Lambs That Learn to Walk in Snow

My dad was an alcoholic. He admitted it himself, and battled the disease off and on for much of his life. He once told us that drinking had made him do things that he was sorry for. He apologized.

I have early memories of waking up in the night and hearing my mother and father fighting. Was I four years old? Five? Instead of darkness, I could see a light shining beneath the bedroom door and I’d hear them yelling at each other down the hall. To this day, I don’t like seeing a light shining below my bedroom door when I’m trying to go to sleep.

During one fight Mom told him to quiet down or he’d wake us. Ace and I shared a bedroom, and we heard him say that he was going to tie weights around our necks and toss us in the river. Then the door opened. He came in, and we kept very still, pretending to be asleep. Ace was a year older than me and must have been more aware of what was happening. He used to tell the “weight around our necks” story, and now I honestly don’t know whether I remember it happening, or if I’m just picturing it happening based on his telling. But I definitely remember the late night fights and that light shining underneath the door.

There were several times when Mom took us kids away. The first time that I can remember, she packed us in the car and took us to a cheap motel a few miles away. I recall being crammed into a small room. I can’t picture which brothers were there. At that point, it was probably three: Ace, my younger brother Trey, who would have been just a baby (I picture a crib in the room), and me. Thinking back, I’m not sure how she would have pulled off this escape. We would have only had one car. Was my Dad gone? Asleep? Did she rent a car or call a cab?

Another time we were taken to my Grandparent’s house (Dad’s parents) for a week or two, until Dad came and got us. We also spent a couple of days at a friend of Mom’s. It’s possible that these were all part of a single chain of events, and we were being shuttled from place to place.

All I understood at the time was that Mom and Dad were mad at each other, and that’s why she took us away. It didn’t occur to me until much later how desperate she must have been to do such a thing, and how truly terribly my Dad must have been treating her.

A story I heard later was that my Mom had gone to our parish priest, Father H, complaining that my Dad was hitting her, and he told her to look inside herself to see what she was doing wrong. What an irredeemably shitty thing to say, an impossibly awful thing to say. I hope there was some mitigating context — perhaps some sort of “it takes two to tango” point was being made. But if Mom remembered it happening that way, the damage was done, regardless.

I don’t remember witnessing any physical abuse. I do remember coming home one summer day after playing outside, and seeing our kitchen chairs thrown into the landing, and thinking “not again.” That’s how it was — I experienced all the action as noise occurring offstage. And other than a few spankings, I wasn’t hit by him. I can attest that his spankings were much harder than Mom’s — the burn would last for quite some time. When Ace and I misbehaved, we always hoped that she would be the one to administer the punishments — she spanked us also, but not as hard.

Our greatest escape occurred when I was in second grade. Father S (the younger, good priest) had lured Dad away from the house on some pretext. While he was gone, Mom’s brother (my Uncle Bob) came to take us away. By now, there were six kids, so there must have been two cars (perhaps Mom’s brother-in-law, also an Uncle Bob, was the other driver). It was April 1965. My youngest brother, Mighty, was just a few weeks old. I was in second grade, and was about to make my First Communion.

We first drove to Indianapolis, where my Aunt Dorothy lived, and we stayed there for a few days. I had given up candy for Lent that year, but we had been offered some out of a giant bowl (or so it seemed to me) filled with good candy (for me, that was any candy bar covered in chocolate). Even at that age I knew it was cheating, but I wanted some so badly that I decided to switch and give up peanuts, which I rarely ate, instead. Given the circumstances, I’ve decided to forgive myself.

Next, we went to Vincennes, IN, Mom’s hometown. No one could take in 6 children, so we were split up. Ace went to my Aunt Henny’s house to live with my cousins. Trey, Mighty and I stayed with Mom in Mamie’s apartment — Mamie was my maternal grandmother, but we always just called her Mamie. Boppo, who had just turned one, stayed with my cousin and his wife. They were a young couple, and they must have lived some distance away, because I don’t recall seeing her very much in the months we were there. I can’t quite remember where Deef ended up. He was only two, so he may have also stayed at Mamie’s, but it was a small apartment, and I have a vague memory of him staying with Ace at Aunt Henny’s (“Mamie” and “Henny” — I’m not making up those names).

At Mamie’s, I slept on a roll-away cot that had to be set up every night in the dining area. The bed was next to glass patio doors that didn’t have any drapes, and I used to make sure I was completely covered in sheets while sleeping because I was afraid that if aliens came down to Earth and looked inside, they’d see me naked. Don’t ask me why. I had just passed my “I wonder if I’m a robot” phase, where I’d put magnets against my arm to see if I were made of metal. Weird kid.

I was enrolled at Saint Francis Xavier, a small Catholic school that my cousins also attended. My first day, Mom took me inside and told me which door to go through for my class, pointing me in the right direction. I took two steps, she left, and then I just stood there crying, afraid to go in. Someone came out, asked me if I was the new boy (they’d been expecting me), and took me into my classroom. After that, I used to meet my brother Ace and my cousins in the morning and we’d all walk to school together. It seemed incredibly far away at the time, but when I went back a few years ago it was only a few blocks. I don’t suppose they moved the school on me?

The school was very small, so there were both first and second graders in my classroom. While the first graders were being taught, we second graders were supposed to work on exercises we’d been given, or use the time to do our homework.

I used to get a small amount of milk money every day. Unlike the school I’d gone to in Michigan, we had a choice of white or chocolate milk, and both were the same price. For a seven year old, it was a no-brainer.

Because I had missed my First Communion at home, it was arranged that I’d do it by myself during a Sunday mass. I have vague memories of that event, mostly of being dressed up and standing around outside the church. Later I ran into a bit of a problem. Our church in Michigan must have been relatively progressive (except for their views on spousal abuse), and they felt it was better to delay the sacrament of Penance until children were older and had a better understanding of what sin and repentance (and guilt) were. At St. Francis Xavier, we second graders were being gathered together to go to Penance, and I had to admit that I’d never done it before and had no idea what to say or do. The nun teaching our class was beside herself, telling me that I’d burn in Hell for receiving communion with unconfessed sins (I think she was overly worried about my soul). Somehow this was smoothed over, and one of my classmates, Matt, was tasked with showing me the Confessional ropes. While the first graders were being taught, we’d go out into the hall and he’d go over my lines with me. I remember laughing a lot, mostly at my difficulties memorizing what to say. The hardest part was trying to estimate how many lies I’d told during the first 7 years of my life. I tried to recall those that I could, and then added a few dozen more to account for those I couldn’t remember, effectively extrapolating back to when I learned to talk. Weird kid.

One Saturday the class was invited to a classmate’s birthday party. It was an exciting and memorable day, because I won almost all the party games and left with a big haul of prizes. I’ve since thought back and realized that I won an implausible number of times, and I wonder if it was decided to let me win, to cheer me up because of my family circumstances. I can almost feel the adult hands nudging me, blindfolded and with a disembodied tail in my hands, towards the posterior of the donkey, or being told more than once, after a game was over, that I’d “won” without knowing how or why. It may have all been just dumb luck, but it’s telling that I feel such a scenario is possible. Everyone seemed nice to me.

One day our class was preparing a song and dance number for a school assembly. The song, I’ll never forget, had the lyrics “I was strolling through the park one day, in the merry, merry, month of May.” To accompany the song there was some choreographed sashaying and twirling of parasols that was “just like we did last year,” when I wasn’t there. I was completely unable to figure out the dance moves (a trait I have to this day). Eventually I was told to turn in my parasol and sit down. As consolation, I was given some sort of “important” backstage task which mostly consisted of staying out of the way. I recall feeling a little embarrassed, but mostly relieved.

Anyone who knows me now might be surprised to learn that I had a bad temper back then. Two incidents spring to mind. Once during recess, I was sitting on the school steps enjoying a chocolate milk and someone walking down the steps accidentally stepped on my finger. Accident or not, when the pain shot through me I saw red and started swinging wildly at the culprit, who I hope isn’t writing a similar reminiscence about being unfairly attacked, whoever he (or she!) was. I doubt I could’ve done much damage (the kids in my neighborhood used to call me “weaky-bones,” aptly), but I remember getting in trouble for it.

Another time I was in Mamie’s apartment with Trey, and we started arguing about a noise we’d heard outside in the street. It was a stupid, pointless, argument of some kind. For instance, I insisted that a truck had just honked its horn, he said it was a car, neither one of us backed down, and I just got madder and madder until I starting punching him uncontrollably. Crying ensued. I was seven and he was only four, and I still feel bad about the incident (Sorry, Trey!). Shortly after that incident, I happened to overhear my Mom and other grown-ups tsk-tsking about someone losing their temper. That “someone” may well have been me, because I felt embarrassed by the conversation, and I vowed that I would try to control myself. There were a few times afterward when I felt the same inner rage, but somehow forced myself not to do anything. Looking back, it’s easy to see where that rage was coming from, and simply forcing myself to suppress it couldn’t have been healthy, but I was seven, what did I know? And as small as I was, it would have been worse to continue wailing on people at the slightest provocation.

Since then I can only recall losing my temper to the point of fighting a couple of times. For some reason, the only times were with Ace, who was older, bigger, and stronger than me, and the star athlete on the block. He would bemusedly let me flail at him, and then easily overpower me in a way that wouldn’t hurt me, at least not much. I’m not sure why it was just him — perhaps I knew I couldn’t really hurt him, or that I wished I could be strong, handsome, and muscular like him.

The school year ended and summer beckoned. I remember running around the city with my cousins, unsupervised. We’d go exploring around the Wabash River and watch for trains crossing the railroad bridge, or climb around the empty rail cars in the railroad yard. There was old diner a few blocks from Mamie’s where you could sit at a counter and get a coke for a nickel, and I remember figuring out a “shortcut” that involved going down the alley across the street, taking a serpentine path between two school buildings on the next block, again crossing in the middle of the block and taking another alley, until: voila! 5¢ cokes. I felt quite proud of myself, even if it didn’t save any time.

Despite the circumstances, I remember my stay there as idyllic. It was nice being around Mamie, my cousins, aunts and uncles in a small town — in a few years we would never see them again. My mother was the youngest child, so most of our cousins were older, and it was interesting to be around the older kids. I remember a lot of excitement when the two older girls went to Evansville to see the Herman’s Hermits — it was one of the first times I began to realize that there might be more to the world besides playing with other kids and eating chocolate bars. I have fond memories of Uncle Bob (Mom’s brother), and how nice he was to us, and how funny he was. He would load us into his car and take us to a farm at the edge of town just to look at the cows, who would come over and stare at us quizzically. Or we’d drive along the Wabash River and cross the Red Skelton Bridge (Red was a native son), or tour the Vincennes University campus, where Uncle Bob taught and was the editor of the school paper. There was a joke he always told as we crossed the bridge over the Wabash near the George Rogers Clarke Memorial. Two Native Americans were carved into pylons at the entrance to the bridge, and he told us to ask them a question, and when we didn’t get an answer, he’d say “See what I mean?”. I thought it was the very pinnacle of cleverness, even though I didn’t understand the joke. Since then I’ve racked my brain trying to recall what he said, without any luck. Maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t remember — I might be disappointed, or worse, I still wouldn’t understand it.

Sometime that summer we got the news: we would be going back to Michigan and rejoining my dad. He had been convinced to get help and was drying out in a sanitarium. I remember the disappointment I felt upon hearing this, and the apprehension I felt about going returning. After all, we’d left and gone back before, and nothing had changed. In retrospect, of course, our situation could only be temporary, with the kids split up, some sleeping in roll-away cots in a small apartment, Boppo living far away. One day I was playing at my cousin’s house (where Ace and Deef were staying) and it was getting near dinner time, so I was invited to stay. In another room, I heard my Uncle yelling at Aunt Henny about having to “feed all these god-damned kids.” I couldn’t have realized at the time the tremendous sacrifices being made by so many people on our behalf.

I can remember being reunited with Boppo (and how sad my cousin and his wife were to see her go), and then later getting into a car in front of Mamie’s house for the trip home, but after those good-byes I can’t recall a single detail about the journey. What I do remember was how ecstatically happy Dad was to see us, and how surprised I was about that. I thought he’d be mad at us for running away.

He did stay sober for years after that, and he spent a lot of time with us kids. On the weekends or evenings he’d often take us for a “ride” in the car. Our most frequent destination was Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where we’d watch the planes take off and land, ride the shuttle bus, check every single payphone for change, and eat candy bars from the vending machines.

When I was 12, my Mom nearly died from a brain aneurysm. One evening, she had a sudden raging headache. She said she had felt a rushing in her head, and immediately knew that something was seriously wrong. For some reason, Dad wouldn’t take her to the hospital. I’ve always had the impression that it was because he was worried about the cost and was hoping that she’d get better. His job — the one he’d been promised “for life,” he often told us — was renting out office space in the Fisher Building, a Detroit skyscraper, and he had recently lost his job (or was about to). At the time I thought he’d lost it because of something he’d done wrong, or that it was a result of his drinking, but in retrospect it must have simply been the decline of Detroit and its auto industry that caught up with him. The Detroit race riots had only been a couple of years before — in the aftermath I remember him taking us to look at the burnt-out houses and buildings. He used to occasionally take us to the Fisher Building on our rides, but stopped after there was a shooting in the neighborhood.

It was gut wrenching to hear Mom’s loud moaning throughout the night. The next day she finally went to the hospital. The story I heard later was that Dad stopped at a bar on the way to the hospital, making her sit in the car while he went inside, which almost seems too awful to be true, remembering the agony she was in — perhaps I’m confusing it with a different trip to the hospital. I don’t have any explicit recollection of him drinking again at the time — he certainly never did at home. If he had been, he must have stopped afterward, because I remember him going to the hospital almost every day, most of the time taking us.

She had emergency brain surgery and spent weeks in the ICU. You had to be 12 or older to visit intensive care, so only Ace and I ever saw her there. Because of the drugs she was often incoherent. Once she claimed that Billy, an 11 year old from down the block, had stopped by in the morning and delivered a newspaper (we did all have paper routes back then, but lived miles away). Another time she was ranting about how our family name would live in infamy. She was loud enough that people in other beds were starting to complain.

Her head was shaved prior to the surgery, and I was surprised that it grew back gray, since she had dark hair before going in. I thought it must have been caused by the brain surgery, but I later realized that she was prematurely gray (As was I, though now I’m maturely gray.) and that she’d been dyeing her hair. Even after her hair grew back you could still see an indentation on the side of her head from the brain surgery. It was something that we quickly got used to, and it became one of her distinguishing characteristics, but nothing we ever thought about much or were bothered by.

It was only later that Dad told us how close she’d been to dying — her chance of survival had been 5%. The thought of her dying had never crossed my mind. I don’t know if I was in denial, or just completely clueless. Shortly after she went to the hospital, I was sitting in class and there was a knock at the door. I was told to go out into the hall. One of the newer priests, Father B, was there, and he said that he was sorry and that he’d be praying for us, and I remember being perplexed about why he’d gone through all the trouble to stop by. She did survive, of course, and we always thought it was through sheer force of will, because she didn’t want to leave us six kids without a mother. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was divine intervention.

When she was getting a little better and more coherent, I remember taking her down to the hospital cafeteria in a wheel-chair so she could see my younger siblings. The cafeteria was in the basement, but we knew that just outside the cafeteria, there was a back stairwell that led outside (by then we’d spent a lot of time at that hospital, a lot of time in that cafeteria). Someone, Trey or Deef, brought our dog Sam down the stairwell, and we wheeled Mom over so she could see her. I can still picture Sam barking in excitement at the end of her leash, all of us laughing and Mom smiling.

Just before she came home, Dad talked to us. He may have given us a pep talk about taking care of her and having patience, but I mostly remember him saying that “she would never be the same” mentally, and how sad that made me feel. It must have been then that he told us about her beating the 5% odds of survival. Despite his warning, she seemed fine mentally, though she suffered from occasional seizures, which were scary at first, though we eventually got more used to them. Sometimes, there were specific events that triggered them. One day she received a phone call telling her that her mother (Mamie) had died, and after putting the phone down she began showing the telltale signs: the shaking, slurring of words, eventually ending up in a fetal position while we tried to make sure she wasn’t swallowing her tongue.

Sometimes a seizure would come on unexpectedly. Once, Ace and I drove her to the grocery store and then went to the department store next door to look at records. When we came back, we saw an ambulance parked outside, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was for her. It was. Later she told us that as she was shopping she felt the seizure coming on. She said “help me” to a woman near by, and the woman threw her hands up in the air and started screaming. I wish Mom were still alive to tell the story so you could see how much she laughed when telling it.

One summer I was home from college and Mom had a seizure. By then we were used to them, so we called 911 as usual. While the ambulance was outside our house, a patrol car stopped by to make sure everything was all right. That evening, after being assured that she was ok, my friend Steve stopped by. Having nothing better to do, we drove to Edward Hines Park, where we sat on a small hill sipping beer, watching cars drive by, and talking about the future — a common pastime that summer. Later, we were driving around and I had to pee (a familiar response to that common pastime), so Steve found some suitable-looking shrubbery on a quiet side-street. As we were watering the foliage, a police car turned the corner and shined its lights at us. They found the leftover beer in the car, and I thought we were really in trouble. I felt even worse because of all the additional trouble it would cause Mom, who, after all, had just gone to the hospital. Then one of the policemen asked me, “Weren’t we at your house earlier today? How’s your mother?” Luckily it was the same patrol car that had been by the house. They let us go with a warning. While things were more lax back then, I’m sure we got off easy because they felt sorry for me.

In high school, our household income was officially below the poverty level. I qualified for the free lunch program at school. At first I was embarrassed showing my card when checking out, but soon the woman working the registers recognized me and would just nod me through.

At some point during my high school years, Dad started drinking again, or at least we started noticing it. With six growing kids (with multiple teenagers!) crammed into a small house, a house that was falling into disrepair because we had so little money, I wonder if he started staying out just to avoid coming home. We were getting older, and had our own activities, so he couldn’t take us for “rides” anymore.

During my senior year in high school, Mom went into the hospital with pneumonia. During one visit, she insisted that I not let Dad have any of our assistance checks (Ace was away at college by then, so I was the oldest at home). She gave me the checks and told me to use them to buy food. Then my Dad also asked for them. I really think he meant well and wanted to do the right thing with the money, which made it even more difficult to tell him no. I recall preparing “meals” for the family while she was gone. Hot dogs with cheese and bacon (aka “Swankie Frankies”), sliced turkey with gravy (bought frozen, heated, and served over white bread), and Hamburger Helper Lasagna are some examples of the culinary delights that were proffered.

Mom couldn’t drive because of the anti-seizure drugs she was taking, so I would often drive her on errands. One Saturday she needed to go grocery shopping, and my dad wouldn’t give her the car keys unless she had sex with him. I can still remember him yelling “Get in here!” from the bedroom at the back of the house. She went, and we got the car keys. The thought of it still makes my skin crawl. It’s hard enough to picture one’s parents having sex, but harder still when there’s blackmail involved. Years later, though, I was visiting home and took Mom out to a restaurant in Detroit’s Greektown. After lunch, she pulled out her cigarettes and said, “There’s nothing like a cigarette after a meal,” then she added “…and after sex,” and gave me a sly look. I was taken aback, but didn’t think much of it until later. Whatever she felt about the car key incident (I never asked her), it wasn’t enough to obscure better memories of sex that could’ve only been with my Dad (or so I suppose?). I certainly didn’t detect any twinge of pain or regret when she said it. Everything is more complicated than you think it is.

Mom eventually filed for divorce. Dad was opposed to the idea, even though he went on to remarry a nice woman who was good for him, and forge a decent life for himself. Such is human nature. The divorce was finalized on the day of my high school graduation. It was a great day. Besides the divorce, I was starting to become, and remain to this day, best friends with my co-valedictorian.

That’s all I wanted to say. I’ve focused on a few bad times, but of course there were good times as well. These events seemed to stand out for me, but when life is running smoothly, we don’t notice it as much. In my life, the good has greatly outweighed the bad, and certainly much good came from my dad.

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if we had stayed in Vincennes, or if Mom had died from her aneurysm, but there’s really no point. Forget everything that might have been, but wasn’t.

I forgive everyone, even me. Well, almost everyone — to the priest who ignored, or at best downplayed, my Mom’s abuse: I hope you’re rotting in whatever hell you’d conjured for yourself, you fucking idiot. Fuck you, you fucking fucker (in my mind I am punching wildly) fucky mcfuckface fuck fucking shithead. Just kidding — I forgive you too.