Introduction

Things are never what they seem. That’s the story of my life. My life was never as it appeared. Not to outside people looking in, and as it turned out, not to me either. But that’s for later.

Since I was little, I remember my uncle Jim (who never wanted me to call him uncle, so it was just Jim) always said to me “You and I need to write a book. Nobody would believe this!”

When you are ten years old, writing a book seems like a VERY cool idea, like becoming an astronaut or a scientist or climbing Mount Everest; and something you should do when you are twenty five. For some reason, as a child, the age of twenty five was always a red letter year for me. It seemed to me that by the time you become twenty five, you are “all grown up”. Until, of course, I reached the age of twenty five and felt like I had lived a lifetime, and yet still felt like a child. By the age of twenty five, I was still in school (graduate school by then), and very busy with being twenty five. No time for a book…I had a dissertation to write. There was plenty of time to write later.

But Jim persisted. ”We have got to write a book” I would hear him say every time we talked on the phone, or spent time together laughing at our families, and the situations in which we found ourselves. By the time I was thirty five, I was now back in school (again), and very busy with being thirty five and raising 2 babies. This, as you will soon find out, was more complicated than you might imagine. But Jim made me promise, that no matter what, we would write a book someday about our crazy family.

Now I’m fifty, and for the first time in my life, I feel like there might not be enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. I never became an astronaut…turns out flying gives me vertigo; not exactly conducive for circling the galaxy. I never climbed Mount Everest and it’s looking like that will never happen. But I watch every movie and documentary and read every book I can find on the subject. And I did finally climb a mountain once, and since I wasn't supposed to live beyond the age of 5, that was my Mount Everest experience. I did become a scientist, so 2 out of 3 wasn’t bad.

And with some good luck and Karma, I still have a shot at some pretty awesome experiences yet to discover. Jim died back in 1996, right after I graduated PA school. It was a devastating blow to me. He was my one. The one who understood all the craziness in my life; not just from my childhood, but what I was dealing with in the present. And his death sparked off a whole list of questions about my life I never even knew to ask.

But I’m good at keeping promises. I finally am writing the book about our crazy family. So this book is for you Jim. We are finally writing that book.

My First Few Years

My family moved to the house we all grew up in when I was 2 years old. It was a big, brick 2-story colonial house in a quiet suburb northeast of Los Angeles. It cost my parents $25,000 to buy that house, a small fortune back then for a young family. Of course, they had no credit, and so the woman selling the house financed it for them. They settled on a monthly payment, and that's all it took. They never even set foot in a bank or loan office.

The neighborhood used to be all orange groves before houses were built, so almost every house on our block had at least one orange tree in the backyard. It was a street lined with maple trees in front of every house and young families. I loved that house. It had 3 bedrooms, a large den with hardwood floors, a long driveway and a huge backyard with orange, lemon, fig, peach and loquat trees.

When we first moved in it was just Mark, Cindy and myself, but my mom was getting ready to have my baby sister Teresa. My father hired a housekeeper, Helen, to help my mom out while she was pregnant. I don't really remember much of her except she was kind of stern, and very protective of me, by orders from my mother. Just in case I might "catch something" from the other kids. Because I was so isolated from my brother and sister, I was the "unknown", Mark and Cindy were always trying to get a peek, or sneak in when no one was looking. But Helen always shooed them out so they were left to play on their own, and I was pretty much left alone.

One day shortly after we moved in, my mother, who was still pregnant with Teresa, was upstairs napping. We still didn't have enough furniture to fill that big house, and there was lots of empty space that just begged to be used. Mark and Cindy wanted to play with me but Helen wasn't having any of that. She told them to go find something else to do. Suddenly there was the great rumbling sound of thunder coming from downstairs. Mark and Cindy had found the perfect roller rink on the hardwood floors in our big empty den and were skating circles around and around with metal skates strapped to their shoes. Shortly afterwords, those somewhat scarred and battered hardwood floors were covered with wall to wall carpeting.

I remember the day when my parents brought Teresa home from the hospital. She was born in mid December, and I guess the hospital thought it would be cute to send all the new babies home in a Christmas stocking. So when my mother walked through the door carrying a Christmas stocking, naturally I was pretty excited. But when she bent down to show me what was inside, I was confused. It looked like they sent home a baby monkey! Teresa was covered in thick, black hair...everywhere! I was sure somebody at that hospital place had made a terrible mistake, and we would need to return her for the right kind of baby! But she eventually lost the hair (at least the extra hair!) and she became the most extraordinarily beautiful child with big blue eyes, and jet black hair in ringlets. As she grew older, she came to look like Elizabeth Taylor.

We had a dog named Trixie that followed me everywhere, or maybe I followed her everywhere. I just remember always being around Trixie. When I rode my tricycle around the backyard, Trixie was there to get in the way so I couldn't go too far or too fast. I would crawl into big cardboard boxes to play, and Trixie would crawl in right after me. I was so little for my age, that she would dwarf me in that big box. She was a big Collie with beautiful long hair and a long, cold nose. And she was the only living creature I was allowed to play with for my first few years. Funny how my mother thought that the dog was somehow cleaner than my brother or sister.

I loved that dog. She was my best friend; my only friend for a while. But still not the same as having other kids to play with. Not the same as having a brother and sister. And I think it drove my mom crazy that I loved that dog so much. It took my attention away from her. A few years later, my mother told us that Trixie had run away. My mom and dad drove us all around the neighborhood in our station wagon "looking" for Trixie and calling out her name for hours. I found out a few years later from my next door neighbor that my mom called somebody and sold Trixie to him while we were out of the house one day. She sold my only friend.

Although I couldn't know it then, my first few years in isolation from my family was a foreshadow of the rest of my childhood.

My Mother

My mother's family came to the United States from England. Sheffield, England to be exact. They left Liverpool, England on April 16, 1910 and arrived in Portland, Maine on the S.S Canada passenger ship. They were part of the Mormon wave of immigrants from Sheffield, England that started in the 1840's. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions made for a wretched existence in Sheffield and so the Mormon missionaries were quite successful in recruiting converts with the promise of a new life in the United States. Some even had their trips funded by the church. My mother's family paid their own way, but because her father was only a hawker and draper, they traveled in steerage class. Steerage class was the default choice for poor, but hardworking people unable to afford proper accommodations. Often hundreds of people were housed in one room. Once a day they came to the deck for their daily meal of beef broth and bread. It was a long, harrowing and often painful journey. My partner always says "When all your choices are painful, choose the pain with hope". They left a hopeless existence, traveled a painful
journey with the hope for a better future. Upon arrival in the United States, they traveled directly to Salt Lake City, Utah where the oldest sibling, Fanny, had already settled, having been the first in the family to immigrate from England in 1907.
She was only 4 years old at the time she immigrated, but she remembered that trip. She was 97 years old when she told me that story, and she died a few months later. That was 5 years ago and I still miss her. She was my rock, my savior, my person. She taught me how to live and love by example. She was married to the same man for over 50 years when he died. She loved him so much, we thought she would soon follow suit, but she lived for another 25 years. Sometimes I think she did so only because she felt like I needed her. And I did.

She taught a lot of things. She taught me not only how to cook, but how to cook with love. She loved you with food. And it was her greatest pleasure to cook for me. I remember her in my early years always wearing an apron. To this day, even though I am a vegetarian, I miss her pot roast, pork chops and meatloaf! Eating her meals filled up the empty spaces inside me; I knew she made them just for me, because she loved me.
She taught me how to believe in myself. She told me throughout my life that I could do this or that, that I would...someday, that I should always try. She thought I could, would, should do anything I wanted, and so I also came to believe it. She instilled in me confidence.
She always believed I was a good person, even when as an adult I couldn't always believe it. She never scolded or even raised her voice; in truth, I never wanted to disappoint her so I tried to never give her cause to scold. Her depth of love for me was apparent to anyone who came within her sphere. When I brought my friends home from college, she would tell stories of how I "caught the ball" when I was 2 years old, or some other achievement I had accomplished, some quite ordinary to the listener but always considered extraordinary in her eyes. My ex-partner once said that I could be a mass murderer and her reply would be "Well they must have been very bad people for her to do that". I could do no wrong in her eyes; I knew this, and in a way, she became my conscience.
Her name was Gwen. She didn't give birth to me. She didn't have any legal rights to take me away from an untenable home life. But she was always there when I needed her. She gave me unconditional love. And that was what I needed to survive.
She was my mother's mother. I called her Nana. I just looked up the meaning and origin of the name Nana. It has a Hebrew origin and means Grace. Of course.
I have 2 children now. I didn't give birth to them, I don't have legal rights over them, and unfortunately they don't live with me anymore. But I love them unconditionally, as Nana taught how. I believe in them, as Nana did in me. I try to be there for them when life gets tough. And most importantly, I try to teach them how to live and love by example, just like Nana did for me.
Nana was my mother in every way possible except legally or biologically.
My name to my children is Mamere. It means "my Mother" in French. And everyday I strive to give them what my grandmother gave to me. A sense of belonging and hope, belief in themselves and unconditional love. And most importantly, the ability to survive. And I hope that I have taught them by example that when all their choices are painful to them, to choose the pain with hope in it.

Starting out

This is the first blog I've ever written. I started this blog to write about life. More to the point, my life.

For years now I've been "trying" to write my memoirs. I've found it much harder than it originally sounded. Just sit down and write it, right? But sometimes when you are writing about life, life just seems to get in the way. Busy schedules, family life, friends and work. And now I'm writing a textbook for work, which is a completely different style of writing. To be honest, I'm much more suited to write textbooks. I'm logical, frank and to the point. And writing about events and family dynamics demand a much more prosaic and sometimes conversational style.

Sitting down to write a book, or even just a chapter seems a bit daunting, or at least that's been my excuse up until now. So I thought maybe just writing a blog would be, maybe not easier, but more manageable. And hopefully, there will be more immediate feedback, than say writing an entire book, sending it to a publisher and having the whole thing rejected! This way I can get rejection bit by bit!

When I went away to college, and new friends started asking about my childhood, I would tell them it was pretty normal. I grew up in a family of 4 children, 2 sisters, a brother and a mother and a father. I was raised Catholic, we went to church on Sundays, to the beach on Saturdays; we took family vacations in the station wagon and my father worked a lot. Your typical American family in the 60's and 70's.

All of which was only partially true. If you took every element of that statement apart, each was true as a stand alone statement...sometimes. But there has been so much unspoken tension, drama and outright lies, not only in my immediate family, but as I've started to do genealogical research, in our whole family history as well.

In my family, the " bad" things are not spoken of, and if not spoken, they can pretend they never happened. I think for some members of my family it is a case of selective memory; in others a case of denial, and still for others it is just outright lies. The adage "It's somehow not real unless it's spoken out loud" could describe my family. And "Normal" was what I learned to tell teachers and friends because I didn't want them to know the truth. And when you say it enough times, you begin to believe it. As I lived my life as an adult, however, I began to rethink what"normal" really means. So I decided to write about my life just to give voice to some of those memories and get them out of my head and into the open, where they belong.

Someday, I'd like to write a book that somebody else reads. For now, I'll have to settle for a blog, that I'm hoping somebody else will read, and maybe give some feedback on my writing. All of my stories are true, but I may change names, etc for privacy sake.

I don't know how often I'll write. But I hope that whatever I write is at least compelling enough for at least one other person to read. Everyone has a story. And this one is mine.