I have a letter in my hand from my grandfather, Richard F. Giersch, to "darling Peeps", then in her late teens. Richard Giersch was a first-rate engineer involved with the invention of air conditioning, and he talks about his projects in the letter. But the burden of the letter is an appeal to his daughter to answer him frankly on a matter of "fact": did he, on her confirmation day in the church(around age 14) tell her that he would KILL her? He then describes his struggles with his wife's "mental attitude" in a "trying period of life". At this time, BB, Lil's mom, was about 50, possibly going through menopause, which was little understood at that time.
The conflict of Lil's parents figured large in her life. There is the often repeated story of teen-aged Lil retreating to the shower so as to drown out the sound of her parents arguing. It is apparent from the letter that Richard was "on the run" from BB from early in their marriage, that her paranoia could turn a harmless expression into a death threat, putting Richard under a permanent cloud. It sounds similar to what happened between me and Muz. Since Richard died in 1952 when I was four, I never knew him, but Lil always spoke glowingly of him as a hero: inventor, musician and adoring father.
My impression of BB, as she visited periodically in the 60's and 70's(dying in 1981), was of this immense dignity floating through the world in a cloud of sweet-smelling emollients and powders, supported by a complicated system of undergarments. She was the aging belle, secure in her social superiority, telling stories about what seemed to me the ante-bellum South(though in reality it was the Jim Crow era). Her feelings could be hurt easily, so leave it to me during one of her visits, in the coltish aimlessness of adolescence, to blurt out "Why don't you go home?" I can still remember that look she gave me, with her swimmy eyes behind thick glasses--there were worlds of disappointment and hurt back there. My remark became a family horror-story, but I wonder now how much it reflected the uneasiness of those visits....not to justify my rudeness!
So, in 1944, as Lil headed into marriage and family fueled by a genuine romance, there was another kind of running away going on: the pointless, endless wrangling of BB and Richard would NOT be carried into the next generation.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
TWENTY YEARS
If you count 20 years from Robert J. Watt's death, you arrive at 1959. This was a big year for me, eleven going on twelve, moving from Bracknell, England to Smithtown, New York; and on the cusp of adolescence. We don't do life in 20 year chunks, yet we ourselves felt the weight of the 20 this last fall as we gathered for Mom's show. At the very least, marking time by this method is a tool for interpreting what's really going on.
So, in 20 years, Obi had gone from lonely grief and a family shake-up to a well-launched professional career, a wife, 6 children and the wherewithal to provide an expansive--in some ways idyllic--suburban lifestyle for himself. He loved his work, enjoyed his family, went all over the world, worked with his hands--and drank.
Every generation has a set of lies that it adopts and doggedly clings to, even when the truth starts to protest. In our time, "free" sexual expression is one of those lies. Back then, the lies included "drunkenness is funny" and "smoking is good for you". Obi drank and smoked and started having "incidents" at parties, going out of control. There were driving problems and disappearances, and all this in the light of the threat of being instantly fired if he showed up to fly at Pan Am "under the influence".
Alcohol abuse, like any other dependency, is a symptom of unresolved issues from the past. I know so from my own battles with alcohol in my adult years, and the point is re-enforced by what I have learned from a 12 step program, Celebrate Recovery, this past year. We as a family had a lot of fun in those years of growing up, because both Lil and Obi--as you know first-hand from the grandchildren years--were generous, adventuresome and instinctively nurturing. But how could they know, having swallowed the current cultural lie, that the sterling qualities they had in such abundance would be tainted and twisted by the contents of a bottle?
In Obi's case it seems to me the bottle was his self-medication against all those painful things he endured in his formative years, things which disturbed and threatened him. They were like a black hole you don't dare get close to, because it sucks you into oblivion. During his young adult life, Obi was blessed with his uncle Homer, a successful businessman and world traveler who stood in for his deceased brother Robert. He was a great fellow, who offered Obi some much needed fatherly steadiness, but he too was firmly in the grip of drink.
Obi's formative years were marked by the Depression, which was followed by a terrible war. Many--especially the soldiers--made it a policy to not look back. The past can't be changed, true; but it can change you.
So, in 20 years, Obi had gone from lonely grief and a family shake-up to a well-launched professional career, a wife, 6 children and the wherewithal to provide an expansive--in some ways idyllic--suburban lifestyle for himself. He loved his work, enjoyed his family, went all over the world, worked with his hands--and drank.
Every generation has a set of lies that it adopts and doggedly clings to, even when the truth starts to protest. In our time, "free" sexual expression is one of those lies. Back then, the lies included "drunkenness is funny" and "smoking is good for you". Obi drank and smoked and started having "incidents" at parties, going out of control. There were driving problems and disappearances, and all this in the light of the threat of being instantly fired if he showed up to fly at Pan Am "under the influence".
Alcohol abuse, like any other dependency, is a symptom of unresolved issues from the past. I know so from my own battles with alcohol in my adult years, and the point is re-enforced by what I have learned from a 12 step program, Celebrate Recovery, this past year. We as a family had a lot of fun in those years of growing up, because both Lil and Obi--as you know first-hand from the grandchildren years--were generous, adventuresome and instinctively nurturing. But how could they know, having swallowed the current cultural lie, that the sterling qualities they had in such abundance would be tainted and twisted by the contents of a bottle?
In Obi's case it seems to me the bottle was his self-medication against all those painful things he endured in his formative years, things which disturbed and threatened him. They were like a black hole you don't dare get close to, because it sucks you into oblivion. During his young adult life, Obi was blessed with his uncle Homer, a successful businessman and world traveler who stood in for his deceased brother Robert. He was a great fellow, who offered Obi some much needed fatherly steadiness, but he too was firmly in the grip of drink.
Obi's formative years were marked by the Depression, which was followed by a terrible war. Many--especially the soldiers--made it a policy to not look back. The past can't be changed, true; but it can change you.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
MISSING
Obi was a 19 year-old college boy in 1939 when his father, Robert, died of Hodgkin's disease. He was away at Washington and Lee, the university in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia where I graduated in 1969. He lost his father and his means of continuing college in a single stroke, then returned to Chicago where he began taking an interest in flying, which took him to Florida in the early 40's.
There is only a bare outline of Obi's childhood to go on, because he was willing to share few stories of childhood, good or bad. He played catch with his father, rooted for the White Sox, was nicknamed "Fat" and "Red"--tags that wounded him deeply. We(his children) heard next to nothing about his early years, the impact of losing his father, how he got along with his older and younger brothers. As he got started on his career and married Lil in 1944, it was as if he turned his face away from the pains and shock of childhood, never to re-visit them.
Now, I don't know if he was "running away" from his childhood miseries, or not. I do know from my own experience looking back that the price of redeeming memories is high. By redeeming, I mean that the bounties of our childhood can be received anew if we will pass willingly through the gate of death and loss. Looking back in his teen years, Obi might have found some gems of memory from his parents' marriage or from his school chums; but first, the abyss of death had to be crossed.
As a person with secrets myself, I look back on Obi's life as one damaged by secrets and cover-ups. I'm not sure how, or if, he grieved the loss of his father in 1939. Soon after, his mother and younger brother Tom left Chicago for Boulder, so he lost his homeplace. His family history of alcoholism only aggravated the secretive trait, because in that world you can make your troubles go away--for a while. As you may have heard, drunkenness in that era was considered funny, and smoking was good for your health.
In any case, my point here is that when you're missing something or someone, the length, depth and soreness of that loss must-- sooner or later--be fully felt and explicated. It never goes away, or resolves itself.
Obi was a 19 year-old college boy in 1939 when his father, Robert, died of Hodgkin's disease. He was away at Washington and Lee, the university in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia where I graduated in 1969. He lost his father and his means of continuing college in a single stroke, then returned to Chicago where he began taking an interest in flying, which took him to Florida in the early 40's.
There is only a bare outline of Obi's childhood to go on, because he was willing to share few stories of childhood, good or bad. He played catch with his father, rooted for the White Sox, was nicknamed "Fat" and "Red"--tags that wounded him deeply. We(his children) heard next to nothing about his early years, the impact of losing his father, how he got along with his older and younger brothers. As he got started on his career and married Lil in 1944, it was as if he turned his face away from the pains and shock of childhood, never to re-visit them.
Now, I don't know if he was "running away" from his childhood miseries, or not. I do know from my own experience looking back that the price of redeeming memories is high. By redeeming, I mean that the bounties of our childhood can be received anew if we will pass willingly through the gate of death and loss. Looking back in his teen years, Obi might have found some gems of memory from his parents' marriage or from his school chums; but first, the abyss of death had to be crossed.
As a person with secrets myself, I look back on Obi's life as one damaged by secrets and cover-ups. I'm not sure how, or if, he grieved the loss of his father in 1939. Soon after, his mother and younger brother Tom left Chicago for Boulder, so he lost his homeplace. His family history of alcoholism only aggravated the secretive trait, because in that world you can make your troubles go away--for a while. As you may have heard, drunkenness in that era was considered funny, and smoking was good for your health.
In any case, my point here is that when you're missing something or someone, the length, depth and soreness of that loss must-- sooner or later--be fully felt and explicated. It never goes away, or resolves itself.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
FAMILY FIGURES
I am sitting here on a cold Monday morning, the porcelain images of Obi and Lil are a few inches away. Obi regards the headlines of the Times with mild disapproval; Lil, for her part, looks over her teacup at an invisible person plainly in need of sympathy.
Though I cannot hear from them directly any longer, their manner of life characterized by generosity and the enjoyment of life's simple pleasures--these direct my own ways and thought patterns every day. It's that way with our human legacies--things we receive, both good and ill, dark ways and light--handed down willy-nilly to succeeding generations.
Our common human longing is for the past to be unlocked and explained so that we can see our way forward. Children ask again and again for the story of their parents' first romantic meeting, their eyes shining to hear of its glory. In their innocence, they are already looking for a mate!
Now that you have all grown up and left, it's a good time to reflect on where I came from and where Obi and Lil came from. Values and patterns of life are passed down, mostly unconsciously, the unhealthy and the healthy, the constructive with the destructive. I feel stuck in patterns I learned from my parents, and the only way I figure to get unstuck is to open up a conversation with you, a conversation with a past you may know little about but which directs your steps to this day.
Though I cannot hear from them directly any longer, their manner of life characterized by generosity and the enjoyment of life's simple pleasures--these direct my own ways and thought patterns every day. It's that way with our human legacies--things we receive, both good and ill, dark ways and light--handed down willy-nilly to succeeding generations.
Our common human longing is for the past to be unlocked and explained so that we can see our way forward. Children ask again and again for the story of their parents' first romantic meeting, their eyes shining to hear of its glory. In their innocence, they are already looking for a mate!
Now that you have all grown up and left, it's a good time to reflect on where I came from and where Obi and Lil came from. Values and patterns of life are passed down, mostly unconsciously, the unhealthy and the healthy, the constructive with the destructive. I feel stuck in patterns I learned from my parents, and the only way I figure to get unstuck is to open up a conversation with you, a conversation with a past you may know little about but which directs your steps to this day.
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