Retail Relapse

I didn't want to give the wrong impression of my step-dad, Bob, in my last blog. When he grabbed my mom by the throat at the dinner table, it was completely unprecedented and out of character. Bob was the calmest, gentlest man I have ever known, which may not be saying that much. But he was. He was so calm and steadfast that his violence toward Mom was shocking.
The argument had gone on for days, and, as usual, revolved around money. We were at that point of being broke where Left Over-Left Over Stew had been on the table for more than a week. To this day I cannot abide Left Over Stew.
Bob had been working directing commercials, and Mom had been designing sets. You can make a lot of money in Hollywood, but it generally comes in spurts. If you don't save during the good times, you're sunk during the bad times. We were in a bad time. And there were no savings.
Mom had this thing with money. I got it, too, and apparently so does my oldest son Matt. We tend to spend every last dime of what we have on hand, as well as part of what we're expecting to show up. Mom would spend more than Bob had coming before it ever got there, keeping us ever behind. It didn't matter how much he made, she would spend more. And when money was getting tight, she'd it spend faster. It's very stressful living like that.
I understand all this now, partly because of all the counseling I've been through, but also because I do it, too. See, when the money is almost gone, you get this little warning bell in the back of your head. I don't have to keep a running balance in my checkbook because my subconscious keeps track. I'll be driving along when all of a sudden, a little voice says, "We NEED to go to the Thrift Store..." Translation: "We're about to overdraft our account, so we'd better spend what we have NOW before there isn't any to spend at ALL." Completely illogical, very immature, totally compulsive. Very hard to fight.
That voice is the inner child who is fearful of not having what she needs or wants this minute. Mom's inner child was desperate, and she was powerless against it. So was Bob, especially since his inner child was a lot more mature than Mom's, which only made her inner child dig in harder.
When he tried to reason with her, she battled with her amateur psychology. When he tried to be the Man of the House, she ridiculed and chastised him. Even a logical discussion that resulted in a joint decision would become fodder for the next argument. But, when he tried to cut off her access to the money, she would go into emotional distress and become dangerously unhinged.
One time, she was furious at Bob for trying to corral her spending. First she got angry, then she got depressed. She threatened divorce, then suicide. Then she disappeared for 3 days. We were all freaked out. Then one afternoon, I got home from school, and she was back, surrounded by packages. She'd been in San Diego, it turned out, at a hotel, on a shopping spree. Because we were broke.
Bob just sat smoking his pipe, watching her. She was giddy, happy, loving, and completely out of touch with reality. Insane, really.
And Bob never yelled, or recriminated her. He just watched her, hugged her, told her he loved her, and went off to putter in the garage, and figure out how to make the mortgage payment.
We watched her, too, because a spending binge was usually followed by a guilt-rage binge, and that would probably fall on us.
That night that Bob grabbed Mom by the throat? It was scary, but even at the time, we didn't blame him. Not one bit.

Mom and Determinism

It's been awhile, and I've been thinking. Why not tell my own stories? After all, those are the best ones...

My mom says we’re Heinz 57 – that means our people come from all over, from Scotland, Ireland, France. Probably England, too, and she always claims some Indian, usually Iroquois. That’s because the French must have mixed it up with some locals when they were trying to conquer what is now New England. You can see how well that worked for them from the name which is not “New France”.

She says our Iroquois ancestor was called, “Shimmering Water”, clearly an Indian princess or some one high up. Couldn’t be something like, “Mud in Face”,  or “Snores While Sleeping”.

Then on my dad's side we're Spanish, German or Dutch, English, and I'd swear Apache. All together it's quite a mix from an Anglo-Saxon perspective, but completely normal. With all the mixing that's been going on, who can say what we are, except maybe human.

Both sides of my family like to go on about our ancestors who had it better and harder than we do now from all accounts. Mom says another long-lost ancestor was none other than Ulysses S. Grant, although he has never shown up in any of my ancestral searches. Mom used to say he was our, “Great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather", and talk with disparaging intimacy of his drinking and womanizing and mood swings. He was definitely Irish, so Mom says.

No one ever dared contradict our Mother when she was on a roll, telling stories and holding court. No one. That would be dangerous, if not deadly. My step-dad did once in so many words. It was memorable.

They had been arguing at the dinner table, and even after he had reached up and turned off his hearing aids so he couldn't hear her, she kept going. My brother and I were just trying to get through the meal, when all of a sudden my step-dad's hand shot out, across the table, and grabbed my mother by the neck. Then he started to get up, his arm rigid, and my mom suspended from his fist like a fish, turning all red, and kind of sputtering. Rick and I bolted out the front door into the driveway, screaming for help. I guess my step-dad had reached the end of his patience. He was pretty patient. He was Belgian and Welsh. Mom called him either "The Belch", or "The Blemish". (Flemish - Belgian... get it?)

My mom had a bit of a temper, due to the Irish in her, she would claim. She says she once got so mad at her father that she went down into the basement where his long-johns were hanging to dry and cut off the legs and arms of each set with her scissors. Why any one would have let my mother have scissors is beyond me.

Mom went to Sunday School, at her mother’s insistence. Nanny was a tried and true Catholic, a fact that irritated the hell out of my grandfather Frank, who was himself a Protestant at best. Nanny ruled on religion, so Mom had to go, never mind her heathen father’s opinion. She was given money for the collection plate and the bus, and was sent off on the streets of Trenton, New Jersey. This would have been around 1940, when it was relatively safe for kids wandering around big, industrial cities alone. Mom was about 9.

One day when the nuns were teaching Determinism, my mom dared ask a question. I don’t know how long she had been going there, or what had happened up till then, but I know my mom and it’s hard to believe she had been quietly sitting there all along. Speaking up runs in our blood, so to speak, probably the Scottish in us. So they started in on Determinism, about how everything is already set by God forever to go a certain way.

Mom thinks about this, and then raises her hand: “If everything is pre-determined, and God has everything all planned out, then why do I have to sit here?”

The nuns, after a brief argument, decided to leave my Mom to God, and sent her home, telling her not to come back without her mother.

She took the money for the collection plate and the bus and started going to art classes at the local YMCA. She never told her mother about her lesson at Sunday School. She did indeed continue with her art, which she decided was what God had in mind all along. Not that she believed in God, as such.

But that’s another story.