This is quite personal but so what, it happened decades ago and some of you know the story anyways.
**
At an annual Fourth of July party a friend has, I met an old childhood neighborhood playmate, Scott, who I hadn’t seen in decades. We recognized each other but were equally shocked at how the other grew so old.
“You’re totally white!” said Scott.
“And you got FAT” I retorted.
We played “catch up” as people who haven’t seen each other in a long time do and then it became, “Whatever happened to So ‘n’ So?.” I wasn’t all that surprised to hear that Julia, a girl a couple of years older than me who lived down the street, was now a lesbian living in New Hampshire with her partner and working for the US Mail. It explained why she managed to beat all the boys up in our neighborhood when we were kids then. I can remember a few times when she threw me to the ground, knocking the air out of me and then responded to my complaining that she was “just playin’.” Just playin’? Or avenging? Who knows.
During our July 4th conversation, Scott mentioned that he, way back then, “had never seen the inside of my house, ever.”
The first thought that ran through my head was “...Oh...that! Well, you were never going to see inside! No one was.” When I thought that, I knew I displayed that personal reflection on my face, I could feel it and he must’ve read it.
This takes explaining.
I knew my Mom was different from the other Moms in my neighborhood. Also, I knew our actual home was as too. I had been inside other’s homes and saw how organized and kept most were, how peopled those homes were, how open and usually inviting. The Moms I met were all sorts of various types, fish wives with a penchant for swearing, others were prim and proper and one was a child of the 60s kinda Mom who openly smoked pot. Other Moms were just complete screaming, yelling bitches and a few others seemed normal.
My Mom and home fell outside the usual parameters and I learned it from comparison. I then realized that, early on, that if I was to maintain any positive image and street cred, I was going to hide all the “different-ness” my home embodied by barring visitation by anyone. Why confirm what everyone sort of suspected anyways?
For whatever reason, my Mom suffered with major depression a good half of her life which sometimes slipped into batshit crazy psychosis. That meant dragging her off to various psychiatric hospitals a few times in the 70s. When stabilized and not loony, she did as little as possible around the house as depression wholly saps your energy and motivation. So I was quite accustomed to clutter, piles of undone laundry and carpets that needed vacuuming five months ago. When you’re born into that, that something is normal as you aren’t aware of any other way until you start traveling your own neighborhood.
What did she do all day? Sit at the kitchen table, drinking Lipton tea, smoking two packs of Newports a day and listening to WPRO AM radio talk shows. She did however get breakfast, lunch and dinner ready (most times) and the laundry when my Dad bitched about not having any clean Oxford shirts to wear to the bank.
I have wondered, just what my Dad thought of this situation. He was married to a women who became persistently ill and he, bound by the “in sickness and health” marriage dictum he could not break. Personally, if it were me, I’d feel robbed.
**
Funerals are big events. At my Dad’s, I met people I had only heard about and then met people I never knew who were related to me. It was a surreal event at the wake as so many came up to me, his work colleagues and other relatives on both sides I rarely saw who then had to explain who they were to me. At 13, I was pretty standoffish to total strangers who wanted to effuse their “Sorry about your loss” and obliged hugs on me. The whole time I was thinking, “Who the FUCK are you!?” as they wrapped their unfamiliar arms around me. That action just repelled me as I didn’t hug intruders who I have never met. But I had to be nice, stand there and fake my thankfulness for their offerings. “Thank you...yes..thank you..(Get AWAY from me! Who the hell are YOU? NO! Don’t hug...shit they’re hugging...better hug back..UGH!) I must’ve said that to myself 30 times that night.
One of the intruders was an Aunt Edna, who came from my Mom’s side and never knew existed.
A year later, this aunt Edna invited us to her home which was not more than a mile away. I had to be told she was at the funeral but I never remembered. You meet someone once and in certain situations, you can forget them forever as you’re pretty sure you’ll never see them again.
I was being forced to go visit. My first thoughts? “Oh, Christ, visit a supposed relative I know nothing about? Who I only met for 80 seconds a year ago...What...the WHOLE day we have to be there? What can we possibly have in common? What are we going to talk about?”
So we go and I remember the day, August 11th 1977. Why? Because on Edna’s kitchen table was the latest news.
Yes, that long ago.
My Mom and Edna fell into conversation quickly and it moved onto people and events in the past I knew nothing about so I wandered off through her house. It was a smaller bungalow type and each room was nicely appointed, clean, ordered and inviting. Not pretentious nor a hovel for the poor. I started to like this house quickly.
This may seem odd but I swear I see homes, houses and think I can “feel” a certain vibe about them. Usually white trash homes I knew of and see today at times tell me ugly stories of who lives there. I guess it came from knowing some kids back then who I knew lived in perilous families that had abuse (both physical and sexual), drinking, unemployment, nightly arguing parents and God Knows What Else. Those homes eventually show their inner lives on the outside with uncut lawns, peeling paint, general shabbiness and the occasional cop car parked out front.
The vibe I got from Edna’s house was the total opposite. It was healthy, vibrant and welcoming.
As the day wore on, Edna and I began talking. She was good at warming me up quickly to lower my guard about her. She understood and didn’t rush at me with falseness of a hostess at a cocktail party. She was open and real. Her sincerity was what I quickly cued in on. She was quite different from most of the fucked up adults I knew in my neighborhood or school. She struck me as one of the very few people who were balanced.
Later into the afternoon, a feeling, a thought occurred in the back of my head.
“I want to live here.,,please adopt me!” This thought surprised me as it came out of nowhere and with great firmness.
I recognized this house as a good place to be. I was certain of it. I damn well knew what the lousy ones looked like and it’s not a huge effort to see what the opposite looks like and know it for certain.
Certainty. I’ve known some homes in my childhood neighborhood that oozed normalcy, health and stability, but my inner smoke detector told me otherwise. The outward appearance of these homes were a show for others to see. The sad fact was that some of these “normal” homes I knew of held some ugly secrets within that were buried...purposely and deeply buried to last past Judgment Day. Some of those secrets in those homes I never knew about till I was 40.
Shit. I was right about my estimation of some of those parents, homes and such. It goes far in explaining why some childhood friends were the way they were and how their lives eventually evolved.
But not Edna’s house. I gathered no indication of abnormality at all.
The day’s visit was over around 9PM. I had enjoyed my time there and realized it wasn’t the torture I thought it was going to be. Driving home, I mentioned to my Mom that Edna was “cool” and she agreed.
A year later, being 14 and summertime again, I found myself doing what I did a lot of, tool around on my ten speed, trying to find ways to entertain myself on a hot humid day. There was no one around to hang with so I just went off on my own, exploring and hopefully find something that would engage me, to kill the school/summer vacation boredom.
I found myself riding south along York Ave, then by the hospital and finally, in front of Edna’s house. I had not planned that. I just sort of did it. I wasn’t aware of any subconscious motivation at that age yet.
I sat there on my bike in front of her home, noticing her car wasn’t and was there for a good 15 minues, looking and remembering...and still wanting. It was a fantasy and I knew it then. The whole idea just wasn’t legally nor practically possible. I knew that much at 14. I wasn’t going to emancipate myself from my own home to Edna’s.
I never saw her again. As my Mom’s sickness cycled in and out, the outs had her further retreat into our home, blowing off the entire world and with that, any more visits to Edna.
When she was “bad,” I became a psychiatric nurse, check writer, bill payer, food cooker, clothing washer. The benefit that occurred was I had no parental supervision at all and did whatever the hell I wanted. I and others roamed Pawtucket at 2PM on our bikes, looking for shit to entertain us. I however was smarter than your average bear and never allowed myself to be in the back of cop car at 14. I do admit, it was a fun then at times as our mouse pack of a gang tried to emulate what our older siblings were doing in the late 70s.
Still, I wonder how I and a few others, would have done had we all been adopted by an Edna.
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