Real Families Open Call: Fireworks!

I wrote this post in response to an open call for submissions of essays about Real Families on Open Salon.  It has been selected as an Editor's Pick and will appear on the front page on OpenSalon.com today (7/27/10)

Like all major holidays, the 1956 Fourth of July started very early for the adults in the family. As a very mature 11-year-old, I was anxious -- too anxious, it turns out -- to join that club, so I was determined to help this year.

Every holiday in my family was a bit of a crap shoot. They would all start the same: Granny in the kitchen, throwing handfuls of this and pinches of that into huge pots; seasoning a mountain of hand-selected and Johnny-the-butcher-across-the-street-cut prime spareribs; boiling spuds for a tub of mustard-spiked potato salad; and, if we were lucky and she felt up to it, rolling out her flaky dough for her world-famous fried sweet potato pies.

The guy who held all the dice was my Grandpa. He always did, every day, but on holidays the relatives would come. What happened on a week night at the dinner table, we were all used to. But it was a horse of a different color when the relatives came.

Grandpa was a legendary drunk. His legend grew out of the fact that he would be "three sheets to the wind" --a phrase they all used, but not one of them would or could ever answer my incessant requests for a definition -- from about 30 minutes after he rose in the morning until he retired at night. But never, not once, did he ever miss a day of work. Not even the day after he stepped out of the coal delivery truck he drove on one icy evening, slipped on the ice and broke his leg. To this day I haven't figured out how he drove that truck with a cast on his leg.

My eleven-year-old self had learned by then to anticipate Grandpa's antics. That I was his favorite grandchild was a well-known, much discussed and deeply hated (by my sister) fact. He was only about 43 when I was born. My father was in the Coast Guard (November 4, 1944) so Grandpa was the one who drove my mother to the hospital. He was the one the nurse found in the waiting room when she announced my birth. And, according to lore, he was the one who paced the floor with me when I was screaming with colic.

On that morning, under the guise of arriving early to "help Granny cook," I climbed on Grandpa's lap and whispered in his ear. "Can you try to slow down on the booze today? For me?" He laughed, patted me on my head and slid me off his lap. "Anything for you, Punkin."
Well.

All the relatives had arrived, my mother and my uncle, her brother, were setting up the ubiquitous croquet set, the aroma from the barbecue pit was creating watering mouths and Grandpa was nowhere to be seen. That was never good.

Apparently, he had "gone to see a man about a dog," his way of announcing either a trip to the bathroom or a trip to the liquor store. The bathroom was unoccupied.

Suddenly he came sauntering around the side of the house, his ever-present newsboy cap pushed back on his head and a silly grin on his face. Uh oh.

Granny looked at him and sighed. Too loudly. Grandpa said, "Oh, brother!" Red flag number #3; the cap and the grin were 1 and 2. I grabbed my sister and my little cousins, who were running around screaming as they played Hide and Go Seek, and ordered them to sit down on the lawn.

As Granny was walking from the barbecue pit to the house, Grandpa reached out and grabbed her, hard, by her upper arm, sending the platter of freshly cooked meat flying. Jr., their son, my uncle, missed his croquet shot because he tossed his mallet sideways and reached his parents in about two long steps. He grabbed his father by the shoulders, spun him around and shouted "Not today, old man. Not today."

At 54, Grandpa was still lean and strong, despite his daily abuse of his body with alcohol. Uncle Jr. was an athlete, was a sailor on a ship during The War and knew his way around a brawl.

They grappled their ways up on the back porch, a long narrow expanse behind a large, side-by-side duplex. On the porch, in addition to the metal porch chairs were some tools that had been used recently to bust up some concrete for reasons I don't recall.

At that moment, my mother walked out onto the porch from inside the house. Confused by what was happening, she yelled "Goddammit, what the hell is going on now?" She immediately ran over and, without thinking, tried to get between the two furious men.

Livid by now, and roaring drunk, Grandpa grabbed the sledgehammer that was leaning against the porch wall, and took a roundhouse swing at my mother. I screamed and fell to my knees crying. All the younger kids were crying uncontrollably. The 20-pound head of that hammer wrenched the handle out of Grandpa's hand, grazed the skirt of my mother's dress and slammed its way through the entire wooden door that led into the kitchen.

And we still had the fireworks to set off.

Greeting Mr. Nixon

It was sometime in the autumn of 1960. I don't recall the date, but it had to have been late September or some time in October.

The Proviso Township High School majorettes had been rehearsing much more than usual as soon as classes resumed at the end of summer vacation. At a time when public schools were well-funded and well-run, the majorettes performed with the marching band at all football games. We also led the band in all local parades and special civic functions.

There was an unusual opportunity for us that year, though. Richard Milhouse Nixon, the Republican candidate for President in the 1960 election would grace our little town with a campaign stop, and we were invited to greet him at the podium.

Being a normal teenaged sophomore in high school, it would be fair to say that what I knew about politics was about on a par with how much I knew about a balance sheet. Not a damned thing. But like most clueless young people, I took my cues from my family when it came to, well, almost everything -- White Sox or Cubs, Bears or nobody, Catholic or Protestant, and Kennedy or Nixon.

With all the enthusiasm of a well-informed campaign worker, I assumed the appropriate anti-Nixon posture (deep in my heart it was because he was rather homely and JFK was so cute.) There were equally clueless girls on the squad whose parents supported Nixon, so they too voiced very strong and very baseless opinions in the locker room.

My parents informed me that it was my duty as a member of a team to go out there and perform my heart out, no matter which candidate was speaking. I was representing the mighty, mighty Proviso Pirates, not Nixon.

So I practiced and pranced. I repeated the twirling routine until I was able to perform it six times in succession, from beginning to end, without dropping the baton. That was particularly important because I was required to do a very high, spinning toss in a solo.

The big day arrived. I had had plenty of practice and plenty of time to be helped to understand the significance of a Presidential candidate visit to little old Maywood, Illinois. When I finally buckled on my feathery plumed majorette hat my hands trembled in anticipation.

It rained that day. Let me just say that precipitation of any kind creates challenges for baton twirlers that we hadn't practiced for. The crowd was unphased by the weather and greeted the candidate with loud and raucous cheers. The band played flawlessly as my sister twirlers strutted and spun.

In order to toss a baton as high as I intended, it was necessary to grasp it near the end of the shaft with the smaller rubber tip. The weight and size of the bigger tip on the other end then propels the baton upward. I did my turn, passed the baton behind my back, grabbed the small end and let 'er rip.

I raised my stunned eyes from the solitary, shaftless rubber tip still sitting in my rain-slicked hand just in time to see Mr. Nixon take a quick, and I must say, nimble step backward as the flying missile landed with a clang. At his feet.

Throw the Bozos Out!

NOTE: This post was written on the eve of Congress's decision to extend the Unemployment Benefits.  I was worried.

Change we can believe in

Pure audacious hope

WE all came with huzzahs

THEY come now with rope.

 

Nothing's changed but us

We are poor and fractured

Our sons still fight for who knows what

No jobs are manufactured.

The homeless now have houseguests

The jobless numbers soar

While Congress plays its reindeer games

Our hopes are shown the door.

Enough of all this nonsense

We the people need

To handle things ourselves

While you kow-tow to greed.

Go back to where you came from

Buffoons and plutocrats

I've seen enough Republicans

I'm sick of Democrats

If you can't lead us out of this

Get out the freakin' way

Go home and take an upclose look

At how you've 'saved the day.'

Stuck on Stupid

Being smart is not politically correct in America. That’s right. Most people, especially writers I’ve noticed, seem to find it abhorrent to deem themselves smart or talented or gifted. And we all know how certain political parties malign our President for being a liberal intellectual.

I have read articles in which the writer says something so profound it brings me to tears. And in the very next sentence, the writer disavows any credit for having had the intelligence to come up with something so profound, so it must have been some kind of accident or unconscious act of plagiarism.

That’s not my modus operandi. In fact, I have spent a significant portion of my life knowing that I was smarter than the average chick and – wait… for… it – WISHING I WERE MORE STUPID. Actually, that alone might be evidence that I am not as smart as I think I am, isn’t it?

Anyway, I was made aware of my outsized IQ at the age of 4. Unbeknownst to me, my family had noticed that I was exhibiting signs of being precocious (read: smartass), so they conned a family friend who was an educational psychologist to administer stealth IQ tests. If they thought they were fooling me with those Rorschach pictures…

So it was determined that I had stood in the brainiac line a little too long when the creator was passing out smarts. All of a sudden there was talk of part-time jobs and selling insurance policies in order to pay the tuition for the University of Chicago Laboratory School! What the hell? I hadn’t even graduated from the boring and baby-blathering nursery school and already they’re planning to put me in college?

As fate would have it, all of them were working as many jobs as they could handle, so I was forced (thank goodness) to attend kindergarten with the great-unwashed average IQed kiddies at the public school that “colored children” attended. Oh, don’t for a minute delude yourselves into believing that my personal paint-job didn’t have a lot to do with all the fuss about my intellectual abilities.

Of course, once I managed to survive the exposure to normal boys and girls without becoming suddenly slow, my mother added another meatless meal to the weekly menu in order to afford the tuition to our Catholic school, where I was guaranteed to receive a “decent education.”

That all went well. In fact, it went so well, it caused me to have to deal with one of the more humiliating events of my pre-adolescent life.

At the end of my 8th grade year, Sister Sarah Williams announced that Proviso Township High School was conducting an educational experiment. Thirty eighth-graders from the feeder schools in the township area would be selected on the basis of their Intelligence Quotients and academic achievement to date to go through high school together, in special accelerated classes. They would become known as the Plus 30.

Now, it just so happens that I was at that point engaged in a battle royal with my parents, who were hell-bent on me winning a scholarship to Nazareth Academy, the local Catholic high school FOR GIRLS! I wasn’t having it. Nope. No boys? No Lezlie.

Besides, I wanted to go to the public high school and stop being such a conspicuous outsider. Here I was, different in every possible way from the group of people with which I was identified, and teen-aged angst was setting in. Everybody hated me already because I was “mixed” and went to the snobby Catholic school. And there had been rumors at the public elementary school that my white mother thought I was too good to mingle with the likes of them because she wouldn’t allow me to attend their weekly Wednesday night dances.

Being the smarty-pants that I was, I recognized an opportunity when I saw it. But the Plus 30? Surely, I would not be one of them out of all the kids in all the schools in the area. And who would want to be one of them? Talk about a way to get permanently ostracized in the community in which I had to try to live!

But it was my only hope of avoiding banishment to the testosterone barren Nazareth Academy and at least there were boys at Proviso High, so I changed my approach. Instead of trying to hide my intellectual “light” under the proverbial bushel basket, I let it shine at every opportunity. Instead of throwing the spelling bee, as I sometimes would, just to keep the haters at bay, I tried my best to win them all. Extra credit homework became required in my mind, not optional. I sneaked into the school office, where I was sometimes doing teacher’s pet duty by entering student grades into their permanent records, and I did the unthinkable. I looked at my own records and saw, for the first time, the magic number that was my IQ.

Oh boy. It was worse than I thought. With this score, there was very little chance I would MISS being selected for the Plus 30.

Well, it happened and because it did, I was successful in convincing my parents that I would be getting an even better education at Proviso High, and I sweetened the deal by signing a contract which guaranteed I would maintain high grades or suffer the consequences.

And that‘s when the fun began.

Apparently, while I wasn’t looking my personal value system was taking form. That system kind of puts in order of importance the things that make a person tick, so to speak. In later years, using company administered inventories and tests, it would be determined that my top two personal values are power and achievement, followed closely by recognition. The word power, in this context, was defined as the ability to get things done by influencing other people to act. Achievement and recognition are self-explanatory.

Combine those values with my undeniable interest in boys and their attention, and I became the embodiment of that representational character known as Harriet High School. Class officer? Why not? Student Council? Of course. First non-white drum majorette in the history of the school? Yep. Anything and everything to distract my haters from the fact that my name was on the wall outside the superintendent’s office on the dreaded Honor Roll. Once, I even went into the office to ask that they remove my name in order to quiet the ever-increasing vocal disdain of my peers.

Fortunately, the tables turned when I got to college. Oh, I still did my over-achievement thing and personified Claudia College, but there it was encouraged. And, since at the time I was the only non-white female student on campus, the anti-achievement pressure from the African-American students ended.

I have often thought that life would be so much easier to bear if I were just less smart. I wouldn’t be so intimidating to so many men. I wouldn’t over-think everything to the point of analysis paralysis. I wouldn’t be so quick to pick up the clues left by my two cheating husbands. And maybe I wouldn’t even know what I don’t know.

Doomsday's Not Going to Ruin MY Day

I received an email yesterday from a blogger buddy of mine. She was upset by something that had been circulating in the news and in the blogosphere: Doomsday: How BP Gulf Disaster May Have Triggered a World-killing Event, and she wanted me to weigh in on it.

In a nutshell, the story that ran on Helium.com makes a pretty plausible case for the idea that the breached oil well in the Gulf of Mexico might have set up the perfect environment for a cataclysmic natural event that would result in the virtual annihilation of the human race.

Is it true? I have no idea, but it didn’t strike me as utterly ridiculous. I mean, this planet has been spinning around for millions of years, and lots of catastrophic events have been reported. I think we humans can get pretty arrogant sometimes, when we think that nothing of that magnitude could happen to us. I say, “Why the hell not?”

My friend was concerned about the implication that the government is well aware of the impending doom and has deliberately squelched the truth. My reaction was and is what good would it do to tell 300 million people that circumstances beyond the control of any human being are likely to lead to the destruction of our world as we know it? Let’s look at the possibilities:

1. The President goes on TV and tells us the facts, and they ain’t pretty. People panic, start spilling out into the streets, screaming, running, snarling traffic, causing riots. Great.

2.People panic and do what comes naturally. Everybody grabs a partner and gets frisky. A good percentage of the hetero couples will conceive a child that very night. The party goes on for days and weeks, and the ob-gyns can’t keep up with the demand. Harmless, you say? Well, what if this writer is wrong? What if, despite all the science that he says supports his prediction, it doesn’t happen? We will have millions more mouths to feed in an economy that is barely capable of sustaining the ones already here.

3.The Republicans in Congress will label the prediction a ruse started by the Democrats to encourage people to look to their government for protection, thus strengthening the argument for bigger government and more spending. (Spending on what? Don’t confuse them with reality please!)

4.The Birthers and other tea baggers will blame Obama for the methane bubble phenomenon, because he was not born in America, and God is leveling his wrath upon him and the rest of us, which is unfair, of course, but God knows what he’s doing.

Naw, none of that makes any sense to me. I’ll do what I did while waiting for Y2K to wreak havoc with the world and all the other doomsday events. Nothing. Absolutamente nada. If the event occurs as it is predicted, we’ll never know what hit us. There will be no warning, and there are no preparations to be made. No Last Wills and Testaments required; nobody will be left to inherit anything. No worries about leaving debts for family members to be stuck paying; nobody will be left to pay them.

As frightening as that article was at first, and it was, I say “As You Were.” There ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.

Despair is Running Rampant on Open Salon

Open Salon is a web site for writers where I have been active since February 2010.  The names mentioned are pen names of two fellow bloggers who have today threatened suicide.  There are many more that I know of who are contemplating it. 


The edge of despair is a siren song
The lilting sounds of relief fill the air
And pull its guest ever closer
To the end of the pain.


The edge of despair is the darkest of places
Where friends and family get lost in the gloom
Disabling one’s vision of any chance of
Seeing any light, any end, any tunnel.


I’ve been to the edge of despair
I stood there in pain and in fear
Of staying and keeping the pain
Of going and failing my child.


That fear finally trumped all my pain
That, and the certainty of Hell
But always the darkness prevailed
My Hell was already here.


Thank God I’m still here to hear the alarm
Self-destruction turned to thoughts of others
And found in that choice a way to silence
The voice of the siren.

Today the siren is calling to Scylla
Today the siren is calling to Robin
And probably others who have not cried out
Be aware, be available and be brave.

Full Circle

It's over. My 16-month ordeal has come to an end. I'm exhausted, I'm humbled, I'm smarter, and I am free!

Yesterday I assembled at the closing lawyer's office with the buyers of my house and signed it over to them, lock, stock and barrel. They suddenly gained a $2500 per month mortgage payment. I got zero dollars in exchange for my house of 17 years.

My job loss, long-term unemployment and housing crisis loss of equity in my home is much too common among Americans today to repeat here. Suffice it to say that I fought my ass off. I used every negotiating skill I've ever had. I schemed. I begged. I cried an awful lot for a hardass like me. Nothing worked, and I was headed for foreclosure. My credit score plunged to depths I'd never seen since FICO invented scores. My pride? Shambles.

Finally, I jumped enough of the bank's hoops to qualify for a Short Sale. This just means that the bank determines a lesser amount than I owe as a settlement. In order to achieve that amount, I couldn't afford to pay a real estate agent, so I had to sell it myself. Never second-guess the value of an agent, folks. It is one of the most stressful jobs I have ever had.

When I handed the bagful of keys to Mr. and Mrs. A. at 2:45 p.m. yesterday, I was expecting to feel emotional about turning over my beloved house for nothing in return. Instead, something akin to an orgasm swept over me. The sense of relief was absolute ecstasy. And I said, "Congratulations!"

I am thrilled that I found a family to live in that house who I genuinely like. They have two adorable little boys who I will be able to watch grow from my new residence, directly across the street. I am even thrilled that they were able to get a home that they never could have afforded two short years ago.

I am not the same person I was the day I received the call from my boss telling me he had no choice but to lay off all his employees. That person was still driven by the desire to own things, to get more of those things, and to display those things with pride. I was not unlike other children of the 1950s and 1960s, who spent too much time finding more and more money, and working longer and longer hours to earn it.

The day my fate was altered was the day I refinanced my 13-year-old mortgage and took out a huge chunk of cash to remodel the house. That was in January 2006, the height of the housing market. It was the beginning of the end for me.

I'm different today, because I have taken a long time to remember how relatively stress-free my life was when I wasn't a homeowner, when I wasn't a taxpayer, and when I wasn't responsible for so much debt. Sure, there were months that I would run out of money before I would run out of month, but I managed somehow. The American Dream, which included the house with the white picket fence and 2 cars in the driveway, caused me to live the majority of my adult life under extraordianary stress, and I didn't even know it.

But my body knew it. Backaches, headaches, high blood pressure, chronic depression. I gained weight, due to 10-12 hours a day sitting at a desk, grabbing vending machine snacks to survive. The bodily toll was tremendous.

As for possessions? I have just spent the last two months shedding them, and most were given away. I've kept only the things that can fit into my severely downsized living spaces. They just don't mean anything anymore.

Instead, I delight in the nature around me, the friends who have been irreplaceable during this difficult time, my family and my dog. I am proud of my 30-pound weight loss between March 2010 and today. I feel and look younger and I have far more energy. None of the things that delight me so much cost a red cent! Zip, zero, nada.

I believe I am about to live the best part of my life. I am so grateful that I was able to avoid foreclosure, but if I hadn't, I would still be just fine. I am grateful that I have a little savings left and that I receive Social Security and a small company pension, so I can pay my rent and buy the simple foods I have learned to eat.

Life is good again.

My Breakfast with Barack

I woke at 3:00 a.m. without benefit of aural intrusion. Anticipation of the day to come was all that was needed. In 4 ½ hours, I would be face to face with Himself.

Sleep had come in fits and starts after I climbed into bed seeking the proverbial “good night’s sleep” universally recommended for the night before a Big Day. It would be interesting to learn if any mere mortal has ever achieved such a preparatory slumber. My guess is, like so many other recommendations for daily success in life, it was a guideline based on theory.

Wide awake now, I decided to begin the lengthy task of grooming and dressing myself for an audience with POTUS; the master of Yes We Can, the Great Half-Breed Hope, and the Chicago Jet-Job* who grew up Barry in Honolulu, Hawaii.

What started as a mindless flip through a doctor’s office waiting room magazine morphed into a three-day marathon of writing draft after draft of the essay which would became my submission to the Writing Contest. The prize? A 60-minute private breakfast meeting with Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America.

Knowing there would be at least one photographer present during the meeting, I was obsessing about which outfit would flatter me most, photograph best, and honor the Office of the Presidency most appropriately. Did I secretly want to impress Barry, the man; the brotha whose smile illuminates the room; who slow dances with the First Lady as if they were in the rec room at a South Side house party; and who sometimes slips into a modified “pimp walk” when he forgets that cameras are watching? Well, of course I did!

I arrived at the White House looking professional and mildly elegant. After clearing security, I was escorted into an anteroom located beside the Oval Office. My mouth was dry; my hands were not. I sneakily rubbed them dry on the expensive-looking upholstery on the sofa and tried to breathe deeply. Gradually I regained my composure.

At the stroke of 7:30 a.m. the President’s secretary approached the sofa, smiling. “The President will see you now.” A wave of giddiness threatened to destroy my resolve to remain calm, but I prevailed.

Barack Obama rose from his desk as I entered the room. He flashed that trademark smile, making me believe he was genuinely glad to see me. Coming from behind the desk, he pulled out a chair beside a small, but beautifully appointed breakfast table. “Please, let’s sit down. I’m dying to have my first cup of coffee. Will you have some with me?”

I looked Barack, the brother, the Chicago homeboy, the fellow *mutt* directly in the eyes and locked in his gaze. He looked bemused, then a tad befuddled. Then he looked away.

When the waiter had served the eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce, sliced melon and raspberries and quietly slipped out of the room, the President put down his coffee cup, folded his hands on the table and said “You must have worked very hard on that essay, Lezlie. May I call you Lezlie?” I nodded.

My staff was impressed, not only by what you had to say, but by how you chose to say it.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. But, no, I didn’t work very hard at all on that essay. I simply spoke directly from my heart.”

“Really.” He sat back in his chair. “So why don’t you go ahead and tell me what you came to say to me.”

I, too, sat back for a few seconds; then I leaned in.

“Sir, your mother and your grandmother have passed on. They were probably the only two human beings on earth who could hold what I call a ‘Come to Jesus’ with you since you are the President. So I’ve come to do it on their behalf.”

Barack’s eyebrows elevated almost imperceptively. A smile played about the corners of his mouth.

“For the next 45 minutes or so, I would appreciate it if we could drop all the protocol and just talk, mother to son. Are you game?”

“Oookaaay… Yeah, sure, why not?” He gestured for the unobtrusive photographer to leave the room. I was more than a little bit terrified, but I was there to say something, and say it I would.

“Barack, when folks saw you speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, every last one of them sat up a little bit straighter. They heard in your delivery the sound of a born leader. They heard in your message the words of a clear-thinking man of high intelligence. They heard in their hearts the stirring of a long-lost virtue: Hope.” You made that your definitive word: Hope.

“Then you stormed onto the national stage. You made us all so proud. You boldly announced your intention to become the first non-white President of the United States, and then, by God, you did it. Yes, We Can, we chanted. Si, se puede! You made promises, just like all politicians do. But we believed you. We believed your promises.”

“Now, son, I know you found a hot mess on your desk that first day on the job. Everybody knows that. Nobody was foolish enough to believe you would have an easy time of it. I mean, look at you.”

Barack Obama examined the back of his hand.

“Are you trying to let us down, Barack? Startled, the President’s head snapped upward. For a moment there, I thought I was going to be thrown out on my kiester. Instead, his head dropped to his chest; he stared at the floor.

“Are you going to continue to pander to politics, waltz around Wall Street’s wrong-doing, and weasel word the war strategies?”

His chin remained on his chest.

Or are you going to deliver on your promises to end the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy; end the unwinnable wars in the Middle East; and advocate with the full scope of your Presidential powers on behalf of the poor and the powerless who are disappearing under the heels of corporate self-interests?”

“You were taught to be a man of your word. I’m not from Kansas, but I know Kansans. They value integrity. I value integrity, and you told us that you value integrity.”

“After I leave, I want you to go into your fancy private bathroom over there and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Is that the guy we elected? Is that the guy we sent to change things? Is that the guy who we can count on to lead us out of the fine mess we find ourselves in?”

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the President of the United States, the so-called leader of the free world, raised his head and his eyes to display a single, glistening tear begin its descent.

* Jet-job: a term used to describe the rapid ascent of an individual up the traditional career ladder.