This Is Us...Really

USA is showing a THIS IS US marathon and I find myself re-watching and feeling even more than I felt seeing this show the first time. It's got everything you've seen or wished for in a family — a Dad who's a dreamer but shows love; a reluctant mom who clearly does her best but is flawed.  There's sibling rivalry, not fitting in, weight, cancer, success, fame, dying, regret, family — relationships.

I know people don't understand my deep connection to watching TV.  Television is a source for me.  Of company, of information, of sentiment, and vicarious emotion.  When I'm feeling lonely, disconnected, sad, depressed, I find something to watch that will fix that for me.  

It seems frivolous I know.  But there are so many pluses for me watching TV:  It's right here and it's here all the time; I've already paid for it; and between satellite and Netflix and Showtime and HBO, I can usually find something that will give me what I'm seeking.  I don't have to risk that I'll seek something and it won't be gotten.

My friend Susan believes it's better to ask — even if you don't get what you're asking for — than not to ask at all. I don't feel that way.  Yet.  It's too disappointing and too hurtful and too — well — just "too".

But I understand that when you don't ask, you definitely have no chance of getting.

My struggle (well, one of them anyway) is to let go of the outcome.  That's what a therapist tells me.  Let Go of the Outcome.  Let go of resentment and regret.  Let go of expectations.  Let it all go.  I'm trying.

I understand the concept and it makes sense to me, but it's one of those easier said than done.  But I'm trying. And at times, I'm succeeding.  So far my best success — I think — has been with some of my friends and my daughter.  Still a ways to go with the son and the once-husband.

So This Is Us allows me to see a family — across time — struggling and loving and hurting and supporting in ways that virtually never existed in my family.  I get to watch how they do it and I get to momentarily feel the bonds of being with a family.  I hope we managed to live that give-and-take for our kids so that they'll have a better sense of what it means to be in a relationship, to have a family.

That voyeuristic view of family life (whether it's real or not) allows me to experience what I currently lack in my life.  

Right now, luckily, I'm really pretty happy.

I love my little home.  It's filled with everything I absolutely love, arranged just as I like, only used by me and for the first time in I do not know how long (if ever) I'm neat.  Everything is in its place.  I'm no longer sloppy but I'm also not racing and juggling to manage and provide for a family of four.  

It is just me.

What a change.  I'm continually surprised by what can change.  

I had an open house on New Year's Day.  Twenty-six people came, it was wonderful, my daughter was there and saw my new place for the first time, and for the first time EVER, I didn't kill myself to have company!

I didn't have to stress about cleaning up days before everyone came because pretty much everything was already clean.  I didn't go overboard on getting drinks or food and I almost cooked NOTHING.  I had a great time, I was relaxed and I didn't pay for it in a horrible way.  HOORAY!

I miss having a fireplace and of course the companionship of someone next to me, but all in all, I'm enjoying my life at the moment and I feel secure.

So while I may be watching This Is Us — finally, joyfully, amazingly — 
I'm much more intently watching —  This Is Me.

The Other Side of My Father

There was something of the prankster in my father.  He wasn't fun-loving like my Uncle John but he did love to play a joke on someone.  Two pranks that have always stood out in my mind.

Not my mom's jewelry but it could be.

My mother was upstairs in her bedroom getting ready to go out with her friends — whom we all called "Aunt Alice" or "Auntie Arax" or Aunt so-and-so whether they were actual relatives or not.  When I was little, I loved watching my mother get dressed because her art deco dressing table had four drawers filled with wonders — one with gloves and more gloves — ivory kid gloves with a tiny pearl button that closed the glove at the wrist or black lace gloves that went to one's elbows; handkerchiefs and scarves in every size, color and shape —  gauzy rose, emerald green sateen, or beautifully patterned turquoise,red and gold silk.  I loved to stick my hands in that drawer and feel the coolness of the fabrics, pull them out, spread them on her bedspread while she perched on an ottoman in front of the big round mirror and pulled out box after box filled with her costume jewelry and tried on various combinations of clip-on earrings and necklaces.  She'd organized her jewelry by color or type — all the pearl or green or silver ones together so when she'd picked out her outfit she could seek out just the right accessories to dress up her outfit.  My mother had a great eye, was a GREAT shopper and despite her limited budget always looked incredibly fashionable.

While she was getting dressed for a Sunday outing with "the girls,"  my father was downstairs and had commandeered my brother and few of the husbands on the block to move all the furniture out of the living room and dining room — except for the tables and lamps.

When Aunt Alice and the others arrived my mother yelled down, "I'll be ready in five minutes, sit down, make yourselves at home!"

To which my Aunt Alice called up in her soft-spoken and bewildered voice, "But Dotty — there's nowhere to sit..."

"That's ridiculous Alice," my mom called down as she finished putting on the last touches of her make-up — pursing her lips to apply her lipstick — "just push aside whatever's in your way!"

"But Dotty," Aunt Alice's voice quietly persisted, "there's really NO-WHERE to sit."

And at that my mother slammed her drawers closed and clicked down the stairs in her sling-back pumps (that perfectly matched the color of her full-skirted belted dress) to see why Alice and the others couldn't sit down in the living room.

The second she saw all her furniture missing — the couch, chairs, coffee table — she shrieked, "TOM-MEE! You get my furniture back in this living room NOW!" as my father and his accomplices laughed their heads off hiding behind kitchen doors and dining room drapes.

The Erskine's house as it looks today — minus the hedges.You 
can see (by the changed roofline) that the house was expanded.

My father's pranks were not just reserved for my mother.  He played another memorable prank on our next-door neighbor, Mr. Erskine.  Our houses were next door to each other on a dirt road with a strip of 6-foot grass from the gravel to the thick row of hedges fronting our yards and  that encasing our lawns like a thick, brushy green fence.  These hedges were only broken by the asphalt driveways that provided a place to park the family car.  Harry — a hard-working, proud, stocky Irishmen — drove a gray bomb of a car that seemed to engulf him once he got behind the wheel.  

Mr. Erskine worked late, came home late and — as our street had only one streetlight — had some issues finding the opening to his driveway as things were pretty dark at our end of the block.  SO Harry Erskine came up with the ingenious idea of lining the beginning of the driveway with large boulders painted white. Now when he pulled onto our street in the dark of night he could find his driveway!  

One night, my father decided that we should move those painted rocks and see what happened.  So the guys lugged those heavy boulders behind those hedges and then later, much later, we hid behind them.  Crouched down in the stillness and black, my cheeks against the grass, peering through the under-branches of the hedges, I felt my heart thumping.  The grown-ups were talking and laughing in anticipation when finally a pair of headlights turned onto the block and slowly moved forward.  I could hear the crunch of the gravel under the tires of the lumbering car as it rolled past the driveway and then continued on, until Harry Erskine realized he'd missed his house.  As the brakes brought the car to a screeching halt, the driver's door opened, Mr. Erskine got out muttering (what I think were) profanities in his Irish accent, and everyone popped up from their hiding places, laughing at the success of the prank. 

As even Harry began smiling at the joke, the whole gaggle of neighbors congratulated my father on the success of his joke. With all the kids tumbling around on the grass among the gang of grown-ups, I felt this comforting sense of warmth and happiness surrounding me.

Now if only they could all come home with me.
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IMPORTANT UPDATE:

It goes to show that memory is faulty/selective/flawed.  Below please find my childhood friend Marilyn's recollection of these two events.  Definitely remember what's she's added to the hedges story but am floored that I fell for the furniture "prank on the prankster"!

I remember some details a little differently.  For some reason, I remember the joke of the furniture move was to be on your father and to get him in trouble with you mother.  I remember it taking practically all of the men in the neighborhood who we knew (Mr. Sperling, Mr. Hans, Mr. Guardiano and others) to make this one happen.  The furniture was already outside in the late afternoon by the time that your father got home.  And then "he faced the music."

For the "hedges" incident, I remember us all being inside the gray Hudson returning from the drive-in movies.  I vaguely remember my father's frustration when he could not find the opening to the driveway.  What I recall is that more hedges were added, in pots, to line the driveway and have it appear as if there was no opening.  Again, it took a cast of neighborhood characters to pull this off.

I also remember several informal get togethers after these antics to laugh again and again and to share the stories.  The summer fold-up chairs would come out and various folks would share the stories over and over.

Thank you Mar for setting the record straight!!

Knock, Knock, Knock'in ...

When you're seven or eight years old, everyone's bigger than you are.  Except for school — where most everything and everyone is your size — you spend much of your time just standing thigh-high in a sea of legs.  Grown-ups all around, you're always looking up, always reaching up, to find a hand to hold and guide you.  In my case, for one reason or another, the hand that held mine was not that of my mom or dad.

From my child's perspective, it seemed my father spent a lot of time in the hospital, a place I was not allowed.  Since my mother worked six days a week, getting to the hospital was a Sunday affair when we'd all get ready and one of the relatives would pick us up and pile the four of us in a big Buick or Oldsmobile — those huge armored tanks of a car.  My mother didn't drive.  She'd witnessed a horrible car accident at the age of 25 and simply never drove again until about 20 years later when she had no choice but to learn to drive because we'd moved to a place where there was no public transportation.  Even though the idea of the hospital was a grim affair to the grown-ups, I always liked and looked forward to the car ride — squeezed in the back, looking out the rear view window, watching the trees and the houses fly by.  Riding in a car was freedom.  It felt like being in a little house on wheels that protected you but was a moving ship that could take you just about anywhere.  

I think my Uncle Johnny was the chauffeur most of the time.  His car was a Ford Station wagon — light Green with a dark green stripe on the two front doors. The first owners were the Ford Family (they always put a stripe on the front doors to identify their cars). Unlike my dad, Uncle Johnny always had a smile on his face, a joke on his lips, or a laugh chuckling out of his body.   When we got to the hospital, everyone climbed out and filed in to the hospital lobby.  Here's when the strategizing started.  There had to be a plan for how to sneak my brother in.  My sister at 13 was just old enough to visit by the hospital's rules, but my brother was not yet 11 and it took some finagling. While I played around, the adults plotted.  Usually my mom and Aunt Maddy would get visitor's passes and go up.  Then my aunt would come down with both passes and then my uncle would go up with my brother.  This back-and-forth exchange would continue until my uncle came back down, my aunt (the last of the adults) would take my sister up and Uncle Johnny would stay with me.

Herve Moran poster file.vintageadbrowser.com

At first it was fun.  He'd light his cigarette, put it in his ear and make the smoke come out of his mouth!  He'd blow smoke rings.  He'd play magic tricks and pull a quarter out from behind your ear.   These tricks would keep my attention for a time but after his second or third cigarette I would be restless.  I'd wonder what was going on upstairs in my father's room.  I'd imagine my father a different person — that he was smiling and telling jokes to everyone around his bedside.  That his room was filled with colorful cards and the smell of carnations and sunlight flooding over everyone as they laughed and were happy just to be together.  It was my fantasy and I was restless to see if it was true.  That's when we'd head outside.  

No matter the weather, It was my job to find the pebbles and his job to toss them at the window of my father's room on the third floor.  Despite even the snow blanketing the hospital's well-tended grounds, I searched the dirt beneath the shrubs, picked and pushed the soil to find a few stones for my Uncle John to carefully aim at the glass in hopes of attracting my father's attention down toward me.  Sometimes he was successful — sometimes not. When he was, I'd strain to see the outline of my father behind the window that didn't open, hunched over on crutches, sending us a feeble wave before turning away and hobbling back to his bed.

The glimpse was a momentary connection to my father that soon faded and in its place came an empty feeling in the center of my stomach — a hole that no smoke ring could fill.

The Rest of This Story

This post continues the story in Things Change
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There was a lot that led up to my father's departure.  

He had had a hard life long before I was born.  I never knew his parents and I only learned bits and pieces of his past much later when I was older.   His mother had a first marriage that produced two children but that husband died.  Later she remarried and had another son, my dad.  His father ran out on the family — but not before my father experienced the shame of his father beating his mother and the pain of his father beating him.  With his father gone and his mother unable to support them doing her beadwork, he dropped out of school after eighth grade and worked on a truck delivering bread. He got to take the day-old bread home which was helpful to them.  He told me that during the Depression his mother (maybe with him along) scavenged in the garbage cans behind grocery stores for food that was thrown away — she'd make soup from the vegetables, jam from the rotten fruit she found.  He became the sole support for his mom, which is why he never went to war like almost everyone else in his generation.

There was never an easiness between us.  He and my sister had a bond.  She was his first.  When my sister was five and my mother was pregnant with my brother, she left my father and moved back home with her parents.  My grampa wasn't sympathetic.  "You chose him now you have to stay with him."  Unhappy with her options, my mother was trying to figure out what to do when she was out walking when my sister tugged on her hand and cried out, "That man!  That man! I think that man is my DADDY!" pointing with her finger and dragging my mother to cross the street.   My mother told me she felt she couldn't keep my father from her.  And so she went back.  My sister stayed fiercely loyal to my father and he to her.  Maybe he felt she was always on his side.

My father identified with my brother. Of course he was the first son and they were both males.  But more than that their mindsets were compatible.  They both wanted to get rich quick and were constantly concocting schemes to achieve that goal and here's where they differed.  My brother's schemes were usually illegal, generally succeeded, until he got caught. My father's escapades were always legal (as far as I know) and always failed.  So in some way, my father admired my brother's successes and turned a blind eye to how it was accomplished.  He relished the money and what it bought — the fancy car, the ski house, the beautiful girls, the trips overseas.  And when my brother did get caught and faced juvenile detention, jail, and eventually, prison my father was always there to bail him out.

By the time I came along, there were no slots left.  Not the first-anything and the youngest in the bunch, in all the chaos no one paid me any attention.  I didn't understand the commotion, the outbursts, the rage.  I didn't understand why our family wasn't like the ones I saw on TV.  I wasn't "Princess" or "Kitten" to my father.

My father had had his share of bad luck.  He wanted his own business.  He knew drycleaning from working at a commercial cleaners.  When I was young my parents borrowed, sold their insurance policies, scraped together the money, and bought a drycleaners.  He went out to solicit new business.  Was going door-to-door to give people flyers.  One home he went to had a six-foot chain link fence.  He went in. Somehow the gate locked behind him.  Guard dogs raced out and attacked him.  He struggled to climb up the fence backwards while the dogs were biting at his legs.  He managed t throw himself over the fence.  He broke his ankle and who knows what else was wrong.  I was little.  I didn't know what was going on except that all of a sudden my father wasn't around any more, my mother went to work very early and came home very late.  My sister, maybe she was thirteen had to run the household.  My brother and I tagged along.  On Sundays when someone drove us all to the hospital to visit my dad, I was too little to be allowed in.  My brother could sneak in but some relative would stay outside with me and throw stones at the window to see if we could get my father to look out the window and wave.  It was grim.

Months after, my father came home to recuperate.  My mom didn't drive so she took public transportation and her day was long and hard and more than any one person should have had to bear.  She was worried about keeping the business going, paying the bills, putting food in the frig.  We three kids were extra baggage she just couldn't carry at the time.

My father got better and began going back to work.  His doctor recommended he bowl for exercise to help his ankle.  He was coming home from bowling one night driving the VW van that was the delivery truck for the cleaners.  Back then people referred to VWs as driving a "tin can."  While he was driving home a 17 yr-old drunk driver with a suspended license ran a stop sign at a perpendicular side street and plowed into the passenger side of the VW.  The force of the impact (he was in a big car) blew my father out of the van, up in the air, and he skidded 40 feet along the railroad tracks parallel to the road before his body came to a stop.  Years later my mother told me that when she got to the hospital there was so much gravel imbedded in his face she didn't recognize him.  

He was a mess.  Now that repaired ankle was shattered.  So shattered that they thought they'd have to amputate.  I was told that a surgeon was found who was willing to try and save the leg but even if he succeeded, he'd always walk with a limp.  My mother was grateful for that.  He was back in the hospital for a long haul.  My mother was back to doing everything on her own.  They would be plunged again into crushing debt.  

This is a compressed story of what transpired in my father's life.  I can't remember the actual dates, the full facts, the other points of view.  I only know that for me, this is what imprinted from the turmoil and  tumult that was our family life.  It was years of hard times, bitterness, fighting, never enough money, and for me and my siblings, never enough parental supervision.  

My father...at a benign moment...

My sister got married soon after high school and my brother was locked up someplace, my mother was working and that left my father home alone while I was in high school trying to avoid coming home at all costs.  It was that behavior that made him angrier than ever.  He wanted control over something and the only something around was me.

I remember it was winter because when I got to the house it was dark outside.  I went in to the kitchen and my father limped in close behind me.  I did what I always did — made myself small, stayed quiet, hoped my mom would walk in the door soon. He was yelling.  He was mad I was late.  He was mad I wasn't looking at him.  He was mad at the world.

When I looked up from setting the table while trying to shut out my father, I saw his beet red face and his voice shouting at me, sputtering about how we were all no good, nothing but bums and in his hand he was brandishing a large kitchen knife.

On some level I knew he wouldn't use it against me but on another level I was just plain scared of him and his rage and what might happen.  So I ran out of the house and up the long road to my friend Susan's house and told her I had to spend the night.  I waited and later called my house, got my mom who was frantically asking me where was I?  What happened ??  I only said I wasn't coming home and I was staying at Susan's.  I remember staying there three days.  When I came home I stayed clear of my father and tried to lay low.  A few days later I came home and found him gone. 

I've written a lot about my father: Father Didn't Know Best, Thrift — the very first post of Tales From Denise James is about my dad.  To the outside world he was a jovial, fun-loving life-of-the-party jokester — but this is the side of him that sticks with me.

I didn't blame my mother if she blamed me — even if I knew better, know better — it always felt like his leaving was my fault.

Things Change

By the time cheerleading practice was over, I rode the sports bus and walked the rest of the way home after my drop-off — it was dark.  The house was empty.  Usually my father was home, sulking, simmering — I never knew if he would stay silent or if he would explode.  I used my key, crept into the darkened house and turned on every light — even though I risked his wrath at "wasting electricity" because I always felt scared to be in the house alone.

In the kitchen, I opened the frig to see what we could have for dinner, and there on the kitchen table was a small tape recorder and a yellow legal pad the long lines filled with my father's almost-illegible scribble.  Though it was addressed to my mother, I read through the first few sentences before I heard the door open, looked up and saw my mother, worn and tired, come into the room.

"Where's Daddy?" she asked.

"He's gone," I said in a small, unemotional voice.  I looked at her carefully to see if she would react, understand what it all meant.  "I think he left a tape for you," I added, pointing to the small machine plugged in to the wall socket.

Without a word, my mother — still in her coat — sat down in one of the heavy, clunky, dark wooden Captain's chairs that crowded around the small round kitchen table. 

"How does this thing work?"

I hit the button to play and out came my father's voice — issuing instructions and commands about where to find this, what to expect or how and when to do that.  It went on and on but the only thing that registered in my ears was his last line:

"You're all better off without me."

My mother shrugged off her coat, read through what he'd written out in his awful scrawl, put down the pad, let out a sigh, went over to the telephone and called my sister — crying.  

I felt bad for my mother and as I tried to quiet the roar of thoughts exploding in my brain — in the pit of my stomach I knew she blamed me.  I heard the muffled sounds of my mother crying and talking in the background — but in my head, all I clearly heard was his voice saying — "You're all better off without me."

It may have been the first time I agreed with anything my father said. 

Standing Up

http://www.annapolissound.com

Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself.  

     It can be difficult.
  

                                           It can be painful.  

                                                    
                                                                It can hurt others.

                                                      
Still, there comes a time when you've just got to make the choice and not back down in favor of others.

If you're familiar with the Hyde School, you know one of the principles they advocate is: 

TRUTH

over

Harmony

How many of us prize truth over keeping the peace?  How many of us are willing to sacrifice our comfort when we are in the company of someone — at work, at play, at home — who tells a racist joke?  That kind of comment is damaging in a profound way, but it's not directed at us and so we duck standing up.  We stay silent.  We let it go by while thinking in our head how awful and inappropriate but we don't speak up.  

And while I wouldn't equate a racial slur in the same way, what about when the comment is closer to home?  What about when someone near to us disappoints us, doesn't come through?  Who among us can stomach confronting a family member or a friend who has hurt or offended us in some way?  I got this random email with the image at right and it resonated with me. Standing up is hard to do especially when there's no guarantee that it will make things better. There is a cost to standing up.

Over the years I've learned to overlook many things.  In my family, when trouble came, it was hidden.  When I was in high school, my father was gone for almost a year.  We told everyone he was living in Arizona because of his rheumatoid arthritis — but the truth was — for almost that entire time —  we didn't know where he was.    And we weren't allowed to tell anyone.   

Keeping that secret was living a lie — day-in and day-out.

There is a cost to staying silent.

I'm tired of paying the price.