Following My Father

"We are moving in two weeks. Start packing."

"Where are we going this time, Mom?"

"Back to California. Daddy starts a new job out there in three weeks."

This exchange happened many times before I was born and before I can remember. My two older sisters lived in even more places than I did and once left their new school in Santa Barbara, started another in Solvang, and returned to the first school after two weeks. I never had it that bad. The shortest time I was in new schools was six weeks.

Mom might have said, "Start packing and cleaning," so I learned when I was old enough to remember. We never lived in as clean a place as it was when we left it. After my sisters left home Mom and I scrubbed fastidiously every surface, using a toothbrush and scouring powder in crevasses.

In my first memory I lay in a large bouncy black stroller by a hedge. Ladies peered down and told Mom what a beautiful baby I was. Years later my therapist told me it was impossible, that babies don't remember that young. I beg to differ.

He really bristled when I said I remembered leaving my home with the other angels to find myself a mortal baby in Toronto. Ha!

As a small child I remembered it, though. My family was by no means religious enough to provide me with an image of angels.

Mom was a frustrated Protestant. She taught me that gruesome prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

She also taught me the lovely Lord’s Prayer.

Despite Dad's atheism, he consented to try various churches, and I attended Sunday school for short periods. Our bouts of attendance never lasted long, so I was spared those confusing classes when I looked at Bible story books, with their scary images of God pointing with a scowl at the poor sinners below. The wrath of God was the only thing I understood in those classes; otherwise, I had no idea what the teacher was talking about.

Nothing about the wrath of God appealed to me!

The first church I remember was a large Spanish-style one in Santa Barbara where we went to the Christmas Eve service. I was three and we had just moved there from Hastings-on-Hudson. Rarely, if ever, in a large church before, I felt awed and somewhat intimidated by all the people dressed in fine clothing. "You have to sit still and be very quiet," I was told.

Our first Christmas in St. Helena when I was seven, we ventured to the Episcopal church and enjoyed a candlelight service in that gorgeous old stone building. For a while we attended the First Presbyterian, a classic white clapboard building with a steeple. I truly bristled at having to look at those big Bible story books as I sat among four and five year old's.

The summer after second grade in St. Helena my parents signed me up for Bible Camp at the Baptist church. Oh, man! All I experienced were a bunch of wild boys running around the tables in the dirt.

We attended churches of various denominations after that. Next, my parents and I traveled to a small Presbyterian one at the top of a hill in Marin County. We all liked the minister, a handsome and personable young man, who left the church in St. Helena for that one. A year or two later he killed himself, leaving behind a wife and young children. The shock and dismay was enough to put my parents off churches for several years after that.

Later, we listened to concerts in lovely old stone churches or the Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco when we lived there. What a gorgeous place that is! Huge, and made of a pinkish-beige material, a red brick dome tops the main worship space. Balconies inside afford a lovely view of the interior.

In later years, my parents found a compatible congregation in the Unitarian Church in Palo Alto. My mother was able to worship and the intellectualism of the services appealed to Dad.

Despite my earlier negative experience with religious denominations, in sixth grade in Palo Alto I envied my friends for their religious beliefs. My friend Heidi attended the Easter service at the Episcopal church. We got all dressed up, and I went with her. Mystified by the service, I enjoyed it, anyway.

But, I didn't set out to talk about religion or the churches we attended. Writing a memoir tends to cause me to free associate, so one thing leads to another, one memory to others.

I told you that my sisters lived in more places than I did. I'm actually not so sure about that. After they left home my parents did not exactly slow down. We did, though, live in two places for two years after Winnie and Sylvia left when I was nine. That only happened twice for Sylvia and once for Winnie.

To give you the flavor of where my sisters lived before I was born and before I remember, I will run it down for you. Winnie was born in Berkeley, California. From there the young family moved to New Mexico, where they lived in a Quonset hut on a dusty lot in the desert. Dad taught engineering at the New Mexico School of Mines, where he served as an essential civilian employee instead of fighting in World War II.

Back in California when Winnie was seven, they moved to Palo Alto where Sylvia was born. My parents bought the only house they ever owned, a lovely brick and wood split-level in an old neighborhood near downtown. We drove by when my parents and I lived in Palo Alto later on.

From there they returned to where my parents hailed from, the upper Midwest and the east coast. Dad grew up in Chicago during the era of prohibition and Al Capone. He told some interesting stories. One involved dark cars driving by with gangsters shooting at each other and bullets whizzing by.

Dad also described fire drills in which the students slid down long slides from the upper floors of the big school building.

Dad told many fun stories about his childhood. When I was seven, my parents and I drove across country to Delavan Lake, Wisconsin. We drove in our station wagon down a long dirt road through a spindly pine forest. As a kid, Dad rode his bike all the way from Chicago and down that dirt road to stay with his Aunt Elsie for the summer, a journey of 87 miles.

My Great Aunt Elsie was a very old woman by the time I met her. Her house was a large Victorian set on grounds dotted with trees that led to the lake. An old barn stood nearby where Dad jumped from the hay loft while holding an open umbrella to see if he could fly. He never hurt himself. I thought that was amazing.

Even as a boy Dad’s scientific bent showed itself. He spend his afternoons diving into the lake to see what he might discover. Sadly, he later became deaf in one ear after so many severe ear infections he got from bacteria in the water. There were no antibiotics in 1919.

Mom grew up in a picturesque converted dairy in a small New Jersey town called New Milford. She lived in the same house all her life until she went off to nursing school in New York.

A picture shows her at age five with heavy dark bangs, just like mine. She played with her best friend Thelma in the creek running through the property.

A core event in Mom’s life happened when her father died of a “botched” appendectomy when she was six. The surgery went fine, except that the dirty packing was left inside his body, causing a fatal sepsis. There were no antibiotics in 1924, either.

She remembered her confusion and sadness. At school the teachers and students gathered in the morning to pledge the flag that flew on a tall pole. They also recited the Lord’s Prayer. Mom thought when they said, “Our father who art in heaven” they were talking about her father.

Mom never returned to live in New Milford, instead she sailed through the Panama Canal on a steamer by herself. On she ventured to Pasadena to visit her aunt. There she met my father while visiting his aunt. He was just finishing up his master's degree in engineering at the California School of Technology. My parents married shortly after, to the dismay of his parents.

In those days, nurses were considered the equivalent of maids, too low a class for Dad, they felt. Dad defended Mom valiantly.

Mom's taste for adventure must have been somewhat satisfied by my parents' nomadic lifestyle. We certainly had our adventures.

I don't know all the places my sisters lived before Dad got a job in New York City. A portrait of them and Mom shows Winnie with her hair in braids that curl up to make loops at the sides of her head. Sweet.

Dad's firm sent him to Venezuela to work with other engineers on a dam at the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroni Rivers. They lived in a camp, very rustic. He did not intend to have Mom and my sisters join him, but join him they did.

My sisters loved it. Winnie told stories of exploring the jungle near the camp and finding humongous butterflies and other insects. She became an amateur scientist during her childhood and teen years. Sylvia, too enjoyed the camp. As a tomboy, she loved the freedom of running around. free.

Their stay came to an abrupt and tragic halt. One day Mom rang the dinner gong, a large iron pipe suspended from a beam on the porch of the dining hall. Sylvia inadvertently distracted her and as Mom looked down the pipe hit Mom on the forehead. After that she exhibited bizarre behavior, such as taking her clothes off and doing cartwheels on the grounds. Dad rushed her to a sanitarium in Caracas, and found an apartment nearby where he and my sisters lived for the next two years while Mom recovered.

Winnie was almost nine and Sylvia almost five when they arrived in Venezuela. In Caracas Dad enrolled them in the British school. The curriculum was taught in both Spanish and English, so they learned some Spanish there. They picked up more from their friends.

Dad and my sisters lived in an apartment on a hill overlooking the city. Dad hired a housekeeper to take care of Sylvia and Winnie and to clean and cook their meals. Her name was Tianita. Dad used to talk about her being a character, a hot-blooded, emotional type. One might speculate about the relationship between Dad and Tianita. If there was anything to talk about, he never talked about that!

Caracas's warring factions meant that gunfire resounded not infrequently nearby. Tianita would shriek and dive under a bed. My sisters followed.

Dad took Winnie and Sylvia hiking often. One day they came upon a small town of white stucco buildings in the middle of the jungle. It was an enclave of Germans, Nazis who escaped persecution at the end of the war.

Mom's amnesia prevented her from recognizing Dad for most of the two years she was in the sanitarium. When he visited, a nurse brought her out to a bench in the grounds. Mom asked always, "Who is that man?" It must have been frightening for her and sad for Dad.

In the sanitarium Mom started chain smoking and became so depressed that she was given shock treatments. Those, and her treatment with a psychiatrist, pulled her through. She never exhibited depression after that. She never smoked after that. She was a woman of good spirits, goodwill, and stamina.

After Mom's release from the sanitarium she joined the family at the apartment. She became pregnant with me and they decided to return to North America. Dad got a job in Toronto, Canada, where I was born.

The family's adventures in Venezuela were not over. Dad sent Mom and my sisters ahead while he figured out how to get out of the country. He owed the sanitarium lots of money and was prevented from leaving because of it. His solution was to engage in a suspenseful act of intrigue.

He sneaked into the relevant office and forged the necessary papers. If you knew my Dad, you would never believe he did that. Dad was law-abiding, honest, quiet, and not a risk-taker in general.

He made it to Toronto in time for my birth, but my parents' suspense was not over yet. At two months old I nearly died from a sinus infection, of all things. It must have gone septic. In the emergency room, as Mom sat there with me a doctor happened to pass through and came over to check me. He rushed me into a room. My heartbeat was dangerously fast.

Placed in an incubator, I was in the hospital for two months. Imagine the anguish of parents unable to see their very sick baby except through a window into pediatric intensive care.

Sylvia always maintained — one of her many grievances — that when they brought me home they gave her a doll and effectively said, "This baby is ours, the doll is yours. Let's keep it that way."

It does not sound like my parents. Even though they neglected many of our needs and Mom was sometimes less than sensitive, they were kind people who loved us. But Sylvia always maintained that her life was difficult because she was the middle child, and that she was ignored a lot. Maybe so. I don't really know. Given her critical nature and quickness to take offense, maybe not.

For example, she used to point to a picture of herself in Caracas. "Look how mussed up my hair was. Look at my shabby dress." Well, if she were the tomboy she claimed to be, it seems to me it would be difficult for her not to look that way.

Throughout my childhood and teen years Sylvia often expressed disapproval of the way my parents brought me up. "You don't discipline her enough. She needs structure and chores. You are spoiling her," was her refrain. This she said only to Mom for fear of calling forth Dad's wrath, and she would have.

Poor Sylvia. My Dad did criticize her quite mercilessly. Not directly to her, but to the rest of us when she was not around. "That Sylvia is a mercenary," he would say. I was too young to know why he said that. Maybe she asked for money. Maybe she said things like, "I'll do it, but only if you pay me."

That's the one thing I did not like about my dad. I hated when he talked about people behind their backs. It made me wonder if he said bad things about me behind mine. He criticized Sylvia in that manner so much that I became afraid he would reject me should I do something he did not like.

It got so bad that when I was ten and given a transistor radio I was afraid to listen to rock and roll instead of classical music for fear Dad would reject me.

Dad was, in fact, extremely accepting of me. My parents treated me differently from my sisters. When Winnie and Sylvia were young my parents demanded behaviors I was never asked to do. I suppose that included keeping their rooms clean, doing well in school...I don't know what all else.

With me, my parents were lenient, maybe too lenient. My rooms were always messy because I would look at the mess and have no clue as to how to clean it. As a teenager I was allowed to get away with things my sisters wouldn't have dreamed of.

For example, at fourteen my sixteen-year-old boyfriend and I were allowed to take the bus to San Francisco to watch the Chinese New Year parade. Afterwards, we spent the night alone at the hippie pad of his parents' friends. John and I slept on a mattress on the floor in an alcove formed by curtains made from cotton Indian bedspreads. There was no sex involved. I was too young and the idea scared me.

There was one time when I was ten that my parents didn't so much allow me to do something most parents wouldn't, but made me do it. Mom dropped my friend Ellen and me off at the Cliff House in San Francisco to go ice skating. Afterwards, we wanted to take the bus home, but found we had too little money left.

There were miles to walk back to Pacific Heights. Halfway there we were so tired we stopped at a corner store to ask if we could use the phone. My parents refused to pick us up, and impatiently told us to walk the rest of the way.

This angered me, but my parents did not allow my sisters and me to openly express our anger. As I did throughout my childhood, I internalized it, and suffered from depression as a result.

The first time I expressed anger at my parents was when I was thirteen. My parents and I lived in Los Angeles at the time. My bedroom was at the side of the house with windows facing the driveway. A door led to a hallway with a door to outside.

My parents blocked the hallway with boxes so I couldn't get out that way. They acted like they didn't trust me, which both angered me and hurt my feelings.

My anger so scared my mother that she decided I was mentally ill and needed counseling. This so scared me that when the counseling center called and asked for me I told the woman I wasn't home.

When we lived there my mother got angry at other things I did, the first time she ever did. In my bedroom one day my mother followed me in and seemed about to hit me. In response, I kicked at her. She never approached me in anger again.

The next time I was openly angry, this time with both Mom and Dad, happened just a few months later. In the spring, before school was over, Mom’s familiar refrain, “We’re moving in two weeks, start packing,” greeted me one morning.

My good friend Robyn and I were so upset we plotted to run away so I wouldn’t have to leave. This faulty logic of two thirteen-year-old girls made no sense, of course. And, our plan included something that would put our eighteen-year-old drama teacher in jeopardy.

From Robyn’s house one night we sneaked off toward Culver City, where Bruce lived, a journey of about ten miles. Through the dark streets we walked, with purses slung over our shoulders.

The farther we went, the more frightened we became. Our weary sneakered feet wanted to stop and rest. The dark night and abandoned streets, with only the occasional car driving by, urged us on.

The possibility of one of those cars stopping and a strange, lewd man trying to pick us up loomed in our imaginations. The isolation and block after block of silent houses made me think of the town Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace found themselves in on that terrible planet Meg and Charles Wallace’s father was imprisoned on. (A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book as a child.)

Bruce freaked out when we showed up at his door. Our naivete made us oblivious to the fact that he worried he might be accused of statutory rape by our enraged parents. He had our parents’ phone numbers from our time with him in the drama group, so he went into another room and called. My Mom showed up not long after. No one blamed him, as they knew we had surprised him.

The next day my parents loaded up our red Chevy Greenbriar van. An armchair for me sat in the back surrounded by boxes. For the eight hour drive to San Francisco I refused to talk to them, and sat sullenly with my arms crossed. I looked out the window at long stretches of arid and agricultural land along Highway; at the windrows and eucalyptus groves; through San Luis Obispo, with a long grade from which I could see the train tracks and the tunnel I passed through many times, especially in my teen years; past Paso Robles, a familiar spot from childhood family trips; between rows of eucalyptus trees approaching Gilroy; through San Jose, past Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, San Mateo, the San Francisco Airport, South San Francisco, and finally, the city itself.

I remained angry with my parents for many things in the next couple of months – for having to attend that dreadful Presidio Junior High, with it’s gloomy brick building, arid yard with a long cement bench on either side where we ate lunches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and an orange, or other lunches our mothers’ packed in brown paper bags. For the cold flat with only beds and our dining table and chairs for furniture.

The incident with my mother in LA was the only time she ever tried to hurt any of us physically. My parents had loud arguments at times, but they never got physical. Only twice did Dad become so angry at Mom that he threatened violence. The first time was in San Francisco when I was nine. I heard them from the kitchen. Mom said, "Albert, put that knife down!"

Needless to say, this scared me to death. I was effectively an only child by then. Winnie worked in downtown San Francisco and rented a charming room in a Victorian near Fillmore Street. Sylvia was married with a baby at sixteen. So, I was alone on the other end of the apartment, with no one to intervene or reassure me.

The next time and last time Dad got scary was when my parents and I lived in a tiny apartment at the back of a building on Sutter Street. I was fifteen. Dad went into the tiny foyer, picked up a small table, and threw it on the floor.

I will tell you more of my story later, and expand upon my experiences in the many places I lived. For now, I will say adieu. I hope you are enjoying my story, and that those of you who grew up in highly mobile families find comfort in knowing that other children shared your experience and know what it’s like.