I always fantasized about running away as far back as I can remember. I wanted to be somewhere else, someone else, in another family, living another person's life. I used to sit on our front porch almost every evening when it was dark, and gaze at the lighted windows in the houses across the street and wonder what it was like living in those houses, with those families. I imagined a mother cleaning up the dishes from dinner, a father reading his newspaper, playfully shooing the kids out of the room, but secretly glad that they wanted to crawl all over him, calling him "daddy" as they played their games before bed. I ima
gined all kinds of interactions and all kinds of families. I imagined myself in those families; loved as part of the whole, and missed when I was absent. Any family, as long as it wasn't the one I had.
When I was younger, I fancied myself running away as a hobo. My uncle, Jim, was a children's TV star, "Mr. Wishbone" and had a TV show on every weekday morning, plus Sundays. Unfortunately, one of his competitors was another children's TV show called "Hobo Kelly". I was not so secretly in love with Hobo Kelly (but did feel somewhat guilty about being disloyal to Jim) and watched her every chance I got. She wore old patchwork clothes with a floppy sailor's hat, and her face was made up as an almost (but not quite) sad clown. I dressed up as a hobo, and fashioned a hobo stick with all my worldly belongings stuffed into a bandana (usually a stuffed animal or sweater, since not much else fit in a bandana) tied onto the end of my stick. Jim would sometimes use makeup to make me look like a hobo. I envisioned running down to the railroad tracks and living a life "on the rails": camping with the rest of the hobos, cooking cans of beans over the fires lit in the oil drum barrels, and falling asleep watching the stars, knowing the other hobos had my back. Even though they were hobos, they were a community, maybe even a family.
I was about 6 years old the first time I remember "running away". I put on my hobo clothes (old pants with holes in them and a huge old men's sport coat with the arms rolled up), packed up my hobo stick and corn cob pipe and walked out the door to go down to the railroad tracks. I was only allowed to go down to the end of my block, and I didn't even know where the railroad tracks were. But that didn't stop me from walking to the end of the block, sitting down on the curb and waiting. For what I'm not sure; but when it was time to go home, I went. I would "run away" as a hobo to the end of my block many more times before I realized that I needed a better plan.
A couple of years later, the circus became my outlet as a fantasy for escape. I remember clearly sitting in my grandparent's den in front of their black and white TV watching a movie called "The Greatest Show on Earth" with Tony Curtis. Nana was cooking dinner, and we were waiting for Papa to come home from work. I was enthralled with the life of the circus. Running away and joining the circus became my new fantasy. I could even be the sad clown hobo (I had all the clothes after all). And the best part was that Jim was already in the circus. He would get asked to be the emcee as "Mr. Wishbone" and ride into the three ring circus on an elephant. So I wouldn't feel so lonely. Everyone knew that circus people were a family; a family of misfits maybe, but a family all the same. I told Nana and Papa about my plans over dinner. Papa laughed and said that they'd miss me, but they would come see me in all the shows. He looked at Nana and said with all the pride in the world, "Isn't she something?"
So that was my plan. At least until Jim stopped riding the elephants in the circus. I never did get up the courage to run away. Some years later, my older sister Cindy actually did run away, but that's another story.
Then the day arrived; the day that changed everything. You know it's that kind of day where nothing will ever be the same. You don't realize it then, maybe not even for decades afterwards. But when you finally look back, you can say, that was it, that was the day when everything was turned upside down and inside out; where you suddenly realize that everything you believed was wrong, and everything you feared was true, and nothing was as it seemed.
On that day, I remember my father waking me up, which was unusual, because I was always the first one up. I was the "early riser" in the family ever since I can remember. But this day, my father woke us all up with a sense of urgency in his voice. My father doesn't deal well in a crisis, and his voice betrays him every time. On this day, that day of days, when I was 11 years old, my father shook me, my 2 sisters and my brother awake to tell us that my mother was missing; or more to the point she ran away from home; she left a note saying that she was running away to find "something". But the note didn't say where, or when, or if she'd be back. Just that she couldn't be here, with us anymore.
Later that day, or maybe it was the next, my father found out from Papa that she had checked herself into a place called the Scripps Clinic down in La Jolla, close to where Nana and Papa lived. I just remember being herded into the station wagon for the 2 hour drive down to San Diego. On the trip down my father explained what had happened, or at least what Papa knew. The "clinic" turned out to be a mental hospital; and my mother drove down, walked in, and told them that "something was wrong". They told her she was having a nervous breakdown, and so she did. This was the early 70's. A nervous breakdown then didn't mean anything more than it does now, which, as it turns out has no defined meaning. All it meant back then was that something was terribly wrong, and no one knew what "that" was. By the time we all piled out of the station wagon, I was pretty sure I had the whole thing figured out. She was feeling guilty about the way she had been acting at home: screaming and yelling at us and my father, for causing all the arguments and fights that seemed to erupt for no particularly good reason. That's what she was running away from. That's why she came here to get help. She wasn't crazy. They just needed to help her stop screaming all the time.
When we arrived, we were all taken to a large open room where a lot of people were sitting, reading, watching TV or just chatting. I didn't really understand at all what I was seeing; this was a mental hospital. Weren't these people supposed to be crazy? They all looked so normal, it was spooky. The only thing weird was that everyone was still in their pajamas in the middle of the day. When my mother finally arrived, she was led into the "common room" by a man who turned out to be her doctor. He took my father aside to talk to him while we sat there and pretended not to be freaked out. My mother just sat in a chair opposite us and stared, at me mostly, waiting for the doctor to be done with my father. She was wearing leopard skin silk pajamas and a blank look on her face that I will never forget.
The doctor finally came over and sat down next to my mother, facing us. He wanted us to know that our mother was doing well, but was very fragile. Any amount of stress could set her back and make her very ill again. We all had to be very careful not to cause her any undue stress. In particular, and here he looked directly at me, that I especially needed to be very careful not to unnecessarily provoke her. I couldn't really believe what I was hearing. Cause her undue stress? What about all the stress she caused us? What about all the times she would just explode over nothing? The times she would cry over nothing, or sleep in a dark room and not get up or dressed for days. Weren't they supposed to be fixing that? And why me, in particular?
We went on a "tour" to her room, and then she showed us the activity room where they made crafts. We left her there, piled back into the station wagon and drove the 2 hours back home. I said nothing the whole time while we were there, and nothing the entire ride back. I was confused and angry, but really mostly confused. For the next few months, she stayed there, doing crafts. My father tried to help out with the house, but he was really not very good at it. He did cook us dinners, but they mostly consisted of whatever he could fry in bacon grease. He finally broke down and hired a housekeeper named Jean, who I loved. She was a great cook; much better than my mother, who for the last few years hadn't really cooked much of anything, and definitely better than anything cooked in bacon grease! She was pretty stern with the other kids, but for some reason took a liking to Greg (my next door neighbor) and me. She'd bake cookies and let Greg and I sneak the first few that came right out of the oven (as long as we ate them with a full glass of milk), whereas everyone else had to wait for dessert! She made meatloaf with a perfectly hard-boiled egg in the center, which always just amazed me. But mostly I liked her because she was there, consistent and reliable. And when I came home from school, it was quiet. My mother would send home "presents" for us…bracelets, leather stitched coin purses and moccasins that she'd made in crafts. I threw mine away. How was making moccasins going to make her better?
Finally, it was time for my mother to come home. She had been there for several months. Before they would release her, we all had to go down for a "family conference" with my mother and her doctor. At the conference, the only question the doctor had to ask was "Do you think you can manage to be good enough to not provoke your mother into another nervous breakdown?" This question was not directed to Mark, Cindy, Teresa or even my father. He asked it of me, an 11 year old girl, who got straight A's in school. Not my brother (who was always doing something wrong), or my other sisters (who barely got passing grades). He wanted to let me know that I was the reason she was there.
I wanted to scream "Just keep her here, I don't want her anymore"; which was true. But I couldn't say it. I couldn't say anything. The hurt, anger, shame and rage was so palpable I could taste it boiling in my throat. Was I really the sole reason that she ran away; did I really "drive her crazy" as my mother so delicately put it? And were my actions going to determine whether she stayed home or got put back in the loony bin to make moccasins the rest of her life?
All I could do was nod yes. The doctor wanted me to hug my mother, as a show of good faith. "It will let her know that you can be that good little girl that she wants you to be". I hugged her. But at that moment all I could feel was sick. Sick at the thought that I was the cause of my mothe r's "craziness", sick at the thought of how I was supposed to make her better; but mostly sick at the thought of her coming home.
I wanted to run away, yet again. Only this time, I wanted to run away from myself.
