Suffering Ends When Awakening Begins

Chapter 3 ~ Family Dynamics

I can trace the problems in the family dynamic back to my parents' upbringings at least. Life in my immediate family was pretty wild. My parents argued and fought a lot. Maybe they weren't made for each other, but how could they possibly have known.

Mom was raised on the South Side of Chicago, the second oldest of four kids. The other three were boys. She didn't get much education, but she was very creative. Her father died when she was eight. Her mother, a nurse, raised her and her brothers mostly on her own. She was sixteen when she got married and seventeen when she started having kids. She never had a chance to grow up.

My father was an only child and was not treated well by his parents. With their permission, he went into the US Marines early to get out of the house. And his childhood was definitely challenging. Still, he was a good guy.

When he wasn't drinking, it was easy to see he had a huge heart and a tremendous love for his children. And the man could build or make anything, from a room addition to a boat. He made a pontoon houseboat in 1966 when I was five. I remember watching him build it. When coming out of the cabin, there were only about twenty inches on each side—with no rails! It was very nerve-racking going out on the front deck while the boat was cruising down the river.

That boat was important to me, but there was another boat in my childhood that had even more special meaning.

My grandfather had a forty-five foot yacht, the largest one in the harbor, an awesome yacht, and I got to spend a lot of time on it. I would sit in the front and catch the breeze and the mist coming off the bow wake. Or I'd go up onto the sky deck and enjoy the sun and the 360 degree view.

The real excitement was on the weekends when the yacht club would have fish fries, and all the boats would tie up next to one another. People would go from boat to boat to get to the dock. It was one big party.

I loved cruising up and down the Illinois River. We'd beach the yacht at a spot called the sandpits so we could go swimming. We'd jump off the bow or the stern usually, but sometimes my grandfather let us jump off the sky deck. It was a fantastic time. I loved that yacht!

It was so calming and peaceful, a refuge from all the crazy stuff that went on in my childhood—the fighting between my parents, their anger toward me, what sometimes seemed to be their lack of love for me. On the yacht I quickly and easily forgot all my troubled family life. Thinking back now brings back memories of joy and serenity; those times really kept me together. A day on the yacht was like a shot in the arm of good times and happiness. It never lasted long enough though. I always longed to go back as soon as I could to get another fix. It was like a dream life, and it created a dream in me—that one day I would have a yacht of my own. I believed that having my own yacht would allow me to have all the peace and tranquility I needed. Somehow, having my own yacht would mean being truly happy, never having to worry about anything. Being on my granddad's yacht was a magic carpet ride. It was the closest thing I had to therapy, and it worked wonders while it lasted.

But when Granddad pulled into the dock after a day of peace, it was back to reality for me. When my dad drank, his anger would come to the fore. One day my sisters and I heard a commotion outside. I ran out the front door and saw Dad fighting with the neighbor, over what I don't know. They were wrestling on the bushes and punching each other. Dad ended up with a black and blue eye. I got scared. I didn't understand why he had to fight.

In the marriage itself, as the months turned to years, the relationship between my mother and father became more volatile, the yelling intensified, and there were even physical fights between the two of them. It made me timid, afraid of my parents and other adults.

I assumed I was the cause of some of these problems. It didn't seem people received counseling back then; you just dealt with problems the best you could and hoped things would turn out right. The majority of the time they didn't. I could count the times on one hand remembering being happy as a child.

My parents' relationship was troubled going back to long before I can remember. When I was a year old, my dad had kicked my mom out of the house because he thought she was having an affair. Dad swore to me he never touched my mom around the time my little sister would have been conceived. In fact, my little sister looks nothing like my older sister or me. Today, she insists that my father is not her father and that she knows who her real father is.

My parents separated again when I was five. That episode I do remember. My mom and my older sister and I moved to the apartment my mom's parents owned in a three flat on the South Side of Chicago.

The apartment in Chicago was always a little noisy because of the number of people in the house and the traffic outside. A separation like that is a shock to any child, and it certainly was to me, but there were things in my new life I enjoyed. I liked running up the stairs to the other apartments and playing outside. And there were a couple of kids I played with. But it was hard for me to make friends.

We lived with Grandma for about four months, and then my parents decided to get back together. As we packed up the car for the move back to our house, one of my few friends was hanging out with me. He was bummed out that I was moving. I was sad about it too. My friendships were few, and any refuge from my family life was a big deal for me. I wanted to continue to be his friend, but I wasn't sure how that would happen.

"Don't worry," I said. "We'll still be friends because you're nice to me. I'll let you buy me an ice cream cone." I don't know why I said that, exactly. It just seemed like it was appropriate to make a pact at that moment. But, actually, I never saw him again. It was just part of the chaos and instability of my life.

The day we moved to Rolling Meadows was unforgettable. I was running in and out of the house, carrying boxes in from the car, the smell of the cardboard and tape signaling the start of something new. At one point I set a box down on the living room floor and turned to run outside and get more. I put my hands out in front of me, like I was flying. Someone had just gone out and closed the glass storm door. My hands hit the glass, and it shattered, leaving my hands and fingers covered in blood. It was scary, for me and everybody else who saw it, but it wasn't as bad as it looked. With several Band-Aids, I was good as new. I was eager to begin this new chapter in my life, but maybe if I'd been older, I'd have understood the incident with the glass door as symbolic of the home life I'd have there. Really the same one I'd always had with my parents. It wasn't really a new beginning at all. It was the same old story.

In the winter of 1967, we were hit by one of the largest snowstorms in Chicago history. Nearly two feet of snow fell. Back then it always seemed to take a couple of days to dig out from a big storm before businesses, schools, and society would start functioning at a normal pace again. We were all stuck at home but doing what we could to deal with the effects of the storm. My dad was snow blowing the driveway near the garage, and I was his little helper, shoveling snow at the end of the driveway. The drifts were bigger than me. Each shovelful was heavy, and I was really struggling. I'd been at it for ten minutes or so when I lifted a huge shovelful and felt a sudden pain in my lower abdomen. I dropped my shovel, doubled over, and crumpled to the ground. As I lay on my side, I saw Dad coming toward me, leaping through the drifts like a deer. He scooped me up and carried me inside and called an ambulance. Somehow, that ambulance made it through all that snow and took me to the hospital. Mom rode with me.

The emergency room doctor told my mother I had a double hernia and needed surgery to repair it right away.

I was laying on an exam table surrounded by a curtain. Every time I moved, the clean, white paper on the table rustled. I was trying to stay as still as I could so I could hear what the adults were saying about me. The doctor and my mom were standing just outside the curtain. No matter how still I was, I still couldn't make out what was being said, but I could hear the doctor's cold, matter-of-fact tone. It was like he was talking about a wrecked car. Years later, my mom told me what he'd said. "Unfortunately, ma'am, due to your son's severe asthma, the situation is grave. He's not likely to make it through the surgery. If you want to do something, you might go ahead and pick out a coffin for your son. The odds are very slim he'll come through the surgery alive."

But I did make it. Somehow.