22. September 2009 by Frank.

   I don’t usually get personal with these little postings, as hard as that might be to imagine, but this time I thought I would be a little self indulgent. What the hell, right? I have been thinking about writing this story out for some time now, and finally the proper motivation has presented itself. They say God works in mysterious ways, but in my life, God tends to just drop a kitchen sink on my head and laugh at me while I stagger around. No real mysteries here. Today was my son’s ninth birthday. I suppose just his approaching ninth birthday may have been subconsciously stirring up bad memories for me. He was certainly excited about it for quite a while now, and I was happy to see all that excitement pay off for him. He had an absolute blast, and I was thrilled to make that happen for him. We cannot always meet all our children’s expectations in life, and it is a damn fine moment when we as parents are able to literally make their day.   So what has me so wound up about this whole birthday thing, anyway? Everything sounds alright so far. Where is that black cloud that seems to follow me around like that kid from the Peanuts cartoon? I was brutally reminded today of my own, very much different ninth birthday. And the continuing fact that I married a woman as much like my own mother as I could possibly find was once again thrown in my face. Don’t take that the wrong way. I am divorced now for some time, but my ex wife is still the woman I married, and she still continues to score off the charts on the mom comparison checklist I have been accumulating for some time now.     A day I will never forget. My ninth birthday. Try and bring yourself back with me, if you will, to remember all of the splendid excitement and anticipation we felt as young children, waiting for the big day to arrive. And when it finally gets there? Fuggetaboutit!!! Of the friggin hook, right? That is the way I felt the day I woke up on my ninth birthday. I was instantly awake, full of excitement and joy. It was my birthday. Attention and cake and ice cream and presents were about to be lavished on me, and I couldn’t wait!   It was the beginning of summer, as my birthday always seems to be. School was out, and we were staying at our very dear family friend’s farm in

18. September 2009 by Frank.

   Here we are at the bottom of it all, really. This is the piece my mother wrote that Gennyfer didn’t want to write about too soon. She thought it might not have the proper impact without some background information on crazymom. I hope you have all read enough of this crazy stuff to have a true and refined understanding of just how whacked out my mother really was. So without further ado, we delve…  Into the Belly of the Beast.

   My mother wrote this little bit of insanity about the time just after our father, Frank, had just gone to prison, and my mother carted us off from a quiet town in upstate New York right smack in the middle of downtown Philadelphia. She moved in with a drug dealing friend of my fathers, the man she called Bear. I was almost 4 years old at this point, and Gennyfer was still a 2 year old in diapers. She packed so much crazy into so little space in this little note she wrote to herself, it almost defies description. But here we are, describing all of this madness as best we can.

   Here are the real standouts for me. “We are all looking for Charles Manson to tell us what to do.” Now I know you are all relating to this statement as much as I am. When life gets rough for me, I am confused and unsure of what direction to take, where to get the best advice possible, who can lift me up from the darkness and despair that seeks to overwhelm and consume me, my thoughts immediately turn to… Charles Manson.

  Another highlight for me was “I remember the night I thought I should walk off the roof of the house. I wanted to die, end it all” I was just three years old at that moment in her life, and Gennyfer was only two. I have a child myself, and as a parent, some part of you puts your kid first, no matter what. But my mom was so wrapped up in her own self centered dramatic bullshit at the time that she was seriously ready to end it all right there. If she had gone off that roof that night, she would have left my little sister and me in the care of some fucked up hippie drug dealer we barely knew, in a strange city while our father was off serving his country in jail. I am sure my mother had no contact with her parents and sister at this point in her life, so I don’t know what this whack job would have done to even try and get in touch with our extended family. We could have ended up wards of the state. Lovely.

  Last, and certainly least considering it’s intense competition on this list, is this wonderful gem, “plus the mystery of spending time in jail - What is that appeal?”  Someone please tell me, what is that appeal? I don’t know really. Is it a chick thing? I have met a few women in my day who have been in prison, and believe me, they were not full of sugar and spice and everything nice, if you catch my drift. Anyone else’s mom out there have a thing for ex-cons? Fill me in on this one. I am truly at a loss. I do remember my mom always being attracted to the wrong guys, even as she got much older. She was the epitome of the good girl who went for the bad boy every time. I have personally known some truly fine men who loved and admired my mother. She would have absolutely nothing to do with any of them. And thank god for those fine fellows. I am sure it pained them at the time, but they really dodged that bullet big-time.

   I will never forget about a year before my mom died, I was at her house helping her to get rid of some old boxes in the closet and consolidate a bunch of her old stuff into a more manageable space. I came across a framed poem that’s title was dedicated specifically to her. I read the thing aloud to her, and there were several personal references to her that were unmistakable. Some guy had definitely had it bad for my mom, and had taken the time to write and frame a very lovely and intimate poem for her and about her. She was always a big poetry fan. I asked her after reading it to her who had written it. All I got in response was a blank stare, and a scratch of the head. She had no idea. WTF! “Mom,” I said, “How in the world does someone write something like that for you, some guy who was obviously totally in love with you, and you can’t even remember his name?” She thought about it for a minute, but could not place who had written it. Wow. I guess unless you were a guy who had been to jail, you got short shrift from my mom in the love department.

   Someone who has been reading these little missives asked Gen and me if we experienced some form of personal catharsis from writing these stories out. I immediately denied that what I felt from writing these things down was in any way cathartic. Then I went home and looked it up, and I feel that I was right about that. Catharsis is a release of emotional tension that restores and refreshes the spirit. I am a Cancer, and Gen is a Scorpio, and believe me when I tell you this, we don’t like to let go of nothin’. Confronting these things head on is no easy task, and the rewards from writing these stories down are not a lightening of any burden from the past. I simply want people to know what it was like for me. For us. And, if they can make the leap, and it somehow pertains to them, what it may have been like for them in some small way as well. TTFN

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8. August 2009 by Frank.

I was putting my eight year old son to bed the other night when I had one of those horrifying flashes go off in my head. One of those gripped with awful, overwhelming, paralyzed with terror flashes. You know the kind, right? Happens to you sometimes while reading your kid a nice bedtime story, right? Am I talking to myself here? Maybe so. I, being an expert at awful, overwhelming, paralyzing terror flashes have been there a time or two myself. So I am trying the best I can to not break down into sobbing tears in front of my kid, choke down the world of hurt and anguish that has just bubbled up into my brain, and finish the chapter I am reading to him. He was pretty surprised when I started tearing up at the end of My Side of the Mountain, which we just finished reading last week, so I don’t know if he is ready to see dear old dad blubbering and wailing and running around his room tearing my hair out. Well, I don’t have much hair to tear out, but the rest would probably freak him out pretty badly.

As I said before, luckily? for me, I have been here before. I look at the pain welling up, I recognize it for what it is and where it is coming from, and I smash it quickly into a safety compartment I have handy for just such occasions that can burst open later. I slam the lid shut on those darn untimely feelings of mine, finish the story, and hightail it out of there. There will be plenty of time to cry over spilled milk later. Suppressing overwhelming emotions like this is a real art form, or maybe an athletic skill. I don’t know if you have ever been overwhelmed instantly and incomprehensibly by grief. I can only best compare it to being hit by a wave in the ocean and being sucked under and pinned down by the undertow. Completely helpless and powerless to resist. Our first urge is to fight it, to struggle to get free, but unfortunately for us, the ocean is just a bit stronger than us. Never been pinned down by a rogue wave, you say? Here’s one the we all remember.

Its like fighting back the urge to vomit, feeling that watery, tingly sensation rising up from your throat, and trying with all your might to suppress it, to make it go away. But it doesn’t. Somehow, that feeling gets a grip on you and won’t let go, and pretty soon you are spewing your guts out all over the place. One time I tried to stop throwing up by clamping my hand firmly over my mouth. It didn’t work. The vomit shot right out of my nose. True story. So why am I making this so graphic and gross? I want to try and relate the power of these emotions coming up, and how easily they can overwhelm our flimsy defenses.

Now that we have that settled, you might be wondering what a segment I called My Evil Stepfather has to do with an eight year old boy’s bedtime story, or my sometimes tenuous grip on reality. As I said, this very thing has happened to me before. I sometimes inevitably see myself reflected in my son. The little me that was. And upon occasions such as this one, I make the dreadful leap of seeing him, so sweet and innocent and dear to me, and superimposing what it was like for me at that very age onto him. All that sweetness and innocence and dearness was there in me as well, and I am swept away with the boundless pain of what I suffered. Sometimes it is just too much to endure. My son’s smiling sweetness has given me this bittersweet gift, to look at him and see myself in his eyes, and to know how terribly I suffered.

Let’s have a pity party. One, two, three…. aawwwww. Here is the story that got this whole train rolling. I was eight years old, and it was the winter of my discontent. I was an active child, always up to something. Sometimes those things would get me into trouble, as the side effects of playing too hard or too loud or too long. My stepfather was never one to interact with me in any way. He commanded and we obeyed. I tried to stay out of his way, but we lived in a small row home at the time, and as it was winter, I am sure that I was getting under foot quite a bit, with no where for him to escape to. I still don’t know how this incident started. But the vivid outcome remains seared into my memory. I am quite sure that I was doing something annoying to him. I just told my son today to stop humming loudly some inane tune that was driving me nuts. I told him three friggin times, and even raised my voice the last time. He decided to leave the room then, so I am not sure if the humming stopped, or just continued elsewhere. Either way, conflict resolved, right?

My stepfather had a much more graphic way of resolving these types of conflict. As I said, I cannot recall the nature of my crime, only the severity of the punishment. Boy, you must be thinking, little Frank must have really gotten his ass beaten in this story. I wish that was the case. See, my stepfather was a trained killer. True story. Our government trained him to kill in the Green Berets. It was one of the few things from his past that he enjoyed talking about. Being trained to kill. He would eat live bugs in front of me for kicks. Just pluck a fly out of the air or pull a worm up from the ground and pop it into his mouth and chew. This practice was somehow totally gross and cool to me at the same time. He would talk about his night drops into strange woods during Green Beret training, being forced to live of the land for seven days while hiking back to base camp. All I can say is that if I was ever forced to live off of bugs for a week, I would certainly never want to repeat the experience just for shits and giggles. But to each his own.

He also had studied some martial arts with a few friends of his, and loved to put painful lock holds on my arms. He was constantly jacking me up in a painful martial grip, laughing maniacally at my pain and helplessness. This was as close to any sort of physical affection towards me as he ever came. Thank God for that. So, to get back to the main point of this story, I am sure you have all been thinking a lot about the upheaval in Iran lately. Me too!!! A few of you may even be old enough to remember way back in the day, when we could only pump gas every few days a week, we had a pacifistic peanut farming rocket scientist as President, and a few dozen American citizens were being held against their will by the government of Iran. It all goes back to the seventies, doesn’t it?

This was a momentous time for our country, and certainly a momentous time for me and my relationship with my evil stepfather. It was the only time I ever saw the man cry. Well, not cry exactly, but tear up. There was a definite glistening in his eyes, I am sure of it. Was this man human after all? He got a call from someone, I don’t know who, to let him know that an old Green Beret buddy of his, a man he had known well in the service, had been the commander of a failed rescue attempt into Iran to save the hostages. All of the men were killed, and it actually brought a tear to his eye.

Often we can forget that our abusers are human at all, and that they may indeed have some of the same feelings and heartfelt emotions that we have. Somehow it seems almost impossible to attribute these traits to someone who has mistreated us on such a profound and consistent basis. I will never forget that brief moment when the monster of my childhood shed real tears. It is burned into my memory, just as deeply and indelibly as the moment he decided to execute my childhood.

This was one of those moments you look back on and wish you could forget, or remember every detail, or perhaps imagine that it had happened to someone else. Maybe you transferred the idea of the memory from a TV show? But they don’t put shit this screwed up on TV. Even in this day and age. As I said before, I don’t really recall what it was I did to piss him off, but I did. He never raised his voice to me. It wasn’t his style. He just did things to get his point across. In this particular case, he went into my room and brought back my favorite toy in the whole wide world, and brought it back with him into the living room where I waited.

It was my G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip, a 12” tall action figure that I had gotten from my grandparents for Christmas that year. I loved my grandparents dearly, and I knew that they loved me, which made the gift even more precious to me. At the time, this was the coolest toy that any eight year old boy could have. Did I mention that it had a grip? A Kung-Fu one? This was hot stuff, and I remember watching my evil stepfather standing over me, holding my now puny looking doll in his big hands, and just going numb somewhere inside. I had a very bad feeling that things were not going to end very well for my G.I. Joe.

My evil stepfather didn’t say anything at this point. He knew that he had my full attention. As he laid my favorite toy down on the chopping block in the middle of our tiny living room, I think I began to shake. Oh, wait. You didn’t have a chopping block in the middle of your living room as a kid. I did. We had a wood stove upstairs in the middle of the living room, with a small chopping block and a pile of wood beside it. And a hatchet. You know, normal kids stuff. So G.I Joe with the Kung-Fu grip gets set down on the chopping block, and you guessed it, my evil stepfather whacked his head right off in front of me with on swift chop. My G.I. Joe fell completely apart, head and arms and legs falling everywhere around the chopping block. One practical thing I learned that day was that most dolls like that are held together by a single extra strength rubber band that runs through the body and holds the head and the limbs together with the torso. Cool. I was completely out of my mind at this point. I don’t think I could have been more deeply horrified or hurt if he had shot me.

But, of course, he wasn’t done yet. He never was. He loved to hammer his points home until the nail was completely driven in. He scooped up all of the limp pieces of my executed G.I. Joe, and marched me over to the bathroom, which was directly off the living room. With me once again watching from a few feet away, my evil stepfather flushed all the pieces down the toilet, not all together, but one at a time. I can still see the head swirling down into the watery vortex, the last vestiges of any hope or joy or love in my young life going with it. That man knew how to cut me to the quick, and he had picked the one thing that he knew was dearest to my heart, and destroyed it callously with extreme prejudice and malice. And then, without a word, he walked away, leaving me standing next to the empty toilet, completely in shock.

As I have said before, different traumatic events effect each of us differently. Some people might not see what the big deal is here. Others might be cringing. I was completely devastated. I can actually remember exactly the point when I went completely numb, and it was miraculously much later in my childhood, but I am sure this incident was a big part of that. I have often remarked to others that I had feelings once, but my parents ran them over with a Zamboni, making sure they went over the rough spots enough times to get one of those smooth, icy finishes. So that’s my story, folks, and I am sticking to it. Tune in next time when you can all go together with me Into the Belly of the Beast. (And yea, this one is going to make the summary execution of my favorite childhood toy by my evil stepfather look like a friggin trip to Disney World.) Peace in the Middle East!!! lolz

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26. March 2009 by Frank.

     A true blue American tradition, like baseball and apple pie. Practiced by every creed and color in the country. You don’t have to speak English to live in the US, but not eating pizza? Fuggetaboutit! Even crazy vegetarians and dirty hippies can eat it. Don’t quote me on this, but I am pretty sure that right after signing the declaration of independence, our founding fathers ordered out for pizza. Could be, rabbit. Some families make it a regular treat. A part of the weekly routine. “It’s Friday night, Johnny. And you know what that means? That’s right. Pizza night!” For other families, it might be a more sporadic but no less anticipated delight. I mean, really. Who doesn’t love pizza? The Taliban?

     At this point you must be scratching your head, wondering if my mom was sick enough to deny us this sacred American sacrament? Did she have no shame? Was she a communist? No. We did in fact partake occasionally in this ritual. One wonders, just how do you fuck up pizza night? Let me explain. No, wait. There’s no time for that. Let me sum up.

     But first, let me digress. I told my sister Gen what I was writing about, and she knew exactly what I was talking about the second I told her the title of this one would be pizza night. Then she laughed at my intense childhood pain, because that is what little sisters do. Even thirty-eight year old ones. This story is not about her personal pain at all. This one will fall squarely on the shoulders of Mary and myself.

     Here’s the windup. It’s Friday night. I am eleven years old. The school week is finally done. The vast and boundless opportunities of the weekend stretch luxuriously out in front of me. I can stay up late and watch some scary movies all night without having to go to bed at any set time. These are pre-VCR days, when I actually had to hold a pillow in front of my face during the really terrifying parts, instead of just hitting the fast forward button. Hammer Films Rule, Baby! Or I might just stay up all night reading the latest Tarzan book I happen to be working on. These were a few of my favorite things.

     I wander into the kitchen and ask my mom what we are having for dinner. As our fearless readers have come to know, this was no idle question. This innocent question was like waiting in the doctor’s office while he silently read your test results behind his desk. The doctor looks up at you from behind his folder, and your heart stops for just a moment. Would it be the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat? Or, as was the case on this particular night, a little bit of both. When she told me that we were having pizza that night, I was immediately elated. I loved pizza. And I had dodged the liver and lima beans bullet. Score one for the home team! That also meant no Hungarian Goulash, Borsht, Onion Soup, overcooked beef roast, hard meatloaf, dried out chicken, or any other of the myriad mystery meat surprises we often had to plow through.

     Anticipation built up all around me. My sister’s were just as glad as I was to be getting pizza for dinner. Just as pleased as I was that we would not be eating whatever brown substance was behind door number three tonight. Finally, the moment came. My evil stepfather got home with the pizza. Now don’t get confused here. My stepfather didn’t bring the pizza home with him after a long day of work. He walked about a block down the street and picked it up. That was probably the most he did all day. He seemed very partial in my view to sitting in his corner chair and drinking. We all sat down to eat at the dinner table. Eleven year old me, ten year old Jenny, six year old Mary, my stepfather and my mother. The pizza was the centerpiece of the table, which worked out well, as we always seemed to have a round kitchen table.

     Finally the box lid was lifted, and I gazed down lovingly at the object of my affection. There is something truly perfect and timeless about pizza. It looks incredibly appetizing, reassuring tired taste buds that a flavor bonanza was on the way. I always liked my pizza plain, with just three key toppings. Salt, pepper, and grease. Watching the first piece lifted up from its cohorts, melting hot cheese drip sliding down the sides, and that perfect smell fully hitting your nostrils for the first time. How delightful that first piece was. Even if I managed to burn the roof of my mouth for the umpteenth time, it was still a small slice of heaven every time. Even with the extreme heat, it is hard to tell where that first piece goes sometimes. One minute I am savoring large bites of saucy, cheese covered joy, the next I am holding a bit of hard crust in front of my face and wondering what happened.

     But on pizza night in my family, I was not allowed this simple, magical pleasure. Under most normal pizza eating circumstances, one wonderful slice would be followed directly by another, and perhaps another, with no pause in the rapturous process of stuffing one’s face with the nectar of the gods. Could anyone reasonably argue that the Ambrosia the Greek Gods spoke of eating on Mount Olympus wasn’t pizza? Instead of enjoying this wonderful, relaxed family moment, I could already feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead. Stress welled up in my chest before I was halfway through my slice, as I gazed around the table in an almost panic to see how my other family members were progressing on their slices.

     It boils down to simple math, really. Two adults, three kids, eight slices of pizza. The adults always eat two pieces each. Half the pizza gone right there. Down to three kids and four slices. That means no second piece for two of us. The viscous game of musical chairs had begun. No time to waste, You needed to pound that first piece back so as to not be left staring into the empty box, trying to pick little bits of dried cheese of the bottom while your lucky sibling slowly chewed their prized second slice. Panic sets in as you watch your little sister across the table from you whittling away at her slice. I was lucky in one sense in that Gen was a pretty skinny kid, and was not a big eater at all. She was happy at that age with just one slice. For Mary and me, it was a little different. We were both big eaters. Even at six, Mary could pack it away. When my son was just her age, we could split a whole large pie jut by ourselves, so I imagine Mary might have wanted more than just one slice at that age. I know I did.

     Dinner should be a pleasant, relaxing time. Families sharing a good meal and relating the ups and downs of their various daily experiences. There should be no winners and losers. But the worst part about gulping down that first slice and scoring the second one was always the disappointed look on Mary’s face as I snagged the last slice from right under her nose. Mary watching me as I enjoyed that last slice of heaven, while she was left to make a meal of her hard crust and the drippings still cooling on the bottom of the box. I walked away from every one of those meals either still hungry for myself, or profoundly remorseful for taking that last slice away from my little sister, who was going to bed still hungry that night. That’s right, I actually felt bad every single time after pizza night.

     Now I have you wondering, maybe money was just that tight. One useless stepfather who never worked, and a mother who worked part time as an elementary school teacher. Not exactly a huge cash flow. But I can tell you one thing about my parents. They never went without their necessities. Cigarettes, because they both smoked at least a pack a day. Coffee all the time. Booze every day. My mom regularly drank a couple of fifths a week, and my stepfather drank beer and the hard stuff every day. And pot. They always managed to have a bag of that laying around just in case, and that shit doesn’t just grow on trees, you know. And my stepfather always had some hidden snack food around the house that only he had access to. That motherfucker wasn’t going to bed hungry on pizza night; I can guarantee you that. But can a brother or a sister get a second slice of pizza, for Christ’s sake?

     I gotta tell you, it’s always something. Some children are beaten, some are molested, and some are completely deprived of sustenance. I am not really sure what to call this type of abuse. But it was constant, it was pervasive, and it was completely effective. I talked to Gen about how hard these stories are to write. It reminds me just a few days after my mom had died, and Gen was reading all of her writings that she found. Gen looked at me and said, “After reading so much of this horrible crap, I wish I could bring her back to life so I could kill her all over again.” Sometimes, I guess, all those proverbial little missed pieces of pizza can add up to a heavy, insurmountable debt. Anyone out there know any voodoo witch doctors?

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15. March 2009 by Frank.

Dear J.,

     So often in the past few weeks my thoughts have centered on you. Being here is such a tremendous opportunity for me and the children that I feel somehow compelled to write to you to share with you various impressions that have come to me while I’m wondering around your, as they say, ‘neck of the woods’.

     Life seems to present many real and vivid questions. For me right now it seems that the most important aspect of my reality is my obligation to my children. There of course, for me is no pat answer. How can one begin to present these “modern day” children with a sense of the true values of human existence? Our present society seems so truly saturated with so much that appears to be the real trash. To try as I said before to present the children with a real alternative is very challenging in our present predicament. Being here does present something very real for all of us. We can, for the time being, have a true sense of ourselves. We cannot change over night but for me at least I have more of a sense of what the children’s real needs are and consequently a more precise clue to my own needs.

     Aside from those questions, the flood last week revealed another aspect of your farm. It is a very safe place to be. A major catastrophe would of course take it, but that would take everything else in the valley. Otherwise, the farm is safe, warm, dry, and even without humans it is friendly. So much has happened there that the vibrations are very positive. Even to me. The place speaks to a unity, perhaps spiritual unity, of the natural forces that affect man. That sounds a little heavy in print but I bet you know what I mean.

     I am grateful and thankful for these moments which have been given to me here. I can feel my body becoming healthier than it’s been for years and when I am able to listen very quietly I believe my soul is growing too

     This is a brief addendum to our last entry, We are all Suffering. My mom wrote this in the same time period of the spring of 1976, as we moved back to Philadelphia by the bicentennial summer celebrations. We were only in the cabin for eight or nine months. Why post such a lucid and sincere and self reflective letter from my mom to one of her favorite relatives? How crazy is this one? The crazy part is after years of moving from one hellish, drug fueled party house to another, after three relationships in quick succession with drunken, drugged out scumbag “musicians” and “artists”, she finally caught a break, and was able to extract herself from the insanity for a moment. My mom expresses here how much better she is feeling, how much more grounded and connected she is. And just like that, my evil stepfather shows up again and tells her he wants her back, and she bolts immediately back to crazy town. Dropping all that peace and quiet and good health for herself, and may I be so bold to add, her dear children she seems so concerned about, for another endless trip back to bizzaro world. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

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11. March 2009 by Frank.

An Unmailed Letter. September of 1976

L.,

     How do you expect me to reply to your letter? Would you have me say - Oh, please R. lets fill our house with junk so that there is no possible way to keep it all clean? Yes R. please see that you stay away as late as possible and come home drunker than anyone else to save the souls of those you drink with and that way too you can avoid all of the children almost 98% of the time. Yes please R. give our house key to every drunk you see and please make it impossible for me to even begin to fulfill my duties to my children.

     L, it is no longer feasible for me to be donkey doo mate for others. If R. can see this and I really believe he can then R. can make a choice between living with a woman, wife, mother, friend, and living with a drunken poet. It appears that the drunken poet is in residence and I am attempting to face a life without the man, husband, father, friend whose presence is missed and loved with every fiber of my being.

     But there is not way that I can beg anything from R.. My responsibility must be towards a positive relationship with my children, my family, myself, God, and my work towards finding something higher in myself. It was no longer possible for me to do anything toward these goals in the extreme chaos of Fifth Street.

     My feelings for R. are very deep and very real. It is quite likely that there will never be another man in my life. Certainly we would be with him now however, L, we have not been asked. We have closed no doors and are quite open for any invitation. We are all suffering.

Topical excerpt from another letter from same time period:

     This may or may not be time to speak of R.. My emotional unbalance could not handle the psychotic personalities he was including in our household. To have men crawling through our windows at any hour of the AM, in any condition was very startling to my being. I could not tolerate awoken in that way and then to listen to them vomiting for hours after that was to difficult for me at present, to gain some objective distance from. When we had to discuss these matters that were pertinent to our relationship R. automatically fell into the role of male chauvinist and refused to discuss anything. It is apparent to me that R. and I are together because of an instinctive caring for one another. But that caring without the reality of God had always been a question for me.

     We are all well physically. We are all still in a state of needing R..

We are all Suffering.

     My mom wrote these letters after moving myself and my two sisters out of the city and into the hills of upstate PA to a little log cabin by a stream on my uncle’s family property. My grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins lived less than a mile up the road. I was seven at the time, Gen and Mary were six and two. I had no idea at the time why we moved away from Philly, and out of the house we had shared for three years with my stepfather R.. In reading her letters I now know that he had cheated on her. We spent the entire school year in the cabin before returning to R. and the city.

     In reading these letters I am glad I was such a heavy sleeper at that age, and was not up to hear all the drunks climbing in the windows and throwing up just down the hall from my room all night long. What blows my mind is the fact that my mom would move us all back to that environment. My stepfather was a real charmer when he wanted something. My mom clearly states in these letters how much we were all suffering from missing him. How we all needed him. Mary was in diapers, so who knows how much she missed him. To Gen and me, he was the devil incarnate, sent from the pits of hell with the sole purpose of torturing us as much as humanly possible. I know what true, unbridled hate feels like, as I felt it deeply for this man.

     What absolutely crushes me the most about this particular time of my life was the fact that my mother saw enough pain and suffering from her relationship with this terrible man that she packed up her three children and moved us three hours away from him. Away from the chaotic, fucked up life we had with him. In reading these postings, I am sure you are getting a pretty clear picture of a very painful and confusing childhood. Alcoholism, drug addiction and insanity are not a good mixture for a well-adjusted childhood. This brief reprieve from the torture and insanity was perhaps made the rest more painful. I have searched my memories of that rather idyllic time in my life. Try as I might, I cannot come up with any crazy mom stories from that period.

     I went to school right up the road from the cabin and enjoyed it. I had friends. I played every day outside in the beautiful woods that surrounded our house. I got to see my grandparents several times a week. I played with my cousins regularly. Without my stepfather around, my mom spent more time being a mom. She baked cookies and made candy on the stove. These are my memories of that time. Pulling us away from that chance at freedom was so typical of her. She was a real carrot and stick mom. She didn’t dangle the carrot just out of reach. She let you eat the carrot, and then beat you with the stick for eating it.

     My evil stepfather drank more than anyone my mom had ever met, and that is really saying something. He did more drugs than everyone else. He cheated on her. He hit me and belittled me constantly. He molested my sister Gen every week of her young life. He ignored his own daughter Mary like it was his favorite hobby. My mom rescued all of us from that life. She got us out. We were safe. We were sound. We were surrounded by loving family members. We were living in a beatific paradise. Then, just like that, it was all gone. She brought us all back to the house of pain. And we hadn’t even disobeyed the law. We were not done suffering.

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2. March 2009 by Frank.

     Gen and I were talking last night about dinner, and whether or not her kids were going to eat or not. It seems like all of her kids have different quirks when it comes to food, but none of them are normal eaters. Neither is my own son. She is actually worried that her oldest might be malnourished in some way. Like berri-berri or scurvy. But after what we were put through in the Gulag, I mean our childhood, she just can’t bring herself to force him to eat certain foods just because she knows they are good for him. After all, our mother was convinced the foods she forced us to eat were good for us. Wasn’t she just trying to be a good mother?

     Let’s take a trip back in the time machine. I will pick a year. Lets call it 1977. Some guy has come into our house and is sitting at the round wooden table in our kitchen. This is nothing unusual. Our house had a revolving cast of characters coming in and out of it. Some we knew quite well, others were, well, strangers. I was eight years old and knew how to lie and cheat and steal, and I was learning how to roll a mean joint, but I had never been told a thing about stranger danger. (Not to ruin the ending of this story for anyone, but there is no funny business or hanky-panky in this one. Just forced feedings. I swear. So relax) This guy is at the kitchen table, and my mom is serving him coffee, and he is telling us how his car has a flat tire, and he didn’t have a spare to fix it, and could he borrow a phone to call a tow truck. Pretty normal stuff, right?

    We did live right in the center of a large city,  things like this happened from time to time. Our family knew all about tire problems. Our car was constantly having a major tire problem in our neighborhood. We would go out in the morning and all the tires would be missing, the car up on metal milk crates. Just a little local flavor.

     Flat tire guy is telling my mom stories, and she is telling a few herself. I don’t remember much of that. You know, boring adult talk, blah blah blah… Then he starts talking about this group he is involved with that practices fighting in armor with swords and spears and bows and arrows. That got my attention. Sounded pretty cool to an eight-year-old boy who had owned a few wooden swords in his day. He talked about this group he belonged to that dressed up like medieval knights and trained to fight like them. I was thrilled. Why hadn’t I ever thought of that? Tire guy finally got a tow truck to show up after a few calls and a few cups of coffee. He took off into the night, another stranger just passing through. But my sweet mother, bless her heart, had gotten his phone number, and an invite for me and Jenny to go and watch his group of crazed barbarians perform their ancient rituals of sweat and steel. Score one for the home team!

     To say that I was excited about this prospect is a complete understatement. I was in a frenzy. How in the world could there possibly be anything as cool as this group in the whole wide world. How could I be lucky enough to meet someone that belonged to a group like this, and was actually going to take me to witness it myself. Fuck Disney or the Grand Canyon. I was going to my first SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) weapons practice at eight years old! Finally, the appointed day arrived. I was on the edge of my seat. Ramped up all day long. Ready to roll. Practically peeing in my pants in anticipation. Then, tragedy struck. I know your thinking, oh, no. That poor little eight-year-old Frank. He was so excited. What could possibly happen to ruin this for him? That’s right, folks, the worst thing that could happen, inevitably occurred. The one thing standing between me and a few hours of blissful childhood heaven. It was….. dinner time!!! AAAGGGHHHH!!!!! (Does this seem a bit over the top to some of you? It might. To my sisters and to me? We understand in the way that survivors understand. These little slices of hell are seared forever into our brains. We cannot forget. What? You were never terrified to sit down and eat dinner in your family? Lucky you.)

     In all fairness to my mom, she tried to cook healthy and tasty meals for our family. She quite often failed miserably on the taste side of things, but she did make the effort. Unfortunately for me, that night happened to be mystery soup night. I can’t tell you what it started out as. Or what all the other healthy ingredients were. I can only tell you what was on the bottom of my bowl when I had finished. A dreaded group of Lima Beans was staring back up at me uneaten. There are certain foods we all have that we can’t stand. Sometimes it is the taste, sometimes the way it looks, or the texture, or just the idea of the food itself can make you sick. I have always hated beans myself.

     When I was a kid, I hated them all. Like anything else in our lives, there were some I hated more than others. Black beans and navy beans were not nearly as bad as kidney beans, for example. Garbonzo beans were the worst. Just looking at them would remind me of the awful feeling of them in my mouth, and I would start to retch. To this day it completely squicks me out to even think about them. For me it was the texture of the beans that I couldn’t stand. Something about the dry, grainy feel of the beans in my mouth completely revolted me at that age. Our taste buds mellow and change over time, but at eight years old beans were the great Satan to me.

     The flat tire medieval sword guy shows up just as we are finishing dinner. He was ready to take us off to his super duper cool weapons practice session. I jump from the table to go, but a disapproving look from my mother freezes me in my tracks. She is looking down over my shoulder into the mostly empty bowl of whatever soup and frowning. “You need to finish all of your dinner before you go” she says, the permafrost drooping frown returning to her face, hardening there. Now let me clue you in on a little secret here, fearless readers. My mom knew that I detested Lima Beans. I was eight years old, and was never a picky eater. It wasn’t like I never ate my greens. I ate just about everything you put in front of me. My Uncle Joe used to call me the human garbage can, and for good reason. I actually ate food out of trash cans at that age. It wasn’t like I hadn’t choked down the rest of the slop she served up that night. I was trapped. There was no mercy in those pitiless eyes. She sat me back down in front of the Lima Beans. I will never forget staring into that bowl with that pre-vomit watery feeling creeping up in my mouth, tears beginning to well up in my eyes, and tire guy standing there looking at his watch wondering just what the holdup was.

    I know some of you are thinking come on Frank, it was only seven or eight Lima Beans, for Christ’s sake. How bad could it be? Believe me when I tell you, I would have rather eaten eight goat turds than choke down those Lima Beans. I had no idea what goat turds tasted like, but those beans? I had eaten those before. Ugghhh. Time was running out. Flat tire guy had people to beat up with blunt weapons, and that wasn’t going to wait forever. I finally dug into the beans, my mother literally standing over me like some grim jailer, making sure I choked down every last one. Nothing was ever free in my relationship with my mother. She always made me pay the hardest price for anything good in my life.

     Finally, having satisfied whatever sicko fantasy of good parenting had been wafting through her head that day, I was free to go with flat tire guy and Jenny to watch the weapons class. The funny thing about so many parts of my childhood, I cannot for the life of me remember one thing about the practice we went to. Bowl of nasty lima beans: permanently burned into my cortex. Awesome medieval sword practice with a bunch of high powered super geeks: no memory whatsoever. The good things constantly faded out of my memory. Is there somewhere I can get a refund for this shit? Seriously.

     Did I mention that my mom sent eight year old me and seven year old Jenny of with flat tire guy by ourselves? For all of you parents out there, I ask you, would you send your young precious children off for hours with some guy you met once? Remember, we didn’t meet this guy at church or a school function. He wasn’t even a good friend of a good friend of our family. Nope. He was just random guy. Doesn’t sound bad enough? I was not allowed to go back to super cool medieval weapons practice. I was told that I kept trying to get out onto the fighting field myself. Go figure. My sister had behaved admirably, and was allowed to go back again by herself with tire guy a few times. As I said at the beginning of this montage, flat tire guy was completely cool. He didn’t try anything out of the ordinary. But handing your seven year old daughter over to a complete stranger over and over again. Really mom?

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