Family Ties

I didn't know my dad's father. He died when I was a baby. To hear my dad tell it, Grandpa was a mean son of a bitch, a rageaholic who when he drank made life hell for my grandmother and everyone else. My earliest recollection of Grandma was that of a saint, lacking only the wings. She never complained, and if she had suffered any abuse at his hands, she kept it to herself. She radiated love and kindness toward everyone in her limited world.

It wasn't until my dad's brother died and my aunt brought us some of Grandma's memorabilia that I realized just how desperate she must have been. Tucked away in her Bible were old newspaper clippings articulating the work of the Washingtonians; a group dedicated to aiding alcoholics. That group was the forerunner to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dad had four siblings; three brothers and a sister. To my knowledge, the only two who drank were Dad and Uncle Gene. By far, they were the kindest and most gentle of the whole lot. As a young child of eight, I was genuinely aware of that fact. In all probability, it was a result of eavesdropping on adult conversations.

We rarely saw Uncle Carl. He was the oldest and rumored to be the most successful. He was a draftsman that at some point in his career had declined an offer to sign on with Walt Disney before Disney became famous. Uncle Carl lived in California, clear across the country, and rarely made it home.

Later on, my impression of Uncle Carl was that he was ashamed of his humble beginnings and preferred to distance himself both geographically and emotionally. Although he wasn't unkind, he was rigid, quite proper and aloof; a textbook example of the oldest sibling of an adult child of an alcoholic.

They all had their issues.

Next in line was Uncle Ralph. He lived nearby but was reclusive, suspicious of most people to the point of paranoia, and extremely introverted.

Aunt Selma suffered from chronic depression and committed suicide.

Uncle Gene lived a few hundred miles away, and I only remember him visiting us a few times so I'm not sure how excessive his drinking was. But he always had a cold beer in his hand while Aunt Dorothy hovered over him, keeping count.

That rageaholic alcoholic environment marked all of them in one way or another.


Family Dysfunction

Dysfunction breeds and festers
In the cauldron of addiction
It casts a net of broken dreams
Claiming family jurisdiction.

Behaviors often go unrecognized
Clues lie dormant for a while
Until another victim's life unfolds
In fates of alcoholic bile.


Mom was raised with an addiction just as devastating as alcoholism. Her father, Grandpap Allen, was a compulsive gambler. He was an affable Irishman with a big smile and a line of bullshit. Mom used to say that Grandpap could sell a refrigerator to the devil if he could get his foot in the door. He was a traveling salesman, and for a time, I guess, did quite well at it. But that was when Mom was young, and life was still good.

Gerri and I loved him. We spent many a weekend with him and Grandma Allen so Mom and Dad could get a break, (whatever that meant).

For a long time, I didn't understand Mom's animosity toward him. Everything he said or did seemed to anger her. Later, I came to realize that our adulation of him was a powerful trigger for her. He had let his own children down, time and time again.

Due to his gambling, my grandfather had lost a brand new home, a string of jobs and several cars. When the bottom fell out, they moved from Ironton, Ohio to West Virginia and were forced to adapt to an entirely different lifestyle. On more than one occasion, Mom would come home from school and find them sitting on the steps, suitcases in hand. They had been evicted again for non-payment of rent
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Mom was the youngest of three siblings. Uncle John was ten years older and Aunt Mimi was two years behind John. The character traits and problems that the three of them inherited from that dysfunctional environment were similar to adult children of alcoholics.

Uncle John, like my dad's oldest sibling, got the hell out and stayed away, except for an occasional visit and telephone calls to make sure all was okay and no one was in dire need. Uncle John affected me as a very straight-laced, humorless perfectionist. He always seemed uptight, but he was a successful husband and father. I learned from his daughter just a couple of years ago, we reconnected after five decades, and he never discussed his upbringing with her or her two brothers.

Mom's sister, big Aunt Mimi, was what is referred to as a low-bottom drunk. Not only did she go as far down the ladder as feasible, but she lived there for the last fifteen years of her life. The fact that physiologically, the human body can sustain for years the kind of abuse and neglect that alcohol doles out was a hard lesson to swallow. Death would have been a blessing.

Mom and Dad entertained family every holiday. Up until the time Aunt Mimi became argumentative and started falling down steps, she was part of all of our celebrations. When Mom finally wrote her off, Gerri and I were appalled. Later, I realized she couldn't watch it anymore. She had repeatedly tried to talk her into seeking help, but to no avail.

Gerri and I attempted to keep in touch with big Aunt Mimi over her declining years. What we evidenced was heart-breaking. We never knew what we were going to find when we visited.

Aunt Mimi had taken up with people who were scamming her. On the pretext of bringing her food and checking on her, they would take her to the bank to cash her social security checks, buy her a couple of fifths and a handful of canned goods, and disappear until the next month. Sometimes the scammers who had no place else to go would be camped out in her living room for days on end. To this day, every time I think of her, that image of an old lady dressed in a moth-eaten mouton coat and a dirty pair of gloves cut out at the knuckles lying in a soiled bed with an open bottle of whiskey sitting beneath it over-rides whoever else she may have been. And when I hear that term low-bottom high-bottom drunk, I am reminded that the only thing separating them is the word 'yet'.

On her seventy-ninth birthday, the last one Gerri and I acknowledged, we took her a birthday gift. It was February 14th, Valentines day. That winter had been extremely cold. When we knocked on the door, we couldn't rouse her so we went around the side of the house to the entrance near her bedroom and tried to get in. The door was frozen shut. Her gas had been disconnected for non-payment. She remained antagonistic and wanted nothing to do with leaving that apartment. Our only alternative would have been to commit her, which we chose not to do.

Three years later in her eighty-third year, we received a call that she was in the hospital on life support. My mother refused to go. Gerri and I gathered our mixed bag of old memories, apprehensions, and lingering sense of duty and paid our final visit. The sound of the respirator managed to over-ride the drumming of our accelerated heartbeats, and at the same time, silenced our unspoken grief.

The next day as we struggled over the option to assume the responsibility of pulling the plug, her Higher Power interceded, setting her free at last.


Amber Liquid

At dawn the dew was shed like tears
Down the dirty window pane,
To cleanse the film of sorrow
That engulfed what now remained.

She lay stretched out in loneliness
Beneath a soiled and tattered sheet,
While visions of a wasted life
Would rewind, just to repeat.

On the floor, a dark brown bottle
Her companion all those years,
Spilled out its amber liquid
No escape now to drown her fears.

In the end, it had betrayed her
Stole those who cared away,
Death held peace, the only blessing
That relieved her on that day.

***************


Sentence by sentence, as I put pen to paper on my family tree, my naivety was being stripped away. The ramifications this horrible disease had on our family was earth-shattering.


Because my father was my hero, looking at his addiction through a lens that excluded delusion was devastating. I had always blamed Mom for all of the upheavals. When Mom gave him hell for spending too much time at the corner bar, I was the first to jump to his defense. No wonder he drank, who wouldn't if they had to live with her constant nagging?

Over the years, that skewed perception, reinforced by her co-dependent response to his drinking, forged an ever-widening fissure in our fragile mother-daughter relationship. Her need to control his drinking was tangled up with all of those fears and uncertainties overflowing from her own dysfunctional background. Combine that with obsessive-compulsive disorder, an inferiority complex hiding beneath a Caesar complex, and BOOM, welcome to my world; a world where confusion and inconsistencies reigned.

Mom was a workaholic, driven by perfectionism. She held down a full-time job, provided home-cooked meals, kept a spotless home, and spent endless hours dressing up her fear and frustration by excelling at all of them. She didn't have time to bother with foolish notions like relaxing, horsing around, or simply chatting for the sake of chatting.

Dad, on the other hand, was self-employed. He was an exterminator. Many of his small contracts were bars that required his services after hours. A perfect setup for a guy who liked boiler-makers (a shot of whiskey, chased by beer). Even in between the beer-joint hours he always had time to listen to our day, discuss frivolous ideas, and laugh. A luxury Mom apparently could not afford.

While Mom was painting the perfect picture, Dad was relaxing at the bar and giving us periodic emotional support. I probably loved my mom, but I never liked her. Her insecurities manifested themselves in what I found to be ugly traits.

She elevated herself by constantly criticizing others; neighbors, co-workers, and even relatives. One of my greatest fears growing up was that she was probably pounding somebody else's eardrum about me.

She placed each and every male boss that she ever worked for on the same pedestal, where every night at the dinner table, they were praised for the one quality that she thought my dad lacked; ambition.

When Dad had one too many to drink, he usually became even more mellow. Except that is, when he became depressed and threatened to walk the railroad tracks, striking the fear in all of us that he was thinking about committing suicide. Or, when he revealed a side of himself that both shocked and scared my sister and me half to death.

Those times Mom never knew when to quit. She would strut right up to his six-foot frame, all four foot eleven of her, and rant and rave until he would push or slap her. As much as I loved Dad, on those occasions, my sympathy was with her.

My sister and I learned that approaching holidays meant that an imminent threat lurked on the horizon. The anticipation of fun and all of the preparation was usually marred by Dad's need to start celebrating at Vern's Bar a few days ahead of time.

Sundays were family days. And unless it rained, we hiked to Nichol's Hill. Mom would carefully pack a picnic basket brimming with homemade goodies that she and Dad would take turns pulling in a wagon. Gerri and I filled our knapsacks with the paper products, table cloth, and a blanket. Then off we would go.

It was about a four-mile trek, punctuated with about a mile and a half of hilly terrain. Some days the heat was relentless, and in between the huffing and puffing, Gerri and I would be moaning and groaning under our breath. But once we reached the spring and spread our blanket, Mom poured everyone a cold iced tea from the thermos and the discomfort fell away in the shade of a lazy afternoon filled with games, fried chicken, and best of all, fun and laughter. Those were perfect days...until we made our routine pit stop at Red Hanks on the way home.

Red Hanks was another neighborhood beer-joint (back then there was one on every corner). There was Vern's, the closest and most frequented. A heavily trafficked set of concrete steps paved the way to the Alvan on McColloch Street. And three doors down from that place was Snyders. We were on a first-name basis with the owners and all of the regulars.

Each bar had its own significance. Vern's was the closest and where Dad did most of his alone time drinking. It was the crux of most of Mom and Dad's troubles. Mom did not like being left out, but more importantly, it was impossible to control his alcohol intake from behind the switchboard at the hospital where she worked shifts.

Then there were those two incidents that probably justified her concern. Because of its proximity, Dad felt secure in the fact that we would fare okay if he slipped off for a few while we were in his charge. How much trouble could we get into? We were good kids, right?

It didn't happen often, but one day my sister and I got into a big fight. I tried to stop Gerri from bothering Mom at work and worrying her. I even agreed to put the knife down, if she would do the same with the scissors. But I was unsuccessful. Mom left her job and was home within half an hour, fuming at us, and Dad, for leaving us alone. Nobody got hurt. Back then, I couldn't wrap my head around why she made such a big deal about it. That argument went on for over a week.

Now the slashed wrist incident, that was a different story.

Gerri and I were goofing off. We did that a lot when we were unsupervised. Dad stopped for a few, and Mom was working afternoons. It was all in fun. Gerri was out on the patio, and just as she came barreling toward me, I slammed the back door shut, and her arm went crashing through the glass pane. Blood squirted everywhere.

Alarmed, frightened, and knowing we were in trouble, I wrapped the gushing wound and decided to call Dad at Verns. It required five stitches. We were eight and ten years old. Guess Mom had a point after all.

The Alvan and Snyders tended to be family affairs. They both had good food, bowling machines, and a host of other kids whose parents, like ours, were seeking a few hours relief from the tedium of their work week. I could always bank on the fact I would run into my best friend, Gina, at one of these fine establishments.

Poor Gina. I always wondered if she was embarrassed by her parents. It never failed. As the evening wore on and the booze kept flowing, they would become boisterous and crude. A vicious argument would always ensue. Thank God, my parents didn't behave like that. I remember thinking, They must be alcoholics.

Red Hanks, the bar at the top of the hill where we capped off our Sunday picnics was the one my sister and I both hated. It was a blemish on an otherwise perfect day. To begin with, we didn't know any of the kids. It was located in the projects, a place where we were not permitted to play, even though it was just around the corner from where we lived. The kids didn't like us and we didn't like them.

We would arrive around 6:00 p.m; be sent outside to play until dusk, then go back inside and languish in our boredom while Mom and Dad continued to order over and over again one more beer. Resting our heads on the table, or falling asleep, invited a swift nudge under the table to the shins. It was usually during Boston Blackie, a detective series that aired at 10 p.m. when we trekked on home.

Monday mornings were "Up and at em, kids, it's a school day."

Our parents were good, hard-working people who did their best. We may have been poor, but we always had a roof over our heads, home-cooked meals, and decent clothes on our back. We never doubted for a minute that we were loved, but the alcohol problem had a way of snaking its contradictions into the fabric of our lives.

Periodically, when the shit would hit the fan and Mom would threaten to leave, Dad would quit. Sometimes it would last for months at a time. Things would improve, the fighting would cease, and Dad would attack home improvement tasks with gusto--there was that ambition Mom was always talking about. It was there all along, hiding inside the Black Label. Mom was easier to live with, and the tension that furrowed her brow and pursed her lips began to relax.

Then bang, without warning, the rug was ripped out from under us. The magic carpet ride was over.

Over the years, the cycle continued. I could never figure out what triggered these relapses, but I did recognize the fact that it always began with the mindset that he could stop at the corner for just one beer. Just one always led to another and another.

The length in between drinks didn't matter. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Little did any of us know at the time, that it is the engine, not the caboose, that runs you over. The word alcoholic was never bandied about in our home. No one really understood the disease or the various ways it manifested itself. It remained disguised for years until some of us trickled into recovery.


Addiction (an Acrostic poem)

Adverse reaction to chemicals
Disguised in fermented fantasies
Dreams defaced in alleyways
Incentive evicted, room for rent
Crystal conveys new images--
Traces of meth in rotting teeth
Isolation creeping closer
Orange jumpsuits carry jacked-up price tag
Nothing to salvage, sobriety shot.

***************

By midnight, I was worn out. All I wanted to do was turn down the static and bury myself under my blanket of denial. But I still had a mountain of crap to unearth. My own, as well as Luke's usage, was weighing heavy on my heart. Luke's alcoholism couldn't be denied. But the guilt that I had been lugging around for failing to recognize and address it was going to be a huge hurdle. As for my own romance with alcohol, I had a gnawing suspicion that what was about to be revealed would rob me of my delusion. Chit-Chat was threatening to put the cap on my escape hatch.