who had, thankfully, sensed the seizure coming and alerted me. Had it not been for him I believe I’d have slept through the entire episode, exhausted from all the cooking of the day before, and God knows what might have happened.

When I got home I found my father at the kitchen table eating breakfast.

That’s right, EATING BREAKFAST. HELLO? I’m at the ER with his ‘beloved wife’ who he wants back so badly, and the man is eating toast.

Now that the sun had risen and he’d properly followed his morning habits, he was ready to accompany me to the hospital 5 blocks away.

The thing about the time in the ER, which turned out to be a good 12 hours before they felt her electrolytes were balanced enough to check her into a room, is that the entire time she was talking a blue streak and, true to form, she was funny! Hey, she might not have been the world's greatest mother; but the woman was funny, no denying.

She did not think she was terribly funny when she heard about it later, but despite my anxiety, I was cracking up. My mom had a penchant for ½ hour sitcoms and dark-haired young men and it was therefore a natural that her hallucinations included visits from both John Stamos and Tony Danza. They spent several hours each ‘visiting’ with her in the ER.

When doctors or nurses would come into the curtained area where my mother was laying in bed connected to tubes flowing with stabilizing fluids, I had to ‘introduce’ them to the various entities that were also chilling bedside with me. We were the big stars of the ER, what with all the celebrities coming in and out.
My mother’s intense nicotine habit also reared its head. She continually asked for a cigarette and when none was proffered she simply hallucinated herself one. It was without doubt the most exacting mime show I’ve ever seen.

She pulled out a pack, removed a cigarette, located matches in a non-existent pocket, tore one from the booklet, lit it (after two unsuccessful strikes it finally caught) lit the cigarette and inhaled with deep satisfaction asking me to get her the ashtray that was "over there". I got the imaginary ashtray and watched as she put the spent ‘match’ into it, very safe and fire conscious of her, and continued to smoke. I’d never seen anything quite so real. I could practically smell the smoke. And she smoked it down to the filter – the timing was exact. Quite the hallucination.

Later hallucinations during subsequent days and other hospital incidents would become less entertaining and more disturbing, like the time she believed ‘voodoo men’ were coming to get her; I surmise all the IV needles brought that one on and she was a frequent IV remover. She often required wrist restraints to keep her from pulling out IVs as well as catheters. Luckily her mind was so altered when she’d do this, she felt no pain.

And so, that was the last time I made a Thanksgiving feast. Who can blame me?

Mary Poppins Redux

2006-11-22T11:47:00.000-05:00

Despite the life altering moments in my life involving Mary P. I was not a huge fan. I’m not a fan of musicals in general, and Mary Poppins just didn’t do it for me in any big way; but there was a singular version of Mary Poppins that did work for me.

I must have been in the first grade when there was a trip to see a theater production of Mary Poppins. I do not know the name of the theater, do not know where it was located, other than Long Island, but I know it opened my eyes to a new, very magical world: LIVE theater.

I had no expectations when I went to the show, as far as I knew it was a movie. Movies I knew, but theater? Never heard of it. It certainly seemed like a movie theater, the seats were the same, there was a curtain up front where I expected the screen to be. It was fun to get a folded paper program when we went in, but otherwise it was the same as going to the movies. I made a fan out of the green paper program and fanned myself quietly while we waited for the movie to begin. My mother was with me, she was a class-mother and since she did not work (God forbid!), she was able to go along on almost every trip as a guardian to help round up the students.

When the lights went down and the curtain came up on not a screen but a three-dimensional set with real furniture and REAL LIVE PEOPLE walking around on it, I was instantly hooked. It was a movie come to life right in front of me. I felt like I was somehow IN a movie, I felt part of the story and I felt that way until it was all over. I was absolutely bowled over.

I do not understand why my mother didn’t think to explain the difference between this and a movie to me; perhaps she just thought I knew what theater was. Maybe she wanted to surprise me. Either way, I was stunned – for once, in a good way.

After the performance the actors came outside on the front lawn (c'mon, Long Island, of course there was a lawn) of the theater and signed autographs for us. I flattened out my fanned program and got several autographs – ME who was afraid of my own shadow! I must have been too high to be afraid. It was then and there that I knew that was exactly the thing I wanted to do with my life – though it took me until I was 18 to work up the nerve to tell another living soul that fact. The things I want most are the things that are hardest for me to admit to, probably because I was denied so many dreams as a kid that I feared letting anyone know what I really wanted. If they knew they would laugh, (this was not a foundless fear: they actually mocked me) but this was one dream I couldn’t gamble with so I dreamed and kept my big mouth shut instead.

Despite all the inspiration: I'm still no fan of Mary Poppins.

Pumpkin Pie

2006-11-18T16:56:00.000-05:00

When I was in the first grade my parents decided my bedroom was in need of a fresh coat of paint. A normal event, in any normal house, but because I tended to be a somewhat morose and dark-minded child it should have come as no surprise at all to anyone that when asked what color I would like my room painted I responded with emphatic glee and with no hesitation: BLACK!

Needless to say their response was an equally immediate: NO!

The color I loved most, the color I knew would make the ultimate statement right on the line between cool and in need of hospitalization was denied me. I was not even allowed to wear black clothing, unless it was the dreaded patent leather mary janes my mother continued to foist on me until I finally, and figuratively, put my foot down. Even as a child my sense of style, such as it was, leaned more toward more classic or daring than the cutesy.

The juxtaposition of what they thought I was, or should be, and what I really was and am never showed itself more clearly than in the first thing they gave me. A source of endless travail as a child and a source of much cynical humor as an adult: my name.

Sweet, sweet irony: a depressive melancholic named “Joy”.

Of course there was no way my parents could have known when choosing that name what my personality would be like. Perhaps they thought it would encourage a sunny disposition. What a blow it must have been to find that I was more contrary than cheerful. When asked, as I am on a regular basis, why my mother chose that name my answer is always the same: She was a sarcastic bitch.

The truth of it is, as she told me when I was older, is a truly touching story. She wanted to name me Cassandra - a name that would have suited me more given the seer Cassandra’s lot in life - but she decided to go with the simple, three letter name instead; opining that I would not be smart enough to learn to spell both Cassandra and and my excessively-vowel filled last name before I was twenty-one.

Hey, who says there’s no such thing as parental encouragement? With that sort of confidence behind you, you're simply destined to succeed in life. (I did inherit my mother's sarcasm... how could I not?)

Perhaps because of my name and its inherent issues I have always found the naming of things, of people, of pets, or works of art, to be a task of such import, such power that it is nearly paralyzing. What you call a thing is what it will ultimately become. I refuse to use the word boss for just this reason. Of course this philosophy did not come from my parents, whose choices in naming things bordered on the stick a pin in the dictionary method.

Nicknames were not used in my home. My mother did not like them. When I was very, very young my father would call me “bup” which, I believe, is Polish for “bup”. But that stopped after kindergarten. Pretty much everything good stopped after kindergarten. Yet from time to time throughout my life, throughout my adolescence, my mother would call me by a nickname... the only one she ever used for me. It was not honey, dear, or sweetie, but rather pumpkin pie.

“Who’s my pumpkin pie?” She’d say.

The fact that my mother absolutely detested pumpkin pie leads me to wonder why she would choose that particular term of ‘endearment’. Yeah. Exactly.

I’ve mentioned my family’s lack of imagination when it came to names. This is most clearly illustrated in the names of my parents and their siblings. You see, it wasn’t their fault they named 6 parakeets in a row Sugar. My father’s name was Joseph Anthony… his twin brother’s name was Anthony Joseph. My mother’s name was Maureen Kathleen… her sister’s name was Kathleen Maureen. Get the picture? I knew that you would.

Nana Moves In

2006-11-15T19:30:00.000-05:00

My father’s mother, Nana as I knew her, lived in Jamaica Queens. Her house full of saints, mothballs and had a tiny, but very pretty little yard that my father had laid out for her. It was small enough for her to care for without help and though it was a typical teeny New York City backyard, it was still a yard. And it was a bit fantasy-like for a kid.

There was an archway with roses growing over it (pretty but problematic due to the abundance of bees, which terrified me) and a small bench, a pedestal birdbath and true to form, a saint. Francis to be exact, one of the few in the massive pantheon of Catholic saints that I had a handle on. Francis is the patron saint of animals. This was something I could get behind. The statue was dressed in the traditional Franciscan monk robes, he had the cool circle shave haircut and there was a bird settled on his outstretched hand. Because statues were like dolls to me, the rare times I was found outdoors I could be found hanging with St. Frank making up elaborate stories about talking to animals.

Though Nana lived alone in this house for over 20 years with no problem and was able to care for herself and the house, and continued to work as a housekeeper, by the early '70s the neighborhood was changing. Crime was rampant and her house was broken into three times, twice with her in it. Once when we were visiting her our car was broken into, in broad daylight. There was nothing of great value taken, the stolen goods were a few dresses of my mother's we’d picked up from the dry cleaners on the way to Queens. The most valuable thing in the car was my precious Teddy bear. This poor bear had seen some shit. When my father went out to the car, and told us it had been broken into, I was distraught! Who cared about clothes! Where was Teddy!?

Happily the thieves either had no use for a threadbare, one-eyed bear (imagine that?) or they had the heart not to take a child’s toy. Teddy lay forlornly in the footwell of the back seat. My faith in mankind was restored! My bear was safe. Needless to say I did not let her out of my sight after that.

During the third house robbery the sweet and well-washed Bobbi made a break for it. He ran away and was never seen again. Though I know we were all heartbroken, he was such a lovely, good dog, I always felt he ran to get away from the baths. I hope he found a home where he was allowed to revel in his own doggie smells for more than a week at a time.

It took Bobbi’s desertion to finally make the point clear to everyone that this crime-ridden area was not a good environment for an elderly lady living alone who was not in the best health. Even the loyal pup knew enough to get the hell outta Dodge.

There was much discussion amongst my father and his siblings as to what to do about the situation. Indicative of my close family ties, not one of my Nana’s four children was willing to take her in.

The fights began.

While Nana’s own children fought to keep her out, my mother was the voice of compassion.

“She’s coming here,” said my mother.

“No,” said my father.

“GODDAMMIT, SHE’S YOUR MOTHER!”

And that was the end of that.

It always surprised me that on rare occasions my mother found her voice and exerted a sense of reason and authority to which my father complied. When I say it was a rare event, I’m not kidding. It happened only three times. Nana moving in was the first time. And it was actually the most unusual because my mother and Nana were not on the best of terms by any stretch of the imagination. My grandmother didn’t think much of my mother in all the typical mother-in-law joke ways: she was a bad housekeeper, a bad cook (well… no argument there, but c’mon that’s no reason to dislike someone), and from what I understand, her worst quality was that she was not Polish. This, from my point of view, given what was going on amongst the Polish contingent, was the one quality to be most applauded.

Despite the lack of love between them, my mother’s Irish clannishness would not allow my father and his brethren to put their mother into a nursing home. It just wasn’t done. She was coming to live with us and that was the end of it.

Now this was not a simple matter of moving someone into an existing space. The house we lived in had two bedrooms and one bathroom and that was it.

Where to put the new arrival?

Simple answer: build a room.

The attic of our house had been designed to be turned into a second floor, two bedrooms and a second bathroom. It was one of the selling points of the modest abode. All the neighboring houses, of the same model... oh yes, they were ALL the same model, had converted the attic. But my father, never one to spend unnecessarily, had no intention of making the upstairs into a livable space. Until Nana was coming.

To make the alteration to the upstairs required the installation of a dormer to one side of the roof. My father was a do-it-yourself guy from time immemorial. In times past, when installing insulation to the attic or laying some plywood so one could use the attic without having to walk the balance beams of rafters, he had fallen through the dining room ceiling. On two separate occasions... In the same spot... ‘Nuff said on the Polish jokes.

The repaired space in the dining room ceiling was always discernible, and my mother loved recounting the story of my father yelling, her running into the room and seeing his legs dangling through the dining room ceiling. Twice. I never saw it myself, but I could certainly visualize it. Oh the things we found to laugh about.

But when he finally agreed to renovate half of the attic into a bedroom and bath for his mother even more fights ensued. He was going to do it himself. Now this is not a one-man job. This is the Amish raising a barn. Oh he wanted to do it himself. There was no way he was going to pay someone else to come in and touch his precious house. First, he loathed parting with the money, but more importantly he did not want someone else touching his house. This was tantamount to residential infidelity! But after attempting to do it himself, to the extent of cutting a giant section of the attic roof away, he saw it was an impossible task. He was forced to hire a contractor.... or we'd be living in a house with a giant hole the length of the roof.

He found a contractor, through the yellow pages I believe. They came, they estimated, the deal was sealed. But then the horror of governmental intervention reared its bureaucratic head. Lo and horrors: to make such an alteration to the house required the dreaded PERMIT! Who knew? My father was furious.

“It’s MY HOUSE,” he ranted. “Why do I need the town’s PERMISSION to do something to MY HOUSE?!”

The contractor must have been desperate for the job, there’s no other reason I can see that he would have dealt with the stubborn arguments of my father’s house-possessiveness. But the contractor stuck it out, my father finally arranged to get the permit, which then brought an assessor to come re-assess the value of the house and then involved getting an electrician to come in and certify that the wiring; which my father did do himself, was done properly… oh it was an adventure.

The actual installation of the dormer took a mere two days and went like a charm. It was all the pre-building arrangements that made for many sleepless nights full of raised voices that, for once, were not raised in alcoholic rages.

Once the bedroom was created, my father paneled it. Why paneling was so hot in the '70s is something I still do not understand. It was ugly, you were stuck with it seemingly forever and it made every room look like a finished basement. Needless to say almost every room in our house was paneled. Dark, wood tone in keeping with the ever-cheerful outlook of the inhabitants. And so, paneled and dark, the room then required a carpet to cover the plywood floor. This was yet another expense my father balked at. Luckily, the Fletchers were getting new living room carpeting at the same time.

They had a huge hunk of carpet they were getting rid of and offered it as Nana-room carpet. My father jumped at it. Unfortunately it was the perfect '70s carpet: all the popular colors of the time, rust, gold and avocado green – and yes, I know you’ve already guessed, it was shag.

I imagine my Nana was thrilled, though she never commented.

So the room was finally ready, the bathroom was going to take a while longer. But it was necessary that there be one on the second floor because otherwise poor Nana would have to take the stairs several times a day and that wasn’t going to work out. She had pretty much stopped using the second floor of her own home because the stairs were too much for her. But this was a secondary matter to be dealt with another time. First she and her furniture had to be moved out to Long Island and her house sold.

And herewith began more battles.

Though her loving children did not want the old dame moving in with them, they had a definite desire for her stuff. She obviously could not take everything with her to our house, though she was able to take some furniture for her own use – luckily the upstairs bedroom was quite the largest in the house and was a virtual studio apartment (actually the same size as one I eventually moved into in Brooklyn) so she was able to keep things she loved. Needless to say, several saints came to live in beautiful, suburban Centereach. But the ‘kids’ fought over the rest.

She wasn’t dead – but they fought as if she was.

It was at that point that my connections to my father's side of the extended family failed. The siblings broke ranks over inanimate objects thus showing the true nature of familial love. I had thought the arrival of a matriarchal figure into our house would keep the weekend rages under control to some degree, and that having her there would mean increased visitations from other family members. Neither was the case. So much for my dreams of a full family life. God how I wished I was Italian.

So Nana moved upstairs and I virtually never saw her again.

I believe the loss of her autonomy was her death knell. She lived with us for a total of six weeks and became ill enough to require an ambulance to take her to the hospital. It was my first, but not my last, contact with an ambulance visit.
The last time I saw her alive was as they took her out the front door on a stretcher. She died within a week of her hospitalization.

Though I had not been close to her, I was saddened by the loss. She was the first of my grandparents to die that I knew. Her husband died when I was a month old so I never knew him.

My mother was good enough to spare me the funeral, for which I was grateful, as my shyness made me terrified. I had never attended a funeral but had heard, from the Fletcher kids, that you had to go up to the casket and kiss the corpse. Despite my attraction to the macabre, this was NOT something I had any interest in participating in. My mother, ever hating the open casket tradition, let me off the hook. I stayed home with Mary Jean Flynn, one of the tanning girls, but one of the sweetest maybe because she was more of a freckler than a tanner like her sisters. She wasn’t much older than me, but, as ever, my mother’s over possessiveness would not allow me to stay home alone.

The upside of all this construction, familial backbiting and death was that I got to move into the upstairs bedroom mere months after my Nana’s demise. I felt like Greg Brady getting his own room.

I was as thrilled with the huge room as I was unhappy about the paneling which made it impossible to choose a color to paint the walls… one did not paint paneling. But I worked with what was there and the color scheme became secondary to the fact that I was now no longer one wall away from my parent’s bedroom. This made the weekends slightly less stressful in that I did not hear every word leading up to the fights, instead I just heard the main event, and I was able to cocoon myself in the attic room with my music and let them fight amongst themselves. I still worried for my mother’s safety, but by the time I moved upstairs I was accustomed to sleepless weekends and fear. Being upstairs helped to quite literally keep me above it all.

Thanks Nana.

Oh and that second bathroom? It never happened. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Swimming Pool Disaster

2006-11-14T19:34:00.000-05:00

The day of the great swimming pool explosion was a typical summer’s day in suburbia in the early 1970s.

Three of the backyards adjoining ours had swimming pools. The house directly next door, owned by the Mahr family was one of them. This was in the beginning of the ‘get a pool’ craze in our neighborhood so everyone was still working with the old-style above-ground pools. Years later they would all upgrade to built-ins. And by all I mean, not us.

The problem with the pool at the Mahr house was that the three houses that were side by side, ours being in the middle, was that the backyards were on a grade. Now when my parents moved in back in 1956 my father, ever in love with the garden and the landscaping, had done a major overhaul to our yard.

He had dug it all up, pulling dozens of wheelbarrows full of stones out of the ground. Smoothed it all down and made a definitive divide between the top portion of the yard where the house was and the lower part of the yard. So instead of an incline there was now a firm ledge. He installed three little brick steps into the edge of the ledge and a flat stone path leading from the house to the three little steps. The lower portion of the yard lay flat.

The houses on either side of us maintained the full slope with no delineation and it was on this perilous slope that the pool next door was built. I imagine it was shored up somehow at the lower end, but it may not have been. I was a kid, I wasn't really checking up on my neighbors' engineering skills.

On that clear summer day of the great swimming pool disaster I was happily ensconced in my drawn-shaded, electrically-lit room reading when I heard a massive explosion outside my window; which overlooked the Mahr’s yard.

It never occured to me to open the shades and look out. Explosion? I was getting the hell out! I ran out to the backyard where my parents were staring open-mouthed at the Mahr's yard.

Everyone was out in their yard – the explosion was not something anyone missed.

And there, right next door, was as close to a tidal wave as I would ever see. An entire swimming pool full of water was coursing down the slope with the wreckage of the swimming pool dragging along with it until it reached the next yard which was level ground.

Mr. Mahr did not replace the pool.

But my father salvaged the blue plastic pool lining and made wonderful use of it.

Because of the definite hill my father had built in the back yard we had a decent place to sled in the winter. It wasn't a long trip, but you could actually get a slide in. And whenever any of the neighbors got a new appliance, stove, refrigerator, washer, what have you, we kids would play in the box until it tore. Then we’d take the largest portion of the box, lay it down on the hill, covering the grass and tear up smaller pieces to use as slides and down the hill we’d go. Cardboard on cardboard is slippery. Cardboard on grass doesn't work as well: too much traction.

So with the old boxes we went sledding in summer. Even my father would join in. (It goes without saying that this all took place when I was VERY young... before the bad times ...)

The great idea my father had when he asked Mr. Mahr if he could have the lining of his now defunct pool was to take the liner and lay it down on the hill, run the hose onto it and make a water slide. No cardboard necessary - plastic and water are PLENTY slippery.

It was FABULOUS.

It was also several years before the advent of Slip n’ Slides - or at least before they were advertised on television. The kids in my neighborhood balked when that contraption hit the airwaves. The Slip n’ Slide was a pale comparison to a full-length backyard of slide.

When the lining gave out my father used pieces of it to line the two small ponds he designed and dug out in the backyard. Recycling never had it so good.

Needless to say there was never an actual pool in our backyard.

Bathing Bobbi

2006-11-11T17:25:00.001-05:00

My father’s mother was a clean freak. And I don’t mean she was simply overly concerned with tidiness. The woman was obsessed. My prevailing memory of her house is the smell of mothballs. No moth was getting in, and if one did, By GOD it was not getting out alive.

She also had an overwhelming number of religious icons. It was a veritable museum collection of paintings of saints. No one ever explained to me who they were or what they were in charge of, but they were always there, eyes following you as you walked through the rooms. I imagine that was part of why she was so concerned with cleanliness. Clearly, with all those eyes constantly on you, you want to make a nice impression.

Typically people like my Nana (my father's mother was Nana, my mother's mother was Grandma) are not animal people as pets make it very tough to keep on top of the household hygiene. But she actually had two pets: Peter the parakeet and Bobbi the dog. Bobbi was a mixed breed but a mix of what I’m not quite certain. He looked like a very small sheep dog with slightly shorter, curlier, champagne-white hair.

True to Nana's inner need for cleanliness, Peter had a small birdbath which she regularly put into his cage and he dutifully used. Possibly he enjoyed it, but it might be that he instinctively knew if he didn’t wash up he’d suffer the ablutions Bobbi endured. It was unlikely that the small, blue budgie would survive a bath like Bobbi's.

Every Saturday night, without fail, my Nana would give Bobbi a bath. I’m not sure if he liked it; my guess is he tolerated it, as dogs will. Now keeping your dog clean isn’t crazy, isn’t unusual and is, in fact, to be commended. Certainly bathing a non-show dog every Saturday may be excessive, but still it wasn’t all that bad. What was, shall we say, interesting about Bobbi’s bath ritual was the drying process.

Nana would wrap the little guy in a big towel and pop him into the oven, on low, to dry.

I think Bobbi would have appreciated, more than most, the advent of the blow-dryer.

Edgar Allan Poe

2006-10-30T19:54:00.000-05:00

In the second grade I finally found a way to break into show business. There was to be a talent show that the entire school could participate in and all you had to do was prepare your skit and perform it as an audition. The judging would decide if you would be included in the show.

My best friend, Donna, and I were voracious readers. Nothing made us happier than the arrival of the Scholastic book orders. From the second until the fifth grades it was ritual for us to pour over the offerings and pool our funds to buy more books than either of us could afford separately. Our books of choice tended to be horror, mystery and dog or other animal stories with the occasional biography thrown in for good measure or a book of some type of science. Hurricanes, tornadoes any sort of natural disaster book would find its way onto our list. As we got a little older we began investing in what is now called YA (Young Adult) fiction. I still have fond memories of the much re-read THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND by Elizabeth George Speare.

We often had to cull our choices by dozens, but we still always bought more books than all the other kids put together. God bless Scholastic: the priciest book was, if I remember correctly, 75¢. So we could really indulge on the 35¢-60¢ books and feel rich.

Despite the bookworminess, I longed to be an actress, though no one on earth knew that until I was 18, so when the talent show came up it seemed natural that we find a way to incorporate our pervasive love of books with some sort of ‘talent’ that could be performed live on a stage.

I had recently seen an unusual form of entertainment on some variety show or other. It was Tony Randall performing something called Madeira, My Dear-a.

It was spoken word piece, what I later found to be called Oral Interpretation of Literature. In the Second grade all I knew was THIS was something we could do. All it involved was reading aloud – We who LOVED to read! We were destined to be fabulous!

After a visit to the dentist, pretty rare - doctors of any kind were not something we did regularly - my mother would take me around to Smile’s 5 & dime store. It was a store of incomparable wonders. If you needed it, they had it. Didn’t matter much what you asked for, Mr. Smile (yes, that was his name) would go down to the basement and emerge through the curtained doorway at the back of the store minutes later with precisely the object you asked for. It was like magic, or something out of Ray Bradbury. My treat for having endured the dentist, which frankly I had no problem with – actually thought I wanted to be a dentist for many years because I enjoyed going so much… I know, I really was a strange child – was to go to Smile's and pick out one item.

At first I’d always pick a bag of tiny plastic animals, or army men, or whatever came by the dozens in a bag for under a buck. But then I discovered the revolving book rack. Now there was bliss. Whitman Publishing had a slew of titles, one more exciting than the next, all in hardcover with more words than pictures = wheee!

When I first discovered these amazing 89¢ books I was covetous of each and every one of them. But the one I chose first was the Collected Edgar Allan Poe. I was in the second grade. I loved it. I realized in later years that it was perhaps an odd choice for a child so young, but I had seen all the Roger Corman Poe movies and I NEEDED that book. I still have it. Of course. It was my first hardcover book... well, the first one that didn't have a Catholic theme any way....

When it came time to choose what piece we would use for our talent audition, it was clear it should be something from Poe. We chose BERNICE because it had a gruesome section on finding poor doomed Bernice’s pearly white teeth. I really was dentist obsessed.

We decided we would read the selection in total darkness, while holding flashlights under our chins to give us a spooky glow. We were ARTISTS! This required lighting design!

My mother actually helped us rehearse the scene. However, she didn’t direct us, just listened and I believe we may have required some tips. Just a guess. Second grade, remember?

The day of the auditions we put a black sheet (yes, it was actually grey and it still had some staples in it) over the two of us, our heads and hands sticking out for a ‘ghostly’ effect, we were both very white kids. We had the book in front of us and our flashlights under our chins. We read, compellingly we thought, from the story of BERNICE and her teeth.

We had worked out our scary, dramatic ending... we switched off the flashlights in unison... Oooh... Spooky!!

Crickets could be heard chirping from two towns away.

I was never much for talent shows anyway.

Halloween Costumes

2006-10-21T11:34:00.000-04:00

There are two choices when deciding on Halloween costumes: store-bought or homemade.

The store-bought costumes of my youth were barely costumes. They consisted of a plastic mask with slits in the mouth and nose for a minimum of ventilation and two holes for eyes; if you were lucky they fit you were your eyes actually were, if not it was a constant tug of war to keep some sort of vision while clutching a pillow case, hopefully stuffed with good candy. (Good candy meaning anything other than lollipops)

This mask contraption was held onto your young face with an elastic cord that would invariably pop out of one side or the other of the thin plastic mask. The costume itself was something like a smock that would be worn over your clothing – usually over a jacket as well because in those bygone years of pre-global warming, October actually was cold. And Halloween could sometimes even be freezing, if you were allowed to Trick or Treat after dark – not that I ever was.

Now homemade costumes tended to be better in quality, if not design. One year my father made me into a robot. I was a Gigantor NUT and wanted a Gigantor of my own. Of course I also wanted one of the baby elephants advertised in the back of the Enquirer for a mere $500 as well. I still don’t understand why they wouldn’t go for it. Baby ELEPHANT people! What could be better? So okay, no elephant and no Gigantor, I really had a thing for bigger than big, taller than tall etc. But despite the lack of giant pets or crime fighting radio-controlled robots at my beck and call, my father did design and implement a costume whereby I would become Gigantor myself.

It was genius in its simplicity, and as an adult I have seen that others had a very similar costume back then. But at the time it was unique (at least to me).

It consisted of two boxes covered with tinfoil. A large one for the body and a smaller one as the head. A silver shirt of my mother's underneath and my arms stuck out the sides of the larger box. Pointed tubes glued to the boxes (they were the tips from a caulking gun) completed the robot look.

Sadly, though the look of it was truly awe-inspiring to me, wearing it AND walking proved to require far too much dexterity. I kept falling down.
Eventually I was a robot hermit crab, shedding the larger body box while my father carried it around as we went from house to house. Me, black pants, oversized silver shirt and a tinfoil covered box on my head. Pretty.

But of all the costumes before and since, none can compare to the wonder that was my mother’s ‘oops’ costume. Somehow she’d managed to forget the next day was Halloween. Too much vino will do that.

It was too late to buy a costume and putting something together was also pushed to the time limits. She lit a cigarette and gave it some serious thought.

"Got it!!" she declared from her perch at the kitchen counter.

"What? What is it?!" I was quite excited as she seemed to have hit on something fantastic.

"You’ll be a GHOST!" she gushed.

Well. Not to disparage ghosts, but it’s not exactly the costume of the century now is it? In fact it’s pretty well the lame, ‘oops’ costume of choice. But my mother had other plans for the typical white sheet with two eye holes. Seeing my disappointment, she elaborated on her idea.

"Not just a regular ghost," she told me. "You’re going to be a HIPPIE-ghost!"

It was the late '60s after all and hippies were everywhere. Strange creatures with strange clothing… how one would make a ghost into a ‘hippie’ ghost was yet to be determined, but my mother was very excited by the idea.

About an hour later, after rummaging through drawers, linen closet and sewing basket, she had it. The plan was set.

My mother had a veritable addiction to Rit-Dye. We’d dye just about anything made of cloth. You’d boil some water, pop the dye packet in with some vinegar (though the vinegar addition was dropped by the end of the '70s) and then in went the clothing item you wanted dyed. My mother had a package of black dye. We had a white sheet. The sheet was going to be dyed black -- this was to be the basis of the hippie ghost costume.

A black sheet however is not enough to indicate the inhabitant ghost is a flower child. Her solution? Curling ribbon. The thin, bumpy ribbon you run over the edge of a scissor to make fancy bows for gifts. We had assorted colors of curling ribbon and while the black sheet dried we curled dozens upon dozens of small lengths of ribbon. When the sheet dried, however, it was not exactly what we’d envisioned. It was more a dull, dark gray than the pure black we both wanted. But we were out of dye, my father was already gone for work, so there was no way to get hold of more dye for another try.

We cut eye holes and got to work attaching the curls of ribbon. Ever one for a short-cut in the homemaking world, my mother opted to staple the ribbon to the sheet. It worked in theory, but curling ribbon tears vertically very easily. The staples went through but the slightest tug would tear the ribbon and the curls would fall off. I had to be extremely careful if I wanted to maintain any sort of ribboning effect. Fat chance.

The next day we went trick or treating. Not one person had a clue as to what I was supposed to be.

I think I looked more like the Blob than a representation of a hippie ghost. Had I been a little older I might have referred to myself as a Jackson Pollack ghost. But either way, the costume didn’t really hold up, either in idea or in execution.

By the time we arrived home I was wearing nothing but a staple riddled dingy grey sheet.

The neighborhood lawns were littered, quite spectacularly, with curls of various colored ribbon. Happy Mardi Gras. Still, it was more of an effort at creativity than the year I was dressed as The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. That costumed consisted of a black turtle neck and black pants. And endless lengthy explanations of who I was supposed to be. Halloween as dissertation on bad television. Boo!

Ferris Wheel vs. Roller Coaster

2006-10-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Living in Long Island in the 1960s and 1970s meant living in a cultural wasteland. There was precious little to do there and very little in the way of development. Now the nearly rural town I grew up in is a mass of strip malls and from what I can tell, there is still not much to do. Although I am proud to say it is the home of New York State’s premier public library. Which is interesting in that it seemed that almost no one I knew there did much reading.

But back when I was a child there were large lots of cleared land where now stand WalMarts. Back then several times a year small traveling carnivals would pass through and set up thier rides and games on these lots. This was a tremendous boon. There was cotton candy, lights, games you couldn’t win and best of all: the rides.

There were kiddie rides and a few grown up rides. My particular favorite was the little roller coaster. It didn’t go very high, of course, but it was still a roller coaster and I loved riding on it. The chilling climb up, hearing the chain cu-chunk... ca-chunk.. pulling the cars up to the highest point, watching to be sure each gear caught and the catch in your breath when the cars reached the top where gravity pulled them into their drop. Sliding around gentle curves that tipped you ever so slightly sideways. The ride was always too short.

My mother would not go on the roller coaster with me, but my dad would. My mother preferred the Ferris Wheel. I was terrified of the thing.

While the roller coaster did dips and turns, it was never very far off the ground. The Ferris Wheel however was a full-sized ride and it was tall; far too tall to seem stable to me.

One of the last times the three of us went to one of these fly-by-night carnivals together my mother persuaded us to go on the Wheel. The Wheel of Horror it should have been called.

I sat between my parents with a death grip on the bar over our laps. I hated every second of it. Hated being moved through space upwards and backwards. So you couldn't see where you were going, only where you'd been. And there was no control, not even the false control of watching the roller coaster chain.

Most of all I feared we would be stuck at the top while they let people out. Naturally, given the way the wheel is laid out, eventually everyone would be at the top while the opposing cars were emptied and refilled below.

When it happened at last... the car swaying gently in the night breeze, I could feel myself break into a cold sweat. Worse than my own fear, I saw my father white-knuckling it too; which was odd as he wasn't afraid of heights. My father was perpetually up on the roof of our house fixing things. His job required him to climb atop huge airplanes to make repairs, heights were not an issue for him.

My mother, ever aware of a sign of weakness, noticed that we were both shaking. Never one to let an opportunity for a laugh pass her by, regardless of the circumstance, she began to rock the suspended car back and forth. Hard.

My father told her to stop fooling around. I was almost in tears and asked her to stop. She just laughed and rocked harder.

"What? What am I doing?" she asked innocently.

I was sure she was going to make the car fall off the wheel, or at least tip it enough that we would all fall out. I couldn’t believe she was risking all our lives.

When we were finally let off the wheel of terror I vowed never to get on one again. I never have. And no amount of love or money could get me to do so.

But I did make it a point to try roller coasters whenever I could.

My favorite is and will always remain the legendary Cyclone in Coney Island. There is nothing to compare with the feel and sound of a wooden roller coaster.

After my first day of riding the Cyclone (I did it three times in a row until my companion cried "uncle") I got home and I called my mother and told her about how fabulous it had been. How awe-inspiring the view of the beach was from the top of the coaster – and how odd it was that someone so afraid of heights was not in a state of terror on such a scary ride. After all, the ride was almost one hundred years old and the wood… well, it certainly sounded rickety.

She told me she had been on the Cyclone when she was about five years old. I thought that was strange because she hated them so much. She explained that her father had taken her to Coney Island and told her they were going to ride the Ferris Wheel. She didn’t realize they were on the Cyclone until it was too late. She was in a state of severe terror and shock and vowed never to ride a roller coaster again. She even told me how she thought it was a pretty mean trick her father pulled on her.

I reminded her of the Ferris Wheel and how she had terrified both my father and me.

"Oh yeah," she said, thinking back, a hint of nostaligic whimsy in her voice.

"Don’t you think it’s interesting that you would do the same thing to me that your father did to you?" I asked. "Especially when you thought it was cruel?"

"Oh it wasn’t the same," she said with deadly seriousness. "The Ferris Wheel was funny."

The Facts of Life... according to my mother

2006-10-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

The age-old tradition of parents imparting the facts of life to their children has always been good fodder for jokes. My own initiation was no different, although there was a slight twist. Naturally.

I had been shocked when I developed breasts in the fourth grade and gotten my first period during the summer before fifth grade began. (is that too much information? oh well... I'm not shy about this stuff, nor should anyone be - it's life!) But being the big researcher I am I had to find out what the hell all this was about – and my hormones were the impetus to get to the library and find out. I read a lot. A LOT. It still wasn't enough. I wanted to know EVERYTHING there was to know.

I ordered a fun little set of booklets on ‘becoming a woman’ that was offered on the back of Kotex and Moddess boxes, just the next step in my mail order mania. Cereal boxes, comic books and then feminine hygiene products and information on the human body… yeah, that’s a natural progression. And so, due to my early development and intense curiosity I was pretty much fully informed prior the fifth-grade screening of the infamous ‘film’.

Known simply as ‘THE FILM’ it was an "informative" educational film describing to young women what their bodies would be going through as they entered adolescence. The boys were shuttled off to gym class and presumably were told nothing while we girls were getting the low down... on the down low.

Those of few of us who had already entered the wonderful world of womanhood were just happy to get a couple of hours out of regular class time.

My mother, never one to venture into uncomfortable territory unbidden, followed her own mother’s cue and never told me a thing. She seemed more than relieved to find I had already investigated the issue and was up to speed on it all without any input from her. But when I was 13 she did venture to impart her wisdom on avoiding pregnancy.

I cannot imagine what prompted her to do this, but oh, was I primed.

I just knew she’d come up with some inane story and since I already had all the medical facts and knew what was what, though at thirteen I had no actual experience save for a neighbor boy showing all of us his penis some five years earlier. And let’s face it that wasn’t showing me much about the world at large. But I did have information, and as we know, information is power. So when my mother came up to my room and decided for whatever reason that NOW was the time to tell me about pregnancy, especially since despite all my research I was no where NEAR needing to worry about the issue, I could not resist messing with her, at least a little bit.

"You know where babies come from, right?" she asked tentatively.

"The hospital?" God, I was a bitch.

"Well… babies are born in hospitals, but that’s not really where they come from," she said.

I just stared at her blankly as if she were speaking Swahili. How in hell I managed to keep a straight face… I was born to be an actress.

"When a man and a woman love each other very much – AND get married…" she began.

I was going to lose it. I could feel the grin starting. I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. I decided to be kind.

"I know where babies come from, Mom. It’s okay." I said.

"So you know you shouldn’t kiss a boy, right?"

No she didn't! Oh this was going to be good. My momentary thoughts of letting her off the hook were gone. I had to go for it.

"Kissing can make you pregnant?" I asked, oh so innocent. Such a cruel child.

"Well… Yes."

"Really? I thought there was more to it. Just kissing, huh?" My poor mother.

"… uh…. Well… it’s not just kissing, no, but you can get carried away if you kiss," she said.

In for the kill.

"Carried away?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"If you start kissing you can get carried away."

"So if you don’t get carried away you won’t get pregnant?"

"uh… Right."

"So you can kiss as long as you don’t get carried away."

"No. Kissing leads to getting carried away."

"I’m not sure I understand. What does getting carried away mean?"

If the woman wasn’t already prone to drink, I think this would have driven her to it. But I couldn't help myself! I was 13, I was informed... I couldn't resist torturing her!

"It’s… it means... well.... it means GETTING CARRIED AWAY!"

The poor woman was at the point of getting carried away by men in white coats.

"But what if you don’t get carried away," I said, going for logic. "I mean, what if you say, 'okay I’m going to kiss without getting carried away'?"

"You can’t help it. You get carried away!," she said.

I sighed. "Okay. So kissing makes you pregnant?"

"Yes." She replied firmly.

"So what does ‘getting carried away’ actually entail?" I asked.

"JUST NO KISSING, OKAY?"

"Okay." I said, giving in because I knew I was going to burst into peals of laughter if I didn’t get her out of the room.

"Okay," she said. Her motherly duty fulfilled.

She started to leave the room and I could not resist one last try: "Any kind of kissing?"

"YES!!" She yelled. She left the room and shut the door. I collapsed on the bed burying my head in my pillow so she wouldn’t hear me laughing. For once I couldn’t wait to get to school the next day so I could tell my best friend just exactly ‘where babies come from'.

Ducks Fly South

2006-09-25T01:30:00.000-04:00

The Fletchers, the family next door, had a rabbit hutch, which became a duck hutch after all the rabbits died. I was always intrigued with the idea of having such unusual pets and longed for a duck of my own. The Fletchers had domesticated, white ducks. They weren’t let out for us to play with very often, but when they were it was a treat. My parents weren’t keen on the idea of keeping ducks however and so I had to content myself with sticking a finger through the chicken wire of the hutch to pet the sometimes cranky ducks.

One summer, long after the Fletcher’s ducks had gone the way of the rabbits, an unheard of thing occurred. A wild mallard landed in our suburban backyard.

We reasoned it was due to the landscaped ponds my father had built in the backyard. The duck must have seen the water while flying across and decided it was a good habitat. He may have been ill, though he certainly seemed healthy, and needed a place to recoup. Whatever the reason I was beside myself with delight. Here was my duck, without need of a hutch!

We thought he’d be gone after a few hours, once he realized he was not in a typical duck hang-out. But he stayed the entire summer and became a great source of entertainment.

Once it was clear he was sticking around we decided he needed a name. My mother wanted to call him Daffy. I fought it as overly predictable; like naming a Dalmation ‘Spot’. We compromised on Daphne; though it was clearly a male duck.

At the time we had a Shih-Tzu, Chan – yes we were really something when it came to naming pets. In fact we went through a series of 6 parakeets: all blue, all named ‘Sugar’. Originality knew no bounds at our house.

Chan was a tough guy and everyone was afraid of him, all 12 pounds of him.

If you dared to call him ‘cute’ it was tantamount to urging him into kill-mode. Apparently he thought himself a fierce dog rather than a cute dog and would do his best to convince you of that fierceness. He pretty much succeeded, though he was always pretty cute.

Now Chan took no guff, and we thought he might hurt Daphne. We were soon set straight on who exactly was the toughest beastie on the block.

Nothing could bring tears of laughter to our eyes faster than the sight of Chan attempting to Alpa dog that duck and the duck turning on the little Tibetan guard dog and chasing him in circles around the yard – on occasion he got a nip in on Chan’s tail. I only wish we’d thought to try to film it.

We were so partial to Daphne that we started to find treats for him. Of course we gave him the usual bread crumbs which he ate with no particular indication of excitement, but then we tried raisins.

For some reason we had a box of golden raisins in the house, possibly for some recipe my mother thought to try and gave up on (thankfully!). No one liked them so we tried them on Daphne. He was smitten. When the box was emptied we got regular, brown raisins – he would have none of it. Only golden would do for our Daphne. And we complied (can we say "duck-whipped"?). It became a morning ritual to hear Daphne tapping his beak on the back door demanding his golden raisins. It took a few weeks, but eventually he began to eat them out of our hands.

When September came, Daphne left, presumably heading south with a flock of his own kind, deciding that the companionship of humans and a neurotic Shih-Tzu were not fulfilling his deeper ducky destiny. We were heartbroken and hoped he’d return the following Spring. But we never saw him again.

I like to believe he found a mate and a supply of golden raisins in the wild. I know that if any duck could do it, he could.

Subway Soap Stars

2006-09-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

My mother grew up in the Bronx and her parents still had a home there until I was about eleven years old. When I was little we would sometimes go visit, just the two of us, which meant taking the Long Island railroad into Manhattan and grabbing a subway up to their house.

This was always a wonder to me.

I was madly in love with New York City and relished any trip in, I loved the subways which were so exciting and alien to me as a suburban child. On the trip home we would stop at Baracini’s candy store in Penn station and get a ¼ pound of fudge for the train ride back. The candy was clearly a bribe to make it palatable to me to return to the suburbs.

When I was 8 years old we were making one of these trips and on the way from the LIRR section of Penn Station, crossing through to the subway my mother spotted two women who were actresses on the daily soap operas.

She was starstruck always and this was no exception. The fact that the two actresses were together although they appeared on different shows was even more intriguing to her. Worlds had collided!

The woman who usually clutched my hand in an iron grip in Penn Station let go and swooped down on the two unsuspecting actresses. As soon as I realized her intent to actually accost them – I turned and continued to head to the subway.
I refused to be a party to her overt fandom, even then I found it distasteful to interrupt people like that. I don’t believe they actually minded, I’m sure they were flattered as this was in the pre-soap hysteria when personal appearances in malls and so forth became 'hot'.

As I marched to the subway, I was sure my mother would note my disappearance and leave the two 'stars' alone to fetch me.

She did not.

There I was, shy, unsavvy suburban child, alone in Penn Station. No idea where I was except that I should head thattaway and I was absolutely astounded that I’d gotten as far as I did - practically to the subway turnstiles.

My mother had a brief chat with the ladies, finally noticed I was gone and decided she should probably find me.

I was dead embarrassed by the whole thing. Certainly more embarrassed by her behavior than scared of the big city.

I was such a judgmental little kid.

Escape! Or How We Got New Furniture and a Trip to Florida

2006-09-10T10:49:00.001-04:00

A long held dream of mine came true on February 12, 1974. We left my father.

It was after a particularly brutal weekend’s horrors. Happily I do not remember the exact circumstances of the weekend, as the result was the joyful event of getting out. That overshadowed everything.

We packed up two suitcases of clothing, put our little dog Chan, a Shih-Tzu who was a gift from the Fletchers, in a carrying case, got a cab to the train and went into Manhattan. We were going to my mother’s sister’s house. At that time she worked at the Empire State building, does it GET any more glamorous? Not to a suburban kid who longed for the city it doesn't.

When we got to the Empire State building and went to the office she worked in, on the fourth floor – not high enough to be scary but still in the tallest building in the world, I felt like my life was finally beginning.

We would stay at my aunt’s house upstate, I would go to a new school, I had lost weight so I felt pretty and felt that I might actually have a chance to ‘be’ someone new. It was a heady and exciting time. Freedom from the tyranny of the drunken weekends, a new life. Hope!

By the time all this was going on my beloved grandmother, and grandfather, were living with my aunt and her husband so it was not only the thrill of a new life, but the opportunity to be near my grandmother on a daily basis. Things just couldn’t have been better in my world. Amazing vistas of potential happiness opened before me. I was happy. I could breathe. I would no longer need to sleep with a carving knife under my pillow.

As ever, things did not go as I’d hoped.

My father tracked us down (didn't take a genius to figure where we'd go) and called incessantly. My mother’s family were little support. They could not believe that my father was the abusive monster that my mother told them about. They would not believe her and they would not believe me. I imagine they could only see the man he used to be and to believe my mother and me would mean they were wrong about their darling boy.

How such a family of females could so easily side with him... I felt betrayed by my aunts and most of all by my grandmother. She who had been so much to me, now took the side of the tormentor. It was unfathomable to me.

When my father made his appearance, coming to bring us home, my mother’s family encouraged it. They turned their backs on her cries for help, because they would not believe. My family, masters of denial.

My mother, however, was not going back without some conditions. They were, that my father bathe on a regular basis. Yeah. Let’s not delve into that one. Also, that we get new furniture for the living room, dining room and a bedroom set for me as well as a trip to Florida to visit the Fletchers. Much to our shock he agreed to these demands. And much to my dismay, my mother agreed that we would return home. I imagine she never believed he'd go for it because let's face it, he had the money: we just lived like we were poverty-striken because he hoarded it away. Seriously hoarded. Which worked out great for me when he died - LOTTO! But to grow up like any minute we'd be on the street when there was money in the bank? Okay... that's an entirely different story.

So the miser decided to buckle a bit to get what he wanted: his punching bag back.

The furniture was nice. The trip was nice. The short-lived personal hygiene of my father was indeed nice. But I never forgave my mother for going back.

I understand now that she was between a rock and an extremely hard place. Her own family was denying her sanctuary from a beastly situation and she had no resources. But this I realize only now. At that time and for many, many years after all I knew and what I still feel emotionally (despite understanding intellectually... sort of) is that she sold us.

She had the right to do it to herself, but she destroyed me and she had no right to do that.

I struggle always to understand emotionally how she could sell my future, my emotional stability, my foundering self-confidence, my hopes of happiness and a life without fear of violence all for three rooms of furniture and trip to Florida.

It proved to me what she felt my worth was, and it wasn’t much.

$10

2006-09-09T10:14:00.000-04:00

Being closed-mouthed about personal stuff was the hallmark of both my parents. I never heard how they met until I was in my late 20s and I asked my mother. When she told me the story I understood why I hadn’t heard it before.

My mother had been attending a wedding reception at a wedding reception hall where several parties were going on at the same time. There was a bar at the hall that was not attached to the individual party rooms, something of a communal bar to escape the party you were attending. A no-man's land, a neutral zone.

While perched on a stool she happened to look down and saw a $10 bill, which in the 1950s was pretty much like spotting a $100 bill would be today. She slipped one foot off her stool and placed it firmly on the bill, so if its owner were to come a-looking for it they wouldn’t see it.

Her plan was to finish her drink and casually bend down to adjust her stocking and nab the ten-spot when no one was looking.

Her plan seemed fool-proof until my father walked in.

His plan was similar to hers except he was after her rather than the bill.

He plunked down next to her and attempted to pick her up. She was not interested. She WAS interested in keeping her foot on the $10.

My father was persistent.

She thought she’d be there all night trying to keep one foot on the floor. Eventually leg cramps would be a problem.

He refused to leave her alone until she agreed to go out with him. So she did.

He left with her number.

She picked up the $10.

They were married about a year later.

And all hell broke loose.

Suntans....

2006-09-09T10:02:00.000-04:00

My mother was a tanning diva. She would lay out on a lounge chair in the backyard for hours on end slathered in Coppertone, turning when necessary. Like a rotisserie chicken. This was a practice mirrored by all the young neighbor girls. They would all leave on a watch and flipflops, like my mother, so they could compare tan-lines. It was a ritual to which I could never adhere. Oh I tried! I wanted to fit in and be one of them and as my mother was the ringleader I REALLY felt I should be right in there with them; basting and turning. But it was horrible!

It was hot, and exhausting baking in the sun in the Long Island summer humidity. Most offensive of all, it was boring. I couldn’t understand the appeal of laying around endlessly day in, day out, just to change my skin color. It wasn’t worth it.

Yet every summer I would vow that I too would become one of the tanning girls, and every summer I would give up after 2 sessions. I felt left out and as usual, like a misfit. Why couldn’t I find the inner peace of this activity that the others must have been enjoying? What was wrong with me?

In the '70s when the height of beauty was a full blown tan and blonde hair, the bronze-skinned Ban de Soleil model stepping out of a pool of blue, Mediterranean water with her hair slicked back from her face was the epitome of sophisticated, European beauty; there I was, a Victorian throwback with brown hair and consumptive-pale skin.

I was a tanning failure.

I would sit in my room, lit by the miracle of incandescent, electric light - which did not hurt my eyes or crumple my skin - and read. I would look out from time to time and see them all laying there on towels or lounge chairs. My mother surrounded by her surrogate, normal, daughters and feel ashamed and useless that I could not participate.

When they would sit together on the back stoop and compare the white to the tan of their watch band marks or the V-shaped lines left by dimestore flipflops across the tops of their feet I would look at my wrist and see the exact same shade of pale white from fingertip to elbow and wonder again, why I didn’t fit in. I knew my mother preferred the company of girls who ‘got it’ to the company of her changeling child who shunned the sun and loved the night. I was a New York City black-wearing wanna-be from the time I was 7 years old, though I was not officially allowed to wear black until I was a teenager ("God Forbid, a child wearing BLACK?!"), trapped in a suburban world where I would never, ever fit in.

Several times I even tried Coppertone’s Q-T, one of the earliest of the self-tanning products. It left a wonderful orange hue on the skin and if not applied properly (and let's face it, it was impossible to apply properly) you invariably wound up looking like you were wearing a bad attempt at Halloween tiger make-up - streaked with orange and white; sort of like a bi-ped creamsicle.

Eventually I gave up trying and accepted that I was destined to be ghostly white always. And I embraced it. Call me pre-Goth.

Vindication of my hatred of sunbathing came about 25 years later when it became common knowledge that suntans were merely sun damage and caused the skin to prematurely wrinkle. And my mother's sister, actually died because of Melanoma.

I am now grateful I couldn’t endure the boredom of laying out (as we called it). I’m still as white as a ghost, but now I call it ‘porcelain,’ and though I was miserable for not fitting in back then, I’m happy now that I didn’t damage my skin. Take that, tanning girls!

Mother's Day Rocking

2006-08-28T20:11:00.000-04:00

In my 20s, and into my early 30s, I was big on going to see bands. Friend's bands, famous bands - didn't matter. One band I particularly loved, and still do despite not having seen them live in over a decade, was NRBQ (The New Rythmn & Blues Quartet). If you have the opportunity to see them live – do so, you will not regret it. Musically impeccable, stylistically eclectic, with showmanship to spare. The only comparable band I know of is The Niagaras - go see them too if you have the chance.

NRBQ were playing a set on Mother’s day and I optimistically bought 2 tickets thinking because a friend I worked with had expressed interest in seeing them that he'd want to go. It didn’t pan out. Sometimes you need to check schedules prior to buying tickets. Oops.

I had several friends who had seen the ‘Q in the past with me and liked them, but no one was free. Silly me. It was Mother's Day and people were going to do traditional 'mother's day things' with their mothers. I told my mother about it and she said she would go with me. Hmmm. Happy Mother's Day? Well, since my mother had been something of a party girl in her youth this shouldn’t have been such a shock. Of course I felt like someone taking their cousin to their senior prom, but I took her up on the offer figuring at worst something embarrassing would happen and at best I’d get to see NRBQ and not have a wasted ticket. I hoped she wouldn’t be bored or uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have been concerned.

We found the club they were playing in, which was conveniently located only blocks away from her apartment. We got drinks, naturally wine for her and beer for me and when the show started my Mom was enthralled. She'd heard me rave about them for years, but never quite got it until she saw them live. She was won over in a flash. People always are. They were great as usual and though she probably would have preferred to sit we ended up standing with the crowd in front of the stage and 'dancing' as best we could in the mob.

After a few songs we noticed a guy who was obviously with the band, either a road manager or roadie or some such thing. He was watching us and nodding to the band. We thought it a little odd, but were too caught up in the show to really wonder much about it. They played, we listened, it was funny, fun, rockin’ and rollin’ and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I was gratified that my mother had been into it and was glad I had gotten to go with her as it was, after all, Mother’s Day. And it reminded me a bit of how on the few occasions we were in a grocery store together we would always end up dancing in the aisles. We danced in kitchens and supermarkets... here we were dancing (for a change) in a place where you were supposed to dance.

When the show ended we were getting ready to leave when the road manager guy made his way over to us. He asked if we would like to go backstage and meet the band! I thought: here we go, mother/daughter groupies? Us? What the..... Well me... maybe... my mother the prude? nahhhhh.

He told us the band had gotten such a kick out of seeing a mother and daughter ‘rocking’ to their music that they just had to meet us. I was beside myself with nerves, but my mother, ever a fan of any performer from soap stars on the subway to the guy playing the organ at the Wurlizter store in the mall, was positively stoked. She was in, and I was tagging along whether I liked it or not. God knows I was not letting her go alone. I like NRBQ... I feared for their safety!

When we got backstage, actually up three flights of stairs - welcome to New York, everything's a walk-up, the first member of the band we met was my personal favorite, the fantastic bass virtuoso, Joey Spampinato. He was so incredibly sweet, just exactly what he seemed to be onstage and in the songs he wrote and sang lead on that I felt I was in my own little fantasy world. He talked about going home for Thanksgiving, home being the Bronx where my mother was born and raised. That was it: they were off and running. He gave me a bottle of beer and I didn't even bitch that I don't drink Bud. (I was SUCH a beer snob, that this was miraculous.)

Then Terry Adams, keyboards and lead vocals and all-around amazing front man showed up. I barely remember what was said, I was too in awe of my Mom’s chatting up and yes, flirting with these guys. MY MOTHER? After a time we reluctantly decided we should leave. Heading down the stairs from the dressing room Terry Adams, fresh from a shower, towel turbaned on his head, came chasing us down.

"You’re leaving?!" he asked.

We said yes, we thought it was time.

He tried to convince us to stay, but …. We had to go. I don’t think I could have handled much more, and my mom was getting tired - any time the sun went down she'd get tired. But not too tired to embarrass me no end, for which I’m now grateful, by telling Terry Adams to give me a kiss good-bye. I was in one of my painfully shy periods... oddly enough they seemed to happen more when my mother was around than not.

So Terry Adams kissed me, while wearing a towel on his head, and I was loath to wash that cheek for at least a day. It's VERY rare that I'm starstruck or ga-ga impressed by people unless they are CRAZY talented... unlike my mother who would ask a busker for an autograph. But this was NRBQ, and I was impressed as hell. We left in fits of giggles, somewhat overwhelmed by our adventure. It was one of the best shows I’d ever been to.

The Fletchers

2006-08-18T20:26:00.000-04:00

The first time I remember wishing I belonged to another family was when I was very, very young. I wanted, more than I could express, to be a Fletcher.

The Fletchers lived in the house next door from before I was born until I was 11. They were, and in fact continue to be, some of the liveliest, loveliest people I’ve ever known. I found out many, many years later that the perfect lives I thought they had were no more or less perfect than anyone else’s, but when I was a child I only knew that they were what I wished I could be.

Mrs. Fletcher, or Muriel as we called her for there was no formality in our little neighborhood; I credit the fact that all the parents came from ‘The City’ and found the Mr. & Mrs. Titles too stifling for their newly found spacious digs, was a nurse. She was the only professional career woman I knew, and she wore the old-school nurse's uniform, cap and all. Once she got a new style cap, an odd one, shaped exactly like a popover, it was a riot! She also had hair I envied. Thick and deep auburn in a bowl cut. When I was old enough to enforce my own choice of haircut, I got it cut just like Muriel’s. I went from waist length to shoulder with one snip and thought I was ‘it’.

Unlike my own mother, Muriel actually drove! AND she had a sewing room because she could actually MAKE clothing from patterns! She was pretty much a 90s ‘having it all’ woman in the 70s. Pretty progressive lady. And completeley not like my mother. And she cursed. Ooooh! You knew when she’d lost her temper at her ever-active and wild, youngest child, Mary-Beth when you heard her call out from the back door, as mother’s did, MARY-BITCH!!!! Though we knew Mary-Beth was in trouble, it was hard not to laugh.

There were two boys, Jimmy, the quiet one with the dreamy black curly hair and Joey, the outgoing one who could entertain you and have you in his pocket in minutes. And two girls Erin, who was older than me but whose birthday was a day after mine, so we shared the post-Christmas birthday blues as well as the typical Capricorn traits of being quiet, responsibe mini-adults in children’s bodies. The other daughter was Mary-Beth who was a year ahead of me in school and decades ahead of me in life but only months ahead of me in age. I wanted to be as free and adventurous and daring as Mary-Beth, but was far too shy, too afraid of the world, and too overprotected. And there was Mr. Fletcher, Joe.

Because we didn’t generally see the fathers of the neighborhood much, because they were working and Joe even stayed in the city where he worked during the week, the fathers were often scary to me. It wasn’t that they were actually scary, it was simply a matter of lack of exposure. But Joe Fletcher was easily the handsomest of the neighborhood fathers, AND he had tattoos on his biceps!! His were the first tattoos I’d ever seen. They were standard, military type as opposed to the more artful type seen today, but still… TATTOOS! Awesome!

The Fletchers were the celebrity family of our neighborhood, without even trying. They just had some sort of magnetic pull that made us all love them. They were the glue that made the tiny neighborhood stick. When they announced they were moving to Florida the neighborhood went into a mourning period that lasted from the actual announcement until… well… pretty much forever. Nothing was ever the same after they left, how could it be?

They were the light we all gravitated towards and when they left we foundered in the dark. But testament to the fact that their ‘stardom’ was well-deserved and not simply hype, they kept in touch with the old neighbors and continue to do so until this day. Though I had not seen them in years, out of the blue a couple of years ago I had an email from Mary-Beth’s oldest son, Zack. He, whom I’d never met, was coming to New York City to audition at Julliard. Could we meet?

Could we?! I was delighted. And true to his Fletcher heritage, the minute I saw him I recognized the Fletcher-face and we hit it off and young Zack, as I came to call him, came to visit and stayed with me for several days after the audition visit and we had a wonderful time. So whatever that charisma is that that family has, it is genetic and has been passed on.

One of the sweetest, most moving things that ever happened to me was after my mother died and I called Muriel to tell her; she and all the kids sent flowers to the wake. But even more, after my father’s death Muriel told me, as she always has since they moved away, to come and visit – and added that I should come because I had family there with them. It was a simple thing to say, and I know she cannot have known how much it meant for me to hear that, and that it was more than my "real" family had ever said to me. After 42 years I was an honorary Fletcher. It goes without saying, but I am very honored by that.

Drums, Oh to be Karen Carpenter

2006-08-18T19:18:00.000-04:00

I wanted to learn to play an instrument, but it seemed my maternal grandfather’s talent for playing, by ear, any instrument he touched was a talent that remained his alone. Not one of his descendants thus far has inherited it. Talk about a recessive gene. But having no musical talents didn’t stop me from wanting to learn. It seemed to me that if someone could just teach me the basics I’d be able to do it. Unfortunately I had no idea how I would go about being taught.

I knew other kids had instruments and had band as a class, but I had absolutely no clue how that all came about. I believe it was something parents had to arrange, there was an instrument to be chosen, purchased or rented, and then you’d meet with the music teacher who would show you how to work the thing. Either my parents knew nothing about this or they chose to keep me out of the loop. Given their strong belief in my musical talents I imagine they felt they were doing the world a favor by not allowing me access to an instrument by which I would make ‘music’.

I had a friend, Carol Polapink, who I met in kindergarten and was a genuinely sweet and smart girl. Her mother was the absolute coolest mom I had ever met. Frankly, my bet is that she IS still the coolest mom. She was young, or seemed younger, than the other mothers I knew, and she wore eye-makeup, lots of black liner as was the style She wore capri pants and little heels and her gorgeous black hair was always 'done'. She always seemed like a city-girl transplanted to the horrible suburbs. I just adored her, she was a doll. Her husband, Carol’s father, played the guitar. Upping the 'cool' factor in my world completely. He played so well that he was the guitarist at our church’s ‘folk mass’.

The folk mass was the church’s way of ‘hipping up the mass’ to catch a younger audience. It was like Carol’s dad was a ... well, a rock star – he was in the church band! Rock on! But far more importantly and better still was that Mr. Polapink taught Carol to play the guitar too. I was awestruck and envious on all possible levels.

When I was in the sixth grade I finally had a chance to learn an instrument. It was an inspiring event. The principal and the music teacher came to all the sixth grade classrooms with a test. Everyone would take this written test and only those who passed it with the highest grades would be offered the opportunity to learn the drums. Why drums were the only instrument to merit a written test is still something I wonder about to this day, but that’s the way they were running it so I played along.

I was one of only 3 girls who were eligible. I was thrilled! When I told my parents I’d passed the test and brought home the forms they had to sign saying they gave their permission for me to partake of this percussive dream come true I was SHOCKED that they said ‘yes’.

That "yes" meant they would have to purchase drumsticks and a pad for me to learn on. The pad was a triangle shaped wedge of particle board with a square of thick rubber (the 'pad') on top. We young drummers would learn proper drumming technique on the soft, QUIET pad until we had it down and then, and only then, we would be allowed access to a single snare drum.

I thought the pad was the coolest. And my sticks… well, I just loved that I knew how to properly hold drumsticks. I’m still pretty proud of that. And I still have those very sticks.

We had class, there were maybe 10 of us, all but 2 were boys (one of the three girls who passed the test was Carol Polapink who opted out because she was more interested in the guitar). The sound of the gentle thumping of wood sticks on rubber padding was magic to me. I practiced. I practiced a lot, and dreamed of playing an actual drum. I think my parents, whose non-belief in me never wavered, were stunned at just how much I practiced.

When the time came for the winter concert, the drummers were stationed in the back of the ‘orchestra’, I was sure they would be giving us the drums for the performance. Alas, this was not to be. It turns out that only boys were ever going to be allowed to play the real drums. They actually told us that! Can you imagine? It was appalling.

They stationed several of the boys with snares right in front of us and the remainder of the drum class played the concert on our rubber pads. It was humiliating.

The boys who were given actual drums to play were neither more talented nor proficient than any of us on our pads. It was a grave disappointment. I saw then that band was not going to work out for me; how long can you play a rubber pad? It was not dissimilar to being asked to lip-synch.

I dropped out of band, as did the other drummers. But for Christmas that year I received a drum kit. A real, complete drum kit with bass, snare, symbols, the works. It even came with a brush for that dance-floor shuffle on the snare that I learned to imitate from going to family weddings.

I would keep time on my drums as best I could. Not having a talent like my grandfather’s I was not able to improvise as well as I would have liked, but I did manage to keep time and occasionally riff. I thought I was going to be the next Gene Krupa... but you know, the girl version.

Then came The Carpenters.

I heard some song on the radio, probably Close to You and loved it. I sang along, I was sure that I sounded precisely like Karen Carpenter. When I learned that she played the drums I knew I’d found my guru. So I got some of my girlfriends together and started a band. We fancied ourselves Josie and the Pussycats (6th grade, remember) and wrote and rehearsed our one song.

Over and over … and over.

Let me recreate it for you now. Pick any tune that works for you. Here are the highly complex and deeply meaningful lyrics of the 11 year old genius songwriter I was, and do remember that plagerism is wrong because I just know someone is going to want to take this puppy to a gold record:

"First I cried… then I sighed… then I died"
[Repeat]

Oh yes maudlin as ever, and I was right there with the clever rhyme scheme. A young poet, a savant!

Oddly enough our group did not catch on and we disbanded after several months. Possibly the fact that there were three of us -- and two of us were drummers (our third played a hesitant electric organ) was the problem.
Or perhaps it was simply that the other drummer played the pad as we only had the one drum kit.

As there are no extant recordings the world will never know how much competition the Carpenters actually had from us. I’m sure Karen rests in peace knowing that.
Get Kids Real Drums

Money Lender

2006-08-15T23:04:00.000-04:00

The allowance that my father doled out to my mother and me was hardly enough for … well, it was a pittance. And it was his way of controlling everyone around him. My mother was forbidden to work, and given what happened when I was 11 and she did actually get a job as a reading tutor in the junior high school I would be attending the following year... well, I guess it was better for her not to work. But that's another story.

The 'allowance' situation wasn’t so bad for me, when I was really young. A quarter a week for a kid who wasn’t allowed out was pretty good. I had no place to spend it so what difference did it make if it was a quarter or ten dollars? Mail order was the only way I could shop on my own and I didn’t get into that until I was maybe, 13. But my poor mother was chained to $3 week and the house. It wasn’t enough. Even in the 1960s $3 a week was a ridiculously small amount of money for a grown woman to spend on herself. Especially one who was used to making her own money from the age of 13. She wasn't even allowed to do the grocery shopping. God forbid. My father did it. Um. Yeah, there were some control issues there, huh? Though to be fair, she did get a raise to $5 somewhere around 1976, after the first attempt at leaving that horrible marriage, so what's to bitch about? Uh.. yeah. Any way...

To make do she devised some creative use of credit cards. The best of her 'scams' was this: in the days of metal charge 'plates' that were run through an embossing machine, store clerks actually had to fill in what merchandise was purchased. There was no such thing as a cash register that gave you an itemized receipt. So my mother would ask the clerk to simply write 'merchandise' in the space provided and then she would take the slip home and then my mother would 'itemize' the 'purchases' on the back for my father who would scrutinize every item bought. The way she avoided any sort of questioning of what she bought was to simply write "underwear for Joy" on the back of the charge slip.

I didn't have much, but if you added it up I had a small fortune in "underwear". Why I would need so many pairs of underwear was not a question my father felt comfortable asking. My mother... a smart woman... when it came to lying any way.

But when it came to cash she was pretty much strapped. Except for me and Topo Gigio.

Here's the '60s pop-culture, history lesson kids: Topo Gigio was a marionette mouse who made guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan show. I had been given a ceramic Topo Gigio lamp when I was maybe 2-3 years old and had it until it was broken in a freak accident. (That accident would be my mother running into my bedroom while being chased by my father and crashing into it... casualty of the weekend wars, poor Topo).

The lamp had a large round base that the bobble headed Spanish mouse sat on. It was around the ledge of this base that I stacked my quarters and any money I accumulated from the tooth fairy. A lost tooth was a boon as I would often find a quarter under my pillow for one. One tooth equaled a week’s allowance! Bingo! I was ready to pull ‘em all! Alas, I didn’t have the Marine mentality that would allow me to pull a tooth that wasn’t ready so I had to wait for nature to run its course to get the bonus cash. But in the meantime my weekly quarters built up, because, as I said I wasn’t spending them. Which is likely the only reason they were given to me in the first place.

So the little piles grew and grew until they looked like a miniature New York City skyline. Much as her own father had borrowed from her, my mother would borrow from my stash. I would keep count and an IOU list. As a small child I was great with money. As an adult not so much.

But whereas her father had her meet him at subway stops where she would wait at the front of the platform (he drove the trains) with her pay and pass it to him while the passengers got on and off the train, my mother would come and ask to borrow a couple of dollars in the relative comfort of my room. And truthfully I didn’t work for the quarters so it wasn’t quite the imposition that her father ‘borrowing’ from her was, at least in my eyes.

Once when I was in the second grade we had a writing assignment. I believe we had to write something about a parent. My little writing became a worn piece of paper that my mother carried in her wallet for the rest of her life. It said something to the effect of: "I love my mommy. She is my best friend. We do things together and sometimes I lend her money."

My teacher found this hysterical and sent me home with an A and the instruction to give it to my mother. My mother found it equally hilarious and thus kept it with her always. I never quite understood why it was so funny, but what the hell, a laugh's a laugh.

When my mother became ill and we began the horror of hospitals and nursing homes that were the last years of her life, I had to go through her purse for her medical cards and found the tiny scrap of pink paper I’d written this little masterpiece upon. I knew she had carried it because she’d pulled it out to show me once years before while cleaning out her wallet. But I didn’t know she carried it until the end.

I guess she thought it was funny enough to hold onto, maybe because of her own experience with her father, maybe just because it was funny to remember what a stalwart little mini-adult I had been. Either way it was moving to find that she had kept it for so many years. It was nice that there was something I did that warranted that sort of care from someone who was not in the least sentimental. Well, not about me any way.

Dr. Doolittle

2006-08-14T22:02:00.000-04:00

After particularly long weekend of the usual type, i.e. drunken terrorism, my father did something completely out of character - he left the house.

He left on Sunday night and did not come home. To your standard issue child this would have been a traumatic and upsetting event. To me it was a wish fulfilled. And my sense of relief and happiness that he was gone was better than any feeling I could recall. But as many wishes are, it turned out to be other than what I anticipated.

The reason he did not return home for more abuse and terror was because he had crashed his car into a tree and while he had thankfully not hurt anyone, not even himself, a policeman had spotted him and arrested him for the unheard of crime of drunk driving.

In the not so distance past (30 or so years ago) it seemed there wasn’t even a law against drunk driving. Hell, everybody did it. My mother even had a name for it: hell rides. These usually ocurred driving back home from family gatherings, which were merely excuses for excessive drinking. And they were hell rides, as in "scary as…". Yet for some reason we were never in an accident. Possibly because we were usually stuck in such horrendous traffic that we were crawling and even a seriously intoxicated driver would have had a hard time speeding or driving erratically at such a crawl.

The morning my mother got the call from the Riverhead police telling her to come and bail my father out of jail was full of disappointments and almost as much fear as my father's rampages. The primary disappointment being that he was in fact coming home. The fear started when rather than leaving me home alone, I was eleven I think I could have managed, or leaving me with a neighbor which GOD FORBID would have meant explaining where she was going, my mother opted to take me with her to the jail. Yeah, there's that genius overprotection tinged with "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?" neglect. Of course looking back I realize she took me with her because she was afraid. She needed protection: I was it. Too bad I was only a child. Though God knows it was rare that I ever felt like a child growing up.

We went in a cab, as she did not drive. I've known a lot of alcoholics in my life, its surprising how many of them refuse to learn to drive. God bless them. So we took a cab to the jail over 45 minutes away. It must have cost a fortune. I believe my mother was secretly pleased that it was going to cost my father even more than the bail and fine. Can we say passive aggressive?

When we arrived at the jail I was already deeply into ‘this isn’t happening’ mode. I was utterly terrified; as any sheltered kid would be. This was a JAIL. There were CRIMINALS here. And my father was now one of them.

It’s not as if it were the Tombs in Manhattan, it was closer in appearance to the Mayberry sheriff’s office. Still, it was a jail. A JAIL.

We entered the beige building and my mother approached a glass-enclosed reception desk. I stood directly behind her and heard nothing. Saw less. I was in the depths of denial and would not look around, did NOT want to be there. I have very little memory of the actual visit, because when we went to sit in the waiting area I pulled out my favorite form of escape: a book.

I had just started reading Dr. Doolittle, by Hugh Lofting that morning, before we got the call. (It was the basis of a favorite movie, I even had a Dr. Doolittle doll, he was okay... Ken was not... the logic escapes me.) Any way, I pulled out the paperback and read it with desperation. I would bet that anyone who saw me, if anyone actually saw the invisible child, that they would have seen one very composed and relaxed kid. Unfazed by the environment. I was always a good faker, butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I must have been quite an odd sight sitting there reading wearing my pink rhinestone cat-eye glasses. Geez.

I was deep within a pink snail and flying on a giant lunar moth – I was NOT in a jail reception area waiting for my mother to bail out my abusive drunken father.

For a long time, well over an hour I'm sure, judging by how much I'd read, I was left alone in that waiting area while my mother went to fill out forms. I was a wreck, despite escaping into the book. All I could imagine was that all around me were people in trouble with the law, bad, scary people and I was alone with them. It didn’t occur to me at the time that the actual ‘bad’ people were in the jail itself and that the ones waiting with me were probably more like me than not. All I knew was this was not a place I wanted to ever be, and I never wanted to be there again. Under any circumstances.

I scanned the room briefly every so often and then dove back into my book. I read a lot. I finished the entire book in the time I was waiting. I don't know how I would have survived the experience without that book. If not for the good Doctor and his cohorts I believe I might have had a nervous breakdown... nothing like an 11 year old having a breakdown in a jail waiting room.

I had always loved books, not just the words and places they could take you, but the actual tactile presence of them. Hard covers, paperbacks, didn’t matter: something about pages bound together simply made me feel right. But after Dr. Doolittle I realized for good and all just how important books really are. They can entertain us, they teach us, and they can actually save us, as that book saved me that awful day.

Sadly, although I love to re-read favorite books, I was never able to re-read Dr. Doolittle, nor was I ever able to read any of the other books in the series. Despite the salvation I found in it on that marathon read, it reminds me too much of fear and helplessness and dreams turning to nightmares. I wish it were not the case, from what I remember it was quite a wonderful book.

Storm of the Century

2006-08-13T14:01:00.000-04:00

The second psyche-scarring incident of being where I didn’t belong took place during an almost unbearably beautiful, but incredibly dangerous ice storm.

It seems that the 1960s through the 1970s were the advent of a new ice age. We had blizzards, storms of ice and hail that would bar driving, and snow drifts five feet tall on a regular basis. It wasn’t winter without at least two blizzards. Schools were closed regularly, though of course for some reason my school district was always the last to admit defeat.

photo donated by Anthony T. DeCosa

There was nothing quite so exciting as waking up to a world of white and then listening to the radio for the school closings. Would mine be announced? Would I have a day or more of freedom from the torment of a day pretending not to be simultaneously bored and terrified? It never failed that the announcer would drone on for 10 minutes or more as every single school district in Suffolk County, Long Island announced that they would be closed.

The Catholic schools would be closed. Libraries, public offices, and various meetings and events all would announce they were closed yet my stalwart hall of horrors would hang tough. They wouldn’t close until the very last possible moment. There was another district with a similar name that was ever one of the first to cancel classes and it was a cruel tease. My relief at hearing Middle Country Central School District No. 11 was palpable.

The day of the ice storm was like waking in the Hans Christian Andersen story THE SNOW QUEEN. I had never seen anything so ethereal and enchanting outside a movie or painting. Trees were fully encased in liquid diamonds. The early morning sun made rainbows in the newly ice-encrusted branches. Phone and electrical lines were like long strands of gossamer spider webs extended across the ugly suburban backyards and the ground was a slick, light reflecting sheet of silver. It was something I would never have expected, and have never seen to that extent since.

I wanted only to stare out at this beautiful world that made a coating of snow look like child’s play in comparison. It seemed impossible that the schools would be open on such a day as this. Not only was it too beautiful to be sullied by the mundane activities of work and school, but it was far too dangerous to get into a moving vehicle with roads made entirely of ice. Even a child could see that.

We listened for the announcement. There was none.

Considering I missed more days of school than any other child in the history of public education without actually being hospitalized, I could not fathom why my mother was so insistent I go to school on this of all days. She sent me out to wait for the school bus. I would have cried but for the fact that my tears would have turned to ice before I could dry them on my coat sleeve, it was that cold. And remembering what happened to the little boy in THE SNOW QUEEN, I worried I would be turned into an evil minion of that queen were a tear of ice to catch in my eye. (I had a really intense fantasy life). And of course, more importantly, I never once cried where anyone might see me until I was in my twenties. For a pansy-assed chicken I was pretty f-ing tough as a kid.

When the bus didn’t arrive after my hands had become numb in my mittens, I returned to the house.

"The bus didn’t come," I said.

"You must have missed it," said my mother."Daddy will drive you."

Good lord woman, are you mad? She woke my father, who worked nights, so it was, in fact, the middle of the night to him. He dressed, scrapped ice off the windshield and off we went to school.

Needless to say it was a slow journey, the combination of my father’s usual slow pace and the treacherous roads made it seem that I wouldn’t get to school until dismissal time. Which worked for me, frankly.

There were two routes from my home to my elementary school. One involved using the main turnpike, which involved traffic lights and a roundabout trip. The other involved the way the bus usually went which was around the back and up an huge hill. Now Long Island is nothing if not flat, but there are a few hills here and there and Oxhead Road in Centereach has one of those hills. The school was at the top of the hill. My father’s car had a tough time with this hill on a good day.

Clearly this was not a good day.

It must have taken 20 minutes of sliding back and forth, two steps back to one step up the ice-slicked hill; but he persevered. I was going to school no matter what. Delightful.

The drive was easier going after the hill, but still slick. We pulled up to the front of the school, and the storm had made even that cinder block architectural heap look beautiful. There were no buses, and only one other car at the front drive. The principal and a teacher I recognized were standing, bundled in parkas, outside the main entrance.

"No school today," the principal told my father. You could almost hear his inner rejoinder of "are ya stupid?"

The sigh my father let out was aurally full of all his frustrations. But it paled compared to my feelings of embarrassment that we were foolish enough to have made such a dangerous trip when it was obvious that we should have stayed safe at home. I cowered down in the seat so the teacher and principal wouldn’t notice me or be able to recognize me again. Not that anyone would, I was essentially invisible all the time. But I didn’t want to be known as the kid whose parents weren’t smart enough to make the judgment call to keep me home.

I felt as if I were trespassing as well, going anywhere near school when it wasn’t in session. After-school activities were not something I was even remotely familiar with. We followed the semi-circle drive out and headed back home. My father opted not to go back the way we’d come. I am eternally grateful. I think we would surely have taken the downhill trip into a tree.

When we got home he shot my mother a filthy look and went back to bed. I am sure I smirked. For all my shyness I was definately a smart-ass as well.

I spent the day reading and watching tv and reliving my feelings of embarrassment. Good times. Good times.

Abandoned at the House of Grapes

2006-08-12T12:07:00.000-04:00

As a recovering neurotic adult I have a particular dread of arriving at planned gatherings too early. This stems directly from two episodes. The first incident involved the same religious instruction class where I was taught that the Holy Mother of God was in fact full of grapes.

The classes were held in people’s homes, a situation that was done away with as soon as the church had sucked out enough money from its guilt-ridden patrons to build a school adjacent. I imagine they intended to open their own parochial school, but as far as I know that never happened and the building was used during my childhood and adolescence as a hallowed hall of religious instruction on the weekends and stood vacant Monday through Friday... But prior to that, it was all home-schooling.

I began my disenchantment with the Church primarily because of these Saturday morning classes. It was bad enough to have to go to school 5 days a week, but to be subjected to getting up on Saturday morning and going for more was fairly intolerable. My parents enrolled me in this program of indoctrination despite the singular fact that neither of them attended church themselves. I imagine this was due in part to the fact that Saturday was needed for recovery from drinking and fighting on Friday and prep time for the rematch on Saturday night.

On the morning of my utter embarrassment my parents were engaging in a rare shopping trip – together. Usually my father would drop me off for class and return home. This morning they both dropped me off and went on some shopping excursion, I have no recollection of what they were after.

Considering the over-protective nature of my parents (I was not allowed to cross our suburban street alone until I was 12 and was required to do it every morning to get to school - the Junior High School was two blocks away) it is interesting to note that rather than waiting to be sure I got into the House of Grapes they simply let me out of the car and drove off.

Overprotective and negligent at the same time. Explains a lot of my own personality dichotomies.

Being the incredibly shy child I was, knocking on the door was tantamount to giving a State of the Union address. But knock I did, as I had no other choice. I couldn’t even walk home because I wasn’t allowed to cross the street!

"What are you doing here?" Was the first thing out of the mouth of my ‘teacher’ when she opened the door and looked at me through the screen door.

"uh… Uh… I’m here for religious instruction," I mumbled out like some would-be novitiate, head bowed, eyes averted.

She immediately popped her head out the door and nearly broke her neck scanning the street up and down for signs of a car that would take the nun wanna-be away from her door.

Seeing no vehicle of salvation, she sighed deeply and let me in.

She sat me down at the counter in her kitchen, which seemed odd to me as we were usually ushered into the den for our class. I was always in awe of homes that had things called 'dens' or 'family rooms' as we had no such specialized rooms. And if we did they certainly wouldn't have been used for anything but sullen staring contests or knock-down fights. Probably best we only had the small space we did. Room enough for the 'family' we were.

I was apparently the first to arrive for class that morning, which was a first for me. My teacher immediately began chopping some sort of vegetables, in my state of terror I cannot be sure if it was carrots or celery. I’ve blanked that memory.

"I’m not having class today," she told me, clearly not pleased to have a wide-eyed, terror-striken wallflower in her kitchen. "I called all the parents and told them."

I was horrified. I was not supposed to be there.

To her credit she did nothing to make me feel bad, but being the child of alcoholics AND Catholic, guilt came before breathing. I had no idea what to say in reply.

"I’m having a party today," she continued. Oddly enough she did not invite her religion class of ten 6 year olds.

"I’m sorry." I said. Certainly not the first time I would utter that phrase.

I spent an entire hour, which felt like two to three hundred years of Purgatory, watching her prepare crudités until my parents finally picked me up at the usual pick-up time.

I will never know if they were aware of the fact that there was no class and just wanted to ditch me for an hour or if it was an honest mistake. Given their hasty get-away I'd vote for the former. But to this day if I am the first to arrive anywhere I become anxious, and if there are crudités in the vicinity I break into a cold sweat.

All Barbie - No Ken

2006-08-09T20:00:00.002-04:00

I loved dolls. I loved dressing them, making clothes for them and most of all making up elaborate stories of their lives that they could act out (with my help). The trouble with my dolls was that they were all female. Barbie (actually Barbie knock-offs but why quibble with brand names now) and all her friends were living in a convent. I felt it was unnatural. Which is hilarious since at 7 years of age I was determined to become a nun. (I just love the old-style full habit).

There were GI Joes that the boys in the neighborhood owned, and sometimes when we were still quite young the GIs and the Barbies would attend mixers of a sort. But it wasn't the same as having a boy amidst the ranks. I wanted a Ken doll!

Ken with his plastic molded hair and dull smile. GI Joe only wanted to blow things up. Ken would take the girls dancing! He was what my girls wanted! WE WANT KEN!

"Mommy, can I have a Ken doll?"

"No."

"Why not?"

And she answered in a sentence that everyone will recognize. I believe instructions for it's delivery are given out with the How to Care for Your New Baby (While Messing with Its Tiny Head) book given out to all new mothers. Say this one with me folks:

"Because I said so."

I would let time pass, then I'd ask again. I always got the same answer.

I resorted to asking Santa for a Ken. Apparently my letters to Santa Claus were never clear enough... even when I added the catalogue and page numbers from the Sears Wish Book. Maybe Santa was illiterate? I did get a doll for Christmas... just not Ken. Instead I got a Mary Poppins doll. As I recall it was actually a neighbor's... she'd gotten two. But again, why quibble? Considering I was an only child who got to wear hand-me-downs.... alright yeah, so anyway...

I was not pleased.

But after a time I had a genius idea. The Mary Poppins doll was extremely non-Barbie, meaning she was essentially breastless, did not have the mini-waist and oddly shaped hips. Mary was an ectomorph. Without her clothes she looked like a boy. Hey....wait a minute....

BINGO!

I got out my safety scissors, the red ones with the swan handles, and chopped off Mary's hair. She wound up with a modified Beatle cut. It worked for her. Suddenly she was "Mark". I had my own one-of-a-kind version of Ken.

I didn't know at the time what a transvestite was, or a transgendered person, though I had heard of Christine Jorgensen as her story was big news at the time. But despite having no knowledge of this side of life I had instinctively made my first transvestite doll - and though my girls may have preferred an actual Mattel-made Ken, they didn't complain. Mark took them dancing. And taught them to kiss! Mark and the girls did things... I'd rather not divulge. Go Mark!!

As an adult when my mother would ask why I thought men in eyeliner looked so hot, I always reminded her how I was not allowed to have a Ken. That shut her up.

I have no doubt that the early seeds of my adolescent Rocky Horror obsession were born of that dolly-make-over. You know... word to the wise here. If your child has a healthy, albeit precocious, interest in the opposite sex - buy them a doll, don't force them to get too creative. It's just less complicated later. Trust me.

Please Lip-synch

2006-08-09T08:52:00.000-04:00

From an early age I loved music. I dreamed of being a singer, or at least in the movies. I had a gift for mimicry, probably born of the fact that I had no clear personality of my own.

With an abiding love of horror movies it was a natural that I should come into possession of a 45 rpm recording of THE MONSTER MASH by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-kickers. I loved that record and played it incessantly on my Close ‘n’ Play. For those of you too young to remember it, the Close 'n' Play was a child's record player (a record being a vinyl disc with grooves on it) that was essentially a box that had a needle built into the top and a turntable in the bottom and when you closed it the turntable would spin and the needle would hit the record. Simple, yet effective.

When I felt I’d mastered the song, had all the words memorized, had my fabulous Boris Karloff imitation down pat, I got up the nerve to sing it out loud, along with the record (primitive karaoke), in front of my parents.

I got the Close 'n' Play out, put it on the dining room table and with my mother on her stool at the kitchen counter and my father across from me at the table I turned it on. I began to sing.

The entire record played and they laughed, full and long. I was delirious with happiness. I actually captured their attention! Miraculous!

"Do it again," they said.

I was a hit!I was sure my superb singing voice was going to bring me fame and fortune, and love, of course. I sang with abandon, careful to keep a well-modulated Boris Karloff intact, as the song required.

The record ended.

Again they had laughed and applauded.

"Do it again," they repeated.

Ecstatic, I closed the record player, which started the song again.

"This time just lip-synch," they told me. "It’s better when you don’t sing."

And there ended my dreams of pop-stardom.

I never sang for them, or anyone else, again.

Macy*s Windows

2006-08-06T11:54:00.000-04:00

One Thanksgiving there was a short story on the CBS Morning Show about the Miracle on 34th Street window displays at Macy’s Herald Square. It was the 50th anniversary of the film and they had commissioned windows that recreated scenes from the movie. The show detailed how the animated figures were made and installed. I jumped to the phone and called my father and told him to turn on his television. I had already started taping the show in case he missed it. This was big doin’s. As I suspected, he was enthralled.

He was coming into New York for Thanksgiving (the one meal I can actually cook, really well). I suggested we go look at the windows. For once he was excited about a suggestion to go somewhere new. He drove in from Long Island, which was always a lengthy trip as he drove at a steady crawl staying a healthy 2-3 miles below the speed limit at all times.

This was not a driving style brought on by age as it is with some people. No. My father was in slow motion alllllll the time. It may have been an undiagnosed hypothyroid problem but we’ll never know for sure. But everything he did or said had to be carefully deliberated, thought through, moved through slowly and deliberately. When, on occasion, he became animated or quick witted, which did happen from time to time, it was as if someone had put new batteries in him but eventually they would run out of juice and he’d go back to slow – mo. Not that he was lazy, he actually was quite the opposite, but he did move slow. Maybe it was a matter of the world speeding up around him and he simply stayed in an earlier decade. With his love of time travel stories I think he’d like that analogy.

So this was the first year Macy*s put in their celebratory Miracle on 34th Street themed windows and my dad and I recreated our Christmas trips to Harrows and went to look at the amazing displays. I fear I may have tired him out. I’d gotten bus passes, my treat, wow, big spender (hey, I was broke, c'mon) and we began my pre-planned Christmas extravaganza showing off MY city at its holiday finest. We started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the spectacular angel-bedecked tree.

I knew this would be right up my father’s alley as it was covered with angels, made in Florence 200 years ago which resembled his own crèche, made in Japan circa 1960 and bought at Smile’s five and dime. Though that sounds like they were cheesy, they were not. They looked like fine renaissance statuary. Because they were so beautiful I do regret somewhat leaving them behind when I sold his house, but the Christmases they represented no longer existed… plus it’s hard to fit a four-foot tall manager in a one-bedroom apartment. Especially when one has a chronic disgust for a hypocritical religion. But okay, that's me and my issues.

As I expected he was entranced and impressed with the museum’s display which also includes at least one hundred additional figures set up at the base of the tree, from shepherds to elephants, making their way to Bethlehem. From there we hopped the Fifth Avenue bus and went down town. On the way to Macy’s it seemed appropriate that we should see what would be the lesser windows of Lord & Taylor and Saks as well as the ever-impressive Rockefeller Center tree.

On and off the bus we went and stood on line to view the windows. I was disappointed that year that the windows were more cartoony then they had been in years past and less finely done. I knew it wasn’t doing it for my dad, despite the fact that they were fun – they weren’t exactly spectacular. Poor dad was about pooped by the time we got across town to Macy’s. But oh how he perked up when we saw those windows. My God they were, and are – Macy’s uses them every year now and well they should - fantastic. Each window portrayed a key scene from the movie we both cherished, possibly the one thing we both agreed wholeheartedly on as perfection.

We started on the first window, where Kris Kringle instructs a storekeeper on the proper placement of various reindeer and moved on to the parade window complete with a signature helium balloon. We looked on in awe at the scene where Natalie Wood and John Payne visit Santa at Macy’s Santaland. We quoted lines from the movie to each other at the courtroom scene where the great Gene Lockhart, father of the fabulous June, states with great relief "Case Dismissed!" while peering over hundreds of letters to Santa. One of my all-time favorite lines was Mr. Lockhart’s priceless "overruled" drawled out with pursed lips and a slowly shaking head. Of course the most bittersweet was the final window installation where Maureen O’Hara and John Payne embrace in their soon-to-be new home and spot the walking stick against the fireplace. Together we intoned, "Maybe I didn’t do such a wonderful thing after all," quoting Payne and we laughed that we’d thought the same line at the same time. Then my father, who was clearly tired unused as he was to so much walking and activity, said he wanted to go back to the beginning window and see it all again. I was not adverse.

He admired the workmanship, the creativity, the attention to detail clearly done with pride, artistry and love of the subject matter. I agreed. Then he said something that both shocked me and broke my heart and still does, and it made me see him differently ever after. He said, "I wish I could have had a job doing that. Who would ever want to take a day off with a job like that?"

I think hearing him open up like that and tell me, of all people, (his stupid, disappointing, loser of a daughter) how he wished his life could have been different was the real miracle on 34th Street.

Knife-throwing Grandma

2006-08-05T11:57:00.000-04:00

Although I thought my maternal grandmother was the best thing since sliced bread, my mother did not, as daughters often do not, feel the same way. My grandmother was the only person who voluntarily touched me lovingly after the age of seven. A big deal for someone who is naturally physically affectionate, but was raised by very icy people.

My mother required that I kiss her good-bye, on the cheek, when I left for school in the mornings, but there was a coolness and a feeling of duty rather than affection to the ritual. My grandma was a totally different story. That woman would hug me almost hard enough to make up for the lack of physical affection at home. Sadly I never saw her often enough to make the feeling stick, but I would almost cry with happiness when she would squash me to her. She was a very, shall we say, well-endowed woman and before I hit my full height, which was the same height as her, my face would smash right into her Jean Naté-scented bosom. Though I was loath to break the welcomed hug, I would have to -- or risk suffocation.

But it was more than the hello-hugs. She would often just grab me for a hug for no reason. Standing in the kitchen, sitting on the couch, didn’t matter; hugs were easy and free with her and I knew that if no one else in the world did, my grandmother loved me. To me she was the sweetest, kindest, most loving person I could imagine. Of all the family members I've lost (and that would be all of them) she is the only one I miss. She is the only one I mourn. Twenty-three years later I still well-up with tears when I think of how much I lost when she died.

My mother knew a different woman. She told me how sometimes when she was young my grandfather’s drinking would drive my grandmother crazy.

Apparently I inherited more than her bosom, I also inherited her temper which was long in triggering, but when she lost it: look out.

Once, my mother told me she remembered her father came home drunk and my grandmother was seething. His method of further antagonizing his wife was to remain calm and casual about everything. Nothing can make you more furious than the person you are fuming at staying calm. She ranted, he smiled. She yelled, he chuckled.

Driven to the brink my gentle, loving grandma grabbed a large clever and threw it at my grandfather. Luckily she missed – but it stuck in the kitchen door he was standing in front of. Like a circus act. Even then, he just laughed.

In her place I’d have likely pulled the knife out of the door and tried again. My grandmother, apparently, did not.

I know my mother told me this and other stories of her mother’s temper to dissuade me from my devotion to her, but instead I took her side. I could see how my grandfather could drive her mad. My mother felt the sun rose and set on her father. Her sisters felt the same way. I could never fathom it.

Stories of my grandfather borrowing money from my mother, who was working from the age of 13, to go to a bar were not the amusing anecdotes to me that they were to her. To me they were stories of an unreliable man shamelessly using his oldest child. I guess his charm overpowered the reality for her. Me? I love nothing more than a charming man: it's my single favorite quality in a man. But does it excuse shitty behavior? No. Especially not in a parent.

There was only one time I saw my grandmother lose this famous temper of hers. It might have been a frightening thing for another child to witness, but what I saw at home with my parents every single weekend made grandma’s scene tame in comparison.

It was after my aunt’s wedding. I must have been 9 or 10. She was the last of the three sisters to be married and I understood, even at such a young age, that my grandmother was grieving the last chick leaving the nest. It was perfectly understandable. All these girls lived at home until their weddings – there was no such thing as moving out on your own. So it was an extremely emotional day for my grandmother. She’d also had a few drinks at the reception, which was unusual for her. Like me, my grandmother’s vice was food not liquor, so it hit her hard. That plus her emotions made her volatile.

I’m not sure exactly what occurred to start the fireworks, but I understand it was something my grandfather said. Quel Shock!

She lost it and actually went after him physically. A regular old-school Irish wildwoman! Someone held her back, I was not a witness as my other aunt made me stay in the kitchen while the fun was going on in the front parlor. But I heard her. Oh my. My mother was right about that, she really could yell. Who knew? And although I had not heard ‘cursing’ other than ‘damn’ I knew she was firing off a string of expletives the like of which I would only learn years later. But I knew where her fury was coming from, I understood that the drink plus the emotion had set her off and I wasn’t afraid and didn’t think she was frightening or wrong. I was, however, curious as hell and sort of wish I could have seen her in her full, fiery redheaded glory. Sadly, I never did. But my grandmother and I were a team and I loved her always. She made me feel special and loved and wanted when not one other person in world did. She thought I was perfect and no one else before or since has ever made me feel so unconditionally worthwhile. I love the mental picture I have of her throwing cleavers. Go grandma.

Lawn Furniture

2006-08-03T19:10:00.000-04:00

The weekend horrors were almost exclusively private affairs. How the neighbors didn’t hear the yelling is beyond me, but then perhaps they did hear and just didn’t dare interfere. One of the reasons I like living in the city, in an apartment, is that there is someone just on the other side of the wall who might help. It’s not a realistic ideal, but there’s some comfort in it for me. Alone, but not alone as opposed to the isolation of a house in the suburbs filled with furtive violence.

There were a couple of occasions when things got out of the dark, like when my father was arrested for drunk driving. And then there was the night for reasons unknown to me he decided in a fit of rage to take all the furniture out of the house and put it out on the front lawn. The randomness of the act, and the knowledge that it was irrational and part of his drunken fury made it frightening; but I have to admit it was surreal and little funny to see the beds, tables, chairs, sofas and dressers all set up on the front lawn.

At first he’d thrown them out or dragged them depending on their sizes, but then he’d gone out and arranged them; pretty much as they had been while in the house.

It was interesting not only in that he was recreating the interior of the house outside, but that he did it on the front lawn rather than in the back when the world virtually revolved around the backyard to him. He all but ignored the front in favor of the back until the day he decided he wanted lawn furniture.
The next day, after he sobered up, he somberly returned all the furniture to its rightful place. At least it hadn’t rained.

Alligators in the Mailbox

2006-08-02T08:50:00.000-04:00

When I was very young, pre-kindergarten, I loved Woody Woodpecker cartoons and cold cereal. My love of Woody and his wood-pecking ways has diminished over the years, alas, can love truly last? But I do still have a cold cereal addiction, which is neither here nor there.

The outcome of this combined love affair of my extreme youth was the wild excitement of ordering a Woody Woodpecker whistle which was offered as a mail-in promotion on the back of one of my favorite overly sweetened cereals, Cap’n Crunch most likely. It wasn’t often that I would have been allowed to get such an item, it was very likely absolutely free with a box top or some such thing, so I was delirious with thoughts of my whistle AND that it would come in the mail. Mail, like phone calls, was something only adults were gifted with and I felt I had made a small step into adulthood with my soon to arrive mail-order whistle. Needless to say I was forever checking the mailbox.

One morning, six to eight weeks after ordering the whistle I checked the mail to find a brown cardboard box, certainly large enough to hold the treasured whistle. It was approximately 4" x 10" long. I shook it hard to see if I could hear what might sound like a red and yellow plastic woodpecker shaped whistle clunking around. I was too young to read much more than my name – so it was clearly the whistle. I was also too young to open mail on my own and had to wait for my mother to wake up. Waiting was agony. I finally decided she was never going to arise on her own and I did what any quiet child does to rouse a sleeping parent. I stood at the edge of the bed and stared her down. It always worked. Though my mother hated it, saying it was a bit creepy. Sort of like having a monster staring at you while you slept.

When she got up and got over the fright of my zombie stare, she came out to the kitchen to open my treasure. She took the box from me, looked at it and though I never heard my mother utter the phrase until I was in my 30s I know she was thinking, "Holy Shit."

"It’s not the whistle," she said.

She looked around the kitchen, opened a couple of cabinets and then decided on a large yellow, plastic mixing bowl. She put it on the small Formica kitchen table and tentatively opened one end of the rectangular box and carefully tipped it toward the bowl.

What spilled into the bowl was like a dream come true to a child who cherished Ray Harryhausen stop motion movies – it was a live baby alligator.

My mother’s sister was vacationing in Florida at the time and back in the 60s it was a cruel, but common, practice to send baby alligators to people as souvenirs. I don’t suppose the people who sent the poor creatures actually thought about what the trip through the U.S. mails would do to the critters. The poor little guy was traumatized, not the least because after being deposited into the relative calm of our mailbox it was then jostled and shook with a vengeance by a determined child.

Of course we were so stunned and delighted to see the little cutie that we didn’t think about his state of health either. And for that I am profoundly ashamed. At the time I was thrilled and all I could imagine was one day walking down the street with my own full-grown alligator on a leash.

My mother’s thoughts ran to how to make the best use of this find right away. Naturally, that meant scaring the hell out of my father.

We crept back to the bedroom with the baby ‘gator still in shock in the yellow bowl. My mother carefully placed the bowl in the bed next to my father and while the two of us barely held back peals of laughter we shook him to wakefulness.

Now my father never woke fast, never moved fast, ever... well, except maybe on a drunken tear trying to kill my mother... but usually not even then. But this one time you would have thought he’d been electrocuted. He woke up, took one look at the tiny prehistoric creature in the bed with him and leapt from the bed screaming. And I do mean screaming.

It was easily one of the funniest moments of my childhood.

I cannot remember if the whistle ever arrived.

The Devil Lives Back There or How Grandpa Hid His Stash

2006-08-02T08:43:00.001-04:00

My maternal grandfather was a drinker, make no mistake. He was however, unlike my own father, a happy drunk. From what I understand he never became violent and as far as I ever saw never became sloppy, so his drinking was not something I really thought about as a youngster. But apparently it was also something he did not do altogether out in the open. There was a fair amount of drinking on the sly. When he was younger he would drink at bars, being a very social kind of fellow, a Scorpio man is a Scorpio man. Whatever your personal opinion of astrology, this one almost always holds true. But after his stroke he drank at home and I believe he enjoyed keeping it a secret from my grandmother.

When I was very young I was exploring the fabulous basement of my grandparent’s house. It was so different from the carbon copy homes I knew in the suburbs. Their basement wasn’t really a basement so much as a ground floor that led out to the tiny city-style backyard. But it had a kitchen-bar area and a separate room with glass doors. Inside that room there was a waist-high shelf that went around three sides of the room and was covered with all manner of fabulous trinkets. There were bobble headed ‘negro children’, popular in the ‘40s I believe, and stuffed and dressed baby alligators -- one was actually fishing. (Probably bought on the same vacation that occasioned my mailbox pet.) There were ashtrays from Ireland and planters shaped like dogs. I was in awe of all of them and loved to go down and look at them.

On one of my excursions to the basement room I became very brave and decided to check the back room that was more of a traditional basement space. It was a storeroom and also home to the water heater and a giant oil tank which was a frightening item to me as my house had gas heat so I was unused to such a thing. It was perhaps four feet long and went almost to the ceiling. It stood on four legs and was made of black metal. I entered the room and heard a noise behind the behemoth. I stood frozen in front of it, my mind teaming with visions of the horrible monster that must be living there. I let out a gasp and my grandfather poked his head out from behind the giant tank.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked.

"Just looking," I replied terrified. Not just of the tank, but also of him. I was always vaguely afraid of him, I guess because I didn’t have all that much contact with him one on one and I was so terribly shy of almost everyone.

He came out from around the back of the tank and took my hand.

"You have to be careful down here," he warned. "You don’t want to come here alone – ever."

I’m sure I looked mortified, I certainly felt it. I was a very well-behaved child, getting into trouble was not something I did... that would come a few years down the road.

"It’s okay now," he told me, "because he’s not here right now."

"Who?"

"The devil," he told me.

"The DEVIL?"

He nodded solemnly. This was very, very serious business. Remember: big Catholics here.

"Behind here," he pointed to the tank. "That’s where the Devil himself lives."

He let me take a quick peek behind the tank, then pulled me back.

"What does he look like?" I asked, as I had never known anyone who had actually seen the Devil, let alone had him living in his basement!

"He’s a mean looking-fella," he said. "Tall, and his skin is all red and his eyes are black and could burn a hole right through ya. You don’t want to run into him, he’s alright with me, we’ve got a deal here. He lives here, he can get down to Hell from here, but he stays here most of the time. But you don’t want him to catch you here, and you don’t want him to know you know about him."

I was a very serious child and understood what he was getting at, this was a huge secret and no fooling around.

"I think I hear him coming back," he said. "We better get upstairs. He won’t come up there – it’s safe there."

We ran up the stairs to the kitchen. I think my heart must have been about to burst from fear. He nodded and winked at me, this was a secret between us – it was not best to let others know where the Devil made his home.

I steered clear of the back room after that, who was I to want to tempt the Devil? But when I got older and in passing conversation mention to my mother how the devil lived in the basement of her father’s house she laughed out loud.

"Behind the oil tank?" She asked.

"Yes. You knew?" I was a little disappointed that someone else was in on it.

"The devil doesn’t live back there," she told me. "Grandpa hides his whiskey back there because Grandma doesn’t like to go in there. You just caught him having a shot and he didn’t want you to tell Grandma."

And so, in effect, my Grandfather wasn’t actually lying, in essence the ‘devil’ did live back there in the form of a bottle. But he sure could weave a tale.

Children's Books

2006-08-02T07:50:00.000-04:00

It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized I had not had the same reading material that other children had been raised with as a given. While my friends would rhapsodize about their fond memories of Curious George I pondered: why hadn’t I been exposed to stories of a curious monkey and a man in a yellow hat? I thought long and hard about why I couldn’t capture the same enthusiasm for childhood books. Then one night after many Margaritas, or maybe it was Sangria, I found myself involved in a typically lengthy and thought-provoking discussion on religion; Christianity in general, Catholicism in particular and I suddenly found myself in nostalgic and rhapsodic memories of childhood books. Oh yes, it finally hit me! The long-suppressed memories of abuse: the religious picture books.

Being raised Catholic, mostly Irish Catholic, as my father’s side, which was Polish, wasn’t all that interested, the books I was given as a child were all along the lines of Jesus, Your Special Friend and Mary, Virgin (Like You Should Be). In fact I recalled I had quite the stockpile of such books in the attic of the house I grew up in. All hardcovers, nice little editions actually, filled with tried and true indoctrination. Ah, the happy memories of reading about Jesus making enough food to feed all the attendees at the Sermon on the Mount. Loaves and fishes a-plenty. Water to wine at Canaan! Wheeee! Party on Dude! And the horrors at Gethsemene when he was abandoned (I wouldn’t leave you Jesus -- you’re my special friend!). So many good times. And the pictures! Glowing light surrounded just about everyone… except perhaps Lot’s wife and Mary Magdalene – until the crucifixion where she really redeemed herself by hanging tight when the boys in the band had all slunk off for more of that wine which had formerly been water.

I always associated God with lots of grapes. It seemed grapes were a huge deal back in the day, as they appeared on nearly every page of these little books. Naturally when I attended religious instruction classes prior to my first Holy Communion and was taught the prayer Hail Mary it was printed on a page with a border of grapes. So when my heavily Long Island-accented teacher, who was just a stay at home mom with no formal teaching background, read the prayer aloud to us to teach us – telling us not to look at the paper (reading BAD) I heard "Hail Mary, full of grapes" instead of "Hail Mary full of grace". It seemed right at the time. And actually, it doesn’t sound too bad now either. One would imagine, given what that woman went through, that wine would have played a large part in her life. Just as it did in my mother’s.