My mom passed away January 2009. One consequence of her death is my urge to write about growing up with her, the woman I affectionately call "Go-Go" because she liked to party, and in many of the photos I have of her she is holding a cocktail and wearing some hot outfit.
These are my stories of growing up in the Viet Nam Era with a mom who enjoyed drinking and partying and, incidentally, had a bunch of kids.
Ever since my trip to the beach last January, where the dolphins appeared with their frolicking ) offering of forgiveness, it seems all that squishiness just sucked the mad (and my stories) right out of me. I know there are more stories about growing up in the Viet Nam Era with a Mom who partied hard and a Step Father who laughed off her dangerous antics. Yet, maintaining my bitterness and a good story to accompany it, doesn't make any sense after that pivotal one-year anniversary trip to the sea to say goodbye. Now the question is, can I tell a good story while feeling all warm and fuzzy with forgiveness?
I doubt it, but I want to try. I want to try because there is something achingly healing about remembering. I want to keep writing because I think I have more to say, and because I certainly have more to feel, and because I think they are good stories worth telling.
It is tempting to write about what's happening now, post Go-Go, in the lives of my siblings and my father/step-father, Roger. Those might be good stories, too, but I'm guessing that's just another way to stray from digging up the ghosts of my past for the sake of exorcism and entertainment.
I've been trying to write about Go-Go's ease and skill in the kitchen, which were substantial. She was confident, arrogant, even, in her insistence that two shakes was a teaspoon, and a handful, a cup. She refused to measure. I suppose she measured when she baked, but she didn't do much of that by the time I came along, the seventh of eight.
When I was hired as a cook, at twenty years old, in a small restaurant in Seattle, the owner was really impressed that I could make a pot of soup without reading a recipe, or by merely giving it a glance. "You have to cook to taste, she insisted" and Go-Go was in complete agreement.
She liked to throw a party and usually did it by cooking up some big feast to go along with the booze. If more people showed up than she planned for, she would announce "FHB!" which stood for "family hold back." I reminded her of it a year or so before she died and, like so many of my memories, she adamantly denied ever saying it. That's one of those things that used to drive me crazy. I wanted our memories to line up, for her to say "wow, I remember that too," or "that must have sucked." But that would not have been her way, and now I know that just because she didn't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Recently Roger called to tell me had given away her baking pans to a friend of his. "What was I going to do with them?" he wondered out loud in our conversation. His nonchalance at one of the things she was good at, sent a searing pain through my heart. It was one more reminder that she, and her beloved tiny baking pans, have passed.
By the end of last year I was plagued by memories of Go-Go, especially of her final illness and the process of her dying. Every significant date beginning in August, was intensely punctuated by what was happening the previous year during that time.
I made it through the holidays distinctly aware of how weird and sad and peculiar I felt. I undercooked the turkey and burned the squash at Thanksgiving. I invited people for Christmas and then uninvited them – I just didn’t know what I wanted. In the end, we held a simple brunch – cooked by Trish in an effort to ensure the guests would be unharmed.
January came and I announced to Trish that I wanted to go to the beach to do a ritual to acknowledge the one year anniversary of Go-Go’s death. I had no idea what kind of ritual I would do, nor how I would do it, but I brought along some paper, a book of matches, and some shells from her beach in Naples, trusting that I would find inspiration, once there. We drove down the coast and when I saw what looked like a good beach, I pointed and declared, “here”, and Trish pulled into the rutty parking lot and we headed down the trail to Montera Beach.
The weather was gorgeous – a crisp, sunny winter day, warm enough to discard our jackets and feel splashes of sun heating up our turtle necks. We rested on a muddy embankment and while sitting, I asked Trish: “do you think we could see whales in this part of the Pacific?” “No” she said, “I don’t think they would be this close to shore”. With our eyes fixed on the sea we both saw it at the same time; what was unmistakably the fin of a dolphin surfacing and vanishing, and she said, “but you can see dolphins!” We shot up from our perch and right in front of us, we discovered first two, then four, and finally six dolphins frolicking and surfing in the stormy Pacific. I burst into tears, instantly struck by the magic of the dolphins appearing on the one year anniversary of Go-Go’s death.
She loved dolphins! Her child-like excitement was incessant – she watched them for decades, from her balcony in Florida, looking over the Gulf of Mexico. She would begin her mediation early in the morning with a cigarette and a cup of coffee – she insisted morning was the best time to see them, and I usually missed out since the time change often caused me to sleep until noon. Now, a year after her death, it was so clear, this was it, my ritual. At first I murmured through my tears “she doesn’t deserve to come back as a higher life form.” It stung even as I said it, so I was relieved when Trish said, “yes she does, she suffered a lot in her life. And in that moment, and ever since, I knew it to be true - I understood on a very different level, that she suffered as deeply as she partied. My heart broke open and I understood that the things that she did to me, just happened. She didn’t do them to me, she did her life, and I just happened to be there. The shift may seem small, but for me it opened up an ocean of forgiveness.
We followed the dolphins the entire length of Montera Beach, and when the rocky cliffs of the coast obstructed our view, we took our time returning to our perch. Before we left, I ran down into freshly wetted sand and wrote “bye mom” as big as a whale, with my boot prints. The exact moment that I finished the final "M", the tide rushed in so fast I had to race to avoid getting wet, and washed my words away. As we made our way back up the coast toward home, I felt healed, and comforted, and knew everything was going to be okay.
Trish and Dee and I spent a few days in Vegas last month, and I, without planning to or thinking about it, channeled Go-Go at the Black Jack tables. If a player was doing stupid things like staying on fourteen when the dealer had a face card showing, I would start to mumble insults under my breath, just loud enough for the dealer and my pal to hear me.
Go-Go hated unskilled card players, she hated them. And the drunker she was, the more likely she was to let them know it. To her credit, she was usually playing two hands - often for A LOT of money per hand, and when a player stays on fourteen or fifteen, it screws up the whole table. She would not hesitate to tell them, "you have to hit that", if you don't the dealer stands a better chance of not breaking". I don't know the odds exactly, but I do know that it takes time to grow the courage to hit fourteen or fifteen, or even sixteen, knowing that much of the time you are going to lose your money - there are just more high cards in a deck. But if you don't hit, you lose, too. And Go-Go was not afraid to say "why don't you just stay home and mail your money to the casino" if she felt like a person was not being a smart player.
So we went to Vegas to celebrate my friend Dee's graduation from nursing school and both Dee and I had gambled with Go-Go when she was alive so she knew when we were playing that I was channeling Go-Go. I even had the raspy cigarette voice to accompany my rants, because I am completely allergic to smoke and my voice turned gravely the first day. Plus, the more tired I became, the less likely I was able to control myself. It was a lot of fun to bring out Go-Go and talk crap about the lousy players, and embarrass my pal a little while I was at it.
When you were gambling with Go-Go and she wanted you to stay up and play with her, she would toss you a hundred bucks to finance your playing. She taught me how to play black jack and she did it long before I had any business knowing how. We went to the Bahama's when I was sixteen and she dressed me up and off we would go to the casino, knowing I could easily pass for eighteen, or twenty-one. If she was winning, she thought nothing of tossing me a black chip or two, or three. If she was down, she would "borrow" money until there wasn't any left, but those weren't the stories I focused on last month. I felt like the trip softened me toward her.
I was not happy about Go-Go's gambling habits when she was alive. Because of it, she died completely broke, leaving behind oppressive debt. But for those few days in Vegas last month, I got to remember how much she LOVED Vegas, and how sassy and fun she was to play cards with. And, I got to remember the good times I had gambling with her.
Roger bought Go-Go her first house. It was large and new and looked over a golf course. It was also in an unincorporated township north of the City, which was awful for me, and my older teen age sibling, Scott. Windsor was two miles outside of DeForest, the nearest town: population seven thousand something. Both Go-Go and my Dad were from a small town in Northern Wisconsin, Phillips – a place we spent holidays – I hated it. I hated that my teenage cousins went to Church functions to do their socializing; I hated the hot rod cars, “parking” at the cemetery, and all town people knowing everyone’s business. Moving to Windsor was like being trapped in Phillips, back in time, and never being able to get out.
That first summer we moved to Windsor I ate Sara Lee pound cake and watched television, obsessively. I missed my friends and I missed my apartment complex. I was miserable, cranky, and lonely. I spent a lot of time alone; exploring the neighboring farms, the creek behind our house, the American Breeders Service land, and the country roads our little housing development, sprung amongst. As I explored I would see hick boys in loud, souped up, 50’s style cars and feel like I had been dropped into time-warp nightmare.
Go-Go was in heaven. Roger gave her free reign with furnishing and decorating her new house. She demanded the best of everything and she was decisive about her taste: ivory and gold trimmed Lenox China with gold rimmed crystal stem-ware, service for twenty-four, gold and sterling flat-ware and furniture from the most expensive store in Madison. I used to think she had impeccable taste, well, she told me she did, and I, lacking any other design blueprint, believed her.
Go-Go was a social creature, and in no time at all, she made friends with the neighbors who golfed and drank at the Lake Windsor Country Club. She had a knack for attracting to biggest drunks in town and Windsor was no exception. I developed a similar aptitude. At the end of the summer, I began eighth grade in the small town middle school and began my hellish travails into adolescence, torturing and being tortured by Go-Go.
I’ve been struggling to write about this time in my life. I was in hell and I took hostages. She tried to control me, briefly, but I spit in her face and dared her to ground me, “what are you going to do, chain me to my bed?” I challenged. I started getting high and drinking and staying out late. The more rebellious I became the more desperate she was. We fought violently. One night I came home at one or two in the morning to find every single one of my albums folded and broken in fourths. My music was my solace. She found a way to get to me, and it worked. From that night on, I swore vengeance. I spent countless hours fantasizing about breaking all of her precious dishes and nick-knacks. My rage was palpable and I had no place to put it, except to do numb myself with drugs, alcohol and sex.
I am lying underneath a rack of clothing in Marshall Fields. I am four and my mom is in the dressing room. I spend a long time running my hands over the clothes, touching the fabrics, the buttons, and zippers - getting lost in the colors and shapes. I love shopping with my mom. Today we are in Milwaukee visiting my Aunt Marian and Mom is trying to find a new bathing suit because she left hers at home. She goes into the dressing room and tells me not to move and I try really hard to stay put in the swimming suit section but there aren’t any good clothing tents to hide under plus I’m too short to reach them. I go through dresses and that was my favorite because they are easy to see and feel. The hangers slide over the bars like the wheels of roller skates, smooth and well oiled. After dresses I go through the skirts and blouses and eventually find a rack stuffed full of clothes to hide beneath. It is really cool in here. I am a queen and each item of clothing is one of my charges. I tell them all about the important events of the royal family and the castle. I’m getting a little sleepy so I think I’ll close my eyes.
I hear a man bellowing over the loud speaker, “if there is a little girl by the name of Diane Haas, please report to a sales clerk immediately. I am very sleepy but I’m pretty certain that’s me being paged to a sales clerk. I wonder what is taking my mom so long. I duck under the clothes and try to find a sales clerk. I tug on a lady and ask her if she is a clerk and she is startled, “are you the child they are looking for?”
“I guess so.”
“Where have you been?”
“Over there,” I point toward the rack and see now it has a big “Sale” sign above it. She takes my hand and hurriedly scurries to a sales clerk. The clerk puts her hands over her mouth and says “oh my god, here she is” now I’m afraid I’m in big trouble with my mom. Clearly all these people are very upset, and they don’t even know me. “where’s my mom,” I ask?
“Honey, you come with me” and again I am being rushed off to yet another location.
“My mom’s in the dressing room over there” I offer sheepishly. “Okay, darling, you come with me.”
We are walking and walking and finally she brings me into an office. It smells like metal and cigarette smoke in here. She walks up to a man and announces proudly she has the child, as if her discovery will win her a prize. She tells him she needs to get back to her section. “What’s your name young lady, the man who introduces himself as the manager asks? “Diane” I say weakly, wishing my mom would come. “Well Diane, there been an accident and your mom had to go away in an ambulance but someone is going to come and pick you up real soon.”
I don’t think I knew what an ambulance was but it didn’t sound good. I wished for the comfort of my hiding place underneath the clothes rather than the stale stuffiness of the manager’s office. I now know that Go-Go was taken to the hospital and somehow my Aunt was called to pick me up. If I was frightened I don’t remember, but I had already become accustomed to strange and unpredictable things happening around me, and learned to stuff any feelings I might be having and ride the waves of uncertainty.
The celebration of life memorial potluck barbeque family reunion party gathering was coming to a close. I was too busy catching up with relatives and friends of the family to realize there wasn’t going to be a “memorial.” Not long after it occurred to me I was standing in my sister’s kitchen and my brother shared a conversation with me. He said he was talking to our brother-in-law and said “someone better tell Diane there isn’t going to be a memorial service.” To that I replied, “I certainly didn’t drive two thousand miles in two days for a fucking barbeque.” Everyone laughed. But that’s exactly what I did.
If there had been some sort of public sending off, a blessing, a shared story telling session, who would have facilitated it? I think my years in California and countless “celebrations of life” had me confused with how things are done in my family. I really did imagine there would be chairs set up class room style in the park adjacent to my sister’s house. I really thought we would publicly express our grief and tell stories about how generous and funny and talented she was, and how much she’ll be missed, and what a train wreck she was. That’s what happens at memorials, or celebrations of life, or whatever you call them, isn’t it? Not in my family.
I am still shaking my head at the weirdness of it. People came from all over the country, people who had known Go-Go much of her life, and all of mine. Dottie and Arnie Carpenter came with their daughter Kitty, the one who watched my heel get torn off in the spokes of my sister’s bike, and as it turns out, the one who has a life long crush on my older brother Tom. A bunch of my cousins, my parent's friends from Windsor, friends of my sisters who didn't even know Go-Go came. Roger’s family was there, goofy and strange as ever. Roger’s sister, Aunt Margie could not stop saying “you look just like Pete,” my younger brother. I had a chance to visit with a few of my nieces and nephews and their kids, and that was pretty much the highlight of the day.
When I introduced Trish as my honey, to Go-Go's eighty eight year old sister, Aunt Marian, she put her hand over her mouth and said “ohhhh” but quickly recovered and withdrew her extended hand and reached out to hug her, saying “well, you’re a part of the family then, you get a hug.” I’ve been “out” to my family for thirty years - did my mom never tell her sister? Still, I shake my head at the strangeness.
By midnight everyone was gone and it was over. Trish and I were grateful to spend the night in a tent in my sister’s back yard. It was our first night in the tent and it was glorious to sleep on her cushy lawn and breathe the fresh, clean Midwestern air. With that part of the trip over, we were ready to begin our great road trip adventure.
I was three years old the day Go-Go left me inside Marshall Fields. Well, she didn’t exactly leave me. She passed out and forgot to tell the paramedics that I was with her. I was happily playing underneath a rack of women’s clothing. The circular shape of the rack and the way the clothes hung fashioned a perfect fort for me. I was fascinated by the shapes and colors of the clothing and was used to busying myself so I wasn’t a burden to Go-Go.
The Marshall Field’s was in Milwaukee where we were visiting my Aunt Marian. It was hot, very hot – or that’s the story Go-Go liked to tell to explain why she passed out. I now understand she had to tell a story because she didn’t want anyone to know she was pregnant.
I must have fallen asleep under the clothes rack. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I heard the intercom, “If there is a child by the name of Diane Kathryn Haas, please report to a sales clerk immediately.” Go-Go remembered I was still in the store and arranged to have Aunt Marian rescue me. It took forever for her to free me from the manager’s office in the back of the store. The clothing fort had been a lot more fun.
It was 35 years later when Go-Go confessed to me, in a haze of alcohol, that she had tried to abort me. She described the whole event in detail, from how her sister, Marian, found a doctor in another city, to the trip they took, and the consent forms in the doctors office. She said she felt horrible, she felt like a criminal, it was the worst experience of her life and she’d never forget it. She told Marian she couldn’t go through with it and we left the clinic. She vowed I would be her last child.
So that hot autumn day in Marshall Fields, when her seventh pregnancy was confirmed, she was convinced she would go through with the abortion this time. It wasn’t just that she did not want any more children. She was planning to start fresh, and leave her husband to be with her boyfriend Roger. A new infant, even if it was Roger’s child, complicated things. She made the doctors’ appointment and a second time did not have the stomach for it. Peter was born the following June.
The stories she told me that night included that she was not certain who my father was when I was born. And it drove her crazy. It was 1959, she was raised a Catholic, thought herself as a good mother, a devoted wife and had ideas about women who had affairs. What I realized was I had been a walking symbol of her infidelity and she hated that.
The after glow of our first family vacation in a fancy hotel came to an abrupt end when Go-Go discovered the damage done while we were away.
Judy had some competition and couldn’t go with us and when Go-Go finally gave in, Scott insisted that as long as Judy didn’t have to go, he should also be allowed to stay home. They were both still in high school so Go-Go asked my older brother Tim to drop in on them and make sure they were okay. What she didn't know is Tim had just received a bag of Seconals (barbituates) from our brother Tom in Vietnam and was more than happy to share them with his kid brother and sister so they could have a party. I think the party lasted the entire week we were away.
I was focused on how excited I was my friend Jackie was going with us. We drove in Roger's brand new enormous Buick with electric windows and we felt like we had our own private limo, even though there were four of us in the back seat. Somewhere along the way we stayed in a Howard Johnson motel with a swimming pool and telephones inside the rooms - it was a whole new world, one that was truly thrilling. We were in D.C. for a week long conference for truck stop owners and operators. While our parents did grown up stuff, we were bused around on "kid friendly tours" to the White House, the Washington monument, the Lincoln Memorial and other points of interest. Jackie and I, being the precocious children we were, started skipping the tours to wander the streets of D.C. by ourselves. How we escaped death or serious injury is a mystery.
We had a blast. We swam in the hotel pool, ordered room service, played with my brothers and other convention kids in the hotel halls and ballrooms and wandered the streets around the hotel. We had never been to such a big city or fancy hotel as that Hilton. We spent the long drive home feeling like royalty.
When we arrived home to our apartment, the damage to the house was not immediately obvious. We hauled our suitcases in and were ready to have a happy reunion with our siblings and tell them all about our amazing adventures. It did not take long before Go-Go began to notice the cigarette burns. The more burns she found, the more unraveled she became. Within an hour of our homecoming, Go-Go was in a full fledged freak out, screaming, shaking, and crying until she was hoarse, but unable to stop her fury. She screamed for hours, days, weeks, and months. The good time vacation came to an abrupt and startling end and was replaced by Go-Go's rage.
The worst room of all, the living room - the one we rarely used because the furniture was too new to be soiled by dirty little children. Every single piece of furniture, including the lamps were covered in cigarette burns.
Turns out, Seconals when mixed with alcohol, make you fall asleep. When Go-Go stopped screaming long enough to get an explanation from Judy and Scott, they told her they had a party and their friends smoked pot. Even I knew that was a dumb story, and I was only eleven.
My brother-in-law sent me the invitation for Go-Go's upcoming memorial service in August. I don't know why we decided to wait until August to have her "Celebration of Life," considering she died on January 3rd. Maybe it has to do with some unconscious honoring of Midwest tradition- those who die in the winter are stored in the Church mausoleum until the ground thaws when they can be buried. It's not like we needed to wait; Go-Go was cremated in a cardboard box in a low budget crematorium in Bradenton Florida on January 5th. We decided to have her memorial in Wisconsin on her birthday, and at the time it made sense. The fact that we would wait nearly seven months after her death to have closure never occurred to us as a bad idea.
When I opened the invitation and saw the attached photo of her, I felt so sad that she is dead. I might have even said out loud: "damn, you are dead." Then I noticed that the photo was taken in my home in Bernal Heights! Go-Go had only been to my house a few times, and I'm pretty sure this picture was taken the last time she visited. She and Roger sold their place in Naples and decided to take a road trip out to California. They stopped at every gambling establishment between Florida and California. By the time they arrived, a week or so later than scheduled, they were so hungover it was astounding. They were cranky and exhausted and had a bunch of money they were spending like lottery winners, rather than retirees on a fixed income.
One day Trish agreed to take Go-Go, Roger and I shopping to Crate and Barrel in Union Square. Go-Go loved Crate and Barrel and had never seen the San Francisco store. She was beside herself with shopping madness. Moments after arriving inside the store, she began waving her arms in the air while yelling my name with her raspy cigarette and alcohol voice, "Diane, oh, Diane, come here and look at this." My girl was cringing and fighting an urge to hide from us. But Go-Go was oblivious to the inappropriateness of her shouting across the store-she was in shopping heaven. Trish does a great imitation of her inside the Crate and Barrel complete with overhead arm waving. They bought a ton of stuff for my home, stuff that was meant to make me feel loved and cared for, but rather fills me with regret and confusion. She died penniless.
Whenever Go-Go gambled she developed a sleepy eye. It was a combination of lack of sleep and alcohol consumption. I also have one lazy eye, that drifts out of focus when I am over tired. Her right eye was the one that drooped a bit after a night at the casino. In this photo, after weeks of gambling, I recognized the eye tiredness right away. Most people don't even see it. It's like her voice after a few drinks, I always noticed the elongated syllables and slurry cadence, but others looked at me like I was crazy. In this picture she is swollen from years of Prednisone, poor diet and too much booze, and she looks incredibly familiar-like herself. I did not recognize what my feelings were until my friend Jane put a name to them. Seeing that photo made me miss her terribly.
1. Tending to impede or delay progress: a holding action.
2. Designed for usually short-term storage or retention: a holding tank; a holding cell.
court(kôrt, krt)n.
1. The retinue of a sovereign, including the royal family and personal servants, advisers, and ministers.
2. A formal meeting or reception presided over by a sovereign.
I woke up in the middle of the night to someone pounding on the glass door in the back of the house. I felt a rush of fear and dread. I somehow knew, even in my sleepy stupor, this ruckus was related to me. I was spending the night at Tracy Higgs’ house and I heard her Mom and brother walk down the stairs toward the disturbance, whispering anxiously to one another. And then I heard Go-Go. The humiliation was excruciating. Up until now, the Higgs’ home had been a sanctuary for me –a place Go-Go had never been or seen. A place free from her bad behavior. I lay frozen in bed as long as I could stand it, hoping that the house would go quiet again and it would be over as quickly as it began. But that was not Go-Go’s way. Once she had it in her mind to have a conversation with someone after the bars closed, there was very little anyone could do to stop her. Go-Go began to get nervous whenever I formed relationships with girls whose homes I preferred to spend more time in than my own. I was only eleven, but I was already starting my pre-teen rejection of her. The Higgs’ family adopted me for dinners, sleepovers, after school snacks, and weekend outings-I was even enlisted to canvas for George McGovern for President. The family was from Colorado and I guess you could say they were hippies. Tracy’s Mom, who insisted I call her Barbara, had long hair which she wore in a thick braid down her back. She wore long skirts, Birkenstocks, and drove a Volkswagen bus. She was raising her four kids by herself, which was just one more reason Go-Go was suspicious of her – that and the peace sign on the back of her VW bus. When I came downstairs Go-Go was sitting on the couch, Barbara Higgs and her oldest son Mark were sitting across from her, held hostage by their own politeness and maybe their love for me. I don’t know what was more humiliating, her smeared makeup and slurry speech or watching my friends sit, like statues, unable to interrupt this bizarre and crazy night time intruder, my mom. She went on and on, which was her way when she was this smashed, speaking about things she would otherwise never dare mention; politics and the upcoming election between Nixon and McGovern, how strange their family was to her, how she wondered why I liked them better than my own family, and much, much more.
I don’t remember how long she stayed or how she got home. In my fantasy I imagine a light suddenly going off for her and she stands up and says goodnight – maybe even recognizing how pointless it is to torture these innocents. A more likely scenario is that one of the boys walked her home-our apartment was only a couple hundred feet away. I do recall pleading with her to please leave and let the family go to sleep. Maybe I was the one who finally got my clothes on and dragged her out of the house and aided with her stagger home. Maybe I stayed home rather than wake up the following morning to face the humiliation of the Higgs family seeing me for who I truly was. Maybe I went back to sleep with the rest of the Higgs family and pretended it never happened. Or maybe I apologized for her, which would also have been my way.
My brother was waiting to get shipped to Vietnam by the U.S. Army. In 1970 a tour in Vietnam meant there was a good chance of returning in a body bag or wheel chair and this was not something Go-Go dealt with well. One night, she and some of the kids from "the farm" including my brother Tim, were partying and talking about how messed up Vietnam was and debating about whether Tom, who was an electrical technician, would be sent to the front line or not.
The Farm was a house outside of town where a group of young hippies lived, including Tim. Go-Go spent a lot of time out there drinking and getting high, sometimes not coming home until the morning. She didn't approve of hippies until they became convenient party pals. She partied with a lot of people she didn't otherwise approve of.
They must have whipped themselves into quite a frenzy that night because around one in the morning Go-Go, Tim, and two others piled into Roger's Buick and headed to New Jersey where Tom was stationed. They had to see him one more time. Before leaving they stopped at a liquor store and loaded up on booze. I don’t know if they traded off driving or if Go-Go, the “adult” in the group, did all the driving. I can only imagine what they must have looked like piling out of the car at gas stations and truck stops on the highway-Go-Go and the three teenage hippies who were half her age.
I wonder if after she woke up the first morning she was devastated to realize what she had done. She left five children at home between the ages of 6 and 16. Was she mortified? Roger was around, but he wasn’t in the habit of caring for us. When we woke, we assumed she was at the farm, but later she called and told us she was in New Jersey.
According to Tom, they were so hung over all they wanted to when they arrived was sleep. I think he was proud that his crazy Mom and brother got drunk and spontaneously decided to visit him - it was after all the the tale end of the sixties. He didn't know what was in store for him and was probably happy to see some familiar faces. He took them to his favorite beach and to a local dive and introduced them to his pals from the base. I don’t think Go Go was too excited about sobering up with the hippy kids so they headed back after spending two nights. Driving drunk was a common occurrence in my family but no one but Go-Go could claim to have driven from Wisconsin to New Jersey under the influence.
The effects of the drug began to take hold - it was so powerful I had to leave the party. I left with a group of kids who were also on acid.Earlier, on the way to the party, an older boy offered me a tiny square of paper and told me to let it sit under my tongue and not swallow it. I did as I was told.
We went to a park where I began to have intense visual hallucinations looking into the face of one of the boys.When he spoke a light and shape concert would arise behind his face, turning him into a dance of patterns and lights and when he stopped talking he would turn back to his normal self - only in black and white. If I waved my hand trails of light followed my movements. I was enjoying my hallucinations so much I lost track of the time. When I realized it was nearly midnight, I raced home as fast as I could, fearing I would run into Go-Go - after all, I was still only eleven.
I ran the entire mile to my family’s apartment and felt like I could run another mile. I had so much energy. I went up to my room, relieved to have avoided Go-Go. With Neil Young playing on my stereo, I laid in bed enjoying the curious feelings in my body. There were posters all over my walls and one of them was the album insert with a copy of Neil Young’s hand written lyrics. I stood on my bed to read the poster so I could sing along. The words dripped and pooled into little puddles. When he stopped singing, the words would turn back into letters. It happened over and over and each time I would laugh out loud.
My fun was abruptly interrupted when I heard Go-Go drive up, stumble out of her car and come into the house. I quickly turned the light and stereo off and lay in my bed trying to hide in my stillness - she had a way of knowing when I was up to something. I heard her rustling outside my door and before I could breathe again, the door to my room opened. “Diane, we have to talk.”
She climbed into bed next to me, and began to talk about all her children and what they all meant to her - each-child’s special qualities and why she loved that person but why I was particularly special. “Tim is smart”, she began, in her sentimental drunk voice, syrupy and slurry “he’s not very ambitious but he’s smart and someday he’ll settle down,” “but you Diane, you are so special.” She went on and on through every one of my siblings, punctuating each child’s greatness with mine.
And then the hallucinations started again. I had my back to her and was staring at my radio alarm clock. Each time she spoke the clock would disintegrate into a pile of melted metal and white tiled numbers, and when she stopped talking it would pop back into full form. The radio melted and formed, melted and formed, offering me solace from the torture I felt listening to her pathetic drivel. I thought it would go on forever but finally she fell asleep.
I laid in bed for hours, trying not to move for fear I would wake her. As the effects began to wear off, I got more and more uncomfortable but still couldn’t sleep. I finally dozed off and when I woke up she was gone.
The first Christmas after the divorce my Dad gave me a pair of ice skates that were much two big. He promised to return them for the right size and bring the skates the following week. I couldn’t risk it. I hid in the closet clutching my skates and refused to come out until he promised not to take them away. I was sure the store would not have the same pair with the powder blue checks and furry strip on top of the boot. I couldn’t bear to lose any more of him.
Go-Go married her BF, Roger, in 1969. They went away one weekend and returned with a diamond on her finger. She was radiant. I was crushed. I vowed to hate Roger for as long as I lived. Living in our apartment in Madison with Go-Go and Roger, I ached for my Dad.
Dad visited us in Madison every Sunday and took us up north to Phillips to visit his Mom every holiday. His dedication to us made me so happy, and so sad. I would imagine him being alone and make myself sick with sadness. I would think about him eating alone, shopping alone, watching television alone and living alone, all things he so recently did with us. I used to get sad before he visited because I would anticipate his leaving at the end of the day. Sundays were always sad days. I loved him desperately and at the end of the visit, he dropped us off and left.
In the beginning there were car loads of kids going off on adventures with him-my siblings, our friends, he never said no - but by the time I was in high school it was frequently just my little brother and I. Those trips were some of the most precious to me because I would have him mostly to myself. We would talk about everything-politics, the educational system, his family, how cars operate, and my favorite, what happened to him in World War II when his plane was shot down over Normandy.
He told me I was smart and I should use my brains. Encouraged me by calling me college material. Go-Go taught me to clean and cook so I could get and keep a man, but my Dad insisted that I get a career, and then worry about marriage and all that. He helped me get my first apartment at sixteen, sent me money when I went to college, and most importantly, wrote me a letter every week, without fail. His letters were never scolding, despite how often I was failing at the things I set out to do. He died when I was twenty six, at a time in my life when I was too screwed up to properly say goodbye.
He'd been dead twelve years when I learned he wasn't actually my Dad. I was visiting Go-Go that summer and she woke me up at three in the morning, inebriated. “Diane, we have to talk.” I was now sober enough and old enough to realize this was likely the thing she had been trying to tell me my whole life. But why now? I was thirty five years old and suddenly I felt so trapped in this hideous childhood dynamic. She went on, “Now I know for sure, I mean, I’ve always known, but I didn’t know absolutely.” “Oh Diane, when I saw you walk off that plane it was so obvious". “You know honey, Roger is your father.”
Her words exploded in my heart, or maybe my stomach, because I jumped out of bed and puked.
When Go-Go first met Roger in the 50's he was a milk man. He owned his route and was responsible for his truck and cooling systems, ordering and delivering his product, billing and collecting payments from his customers, and giving a percentage to Bowman's Dairy, the owner of the product. He was a veteran of the Korean War, a hard worker and a good money saver.
One day after delivering a families milk, Roger ran over and killed a two year old child. It was a tragic accident but the pain of it made Roger want to get out of the milk delivery business. Later that year he was approached by his friend Mike Gintilly about buying a truck stop outside of Madison. Wracked with guilt about the dead child, Roger decided to take the risk, despite knowing nothing about running a huge operation like a truck stop. Mike later changed his mind and Roger was left to run the operation by himself.
The Madison Truck Plaza was a fueling station, hotel, restaurant, store, and a big rig repair shop. Roger worked day and night trying to stay on top of all the work that needed to be done to own and operate a truck plaza. He came home for dinner, slept, and returned to work around ten or eleven and worked through the night. His business was a success and Go-Go reaped the rewards.
The first evidence of their new prosperity was a vacation for Go-Go and Roger to Las Vegas. Go-Go had never been on a vacation or on an airplane and there was a lot of build up and drama leading up to that trip. They played cards with friends, went to horse races and bet on horses, but Go-Go had never seen anything like Las Vegas. She was a small town girl who had never been out of the state unitl she met Roger.
They stayed in Vegas extra days and when they finally returned home Go-Go had an extra suitcase filled with fringed leather vests for all of the kids and some for our friends (it was the late sixties). She came home with her eyes wide with excitement and stories of what a wonderful place Las Vegas was. She also returned with a gambling compulsion that would eventually ruin them.
Go-Go went to casinos every chance she got. When I was sixteen she took my brother and I to the Bahamas because there were casinos there. I spent nights waiting for her to be done playing black jack, days trapped in hotels, and weeks worrying about the money she had lost. Go-Go continued to gamble long after she could afford to. When she was too sick to gamble she died.
When Russell brought Jackie to dinner at our house, Go-Go was surprised she was a girl. She liked to tell the story of how surprised she was because she just assumed “Jackie” was a little boy.
Jackie was no ordinary girl. She was a tomboy. She played basketball, had a very cool banana seat bike, and wore pants two or three sizes too large. I had never met someone like Jackie, who was fiercely independent, smart, funny, athletic, and a girl. I am certain she is responsible for what has turned out to be a life long attraction to boyish girls.
Jackie was closer to my age than Russell's and I wanted her to be my friend. I didn’t understand her attraction to Russell but mostly, I was unbearably jealous. We were new to the neighborhood and I had no experience making new friends. I began by stealing her bike, well, asking her if I could ride it around the basketball court and then taking off down the street and out of site. I upset her mercilessly. I don’t know why this act of bullying resulted in her befriending me, though I suspect I was relentless. Jackie had short red hair and freckles and after we became friends, strangers frequently mistook us for sisters. Mom had fun with us. She really liked Jackie and I think she felt sorry for her because Jackie's Mom bought her clothes too large so “she could grow into them”. Go-Go took us shopping and bought identical outfits for us to wear. The first time we dressed alike, I knew Jackie was mine for keeps. Jackie’s mom was strict. One afternoon I answered the telephone at their house by saying “hello.” Jackie’s mom, Mrs. Consiglio scolded me and then taught me the proper way to greet a caller: “hi, you’ve reached the Consiglio residence, how may I help you?” followed by “one moment please, I’ll call her.” I had never heard anyone talk like that. It was kind of cool. I answered the phone every chance I got so I could practice speaking this strange new language. When I ate dinner at their house I was coached to place my feet squarely on the floor and keep my elbows off the table. Manners were completely foreign to me. I found them strange and alluring. I probably enjoyed the structure but was nervous because I frequently had to be reminded.
Our parents became friends. They had a lot in common, like horse racing and bar hopping between Madison and Chicago where Mr. Consiglio worked. When we were eleven years old Jackie's parents moved to a suburb of Chicago. Luckily, it was close to the race track so my parents visited frequently. Jackie and I spent summers together alternating between her house and mine. We were together when we bought our first bras, smoked our first cigarettes, learned to shop lift (and got caught). We grew up together and I adored her. I think loving her and being loved by her was very important for me. Here we are as teenagers, many years into our friendship. Go-Go is on the left and we are with Roger.
Hunting was big in Wisconsin. My uncles and some of my brothers were hunters. All the burly farm-bred boys in my neighborhood were hunters. During deer hunting season, we regularly saw dead dear strapped to the roof of cars. Hunting season also produced the predictable news of the tragic deaths of improperly clad hunters and children mistaken for deer.
We had guns in our house. When the boys were young, their first one was a bb gun. Later they got pellet guns, and finally 22 caliber rifles- larger if they stuck with it and showed commitment to the sport.
After the barn burned down and winter set in, all the rodents who’d resided in the barn came to the house in search of warmth and food. I was terrified of rats and had the misfortune of seeing one climb the stairs to our bedrooms one afternoon. I laid in bed many nights petrified, soothing myself by imagining that rats and mice were unable to climb bedposts.
One night Go-Go Mom was having a little solo party, drinking and talking on the telephone. I don’t remember what woke me up, or if it was gun shots. When I got downstairs I saw her, perched on a stool, the furnace grate in the floor removed, a beer and cigarette resting on the telephone table, and a shot gun aimed at the heating duct. She had decided to take on the rat population by leaving food in the heating duct and, once the rats scurried into her sight, shooting them. I asked her what she was doing and she ignored me. Finally during a break in her telephone conversation she told me she was taking care of our little problem and to go to sleep. I went back to bed with more than just rats to fear.
Go-Go Mom came home from her weekend with her BF with a carton of malted milk balls. My brother Russell grabbed a bunch out of the carton and one rolled out of his hand, across the kitchen floor, and into the tiny space between the stove and the refrigerator. Candy was not something we had in our house so losing one of those precious malted milk balls was unthinkable. Desperate, Russell crammed his body into the narrow space to retrieve the lost candy. On top of the stove was a metal coffee peculator with its cord plugged behind the refrigerator. When Russell dragged that cord with his shoulder he pulled down the pot. Hot brewed coffee onto his flesh. The scorching metal pot fused with his skin. When Russell finally managed to wiggle out of the spot he ran screaming through the house with the coffee pot stuck to his back.
My Dad jumped up and carried Russell into their bedroom and began phoning a doctor. Apparently, my parents were trying to determine if there was any way to dislodge the coffee pot from his flesh. The doctor instructed them to leave the pot attached and take him to the emergency room.
I'm not sure if Russell's hospitalization kept Go-Go home any more than usual. I like to imagine it did. I know I was jealous because when he finally came home from the hospital he had more cool toys than I had ever seen.
Russell spent more than five weeks in the hospital, having multiple surgeries involving skin graft after skin graft. When he returned home his back looked like a pile of stiff earth worms. I rubbed burn cream on his back nightly. In the summer heat, sun screen and doubled tee shirts were still not enough to keep him out of pain.
In the summer of 1966 Keds came out with a stylish new girls sneaker. I begged my parents for a pair for months or years, it seemed. They had slightly pointed toes and an elastic band over the top and a cute little white rubber sole. Finally for my sixth birthday my parents gave me those coveted red Keds.
A few days after my birthday, my older sister Judy and her friend Kitty Carpenter were going to ride their bikes to the toy store in town. I desperately wanted to join them because I was wearing my new red keds and a pair of peddle pushers with ties up the sides. I had to be seen in town. My brother Scott had taken my bike so my begging them meant that I would ride on the back of my sister's bicycle.
The toy store was in the center of the town of Kimberly and it was one of those old-fashioned mom and pop shops. What I remember about it was row after row of toys stacked from floor to ceiling, and the sour smell of plastic, rubber, and promise.
We stayed a good long while in the store and when we went to leave I saw my brother pull up on my bike. I demanded to ride my own bike home. “How is Scott supposed to get home?” Judy argued. I didn’t care, after all, I protested, he had taken my bike and now I wanted it back. I threw a tantrum, and continued to whine bitterly even as I climbed onto the back of Judy’s bike.
I was sitting on the fender with my heels resting on the rear axle bolts when I felt the most searing pain imaginable. I started to scream. Judy thought I was ramping up my tantrum. My heel had slipped and was being sawed off by the spokes of her bicycle wheel. She continued to peddle, and peddle until finally Kitty Carpenter saw what was happening and shouted "Judy, stop, there's blood everywhere." We were in front of a bar and a man who heard the screaming came out, grabbed me off the back of the bike, and shouted back into the bar for someone to call an ambulance.
Later, after the ambulance ride and the bright lights of the hospital, and after my heel was returned to my foot with Frankenstein-like stitches and wrapped in a big bandage, I obsessed over my little red Ked. I had only worn them that day, and now one was missing and I wondered where it was. Was it on the street at the scene of the accident, torn and covered with blood, laying in the gutter? Or had it been left in the ambulance or removed at the hospital, and discarded in some sanitary waste basket?
While my foot was in bandages, it worked to only have one shoe. Even after my stitches were removed and my foot was healed I continued to wrap my foot in bandages just so I could wear my one red Ked. Asking my parents for another pair was out of the question-I felt I had somehow lost my shoe by my own recklessness and did not dare ask for another pair. Eventually I must have gotten bored with walking around in one shoe, but I never forgot my red Keds.
One cold October evening, my siblings and I were sitting around watching television when my brother Russell walked from the living room to the kitchen where he passed the windows looking out toward our barns. In a level voice he declared, “the barn is on fire.” We all jumped up and gathered around the windows and watched the flames fly. My parents were not home so I suppose one of the older kids dialed the operator to report our fire.
By the time the fire trucks arrived there wasn’t much they could do to save our barn but they aimed their big hoses at the fire and worked into the night. Their first priority was to keep the flames from jumping onto our house which they did by covering our house with water which instantly turned icy in the frigid fall air.
Earl and Joyce Jansen and their seven kids lived in the next farm house and we were evacuated there. I remember talking to my mom who called from where ever she was with her boy friend to see if we were all safe. Apparently she watched her barn burning on the ten o’clock news.
My eleven year old brother Scott, was uncharacteristically at his friend’s house and later we would understand why. The story I remember is that Scott and his two buddies were playing in the barn and decided to light a bale of hay to keep themselves warm. There were twenty four tons of hay in that barn. I wonder how long before the fire was so big they were fleeing for their lives.
Ever since my trip to the beach last January, where the dolphins appeared with their frolicking ) offering of forgiveness, it seems all that squishiness just sucked the mad (and my stories) right out of me. I know there are more stories about growing up in the Viet Nam Era with a Mom who partied hard and a Step Father who laughed off her dangerous antics. Yet, maintaining my bitterness and a good story to accompany it, doesn't make any sense after that pivotal one-year anniversary trip to the sea to say goodbye. Now the question is, can I tell a good story while feeling all warm and fuzzy with forgiveness?
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