The Stepford Wife

When I was a child, I assumed that when a man eventually proposed marriage to me, it would be the old fashioned way. He would have one knee on the ground, and the black velvet box outstretched in his trembling hand. He would have a speech prepared of course; and I would swoon with his declarations of ever lasting love. This scenario wasn’t my fantasy, really; I had just been conditioned to believe that this was the way things happened.

But when my marriage proposal came, it was me who was on my knees.

I was scrubbing the kitchen floor with a bucket of hot soapy water, a dab of sweat at each temple. The fact that the sight of me bent over, being a domesticated goddess, or a soapy slave, inspired this man to propose marriage might have been a red flag. Because I always knew that I could never be a traditional woman.

As early as I can remember, I didn’t want to have children. I remember boasting about this to my mother, to which she replied, “Oh, you’ll change your mind one day.” But I never did. I also thought it highly unlikely that I would ever be married.

But that day, as I rubbed a filthy washcloth over the linoleum, I agreed to be married.

I was only 19 years old.

My life changed overnight.

The life I imagined that I would lead would be one of a hedonistic writer. I wanted to live passionately; I wanted to live like the Beatniks did in the 1950’s. I dreamed of another literary movement, so I, too, could be a part of a sub-culture. I wanted to live in the bowels of an underground America, serenaded by jazz, sex, and poetry. I wanted the purple dawns and drugs that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty knew in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and just like Jack I wanted my own cross-country bohemian odyssey. I wanted to drive a vehicle like an unguided missile, my one arm waving free toward the sunset, over prairies and desserts and cities; my mind ripe with lusty descriptions of all of it. I wanted to frequent coffee houses with my writer friends, and smoke cigarettes until the ashtray overflowed. I wanted to drink one too many cappuccinos, and have zealous debates while delving into intellectual conversations about William Burroughs. I wanted to be free.

But the day I accepted marriage, my life took an awkward turn.

Suddenly I was elbow-deep in china patterns and choosing invitations and flowers. I was thrust into the role of a pink fairy princess; something I never wanted to be. I knew that most little girls dreamed about that time in their lives, but it wasn’t my dream. And I felt I had to pretend that it was.

This idea of being someone’s wife perplexed me. I didn’t understand how it was possible to leave my soul intact, without metamorphosing into somebody else’s idea of what I should be. I was too young; I hadn’t even become fully what I was going to be, and already I had to bend my will to another.

The first order of business was to buy me an engagement ring. My husband-to-be didn’t want to pick it out; he wanted me to choose my own so that I would really love it.

I was glad he did. I had no use for diamonds; I felt they were bourgeoisie. I wanted a blue sapphire in an antique setting; a ring with history, a ring which fed my soul. So my fiancé’ took me shopping for just that. It took us all day, but finally I found a ring that I loved. The jeweler agreed to clean it and send it. I was excited about that ring, and could imagine wearing it for the rest of my life.

Two days later, my husband-to-be followed tradition, and did it “right.” After a wonderful dinner, he plopped down on one knee and brought out a little velvet box, and asked me to become his wife. But when I opened it, the ring I had chosen was not there. Instead I found a traditional engagement ring; white gold, with an enormous diamond that protruded so far from the setting that I was certain I’d put out someone’s eye with it. But worse, I had this dreaded feeling that there was a conspiracy going on, and someone was trying to drive me insane. After all, where was the ring I had chosen? And what was my expected response, was I to pretend I was happy and not mention that the ring had morphed into something hideous? It felt a little like the Twilight Zone.

“What happened to the ring I chose?” I asked.

“My mother thought it was improper,” he said. “She insisted you should have this instead. She said it was BETTER.”

Oh dear God. The MOTHER-IN-LAW.

The mother-in-law, as it turned out, didn’t like any of my choices.

The day I was sent out to register for gifts, a horrifying little ritual, I spent the day choosing practical arty pieces that I found aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t like the idea of telling people to buy me gifts, let alone dictating precisely what they should buy me. But this is what I was told to do, so I chose items I loved. My mother-in-law went back the next day, and changed every single choice I’d made; registering me for conservative china; something that might be found at a Presidential dinner. Ornate silver and ridiculously expensive crystal replaced my more moderate choices. And I didn’t know she’d gone behind my back until the gifts began to arrive.

I chose a rock and roll band for the reception that was to be held at a very hip location; the Bach Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay. Unbeknownst to me, she canceled the rock band and ordered a sedate quartet. By then I was learning; and without her knowing or finding out, I rehired the rock band. The look on her face when the band came to set up at my reception was priceless. She told me the music I’d chosen would ruin an otherwise perfect day.

But the most frightening thing was the MOTHER-IN-LAW insisted that we marry in a Catholic Church. I had been baptized Catholic, that much is true. But it was only because in the 5th grade, when we all had to announce what church we belonged to, I didn’t have an answer. So I went home and insisted that my parents baptize me. Most of the children were Catholics, so that is what I chose. My baptism was almost humorous; I was an 11 year old girl, all dressed up in a white frock, standing in line with a dozen infants.

But other than not wanting to be embarrassed at school, my baptism served no other purpose; I did not want to be affiliated with any organized religion. The prospect of being married in a Catholic church frightened me. Even more frightening, was that I was sent away to live in a nunnery with nuns for a week, a time I supposed they hoped to brainwash me. I remember lying in my bed that first morning; a little cot in a chilly little room, and being awakened by a nun in a black habit. She told me the first order of business was to meet with the Father, where I would promise to have children and raise them Catholic. I didn’t plan on having children, and I sure as hell didn’t want to promise I’d raise them in a faith I didn’t believe in. But I was brought to a dark room and I was forced to agree to a falsehood; and to sign away my soul. I was being buried by a dark blanket of deceit.

My life had turned into a lie. I was a fraud. I couldn’t fight the establishment. I was a mechanical wind-up toy. Like a Stepford wife, I was being sent down an endless corridor of conformity.

I did end up getting my way on some things. I rejected the idea of a receiving line; after all, I wasn’t royalty, and I found the ritual pretentious. I refused to wear a veil; the roots of this tradition meant submission to the man, and I wasn’t having that. I wouldn’t let the priest say, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” but rather “husband and wife.” And my bridesmaid dresses were hand sewn from five different materials and lace; and my bridesmaids wore strawflower wreaths with long colorful ribbons in their hair. They looked like flower-children of the 60’s. I tried to hang onto who I was, but those victories were few and far between.

My first bridal shower was like an episode from a horror film.

A half hour before the event was to begin, I was ushered into a back bedroom at my mother-in-law’s house. There on the bed was an outfit for me to wear. It was a gruesome little ensemble; a white pleated skirt, white blouse, white hose, and white high heels. I argued vehemently; saying I was fine in the new dress I had bought for the occasion; but she wouldn’t hear of it. I dutifully changed, and then was led into a living room that was all white; white carpet and white couches; fake flowers and horrific paintings, like you might see in a hotel; and a far cry from the colorful artsy interiors of my childhood. We drank punch that contained no alcohol. We played inane dreadful little games. But worse than any of that, was that I did not know a single person there. Other than my mother and sister-in-law to be, the room was full of strangers; older women dressed tightly in provincial suits, wearing corsages.

I almost choked. “Where are MY friends?” I whispered.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll have another party for you. But these are MY friends. And they’re WEALTHY.”

It was a nightmare I feared I’d never awake from. I sat there with a plastered smile on my face, as I opened present after present; silver tea sets and crystal candy dishes, monogrammed towels and napkin holders from Tiffany’s. “And this is from....Mrs. Baker?” I’d call out weakly, scanning the crowd for a woman to identify herself. And when she did, “Thank you Mrs. Baker, it’s very lovely.” But it wasn’t lovely at all; I wanted to smash it all against the wall, rip off my white pleated skirt, and go screaming into the suburban streets half naked.

But it was the stationary I received from my mother-in-law which nearly sent me into a tailspin. It read, “Mrs. HIS NAME.” It was his name. It read Mrs. His first name, His middle name, and His last name. I was Mrs. Him.

“You know, I hadn’t really decided to take his name,” I offered in a feeble small voice. “I was thinking of hyphenating it, maybe, so I could keep my name as well.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother-in-law spat back. “OF COURSE you will take our name.”

My entire identity, at last had been stripped.

After the marriage, it only grew worse. I remember coming home from work one evening, and when I opened my front door, all of our antique and funky furniture were gone, and had been replaced with a hideous living room “set” of matching everything. “Your mother-in-law is certainly generous,” my friends would offer, as a way to console me. But to me, these weren’t gifts at all; they were manipulations and controls disguised as presents. She was trying to slowly alter who I was.

My evenings were spent having dinner at the In-laws, or at Lyon’s Club functions. My father-in-law was the Governor of the Lyon’s Club, and I was forced to endure meetings, conventions, and banquets; and I was paraded around in conservative suits and corsages, just like the women wore at my Bridal Shower. It was utterly void of color, of intellect, and of art. I was a smiling mannequin, and the person I knew myself to be was dying. I was dying a little every day.

I believed, for a time, that pretending to be something I wasn’t was the right choice. I thought maturity was about putting my own desires aside, and opting what is best for the greater whole. And for a time, I vowed to sacrifice my own lusty perspective in favor of what was expected of me.

My husband and I separated seven years later. I found a special peace in telling my mother-in-law that the primary problem in our marriage was her incessant interference. And once those words were finally uttered, I danced into the unknown; following an eccentric beat that I recognized as my own. I left my husband and took nothing; I left the china and the crystal and the property and the bank accounts. In fact, I was homeless for six months.

I had a post office box, and my mother-in-law sent me checks in the mail for a full year. I never knew why she sent me money, and I was so impoverished at the time, I didn’t care why. At the end of that year, she called me on the phone and asked me if I was done being a silly little girl, and when I was returning to my husband. I told her “never,” and I felt I had sprouted wings. The checks stopped. And I was free. I started to remember that purple dawn I had dreamed of long ago; the one that served as a backdrop to my life of poetry and non-conformity.

I often muse about children and young adults who give up their hopes and dreams in order to fit in. They are socialized before they are even aware of it; and they are conditioned from a young age to live someone else’s truth. Sadly, this often continues throughout their lives until they stand up for themselves, and actively seek to reignite the spark that society has extinguished. I believe the dreams we have about our lives are signposts to our authentic selves, and happiness is found in pursuing them.

I never wanted to be a fairy princess, draped in pink, forced to endure coffee klatches and idle chitchat. I wanted to be wicked. I wanted to be drunk with profligacy. I wanted my soul to burst with everything that it longed to express.

And although I am constantly tested, I make a vow and a promise to myself every day; and this is a vow, unlike my marriage vows, I try to honor. And that is to never be a fraud again. If I can stay true to that, I know my life will find the right course.
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"Let the beauty you love be what you do."  --Rumi

The Math Geek

The day I discovered that I was good at math, I was horrified. I felt as though Lucifer himself had risen from his fiery pit, and had stolen my soul. I was devastated. And I would never be the same again.

I had always hated math, and all math related topics. I especially hated my math teachers. Their personalities were so dry, I swore that if I blew on them they’d disintegrate like a pyramid of crumbs, and then scatter like dust in the wind. They were like desiccated fruit.

My algebra teacher, Mr. Connors, was the classic example of a geek, before geeks became popular. Black slacks, white crisp shirt, butch cut, pen protector in the pocket, horned rimmed glasses. I decided that he must be a virgin; I couldn’t imagine him getting passionate and sweaty. I would squirm when I thought what his kisses might be like; tight arid pecks, void of moisture.

Mr. Connors’ lessons were given in a steady monotone; an annoying drone about constants, variables, and Quadratic Equations that made me want to stand up and scream. There was the constant squeak and clatter of chalk against chalkboard, and what would spill forth were rows upon rows of nonsensical twaddle; parentheses and X’s where numbers should be; an annoying array of plus, minus and equal signs, spelled out as if they were actual sentences.

How dare this mumbo jumbo parade around as if they were sentences! The sentences I loved were made out of words. Beautiful strings of words, held together by stanzas and paragraphs; descriptive snippets which oozed with love, death, agony, and the mysteries of life. Poetry and literature; that is where the sentences I understood were nestled, safe in their beds of wisdom and communication.

These math sentences were unsightly, meaningless gibberish.

Because Mr. Connors was always writing his ugly sentences on the board, I had plenty of time to stare at the back of his head and his very red neck. I found this far more interesting than the rubbish he filled the chalkboard with. His neck bulged slightly at the collar; I decided this was his only physical imperfection. He was strangely flawless; I was certain he’d never dropped a spoonful of pea soup down his tie. He was a robot; an unfeeling android. It was Square Root this, and Square Root that, and I often felt tempted to sneak up behind him and bonk him on the head with a heavy metal object. Not to kill him, but rather to shut him up. “Bang, bang, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer came down upon his head,” I would sing under my breath, trying to block his mind numbing prattle.

I cut my Algebra class as often as I could, and only attended just enough to pass the course. In those days, they didn’t care too much about delinquencies from class; truants were rarely punished, and because we had few restrictions, graduating from High School really became our choice. No one was really going to force you to put in the necessary time; you were either going to work hard enough to pass, or you weren’t.

I was going to pass. I was going onto college, and I had planned on getting the highest degree I could earn; a PhD in Literature. I had dreams as big as a Harvest Moon; I was going to be a novelist; a journalist; a columnist, and a War Correspondent. I was going to work at the San Francisco Chronicle, and I was going to share the occasional giggle with Herb Caen, whose office would be just down the hall from mine. I was going to rub shoulders with leather elbowed novelists, who would puff on a pipe as they’d quip about their latest narrative. I would be a member of the elite Literati, and I would spend the rest of my life dedicated to perfecting prose.

Sadly, this was never to be.

When I was a senior in High School, my parents sat me down one day, and explained to me that they were moving to Hopland, to the country home my Dad had been building for a decade. They would give me a month; I had to get my driver’s license, which I had been putting off; buy a car, find a job, and find an apartment. I got my first credit card, and was in debt for $20,000 right out of the gate. I had no car, let alone anything to start a home.

Their announcement was one of the lowest moments of my life. I sat there dumbfounded; and I saw every dream I’d ever had for my future fly out the window, flapping merrily away, with little black wings. The depression was beyond tears; I was mute for a long time. “I’m still in High School,” I finally said, as low and soft as my voice would go. But nothing I said would have mattered. I had to become an adult seemingly overnight, and I knew that college would have to be put on hold. I needed a job. And I could no longer take on menial jobs as I’d done in my past; I had to earn a living. I had to pay rent.

I went to work full time at Insurance Company in San Mateo. I honestly couldn’t tell you what my job even was; not only don’t I remember, but it was so inane I hardly knew what I was doing then. But I do remember that part of my job was mailing out hundreds and hundreds of policy statements to clients. So I typed up a small note which said something like: “I’m a frustrated writer held captive in Corporate America; in a tedious repetitive job that will surely suck the life out of me. If you can help me realize my dreams, and be a working writer, please call me at this number. 726-4854. Thank you.” I then took this note and made hundreds of copies of it, carefully cut each one out, and piled them on my desk next to the stack of policies. Before I would enclose the policy in the envelope and seal it, I would tape one of these little notes to the bottom of the page.

No job offers came from this. But it did earn me a trip to the boss’ office, when a client called and complained. And this led to another meaningless job and to another. I decided that if this was going to be my life,  I would rather be dead.

But the nightmare only worsened in intensity. It was a beautiful autumn day, and my boyfriend was sitting on the patio in my front yard, doing his Algebra homework. He was whining and groaning; making sounds that were familiar to me, as they were similar to the noises I made when forced to listen to the incessant drivel from Mr. Connors. I ignored his feeble attempts to gain my pity; and while I had great empathy for his plight, I was determined to go nowhere near his math book. “Heeelllllllllllllppppppp Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” he would bleat, as he would bang his head against his book.

“No.”

I didn’t understand what pleasure could be found in math. The whole idea of math was that it was a solvable puzzle; it was only a mystery until it was unraveled. It was a concrete science; and answers were either wrong or right. But there was always an answer; there was always a finite conclusion. Even if that answer was infinity.

Words intrigued me, because in my mind they were the reverse. The beauty of words was that there was no answer; literature and poetry are just beautiful chains of ambiguity and questions, strung together delicately, with the most invisible of filaments. There is no wrong or right; there is no black or white. It was an imperfect science without any conclusion.

“Help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” he pleaded again.

“You know I hate math. Stop bugging me. I wouldn’t be of any help anyway. Do you know I barely passed Algebra in High School?”

“I know, I know, but just read this ONE problem with me, please. Maybe you can give me some perspective; something I cannot see. PLEASE. I can’t figure out what it MEANS.”

Rolling my eyes, I walked toward him, and toward the dreaded math book. I took a disinterested glance downward, and saw those strings of math sentences; just like the ones Mr. Connors would write on the board; the same ones that filled me with dread, confusion and loathing.

Imagine my horror, when I stared down at the page, and I could suddenly read them.
It was like staring at a page of words written in a foreign tongue that suddenly make sense. We’ve all seen pages of Chinese or Farsi; strange symbols that appear like nonsense on the page; and while we know that others can read the words written there, we also know that no matter how hard we try, we’ll never be able to decipher their code.

That was the way Algebra always felt to me, and in this one moment, when I stared at the page, it felt like I looked at a Chinese book and could suddenly, miraculously, read Chinese. But I didn’t feel joy; as if a magic wand had just given me a special gift of seeing; rather I was utterly sickened.

In short, this led me to becoming an accountant. Without any training, the double entry system made sense to me upon first glance. My mind wrapped around the entire accounting concept; as if I’d always known it. And unfortunately, I was very good at it.

When I would come in for interviews, I would often get similar remarks. “Wow, you’re not what we usually expect when we interview for an accountant!” They always said it in a jolly but judgmental way, which caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. With my wild hair, and robust personality, they couldn’t quite imagine me sitting quietly in a corner office, seriously clattering away on an adding machine.

But I tried to fit in. I tried to look like an accountant. I tried to look like Mr. Connors.

In the early days, I would don panty hose, heels, and business suits; I talked in a monotone business-like way.  I was efficient and calculated. Strangely, somehow, someway I could never truly hide who I was. I don’t know if it was my wild hair or wild eyes, or that I wore too many rings on my fingers. Perhaps it was my hearty laugh, which I couldn’t suppress from bursting forth when something struck me as ironic. But somehow they always figured out that beneath my business demeanor lived an untamed poet, aching to write.

I did beg for a job at the San Francisco Chronicle once. And I mean, I really begged. I decided to write a letter that would scream my true passion to such an extent that someone would feel my crazed enthusiasm, and like a freak accident, would offer me an interview. They sent back a personalized letter which was quite kind considering, saying they enjoyed my writing samples, but I needed more experience to become a columnist.

Somewhere along the line, I did find that there was actually a great deal of creativity in accounting. It was much more fluid than I had previously thought; I discovered that the Balance Sheet was actually something that could be manipulated. Not in a dishonest way, but a good accountant can book things one way or another to make the financials appear to the owner’s liking, depending on the scenario at hand. And on some level, I enjoyed making sense out of chaos, which is really what the job of the accountant is. Not to mention, it paid well.

But one year turned to a decade, and a decade turned to two. And as the years slipped by, I had built a resume of my life, which could scarcely be changed. The longer I worked as an accountant, the farther away I got from being a writer. When I would apply for writing jobs, I could really only offer 25 years as an accountant for my history. And every day I just slipped farther and farther away from my dream.
Over the years the ache has faded. Or perhaps I’m just in denial.

Because it still aches.

A lot.

Christmas in the Tenderloin

They say that if you remember the 60’s that you weren’t really there. This motto, of course, argues that anyone who actually was there spent the majority of the decade high on drugs. But the adage forgets a faction of people who were there and didn’t take drugs; and that would be the children.

The hippie, in his tie-dyed t-shirt and long flowing hair has become an enduring archetype that rivals any archetype before it, and although only a child, I have always been grateful that I had a front row seat to this revolutionary time. The world was in flux; and that unrest had even reached my front door.

My father told me he was too old to be a hippie. He was in his early 40’s, after all, and the majority of the hippie movement involved optimistic kids in their 20’s. But being an artist, and an always forward-thinking individual, he embraced the movement.

At least at first.

“You can trust anyone with a beard,” he once told me. And as short-sighted as that sounds now, it was true for a time. I still remember when he eventually retracted that statement, saying a beard was no longer a guarantee of benevolence.

My father railed against the Viet Nam war, and raking Lyndon Johnson over the coals was a nightly ritual which I came to enjoy. The images of war haunted the poet inside of me, and I had taken to carefully cutting out various war pictures from magazines and gluing them in scrapbooks. Later some of these images became famous; such as the Vietnamese child running screaming and naked after she'd been burned with napalm toward a bashful camera. I had cut that picture out in a circular shape, and I can still see it stuck on the manila pages where I’d put it; it was an image that I referred to often when I needed to cry.

When Wallace was running for President, my father called a family meeting, and told us that if he were elected, we’d be moving to Europe. This was a frightening thought for a nine year old; and I became engrossed with the Presidential race that year; praying every night that Wallace would lose and we could stay in Moss Beach, only footsteps from the ocean.

During those years, my father uncharacteristically took my sister and me out on many excursions; he told us that a lot was happening in the world, and he wanted us to be a part of it. I remember several Peace Rallies and Protest Marches; all of which I took very seriously. We would sing Joe McDonald’s song religiously, “And it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn; next stop is Viet Nam.” I loved the line about being the first people on the block to have your son sent home in a box. Even then, its sarcasm fed me.

During the Summer of Love he took us on a special outing to the Haight Ashbury district. He spent an inordinate amount of time explaining the “scene” as he put it, as we drove to San Francisco that day. I had no idea what to expect; but I will never forget it; and I am grateful that I had a glimpse of that historic display from the back of my father’s white Volkswagen bug. He wouldn’t let us out of the car to roam about; but he did take us up and down the street several times at a snail’s pace. My face was pressed against the glass as I stared out into a cacophony of color, sound and motion that I could hardly comprehend. Young people were everywhere; we could really only inch through the crowd slowly anyway, and we were glad. The street was awash with every color under the rainbow; and the scent of patchouli oil and marijuana drifted through my Dad’s open window. I couldn’t take the sights in fast enough; I spotted a group of young men wearing dreadlocks and playing bongos; then a circle of girls painting hearts on each other’s cheeks. It was a kaleidoscope of long hair, beads, psychedelic signs, top hats, and peace signs. I remember a group of girls all sitting in a circle, creating daisy chains. I had never seen anything like it, and I excitedly pointed, “Look, Look!” as we paused beside them. The chain they were working on was long; perhaps six feet or more; and they each wore smaller chains as wreaths upon their long straight hair. I couldn’t wait to get home and make my own daisy chain.

To be sure, that was a memorable excursion. But there was an excursion that my father took us on that I remember far better than those. It was on Christmas Eve, after a holiday party.

In those days, children hardly ever accompanied the adults to a grown-up party. They were appropriately left home with babysitters, so that the adults could enjoy themselves unfettered. They didn’t want children around trying to eat the pot brownies, for instance, which I tried to do once. I was so incensed when they told me I wasn’t allowed this treat, without any explanation whatsoever.

If my parents had their own party, we were escorted to our bedrooms after a quick hello to the guests, armed with a T.V. dinner and television to entertain us. If my parents couldn’t find a babysitter, we were brought along, but we’d be ushered immediately to the children’s room, where we’d spend the evening with the children of the host and hostesses. This particular Christmas Eve was exactly that scenario.

My parents certainly partied. They loved their martinis; they smoked a little pot; and one day I even walked in on them smoking banana peels. There was a fleeting urban myth that banana peels could get you high; but these myths were followed by many more. But regardless of any of this, my father was far from an alcoholic, and in fact I’d never seen him really drunk in my life; not until that Christmas Eve.

When it was time to go home, my sister and I were retrieved from the back bedroom. We had been sound asleep, and as my mother steered us toward the car, I noticed something was wrong with Dad. He was slightly slurring his speech and behaving erratically. And he was ranting and raving, standing proud atop his very own soap box, spilling diatribes to anyone who might listen.

Of course my father got behind the wheel. In those days, driving drunk was nothing like it is today; it was done with great regularity by plenty of revelers. But on this night, my mother offered to drive; something I had never heard her do. My father wouldn’t hear of it.

The memory is dull, but I remember a frantic yelp from my mother, and as I looked up I read the sign in front of me. It was red, and it said “Go Back. You are going the wrong way.” The car lurched into a panic, my sister and my mother pleading with my father to pull over. At the time, I didn’t really realize that we were going the wrong way down the freeway.

My father spun quickly in a hasty U-turn, driving right over a bumpy median, and soon we were facing in the appropriate direction, speeding down the highway at a fast clip. I remember my mother saying in a strained voice hardly above a whisper, “This isn’t the way home, Dear. Please let me drive.”

“I know where I’m going,” my father snapped back. “I want to show the children something before we go home.”

I remember those words, because I found them far more terrifying than driving down the highway in the wrong direction. It was Christmas Eve, and it felt very, very late. Santa Claus had left the North Pole hours ago, and he would surely arrive at our house very shortly. I hadn’t even hung my stocking on the fireplace yet, let alone put out a glass of milk and cookies, which I always did. It was a tiring night for Santa, and anything I could offer in the way of sustenance and refreshment, I was happy to oblige.

“We have to be home before Santa gets there,” I yelled out. “Please can we just go home right now?”

“No,” my father said. “You won’t want to miss this.”

His answer filled me with dread. Because sometimes he would say these words right before he did something horrible, that only he thought was funny. I thought back to earlier that spring, when I lovingly carried around a chocolate chicken that I had received in my Easter Basket. I loved that chicken, and called it “Chick Chick,” and I took it everywhere; it would even sit with me at the dinner table. One night my father insisted I put Chick Chick in the middle of the table and close my eyes. I resisted because I feared the worst; then he told me I wouldn’t want to miss what he was about to do. I did as I was told, and when I opened my eyes upon his command, Chick Chick was in the middle of the table, but missing its head. And my father was licking chocolate from his lips and laughing.

“I don’t care if I miss it,” I pleaded with my father. “If Santa comes and we’re not home, he will just leave. Mom told us that if children aren’t in bed and sleeping when he comes, he won’t leave the presents! Please!”

My father ignored me. We were hurdling down the streets, and soon I recognized the group of tall buildings on the horizon; we were headed toward San Francisco. For a moment I imagined that we might be going to see the gigantic tree in Union Square; I loved going there, with the giant ice rink on the roof and the buildings swathed in Christmas decoration.

But we didn’t head toward any glittering lights. In fact with every block we drove, the streets looked darker and more sinister. I stared out my window from the back of the Volkswagen bug, and I could see the wet streets; they were muddy with rain and littered with garbage. Everywhere I looked, I saw indigents camped; squatting under newspaper, or sleeping under garbage bags. “Why are all of those people sleeping on the street?” I asked.

“They’re homeless,” my father answered, and I noticed he was looking for a parking place. It all felt very ominous.

“Dear, please tell me you’re not parking the car here,” my Mom spoke, her voice rising ever so slightly. “It’s dangerous. For Christ sakes, dear, this has gone too far. We would like to go home. Now please.” My mother spoke with a British accent.

My father found a parking place and pulled in. “Okay, I want everyone out,” he said.

My mother cupped her hands over his, which were poised over the ignition. “This is the tenderloin district and it’s the middle of the night,” she said. “Don’t be daft. We’re not taking the children here.”

“I don’t want to get out,” I said fearfully. An old decrepit man began tapping on our window, begging for spare change.

My father jumped out of the car and handed the old man a few dollars from his wallet. He sent him away, and then opened the car doors for the rest of us. “We’re going for a walk,” he told us.
And we did.

We went on a long walk. My mother grabbed my hand, and I clung to her with everything that I had. I was fighting back tears as we traveled up one block and down another, stepping over sleeping bodies which littered the pavement. It was sprinkling lightly, and I was shivering; both from cold and apprehension. People who appeared crazy came to us and tried to begin conversations. Empty beer and liquor bottles rolled noisily into the gutters. The streets were silent, except strangled nonsensical screams from its many inhabitants.

Suddenly my father stopped us all. He said, “Merry Christmas” to a sad neglected lady standing near by, and then he turned to us. “Tomorrow is Christmas,” he told us. “And I brought you here because I want you to reflect on a few things. Christmas is a time when we come together to celebrate the brotherhood of man. A time when we reach out to our neighbor, who might not be doing as well as we are, and offer them a helping hand. Good Will Toward Men. But no one has reached out a hand to any of the people here. They don’t have a warm bed to go home to,” he said as he looked sternly at me.

The neglected lady asked my father for spare change. He gave her a few dollars. “So I took you here tonight,” he went on, “to remind you all how lucky you are. When you wake up tomorrow on Christmas morning and you tear into your packages, maybe you won’t receive everything you had hoped to receive. But I want you to be grateful for what you have, and think about these people you see here tonight, who won’t wake up to anything tomorrow morning. That’s why I took you here tonight. Do you understand?”

We nodded. And with that, he agreed to take us home.

But the torture wasn’t over yet. When we were only minutes from home, my father pulled to the side of the cliff on a road called “Devil’s Slide,” a mountain road which snakes around sheer cliffs, and connects the coast to the rest of the world. The road always terrified me; I was certain we would drive over the steep cliffs and plummet to our deaths. But worse yet, only a week before we’d read in the newspaper about a father who asked his family to step out of the car on this same stretch of road under the rouse of his wanting to take their picture. Once they did, he pushed them unceremoniously off the cliff.

“Get out of the car please!” my father demanded.

I was shaking with fear; I was certain I was about to be murdered. But I did as I was told. I was careful not to stand too closely to him. “I just wanted to show you the Moon,” he said beaming. “Isn’t that a beautiful sight? It is hanging so low in the sky and is so full. I would love to paint it.” I could hardly even listen to what he was saying. The only thing on my mind was fear, Santa Claus, and bed. In that order.

I resented my father as we finally drove home that Christmas Eve. I was shaking as I hung my stocking above the fireplace; certain that Santa had already come and gone. I couldn’t get warm; and it didn’t feel like Christmas Eve; a night I was usually filled with so much joy I could hardly stand it. It felt cold and lonely, and I could still smell the stench of the homeless; like stale beer and bacteria; like urine, decay and death. I crawled into bed shaking, and cried myself to sleep.

But something happened to my psyche as I slept.

When I awoke, the world seemed much clearer. I had gleaned some sort of understanding that I previously couldn’t grasp. And I felt the true spirit of the holiday, the way I had never experienced it before. The crisp paper crackling in my stocking filled me with a joy; it no longer mattered what was inside the package. It was the delicious smells and the laughter and the tree and the love. It was being grateful just to be alive; grateful to have a warm meal and safe haven. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that glorious full moon; so ripe above the dark crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean; just tinged with purple. That image was a holiday card in my mind; I started understanding what Peace on Earth really meant.
That morning I realized that “good” and “bad” and “right” and “wrong” are merely perceptions. Because it is often the situations we perceive as “bad” that provide us with the greatest growth and insight. And as we careen down the highway of our lives, perhaps the best we can hope for is to spot that imaginary sign that warns us to go back; that tells us we are going the wrong way.   In fact, you'll never even see that sign unless you take the wrong road.  And perhaps the only way to find the right way is by going in the wrong direction first.

It wasn’t Santa Claus that inspired me to scribble reams of poetry that winter. It was the frightening car ride, the homeless, and that giant tinted moon.

Brownie Concentration Camp

It was amazing that they allowed me to go to Brownie Camp that year at all.

Only two months earlier, I had been thrown out of my Brownie troop for pretending to poison all of my fellow Brownies with L.S.D. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had wandered into the lunch room and encountered a full box of sugar cubes on the table. Children, of course, love sugar; so I went around offering sugar cubes to all of the other little Brownies. Once they had chewed on it sufficiently, I told them that they had just dropped Acid, and would begin to hallucinate in about twenty minutes.

It was the 60’s.
I was nine years old.

I didn’t make a very good Brownie. I detested the costume; it was the color of baby excrement; and I didn’t like the “uniform;” it reminded me of being a soldier. It was the same feeling I had later when I dropped out of the Marching Band in 8th grade; I loved the flute, but I detested the marching. Uniforms reminded me of the images I saw daily of the Viet Nam War. My father had made us wear black arm bands to school, and had told us not to pledge allegiance to the flag until the war was over. I didn’t like uniforms.

The sash I wore over my brown issued dress was empty of Merit Badges, save one. And that was the Badge I had earned for Creative Writing. It was the only badge I tried to earn, or that interested me. I loved it; it depicted a little old fashioned ink pen with a pool of spilled ink pouring from its tip.

I didn’t enjoy the Brownies. I hated their rituals and their songs. And the cookies; I hated those damn cookies; especially being forced to peddle them door to door like the Jehovah Witnesses which my parents always hid from. So pretending to drug an entire troop of little girls sounded like a marvelous way to entertain myself at the time; and it was my favorite day of Brownie’s ever.

When I was tossed out of the Troop, my mother didn’t like it even one little bit. “I’ll give them a piece of my mind,” she told me, as she picked up the phone. I offered protest, citing the many reasons I was actually glad to be thrown out, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

I remember her pleading on the phone with the Troop Leader, reiterating over and over that it was simply a childish prank, and I shouldn’t be excluded this way. But the Troop Leader fought back; saying that the sugar cube incident wasn’t the only reason I was expelled. She told my mother that it was also because I was “swearing.”

“Swearing? What did she say?” I heard my mother ask. Then, to my horror, she began to rattle off a litany of the worst expletives in the book; words I would never dream of saying.

“No, none of those,” I learned later was the Troop Leader’s response. “She used the Lord’s name in vain.” My mother loved telling this part of the story, and used this gushy pious voice when she mimicked the Troop Leader.

“OH GOD, PLEASE,” was my mother’s annoyed response. It was apparent where I learned that one.

Needless to say, I was immediately reinstated into Brownie Troop 566. In part, this was important to my parents who had planned a month long trip to Europe that summer; just the two of them. The two weeks I would spend at Brownie Camp would cut down their babysitting needs in half; the other two weeks I would spend with my grandmother.

I didn’t mind the idea, initially, of going to Brownie Camp. I read the pamphlet over and over, making certain that I was utterly prepared for this grand adventure. “Camp Misty Lake offers 2-week programs for girls. Campers can enjoy canoeing, swimming, fishing, hiking, nature study, outdoor cooking, crafts, adventure and more!” I read every word of the literature. I liked the idea of on-site Naturalists, who would teach us “nature lore.” I was especially intrigued by the “midnight kidnapping adventures” to which they alluded. But far better than the promised activities, I would be attending camp with my very best friend in the entire world, Sheila.

I read carefully the insert which listed “items your child should pack.” It was an extremely long list, and I wanted to make sure I followed the recommendations exactly. Rain Slicker (1) Pairs of socks (10) Tennis Shoes (2) Flashlight (1) Sleeping Bag (1) Bathing Suit (2) Brownie Issue shorts (2) Brownie Issue t-shirts (5) It also stated that every article of clothing must have the child’s name sewn into the item.

“Mom, I have to have my name sewn into EVERYTHING,” I told her.

“Even the socks?” she asked, as she started up the sewing machine with a loud whir.

“Yes, even the socks. Look, it says it right here.”

I wouldn’t leave any stone unturned. This was to be the first time I would go away without my parents, and I had to be prepared.

When the day to leave for camp finally came, I’d been staying with my grandmother for a week. My parents were off in Europe, and I was standing nervously at my grandmother’s door, surrounded by an enormous pile of camping gear and luggage. “We’re going to be late!” I screamed at my grandmother who took forever getting ready that morning, carefully applying her lipstick and adding lotion to her legs.

Finally I was driven to the Bus Stop. I couldn’t jump out of the car fast enough; there was at least fifty children already lined up against the backdrop of the huge Greyhound Bus. I saw my friend Sheila in line, and frantically waved. “I’m holding your place!” she shouted back, and when I reached her we fell into each other’s arms breathlessly. The excitement was palpable.

I’d never been on a real bus before; only school busses. With its plush grey interior; reclining seats and a bathroom in the rear, it seemed to me to be the epitome of luxury. It was a long ride; I had no idea where we were going; but I felt that we were going far, far away. The ride was great fun; we sang song after song, and Sheila and I giggled until we would fall into the aisle in hysterics. I felt very grown up.

When we arrived at Camp Misty Lake, my eyes grew as wide as saucers. There were at least a thousand other children there, all arriving in a long line of busses which wound like snakes toward the reception area. I had never seen so many children in one place in all of my life. There were suitcases and sleeping bags and screaming little girls as far as my eyes could see.

Eventually we all gathered in the reception area, and a friendly man dressed entirely in brown khaki greeted us with a Megaphone. “Greetings BROWNIES!” he called out. The children cheered in response, which made the man smile. “Behind me is a large table containing the names of every child here, in alphabetical order. Your job is to find your name on that table, and when you do you will find that they are all color coded, and that will tell you which camp you’ve been assigned to. There are 40 Brownies in each camp.”

Sheila and I ran off to find our name tags, and to find out the name of our individual camp. We knew we’d be in the same one, as my mother called before going to Europe and pre-arranged it. But when we found our name tags, to our extreme chagrin, they were different colors.

Sheila and I marched up to the nice man in the brown clothes, and told him that there had been a horrible mistake. “We were supposed to be put together in the same camp,” I explained patiently. “Yet we have different colored name tags.”

“Yes, I see that,” the man said beaming. “Well, what is our Brownie Motto? Girls? Let’s say it together. Make new friends. But keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.” Neither Sheila nor I chanted the motto with him. “So Brownie Camp is an excellent opportunity for you girls to make NEW friends. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

I wanted to slap the smug look off his face. “My Mom called ahead,” I explained. “And she wrote a request that we put together.”

“I’m sure she did, Sweetie. But that isn’t Brownie Policy. Now run along and stand with your individual groups. You can visit with each other during meal time, at the Grand Mess Hall.”

I was crushed. Two weeks of camp without Sheila seemed like an eternity. But as instructed, I gathered my gear and followed my group to our individual camp. I was somewhat intrigued by the smattering of white canvas tents I found there; peeking out from behind trees and bushes, encircling a large campfire in the middle. I liked the campfire; it was surrounded by rows of logs that had been carved into benches.

I was assigned a tent, and one of my new roommates asked if she could lay her sleeping bag down next to mine. I nodded sadly. That’s where Sheila should have been, I thought to myself. “Hi,” said the girl breathlessly. “See this ring I’m wearing? It’s a poison ring. And it’s filled with poison. The little needle in the middle is how I can stab people. If I stab you with it in the middle of the night, you’ll die right away and no one will ever know it was me who killed you.”

Charming.

I ignored the strange girl and set up my sleeping area. I began to feel scared, and terribly homesick. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it; we were being called to the campfire for our first meeting.

The girls all gathered, and the Naturalists assigned to our camp introduced themselves. They were explaining that our first activity was called, “Tippy Too Canoe,” and we were all going on a race in the river; and the team that tipped their canoe the least times would win a special prize. They began handing out large orange life vests to each girl.

When they reached me, I held out my hand expectantly, but the Naturalist stared a little too long at my name tag. “Cathy, I’m afraid you won’t be canoeing today,” he told me. I was utterly perplexed and asked why. “Your grandmother didn’t give you permission, that’s why,” he said.

“My grandmother signed all the permission slips. I made sure she did. I know she did,” I said, my voice rising in a panic.

“Yes, she signed the permission slips. But she specifically denied permission for what she called dangerous activities. You are not allowed to canoe, swim, or hike. But you are allowed to do crafts, and that sort of thing.”

What? It was like I was having a nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up. How could my grandmother do this to me? “Can we call her? I’ll explain it to her. She didn’t understand. I’ll make sure she gives me permission.”

“I’m afraid not, we have already spoken with her, and she was quite adamant. She said you like to write poetry, is that true? I see you only have one badge on your sash, and that’s for Creative Writing. We’ll find you a nice quiet place where you can make poems today?” I considered for a moment becoming a Guerilla Terrorist Brownie; a midnight marauder who would overturn tents, frighten other children, and wreak havoc on their spurious little organization. But instead I was led dutifully to the Crafts Room.

My days at camp were mostly spent alone, or locked into a room with children who had physical disabilities. I wrote long anguished prose about my incarceration in this saccharine drenched penitentiary; I wrote of my suffering, my syrupy imprisonment, and my phony captors. I denounced the Brownies; I used words that I had heard my father utter during one of his political rants; words and phrases like “Fascist” and “Police State.” My captors were Pigs.

My only happiness was the three meals a day in the Grand Mess Hall in the middle of camp. There I would meet Sheila, and we’d laugh so hard we often forgot to eat our meal. Sheila was enduring her own brand of torture; her camp mate, for instance, had urinated on her pillow purposely. Our situation had turned dire. We had found ourselves in a Concentration Camp, and our only hope was to escape. We had decided to make a plan; and we agreed we would sneak out of our individual camps at midnight and meet deep in the woods to devise our strategy.

But we didn’t get that far. We were suddenly surrounded by two Nazi Guards who asked us sternly to follow them. The Third Reich had arrived. We were both led outside of the Grand Mess Hall, with the two SS men behind us. I imagined a machine gun aimed at the small of my back; and I knew the drill well. They would lull us into some false sense of security, and then put a bullet through our heads. I could smell the stench of death and hopelessness everywhere. I could hardly swallow.

Once outside, the sentinel informed us that Sheila and I would no longer be able to sit together at meal time; adding that our meal-time laughter and secret conversations had begun to disturb the other Brownies. It was Genocide.

They reminded us that the idea of Brownie Camp was to make new friends; and they uttered these words with their Stepford Wife smiles as they threw me back into permanent isolation. I was an inmate with new found hatred in my heart.

On my last day of camp I marched myself into the office of the Camp Leader, and threw a poem I had penned on her desk. It was entitled, “Brownies are Fascist Pigs.” The Leader read over my poem, and promptly expelled me permanently from the Brownie Organization on the spot. It was D-Day at last. And I was free.

My mother never argued to have me re-instated.
I never became a Girl Scout.

I learned that day that the Pen was indeed mightier than the Sword. And I vowed that day to make writing work for me, forevermore. I know that if I don’t, I’ll never really be free.

Diagnosed As Crazy

When I was 12 years old, my elementary school contacted my parents and told them I might be crazy.

Truthfully, I still don’t know, nor remember, exactly how the events unfolded. But I do remember a frantic call from the school to my house, and a subsequent parent/teacher/child conference. I also remember being exposed to dozens of tests, including one where I had to identify what I saw in a series of inkblots. Did you think the inkblot test is only on television? I can assure you, it is not.

“They think you might be a little nuts,” my mother explained to me one day, after I hounded her about what was going on. I didn’t take offense to my mother’s comment in the least; she said those words to me sarcastically, even angrily. The way she spoke was more in the vain of “how dare they,” blanketed by utter disbelief.

The school insisted that I begin to attend regular “conferences” with the school psychologist. Besides the many tests I was given, additionally I was grilled on my home life; they wanted to know if my parents abused me. I was a good student; an obedient girl; and I remained utterly confused about my predicament, or why I was being targeted.

After many of these conferences, my parents were finally called to the school, and we all sat in the Principals’ office together. The psychologist was there as well.

A yellow lined piece of paper was pushed across the desk toward me. I immediately recognized my own writing; it was an essay of some sort; a writing assignment. I pulled it closer to me so that I could identify which one it was; I always enjoyed writing exercises. I remembered it immediately; it was the assignment where we had to describe our bedrooms at home.

I looked up with a “yeah, so?” and I shrugged.

“Did you write this yourself? Or did you copy it from a book?” asked the psychologist.

“I wrote it myself,” I said, feeling insulted.

“Do you remember what the assignment was?” I was asked. I did, of course, and I told them that we were supposed to describe our bedrooms at home, and what it was like to go to sleep in the evenings.

All the eyes of the adults were upon me. The Principal looked frustrated; the psychologist looked impatient. My parents looked angry. “Is this what your bedroom really looks like?” they asked me.

“No.”

“Did you make this up?”

“Well, sorta,” I answered vaguely. To me at that moment, they seemed clueless. They didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning of “fiction,” and if I had been more articulate at the time, I would have explained the genre to them. But it was more complicated than that; while my descriptions of my bedroom were blatantly untrue, they were based on a very real feeling. I was using my bedroom as a personification of how I felt inside. Did I really need to explain this to my educators?

But the primary thing I remember about that day is feeling sad. Somehow expressing myself often led to my being in trouble. I wondered if they were right; if something was wrong with me; and if I was wrong to write what I had written. I felt shamed.

They asked me to read the essay out loud. I was immediately lulled back into time, when I wrote those images that so inspired me. The bedroom I described existed in a house of destitution. My room was nearly empty, save for one urine stained mattress in the middle of the floor. I was hungry and cold; I had one blanket which was thread-bare; and I had stuffed old clothes into a pillowcase to serve as a pillow. The only light I had was one naked bulb which hung on a long tattered string in the middle of the room. It had a little chain that I could reach from my place in the mattress, and I would turn off my light each night alone after completing my homework on the floor. There were no fairy-tales or good-night kisses. There was just stains and filth.

“Is that the way your room really is?” they asked me again, more sternly.

“No,” I answered sheepishly.

“Do your parents send you to bed without your supper?”

“No.”

“Then why did you write this?”

I had no answer. Well, actually I did. But I was hit with the awful realization that they wouldn’t understand. I explained it to my parents on our way home, and they understood. In fact, I remember them laughing quite a bit about it all. But the school treated me as though I’d done something bad. It was a pivotal moment in my life.

For weeks they ran a series of psychological tests on me. What I loved most was trying to outsmart the test, and tell them that I knew what the test was designed to find out. I asked about the origins of these tests, and if I could borrow the books they had so I could study them. I was fascinated by what they decided was crazy. They ended up lending me the books, and I began to study psychology on my own. But all of my reactions only seemed to provide further evidence to the psychologist that I was a little bit insane. She would often react to my comments and questions with a sad, almost imperceptible shake of the head.

My real life was undeniably austere. My father taught me the word “monastic” when I was very young, and he used to love to use that word; he believed in a monastic life where your artistic self isn’t cluttered by possessions. Not that our house was physically empty; the walls were bursting with original art; the bookshelves overflowed with books and sculptures; there was great attention to the aesthetics; but very little attention paid to needs.

My father built all of our childhood homes, and they were uniformly rustic; often without many more amenities or luxuries than a cabin. We had no heat; just a stove in the living room, and we were sent to bed with a jar of hot water covered in a sock to help keep us warm. In the mornings, my mother would heat up towels in front of the fire, then run to our rooms and wrap us inside them, and escort us to the breakfast table.

We weren’t allowed real milk; only the powdered stuff, which I detested. We were only allowed to use a half of a toothpick; more than that was wasteful. Paper towels were reused; in fact there was a little drying line above the sink where we were expected to hang the paper towels to dry after rinsing them out. Food was often free; our table was often full of mussels that we would scrape off the rocks at the Marine Reserve only footsteps away; or fruit from a neighbor’s tree. My father would pick dandelion leaves from fields near our house for salads. Nothing would go to waste; he even cooked up a rattlesnake once that he killed for our dinner. We were forced to eat beef tongue, and other innards, which led to my dislike of meat ever since. We never had a birthday party; in fact my sister and I only had one each. The only thing special which happened on our birthday was that we were served Sarah Lee Cheesecake for dessert, and we’d receive, for a gift, something we already needed. Our birthday presents weren’t exciting treats; they were something that should be provided by ones parents.

The year I was diagnosed as being crazy, I was given a pillow for a birthday present.

For months I had complained about my lumpy flat pillow, and begged my parents to replace it. Eventually in a fit of anger, I ripped out the pillow from its pillow case, and filled it with my own clothes; at least it was plumper that way. And when I ripped open my birthday present that night, hoping for a toy or for one of a multitude of things I dreamed about, I was given a pillow. And I resented it.

While my room really didn’t resemble the room I had described in my essay, it did describe my feelings about my room at that time. I felt lonely, cold and poor. And I used images to evoke that; and to express that.

Still, I couldn’t help wonder, if I really might be crazy. I knew I had many obsessive thoughts. I was terrified of black cars, and I believed people who drove black cars were most likely kidnappers. I believed if I didn’t fully read any sign that caught my eye, I would die. Later, I believed I had to read them backwards as well. And there was that pesky belief that my neck wasn’t strong enough to hold up my head.

I had read a quote that “lunatics, lovers, and poets” were really all the same. I never forgot that, and I had always been fascinated by lunacy. I recognized the idea of a sort of exalted poetic frenzy, and I could identify that as being similar to the intense passion of romantic love. And both states, in my mind, were really a sort of madness.

The psychologist that counseled me seemed to believe that lunacy was an escape from reality; a desire to disappear into fantasy; and she felt my need to write that particular essay was proof that I didn’t have a grasp on reality.

But I believed exactly the opposite. I believed that I was unable to escape reality; because I couldn’t live the pretend existence that so many people seemed to live. I was interested in truth, and I was surrounded by a world of denial and fantasy. Writing fiction was the only way I really could escape.

But still, it was just one more lesson that drove me away from my dreams. It seems when I muse on my life, I can find countless examples of why I was taught that expression was bad; and why I became an accountant instead.

Today I don’t mind being called a lunatic. I think lunacy, in some cases, is a prophetic insight; one that is perhaps triggered by an acknowledgement of life’s meaninglessness. I realize it’s trite and common to ponder the meaning of life. But I’ve decided that if life is truly meaningless-- then that in itself-- is really very meaningful indeed. And better yet, we can ascribe and create our own meaning. Today I believe in my dreams again, and I’m going to dream them.
I know. I sound a little crazy, don’t I?

Ah, Roma

We had been driving a long way, hugging the coast and passing little beach towns like Rapallo and Rimini, and the green gray of the Adriatic had been our constant companion and guide. I loved staring at the rows and rows of brown bodies lounging in the sun, especially the women, who were mostly topless. They looked so beautiful to me, because no matter what their size or shape, they were utterly comfortable with their bodies. It was such a refreshing change from the body obsessed America I had grown up in.

The ocean had been our companion, but soon it was replaced with mountains of marble, and now the landscape had changed again. I spotted rows and rows of the oddest looking trees; both grand and majestic but nothing like I had ever seen before. “What kind of tree is that?” I asked. My friend explained that these trees were emblematic of the city of Rome, and were simply common pine trees which had been shaped through time by judicious pruning. I marveled at a culture which would take the time to shape thousands of trees for no purpose other than aesthetics.

“Are we almost to Rome?” I asked, but I didn’t need an answer. At that moment, we passed a road sign which told us that the great city was only five kilometers away. I had been so sleepy, but suddenly I was awake and excited. “Let me drive,” I offered.

This was only the third time I had volunteered to drive in all of the weeks we had been touring through Europe. I was traveling with three men, which old-fashioned or not, I decided gave me somewhat of a pass on the driving duties. But most importantly, every time I took the wheel I found myself scared out of my mind. I seemed to have a knack at choosing the absolutely worst times to volunteer my driving skills.

The first was when I agreed to drive the Audubon immediately after we disembarked from our plane in Germany. I was expected to go speeds of 130 mph, which I found terrifying, as did I find the long line of cars honking and passing me in a frenzy. I finally pulled over to the shoulder, my heart beating fast, and had one of my gentleman friends take the wheel. The second time was when I agreed to drive the twisting winding road to Monaco; a narrow corridor which snaked around steep sheer cliffs; the same stint of roadside where Princess Grace plummeted to her death. I kept imagining that if I made the slightest mistake, the car would slide quickly to the edge of the precipice, and in a moment we’d become airborne, and then lurch to our deaths.

And now I had agreed to take the wheel five kilometers before the edge of Rome. Unbeknownst to me, I had just bought myself an E ticket on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Roma. Ah Roma.
As we crossed the city border, I was greeted with a sort of maniacal lunacy that was utterly unexpected. The first thing I noticed was the city streets had no lanes, and cars were packed in every which way, darting in and out of traffic like a world that had gone mad. There was a cacophony of horns; never ending horns; which made the din in Manhattan seem almost peaceful. I drove where I could, as Vespas and bicycles wove in front of me and whizzed behind me and encircled me like a hornet of wasps. Within the first five minutes I almost careened into one of those Vespas, and screeched to a halt. He shouted at me, “What’s the matter for you, can’t you see?” I guessed that he knew I was American. Moments later, out of utter frustration, I purposely turned my wheel sharply to the right, and careened off the road, nearly hitting a flower stand. The florist threw up his hands and began yelling at me, and since I didn’t understand, I just smiled sheepishly. I stopped the car, jumped out the door, and breathlessly begged for someone else to take the wheel.

A half hour later, we had booked ourselves into the “Pensione Florida,” two rooms in a dirt cheap hotel, with a shared bathroom down the hall. We dragged our suitcases up a flight of stairs covered in dog feces, then moved into our rooms. The heat was so oppressive, I took an ice cold shower, and before taking off to explore the city, we all had espressos Italian style, which means to swallow it all in one gulp.

The Eternal City; a maddening concentration of history and legend swelling magnificently over a phenomenal concentration of people, all of them running everywhere in their busy lives. Rome; a city where the ancient world is neatly integrated with the modern; where the Pantheon rubs shoulders with Baroque palazzos and modern buildings are sandwiched in the middle of Renaissance Villas.

We walked toward the Coliseum, and I saw it rising like a mirage in the foreground; a piece of olden civilization tucked in the middle of a contemporary city. We walked from monument to monument, from fountain to fountain, stopping occasionally at cafes for an Aqua Minerale when our parched throats begged for mercy. We walked to the Vatican and I heard a collective sigh from my friends as we all stared dumbfounded at the Sistine Chapel. We walked until our feet were covered in blisters, until sweat dripped in rivulets down our backs. We reached the youth covered Spanish Steps just at twilight; the smell of marijuana wafting in the windless evening. And at nightfall we came upon a tiny Trattoria in the center of Rome. We were hungry and exhausted.

Our host was all smiles, and he took us to the strangest table; it was outside, and actually sat in the middle of a cobblestone road, where cars and Polizie roared by us while we dined. It was perfect.

We indulged in the best meal of our lives. Gnocci Gorgonzola. Fettuccini Porcini. Eggplant Parmiagiana. Spaghetti Pomodoro. Saltimbocca. Spinach salad. Vino Rosso. For dessert, we were served a luscious chocolate torte surrounded by fresh fruit.

The Vino flowed freely. By the time we polished off our third bottle, we were engaged in a lively gregarious debate that grew louder and louder with every sip from our glasses. It was friendly but spirited, and since we were sitting in the middle of the road, it seemed perfectly appropriate to yell and cuss and jump up and down in our seats. But on this day, our argument had risen to a crescendo that was even surprising to us.

Suddenly I saw our waiter rushing out of the door toward us.

His look was stern, and I imagined him to be angry about our thunderous contest. Certainly in America, if we had displayed such behavior, we would have surely been asked to either hush, or vacate our seats. In fact, it had happened to us many times.

The waiter continued toward us with a purpose; he was almost running. We all tensed up, waiting for our inevitable admonishment. As he approached, I noticed that he was holding something behind his back.

“BRAVO,” the waiter announced loudly, as he reached our table. “I have brought you a fourth bottle of wine,” he told us in Italian, “because we are overjoyed that your time here is such a happy one. And we hope another bottle of wine might encourage you to have an even happier time here tonight. This wine is our gift to you.”

We were all stunned.

Born of an Italian father and raised by an English mother, I had always felt as though I were trapped in the middle of two very distinct cultures. My father was born in Sicily, and left my mother and my family while I was still safe in her uterus. I didn’t meet him until I was 17, but from the earliest time, I could remember feeling this wealth of passion that bubbled right below the surface of my emotions. My mother was British, sedate, mannered and excruciatingly polite. But I was born loud and gregarious, and I always knew it was the Italian genes inside of me that made me this way; it certainly wasn’t the way I was raised.

And from the earliest time, I remember my mother always shushing me. It got to the point that when I saw her lifting her finger to her lips, the gesture which preceded the dreaded, “Shhhh,” I would fight an anger inside of me that was rare. Very little made me angry. But being quieted always did. I would feel a seething rage that I could scarcely control.

I need to express myself. And it’s much more of a need than it is a want. It’s a drive that fuels me; it’s an enthusiasm so great that it must be quenched; it’s a force so robust that to hush me is to slowly kill me.

It seems like all of my life, someone has tried to shut me up. I’m too loud, too forthright, and I have no privacy boundaries. I’ve been rebuked by that awful phrase which I detest countless times, “Too much information.”

I don’t keep secrets. I don’t hide. And my worst fault seems to be that I don’t lie.

I always wanted to write, because I could express myself in that way. But the key to being a good writer is being honest, and people don’t appreciate honesty; it scares them. People want to hide.

Writers have been referred to as “assassins” because they are murderers of falsehoods. “Writers are universally hated, often because they tell the truth,” I read yesterday in an article. “Telling the truth is the greatest crime an author can commit,” said a book reviewer. Writers are observers, and because they tell the truth about what they see, the people they observe become offended. People don’t want their family secrets revealed. They don’t want others to know they’ve had a face lift, or that their father molested them. People want to hide behind false facades of who and what they really are, and believe they’re fooling people. People project an image, and a writer smashes it.

My intent has never been to offend. I only want to acknowledge reality; and I cannot live my life pretending that I don’t see what I do. I can smell people’s insecurities; I can see their fears like a visible aura. I can always hear their lies. I see it, and I want to report it. I don’t know why, but I’m compelled to do so. But I do this as I reveal myself. I want to talk about what is real, so we know what we’re dealing with on this strange journey we’re all taking together.

I’ll never forget that sultry night in Rome when the waiter brought us a bottle of wine on the house to encourage our passionate exchange. I found myself, at last, in a culture which understood me. But more than that, I’ll never forget how it felt when someone actually solicited my expression. All of my life, I have felt censored. And this one evening, I was finally applauded for what I did best, and what I enjoyed the most, and that was to express myself. That waiter didn’t see me as a Villain. He saw something far more positive.

When I close my eyes, I can still remember that evening, and later when we limped the long way back to our Pensione, still engaged in a furious debate. I was exhausted, my feet ached, and I was so hot that I got into a cold shower wearing a shirt, so that I could wear the soaking wet cloth to bed. But I remember how happy I felt. Because at last, I was home.

The Red Fedora

When I was a little girl, antique stores were like time travel. I would enter through the often dusty and dank doors, and I would immediately be hastened to another era; to a period in our history that I could only imagine, but never fully comprehend. An antique store was like a ticket to a ride on a time machine; by touching the things that graced the parlors of yesteryear, I was able to taste the essence of what once was.

I loved those crowded rooms, brimming with chipped teacups and silver cigarette cases; with gilded birdcages and parasols. I would stare at each object, trying to imagine it sitting somewhere, long ago. I would trace the surface with my fingertips; I would smell the fabric; I would try to use every sense available to glean a more pragmatic picture. History teaches us, and I have always been eager to learn.

I loved the romance of the Victorian era. I would encounter a blushing pink fringed lampshade, and I would imagine it casting a light over a young girl’s bed. I would stumble on a red velvet Fainting Couch, and I could imagine a young lady swooning; whining weakly for her can of snuff. I would see a tiny fabric pair of shoes; and I would try and fathom the foot which could fit in such diminutive encasements. I would stumble upon an ornate Armoire which held the sepia toned secrets of a family history; I would stare at the portraits, trying to discern the emotions and personality. A stain on a French chintz chair told a story. As did a faded bottle of Castor Oil. Their surroundings were far more elaborate and flamboyant than our modern times, but in other ways so much more simple; their cooking recipes had no more than three ingredients; and in every way, they had less choices.

These tattered objects seemed to hold the footprint and memories of the families that owned them. Like holding a conch shell to your ear and hearing the ocean, when I touched a wooden child’s toy, I could hear the reminiscences of days gone by.

The antiquated Christmas decorations would hold my attention the longest. I would embrace a vintage glass ornament of an angel, and would gasp at the old fashioned lead tinsel still caught in its hook. I would stare at an archaic ceramic Santa, perhaps with only one eye, and I would imagine it on someone’s mantle. I could hear the Victrola playing Christmas music; I could hear the laughter, and imagine the mugs of wassail. I could smell the pungent smell of Christmas pudding wafting from the beaten rafters. And this old Santa Claus with only one eye observed it all. And now it would give me a portal to see it too.

As a child I loved antique stores. It was a visit to a time before MY time. And suddenly, this past Saturday afternoon, that entire concept shifted, as if overnight.

This past weekend, I explored several antique stores. And I certainly encountered all of those objects of yore; of a time I’ve only read about in History Books. But things had changed. I encountered a John F. Kennedy commemorative plate. An antique Star Trek toy in a yellowed box. An Elvis Presley liquor bottle. An “I Love Lucy” lunch box. Advertisements touting the health benefit of smoking cigarettes. Something was different.

I encountered a row of milk bottles, and remembered when they were delivered to our front door, ice cold with the cream on top. I encountered a troll doll, and thought back to my collection; dozens of flesh colored plastic gnomes, with a shock of blue, yellow or purple hair, which I would tie into hairstyles. I came across an old phone, and I remarked to my boyfriend, “this is exactly like the phone we used to have.” Suddenly, an older woman approached me; she overheard my comment and was intrigued.

“Pick it up!” she said, enthusiastically. “Remember how HEAVY phones used to be?”

She directed this comment to me. This old woman was asking me to remember; and it was apparent that she thought me old enough to have such a memory. An old woman was asking me to reminisce with her, about the “old days.” And as I stood there stunned, trying to grasp this remark--because, after all, I’m really still a girl-- a strange realization enveloped me. I DID remember. I remembered the antiques that surrounded me. The store was no longer a place that housed things before my time; it now housed things IN my time.

My boyfriend pointed out an ancient meat grinder, remarking that he had one identical to this when he was a little boy. I said, “do you remember the old COFFEE grinders? I still remember the one we had. It was a little wooden box, and you poured the coffee in at the top, and after you ground it, it came out in a little drawer.” Even talking about it out loud seemed foreign, because the object in question SOUNDED like an antique. And moments later, when we rounded the corner and I saw three of those exact coffee grinders on a high shelf, I felt almost blindsided.

I turned to my boyfriend, and said, “We’ve become antiques.”
He laughed.
I wasn’t amused.
The shift happened so slowly, that it was almost imperceptible. I spent an inordinate amount of time being a young girl, standing at the doorway to the rest of my life; all of it ahead of me; my dreams still possible. Then, on my 50th birthday, blowing out those many candles, I realized that I was middle-aged.

The term “middle aged” gets twisted up on my tongue, as if I had just tasted a teaspoon of poison. I think to myself, it can’t possibly apply to ME. I certainly do not feel any of the things that middle-age seems to imply. But in actuality, the term is more than fair; in fact, judging by the average life span, I was middle-aged a decade ago.

The image of being middle-aged doesn’t conjure up a withered rose to me. I am not completely in denial; I am definitely past the crisp tight bud of a flower I once was. But I still envision I am a fully blossomed rose; utterly bursting, and still vibrant; with perhaps a few yellowed petals near the stem. I cannot think of myself as still blooming; but a bloom nevertheless, fully opened, begging for the last vestiges of summer. I know those roses, and how big and lush they appear, covering my bushes. But I also know how the flower appears shortly thereafter. I am writing this on the last day of summer, and my roses look brown and crispy, like bits of brown paper bags that were caught up by a breeze and got stuck in the branches.

When I was a child, I wrote a poem entitled “Mortality Mocks Me.” In some conscious way, I always knew that time was the great destroyer. It devoured youth, despoiled beauty, depleted vigor and diminished health. Eventually it would emerge as the Grim Reaper, swinging its scythe, cutting down dreams like thick underbrush. Then ultimately, it would snuff out your very existence. To me, understanding time is to appreciate that everything will eventually disappear; and while the first half of life is ripe with hellos, they lessen, and later life becomes more and more a long series of good-byes.

I have never believed in regret, as I truly believe we make the best decisions we can with what we know at the time. But looking over a half century of choices, I can see each wrong took I turn with glaring accuracy. If only I had known then, that with every selection one makes, that we begin to write a resume’ of our life; a history that we can never change; and the longer that resume’ grows, the more difficult it becomes to change courses, I might have done everything differently. We are given this one life, but ironically are not handed the tools to live it well until it is nearly over.

Youth is filled with embarrassment, ego, selfishness, and a preoccupation of self that is agonizing. And once you become middle-aged, you don’t care what others think; you are primarily interested in what you think. You are freed from naïveté; from self-image; from society’s expectations. It is the time you can truly create; it is the time when you can make a difference; it is the time you might be able to shift this world for the better.

At this crossroads in my life, my existence has suddenly taken on a poignancy and urgency that I have never known before. Now that I have walked to the summit of the mountain, and I can peer down the other side and see an end, it has never been clearer that the choices I make today have never been more important. I am 50 years old, I am unemployed, and I am at a threshold of something else.

In a sense, death is a safety net. One day it will catch all of our wishes and turn them magically into unwishes. It will pity our poor flesh and will free us from this churning torture; from this excruciating gift. So there is nothing more important, there is nothing we have to do with more urgency, then simply to live. To smell fermenting strawberries. To allow another to see love in your eyes. To cry instead of hide. To indentify beauty. To hold hands with the crazy person. To acknowledge the moon. To sing and paint and laugh. I can not alter my past, but I can have an effect on my future, and I want something better. I have spent too many years doing what I thought I was supposed to do, and finding it miserable. It is time to follow my passions. I am no longer your slave. But most important, it is time to embrace what none of us can change; that ageing is inevitable, and so is our final waltz.

When I left the store, I remembered why I so appreciated those antiques in the first place. Because the longer you live, and the more history you have knowledge of, the wider the world seems, the more sense it all makes. I am proud to remember history; the way my parents and grandparents used to remember. Because they knew how things had changed, they could now anticipate how things will change again. And now I’ve been given that gift.

We purchased a bright red Fedora from the antique store. It is in fine shape, and is as stylish today as it must have been once, perched on the head of a fancy gentleman. I smell the brim and try to imagine the heads that have worn it. The inside is white silk, imprinted with a picture of a top hat, white gloves and a cane--an image of an elegant time; when Dickens roamed the world and wrote about mistletoe and pudding. When I put the fedora on my head, I remembered that I, too, am in fine shape, and I’m as stylish as ever. And this Christmas, I’m going to decorate this red hat with green holly leaves, and it’s going to remind me how ripe my life is today. It is going to be a symbol that represents my acceptance of what I can not change, and my renewed vigor to change what I can.

I am ripe with possibilities. And we all know that it is only through experience, and the process of ripening--which in some cases is great suffering-- that growth takes place. Time brings seed to fruition and ripening. And as King Lear declared in Shakespeare’s play of the same title, "Ripeness Is All."
Isn’t it?