Entry #5: THANKSGIVING

When I was little, Thanksgiving was just a puzzle to me. The day would be just misery from beginning to end, and yet every year it came around with the certainty of New England's icy winds, barren trees, and frozen ground.

Each November, family ties would propel us unpredictably to different houses. I realize now this is because my mother hated anything to do with cooking, caregiving, or tradition, and much preferred sitting on the couch waiting for multiple martinis to come her way. When I was a toddler, she would fish the gin-soaked olives out of her glass and give them to me. She always said, “olives take up too much room in the glass.”

My father’s parents had divorced and each had remarried, so there were two sets of grandparents on his side. My mother’s mother was dead, and her father had remarried – yet inexplicably he had given away his only daughter to a family of maiden aunts to raise. This meant that on her side there was one set of grandparents, plus three delightful “maiden ladies” - spinster sisters who had agreed to raise my mother as their own.

I thought everyone had nine grandparents, many of whom detested each other and could not be in the same room at the same time. The divorce between my father’s parents had been hideous, and tensions were aroused during the holidays. I could sense the hostility like molten lava just beneath the surface. These people did not “forgive and forget.” They carried grudges. They cherished them, and polished them lovingly for years. Once you were on their bad side, you were finished for life - as inevitably happened to me.

Thanksgiving was an opportune time for different old people to see the grandchildren for one day. After their turn was over, we might not see them again for years. We were not what you’d call a tight family.

My brothers and I would be on our best behavior, stiff and silent. Booze would be served immediately. Eventually a turkey with stuffing would appear, along with green beans made with Campbell’s mushroom soup and canned onion rings on top. Mashed potatoes with gravy from a bottle and some commercial cranberry sauce would round out the meal. The food was fabulously better than my mother’s cooking, so we would stuff ourselves silly while the adults drank and argued about the best way to carve a turkey. Some forced conversation would follow, then a pie that came from a box, and ultimately we would go back home and be released into our separate rooms. My mother, of course, would take to her bed. I simply could not imagine why families would repeatedly put themselves through this torture. No one was thankful for anything, and Thanksgiving made no sense.

I am in awe of large, happy families with giant family gatherings. I had two older brothers, and two first cousins. That was it. Since we were all different ages and had little in common, there was no interaction. I remember playing Pick-Up Sticks on the rug by myself for what seemed like hours while the adults drank.

One year my mother was forced to hold Thanksgiving at our house. She thought she would be clever and serve canned spaghetti. She loved to thumb her nose at tradition, as if she were above any plebeian customs. Let me assure you that canned spaghetti was not witty, or bohemian, or avant garde in any way. It was cold and disgusting.

By the time I went to college, I was released from the tedious cycle of Thanksgiving. After I got married and my husband and I were penniless freelancers, we would often work right through the holiday, enjoying the quiet solitude.

But then we had kids.

I taught myself how to cook, and bake, and make piecrust. I read up on Thanksgiving traditions and recipes in magazines like Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping. I cooked my first turkey upside down, but no matter – apparently some chefs do so on purpose!

We developed a little family routine in which we would wake up early to chop the onions and celery for the Pepperidge Farm stuffing, and slather the turkey in butter before getting it into the oven. With the kids, we would roll out floury pie crust on the kitchen counter, and mix the canned pumpkin and eggs and evaporated milk and sugar for pumpkin pie, stopping to smell each spice – sweet cinnamon, tart ginger, and exotic cloves – before tossing it into the bowl.

We would snap the ends off fresh green beans, then steam them with a touch of sugar, toss them in butter and - unless we forgot - throw crunchy almonds on top. We would mash red potatoes so the flecks of satiny skin would peek out of each whipped white spoonful. We would boil the cut yams and puree them with orange juice, then bake them in the oven with a sweet crust of nuts and brown sugar. We would make dough and watch it rise, then cook dinner rolls and hide pats of melting yellow butter inside each one. Tongue in cheek, we would open a can of Ocean Spray Cranberry Jelly and put it on a plate completely intact, cutting off a few rounds so they looked like sliced beets.

Finally the turkey would come out of the oven, and we would make deliciously lumpy gravy with the scrapings left in the bottom of the roasting pan. The meal would take as long as necessary to prepare, and when everything was ready, we would sit down, just the four of us, and hold hands and thank God for this marvelous feast and this marvelous day and the miracle of being alive and together.

Unfortunately, it was about this time my mother decided that Thanksgiving was absolutely vital to her after all. My brother refused to see her, so I generally took pity on the aged parents and invited them to our house, where they would proceed to wreak havoc. My mother would bring her own gin in a thermos and arrive drunk and ready to criticize, belittle, scorn, deride, and disparage. She is a bona fide genius at sucking the joy out of any occasion.

Once my little son looked out the front window, saw their car pulling up, and said, “Uh oh… more sadness.”

Once my daughter came over to me and whispered, “Mom, what should I do? Gamma is cheating at checkers!” Who cheats a little child at checkers?

Once my mother sat down and an army of deer ticks proceeded to exit from her clothes onto my couch. I was incensed. She had made my father stop the car somewhere random so she could sit in the grass and drink, meanwhile collecting hundreds of ticks to pass along to my children - along with Lyme Disease, Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, Anaplasmosis, and all the other tick-borne diseases. She played the abused victim to the hilt. “All we did was stop for a picnic on the way,” she said innocently. What was wrong with ME?

Last week we held a special early Thanksgiving celebration for my parents, who are now aged 92 and 94. My brother flew in from Latvia for the occasion. Many people went to a great deal of effort to make the day a success for these two people in deep old age who are incontinent, wheelchair-bound, and half-senile. My father smiled at his end of the table, unable to speak, but his eyes still expressive. My mother sat at her end of the table, looking down at her plate. She never smiled, never spoke, never expressed gratitude for anything, and, after being served two kinds of pie, went immediately to bed.

That afternoon she called me. She wants ANOTHER Thanksgiving. Why won’t I come over this Thursday?

Please share your Thanksgiving memories in the comments below. I am eager to hear them!

11/26/2013

Entry #4: THREATS OF SUICIDE

I was home with the kids one morning when the phone rang. I answered: "Hello?"

An angry male voice said: "This is Dick."

That would be my father. He was as uncomfortable being a father as my mother was resentful of being a mother. On a good day he might say, "Um... This is your father calling." But NEVER anything like, "Hi, it's Dad." In person we have always shaken hands formally, as if meeting for the first time.

He continued: "Your brother has this RIDICULOUS idea that my grandfather drank himself to death. This is NOT TRUE." Pause. "He shot himself."

Well OK then. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Biochemistry is against me. I come from a long line of relatives on both sides who were drunk, depressed, and/or crippled by anxiety. My mother was all three, with some undiagnosed mental issues thrown in to keep things interesting.

I don't remember when her threats of suicide first started. I took them completely seriously. I worried a lot. She would get drunk every night, and if she did not immediately go to bed, she would make her way out to the car, weaving and weeping, and then drive off alone somewhere. Letting her take the keys was like handing a loaded gun to a baby. I was too little to do anything, and each time I was certain I would never see her again. I kept looking at the clock and wondering if she was dead - or had killed somebody else. She couldn't have cared less about that.

My father would just vanish. He never made any attempt to address her issues. He was probably glad to get her out of the house. My brothers had heard it all before and didn't especially care about the woman who didn't especially care about them. But I was the littlest, and therefore was hurt the most. I was sure she would die.

It didn't take much to set her off. Not getting enough attention, not getting her way, not getting what she wanted, being forced to share - you know, toddler issues.

My mother could pitch a fit to wake the dead. Her fits were like nuclear bombs to win any war. People would pussyfoot around her, saying or doing anything she wanted to avoid one of her fits. But, fueled by huge amounts of gin, she would become inconsolable anyway.

Her favorite threat was to jump off the Jamestown Bridge. I remember after one particularly horrendous Thanksgiving, my children, both under the age of 10, piped up from the back seat of the car. "Is Gamma really going to throw herself off the Jamestown Bridge?" they asked.

Oh great, I thought to myself. Another generation terrorized by this woman. I was disgusted with her, and angry with myself for failing to completely protect them from her. I tried to be a firewall between them and their grandmother, but there was only so much I could do.

"Nah, don't worry," I answered truthfully. "You know how the police took away her driver's license? She can't get there."

I did not, of course, mention how sometimes Gamma would take her threats to the next level. Like when I was 13, and found her standing wild-eyed and half-undressed in the bathroom, threatening to swallow a handful of brightly-colored pills and capsules. My father left in disgust and told me to take care of it.

Often she would be rolling around naked in bed, drunk and keening. I now realize she really needed to be hospitalized. My father would leave, saying, "Deal with your mother."

I wanted desperately to go to boarding school, but I was not allowed to leave home. My job was to take care of my mother. It was like having a part-time job at McDonald's, but the pay was worse and the customers were never satisfied. I attended a demanding girls' prep school as a day student, and was expected to maintain straight A's and everything else. No one knew what went on in my house at night.

I remember when I finally made it to college, and my mother and I were were driving along in my Volkswagen. She took exception to something - I don't even remember what - and started pawing hysterically at the inside of her door, trying to find the handle to throw herself out of the moving car. That was awkward.

The threats never lessened. "God?" I would ask as I got older. "If you really are there... Couldn't you have sent me a note when I was little telling me she would still be alive at age 92? That really would have helped a LOT."

I did not realize that the big talkers who yak all the time about offing themselves and constantly pitch dramatic fits are not the ones you really have to worry about. The ones who are in serious danger are those who suffer in silence, becoming more and more convinced that the only way out of their private hell is death. Like my brother.

Entry #3: TOYS

As a little girl I had few toys of my own, just leftovers from my brothers. A lot of stubby used crayons - but no paper. A silver Erector Set from 1955 that was just as exciting as silver rods and bolts could be. A box of wooden blocks with enigmatic notes scribbled on them that said things like, "rocket ship supplies." I had about a dozen red Legos - not enough to build anything. Some old Lincoln Logs. And a wood-burning tool that should never have been handed to ANY child.

My four favorite toys were: 

1.  A stubby plastic Troll with round, astonished glass eyes and long black hair - a gift from my father when I had tonsillitis yet again;

2.  A well-knicked black Superball I would bounce outside for hours;

3.  One egg of Silly Putty, blackened by newsprint; and

4.  A silvery blob of liquid mercury that I would roll around and poke in the palm of my hand, marveling at how all the tiny bubbles of mercury always found each other and made a single shiny, slippery puddle.

In case you're wondering: yes, mercury is poisonous. Today you can't even buy mercury thermometers any more.

If I dared to tell my mother I was bored, she would respond, "The INTELLIGENT person is never bored." Every. Single. Time.

If she was in a generous mood, she would put some flour in a bowl, run some water on top, and send me outside to play. I tried, I really did - but there isn't a damn thing you can do with flour paste. My mother seemed to believe it was the equivalent of Play-Doh or modeling clay. One of her favorite expressions was, "Nothing is anything," which roughly translates to, "I refuse to use a real product when instead I can cleverly outwit everyone by using something cheaper that I think is equivalent." For example, instead of buying furniture polish, she would wipe down the wooden furniture with mayonnaise. She clearly thought she was quite clever to avoid spending any of her $30 million on something as useless as a child's toy.

I am happy to say that, since the pendulum must swing the other way, even though my husband and I did not have two nickels to rub together, our kids were inundated with toys. I was an equal opportunity toy consumer: Fisher-price, Hot Wheels, Z-Bots, Care Bears, Play-Doh, HUGE sets of Legos, a horse on springs, musical instruments, art supplies, books, bouncy balls, a trampoline, a ping-pong table... It was the childhood I never had! Fortunately my kids never developed a spoiled attitude, possibly because each and every toy was such a big deal for ME.

One of the more peculiar aspects of my childhood is that my mother vehemently detested dolls of any kind. This was not a feminist statement, nor was it because I was a tomboy. I think my mother hated being a mother so much that she could not tolerate the sight of a child "mothering" a doll. While other girls were changing their dolls into pretty clothes and taking them for walks in doll-sized strollers, I had a stuffed weasel. 

My mother was also inappropriately fixated on the sexual features of Barbie, so Barbie dolls were not only forbidden, but also viewed as shameful and sleazy. This confused me. All I knew is that I wished I could have a Barbie. It would have made me pass for normal.

As a result of all this Barbie deprivation, I could not WAIT to buy one for my daughter as she grew older. She didn't show much interest, but one summer I finally persuaded her to accept a Ballerina Barbie - with bendable knees!

Over the next few birthday parties my daughter was given a zillion Barbies. My sister-in-law sewed unique Barbie outfits with tiny snaps and fancy fabrics. We had a whole cardboard box full of Barbies, and plastic bags full of Barbie clothes and Barbie shoes and Barbie accessories. Barbie had trouble keeping her clothes on, especially those weensy shoes. 

Finally the day came when my daughter outgrew her Barbies. We went through the house, and the vast toy collection, and had a garage sale.

A nice grandmother picked up the plastic bag full of Barbies and said thoughtfully, "Maybe I'll get these for my grand-daughter." 

She smiled kindly at my daughter and asked, "Were these yours, dear?"

"Yes," said my daughter politely. Without batting an eye she added, "I HATE them."

The nice granny put them down again and walked away.

What were your favorite toys when you were little? Did your parents ever give you, or take away from you, a favorite item? If you have children, do you have a philosophy about toys? Please share in the comments!

11/12/13

Entry #2: BABYSITTERS

Some people live to spread the Word of God. Others become policemen or firefighters or soldiers. Some have a burning passion for art, or music, or dance. Some people seem destined to be teachers or doctors.

My mother lived for cocktail parties.

She imagined she was born to be the belle of every ball, of course with lots of male admirers - like Scarlett O'Hara, only from Philadelphia. In her youth, she was flirtatious and her jokes were mildly risqué. She believed she was pretty and witty and smarter than everyone else in the room because she could recite poetry. She probably started drinking at debutante parties at age 18 - her formal introduction into High Society, when suddenly it is OK to down tumblers full of gin.

Like all alcoholics, my mother's personal maturation stopped when the hard drinking started. She continued to believe she was pretty and witty long after the drinking made her both dull and extremely unattractive.

My parents married in 1947. My mother told me she did not want any children, but due to the incompetent use of birth control she had my oldest brother the following year, my middle brother the year after that, and then me six years later.

Children were a major problem. All she really wanted to do was drink and go to parties. She would dress up in something sparkly and douse herself with perfume and go off with my father to be witty and pretty. All she needed to achieve her dream was a babysitter.

My mother's very worst memories of those early years did not involve, say, childhood illnesses or accidents. Instead they were called: When the Babysitter Cancelled. Off would come the earrings and the sparkly dress, and out would come the rage and contempt for the three wretched children who had ruined her life.

 Usually things went her way because any babysitter would do. Generally they were so old I would have to bring them their dinner in front of the TV and then put myself to bed after watching "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges. During every show someone had their SCUBA hose cut underwater, and every time I was filled with suspense. I also was absolutely thrilled to have a TV dinner instead of my mother's godawful cooking. I still remember the globule of stuffing hidden under the rubber turkey and gelatinous brown gravy as if they were the finest charcuterie. But I digress.

One evening there was no babysitter to be found, so at the last minute my mother called a random dormitory at Villanova University - you could do that in those days - and asked if anyone wanted to babysit. Someone did! Success! Joy!

The second the babysitter was in the door, my mother was out. I watched the sitter warily. She seemed pleasant enough, but of course she was a total stranger. Carefully she took off her winter boots, and coat, and hat, and mittens, and she had no fingers on her left hand.

I stared at her stubby paw. My blood ran cold. The floor seemed to drop out from under my feet. I was probably about age 5, and it had never occurred to me that people could not have fingers.

I hid in my room upstairs and said I didn't want any TV dinner. In an admirable display of empathy, one of my brothers said I HAD to come downstairs or I would hurt the babysitter's feelings. I reluctantly appeared and sat at the kitchen table, but my stomach was upside down and I was too terrified to look up. Afterwards I went back up to my room alone.

There are at least eleventy billion ways to show your children you wish you never had them. I would learn that hiring a fingerless babysitter was actually one of the more harmless ones.

11/5/2013