Of grandfathers and fathers

In times of self-reflection and self-analysis, I have looked at my parents and my childhood. I can see aspects of myself that I have either inherited or absorbed from each of them.

I called my dad this morning to wish him a happy Father’s Day, and I asked him how he is similar to his father.

“That’s a good question,” he responded, “and a tough one. We were so different. He was a hard worker. When he wasn’t at his job, he was working on the house or property. I, on the other hand, am lazy. I do not like yard work. I was always more bookish.

“He had a serious injury to his ankle in a river when he was a kid, so he never went in the water with us. Instead of abalone diving, he would wait until low tide, so he could just walk over the rocks. Or, he would stand on the cliffs and point out places for us to go diving.

“He made surf fishing nets for us, and while we were fishing, he’d build a fire on the beach and cook hot dogs.

“When he worked night shifts, he couldn’t go to my basketball games. When Steve [his younger brother] had a track meet, he would sit in his truck, and give a thumbs up, or honk his horn.

“He didn’t judge anyone. He hugged everybody. I can be a little judgmental. I can’t think of how we’re similar. Can you?”

Yes, I can. It was rare to see my grandfather without a smile on his face. He had a great sense of humor and loved to tell stories. My father is like that. Fortunately, some of that trickled down to me.

 

 

Knowing her, knowing me

It was April 1984, and my mother was dying, so I drove up from Southern California to spend time with her. She was at home, as she had no desire to live out her remaining days in a hospital.

She told me that she had hired an iridologist for a reading and had paid for a reading for me as well, as an early birthday present. She invited me to sit in on her session.

The iridologist told my mother that the cancer was a result of hanging on to other people’s problems. In wanting to help them, she had absorbed their issues, causing a fatal internal imbalance.

Then, the woman explained that one eye tells the history with the mother, and the other with the father. She “read” that my mother’s father had been abusive. “Wow, she is way off,” I thought. Much to my surprise, I watched my mother gently nod.

My mother passed away the following month, and I was told she had been determined to forgive her parents before she died. Needless to say, t was just as determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. Here’s what I learned.

When she was six years old, her ten-year-old brother Dirk died from a rare form of anemia. She was heartbroken. She had not only lost her big brother, but her best friend, whom she adored.

Instead of providing comfort, her grieving parents (my grandparents) ignored her; she ceased to exist. She tried everything to get their attention. Once, when they approached a movie theater, my great-aunt Earline walked behind them.

“Little Janice reached up to take her father’s hand,” said Earline. “He pushed her away.”

They made her sit by herself in that theater, so they could be alone in their grief. She was six-fucking-years-old. My heart cries for that little girl.

I know now that my grandfather was behind it, and that my grandmother just followed his lead. His sister Opal told me that a few years earlier, my grandfather had punished Dirk for wetting his bed by making him stand in a cold shower. That poor boy.

No one who ever met my mother would have guessed she had experienced a traumatic childhood. Her bright smile lit up any room she entered. She wouldn’t just rise from a chair, she leaped up. She was generous, outgoing, and loving.

I wish I had known her story during my churlish teenage years, when I felt claustrophobic by her hugs. I would have understood that she wanted to make sure that her children never experienced what she did.

After her memorial service, one of her friends introduced herself, looked deeply into my eyes, and told me that I had my mother’s “spirit.” I smiled noncommittally.

In the liner notes of Natalie Cole’s album, “Unforgettable, With Love,” she wrote how angry she was at her father for dying too soon. I knew exactly what she meant.

I’m angry at my mother for not telling me. I understand now that she wanted to protect me, but damn it, I could have been a better daughter. There could have been healing conversations – for both of us.

I’m angry that she isn’t here to enjoy her grandchildren, sharing her love and creativity, and I have felt my brother’s pain in not being able to ask her advice.

Having her spirit has been my saving grace. After stress melt downs, it has provided me a quick recovery to keep moving forward.

There’s so much I want to talk with her about; so much to share. I wish we could meet for a drink.

Because she could

Each year, Women’s History Month highlights amazing, adventurous, iconoclastic women. And, each year, I think of my great-aunt Rena.

Feisty and independent, Irene “Rena” Harrison was born on August 12, 1900 in Usal, California. Her parents were, technically, Finnish immigrants. I say “technically,” because I and all of my cousins were brought up to believe we were Swedish. The truth, however, is my great-grandparents emigrated from a Swedish village in Finland.

Rena was the second child to be born in the new country. She was also the first daughter, growing up during a time when society’s expectations of women were negligible. She ignored society, and pursued a variety of traditionally male-oriented interests.

She taught herself how to drive and build a house (including electrical and plumbing). In fact, she built several houses and an apartment complex. She was a hunter and tracker. When a baby sibling died, she made the headstone.

With her crooked smile, Rena was quite a character and everyone loved her. Well, except her ex-fiancé, who she dumped a few days before their wedding. She said she wasn’t going to have any man tell her what to do. He later became the town drunk.

During World War I, while men were fighting overseas, she filled in job gaps, such as working at a grape packing plant. She also helped make bandages during the deadly 1918 Flu Epidemic, which ultimately killed more people than the war. During World War II, she was a ranch foreman, worked in a cookhouse, and a Ford garage.

Rena had a green Model T, “Tin Lizzie.” The car was always packed with a shovel, toilet paper, blanket and water, because you had to be “ready for anything.”

In the 1920s, she and friend Elna hitchhiked from Fort Bragg to Eureka, sleeping alongside the road on their bedrolls. It took them three days.

Rena could drink with the best of them. After an evening of imbibing bootleg whiskey, she put both legs in one leg of her pajamas, and went to bed. In the morning, she thought she was paralyzed on one side of her body.

She enjoyed living alone. Other women might have been frightened, but not Rena. One night, when a man knocked on her door, she thought he was going to attack her. Instead of hiding, however, she grabbed a piece of wood by the stove, and went running after him yelling, “Stop, you son-of-a-bitch! I’ll kill you!”

At carnivals, she’d play Skin Games; games of chance and skill. One was called Nail Driving. A block of wood had a good-sized nail just started. If you pounded it in with either one or two shots, you’d win a prize. The women working the booth said, “Give the lady three tries,” not knowing Rena was the best carpenter in the family, with very strong arms. Pow! The nail was gone in one. She’d take home the biggest stuffed animal. When the carnival workers changed shifts, she’d go back and do it again.

Rena never married or had children, but she babysat just about everyone in the family. One day, while taking care of a couple of rowdy nephews, her patience ended. Putting hands on her hips, she said, “If you don’t behave, you’re going to hell. Do you know what hell is?” They both shook their heads, mouths open. “It’s 15 feet high full of shit!” They didn’t give her trouble after that.

She’d work at carpentry during the day, and embroider at night. She’d cuss like a sailor, and smoked cigars. She’d help you tie your shoelaces, then build a fireplace.

When they filmed “The Russians Are Coming,” the movie producers were charmed by Rena’s quirkiness. They asked her if she could drive a wagon in the film, warning the town of an “invasion” by Russians. She wasn’t interested, though. She told them she had “better things to do than be in a damn movie.” The part went to actor Ben Blue.

As she grew older, received surgeries on her throat and back, and had to live with a nephew and his wife, she never lost her independent spirit. She would get in her car and just take off.

Rena had a crush on a bartender named Charlie. When she was 84 years old, the night she died, even though she was in a coma, she said, “Set ‘em up, again, Charlie.”

Per her request, instead of a funeral, there was a party. She would have been pleased to know that, in her honor, two of her nieces smoked a cigar.

Rena set an example for the girls in the family that anything was possible, and to not compromise our dreams. She was my superhero.

Magic

Why write your memoir? Why help someone write their life story? I wanted to share this eloquent passage from Diane Setterfield’s “The Thirteenth Tale.”

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”

Family truths

You never know what interesting, and often entertaining, stories you’ll turn up when you start asking questions. This long Twitter thread is a prime example.

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

Nicole Cliffe
‏@Nicole_Cliffe
_________________________

My dad thought HIS dad was dead until I was a year old. Then he found him in the Toronto phone book.
_____

My mom was doing my family tree and started asking where he was buried and what he died of.

“Huh, dunno. Mom just said he was dead.”
_____

“Doesn’t your mom lie about everything, all the time?”

“Yeah.”

(opens phone book for Canada’s most populous city: boom, there he is)
_____

“Mom, why did you tell us Dad was dead?” “Well, I hadn’t heard from him in a while, and divorce is such an unpleasant topic.”
_____

So, my dad calls his dad and is like “uh, are you the Ralph Cliffe who was married to Horrible Mother?” (He was.)
_____

So, my dad went to visit him and then we went to visit him and we always brought him a carton of DuMauriers and he bought us Mint Aeros.
_____

Later I was like “Dad, you know your dad didn’t think YOU were dead, didn’t that bug you?”
_____

And he said “listen, no human being who had the ability to get away from my mother would have passed it up. I have no hard feelings.”
_____

The real fun coda to this story (there are two, you’re being so patient!) came a year or so later, when my mom found a wedding pic.
_____

A wedding pic of my dad’s mom, not to my dad’s dad, not to her new husband. An older one. “Who’s that?” she asked her.
_____

Turns out she had married a British soldier during WW2, decided she hated England, got on a troop ship and came home. Never divorced him.
_____

(Divorce being unpleasant.) So she just took that one as a mulligan. He wrote her a lot of letters, she ignored them.
_____

So, she was bigamously married to my dad’s dad, and then later to her new husband.
_____

Now, her new husband was a lot of fun, and a great grandpa to my brother and me. Buncha weird tattoos, missing a thumb.
_____

He was Latvian. We would sit on his lap and play with his thumb stump and watch WWII movies.
_____

But in the late 1980s he started to get really squirrelly and paranoid. Which, in retrospect, was because of the Deschênes Commission.
_____

(Canada had started looking more firmly at the war records of German soldiers who slid on into Canada in the fifties.)
_____

But then he died and no one wanted more Unpleasantness, so there you go.
_____

Anyway, she was one of the worst moms of all time and definitely the worst wife and she and I hung out 24/7 and she let me smoke.
_____

And we watched Young and the Restless together and Biography on A&E and I often miss her. And my dad somehow turned out great.
_____

Thank you for listening to my Canadian family saga, in which avoiding Unpleasantness led to bigamy and marrying Nazis and abandonment.
_____

OH, I forgot the best part! On my dad’s dad’s deathbed, he said “Bill, I have secrets!” and my dad was like “Jesus, Dad, let’s not.”
_____

“Your sister? Not mine. You remember [some guy]?”
_____

So, a few months later, my dad said “hey, sis, do you remember [some guy]?”
_____

And she said, “oh, yeah! He took me to the circus once, randomly.”
_____

And THAT is definitely the end of this story.
_____

I do not feel bad airing the family laundry like this, because that woman may have hated Unpleasantness, but she fucking LOVED Drama.
_____

The only thing you really miss out on by hearing this story via Twitter is me saying “the Mounties are after me!” in a thick Latvian accent.

Hands

When I interview elders about their life stories for family histories, I always ask them to describe their grandparents and parents. “Describe their personalities.” “What did they look like?” Although photographs may offer a visual reference, the impressions made on us provide further insight.

An interesting article,”How your life story is told by your hands,” stirred some personal memories.

My paternal grandmother always said her hands were her best feature, and even though she grew up in the country and raised three boys, she made a point of protecting and taking care of her hands.

My maternal grandfather was a sailor in the 1920s, using his hands swabbing the deck and working on the engines. After leaving the Navy, he worked in a lumber mill, and while pushing a piece of lumber through a circular saw, his hand slipped, and a finger was cut off. When my brothers and I were children, he made up a different story each time we asked about the missing finger.

My mother’s hands reflected gardening, sewing, and drawing. They were strong, and supportive. You knew she would catch you if you fell, literally and figuratively.

What do you “see” when you think of loved ones’ hands?

You were there

An integral part of memoirs is sharing your memories of local, national, and international events; whether you were personally there, or you were a witness as the events unfolded. Fourteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers were attacked by suicide pilots, and the loss of lives, and resulting impact on survivors and rescuers was, and continues to be, devastating. Make a list of your personal memories of that day, and the days that followed, to allow your descendants an understanding of how their ancestors were affected. Here is my list:

• The catch in Peter Jennings’ voice as he asked the reporter to repeat the incomprehensible news that the second tower had also been hit.

• News that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon.

• The passengers of a fourth plane, Flight 93, learning of the events from loved ones calling on cell phones, took down their hijackers to prevent additional loss of life.

• People imprisoned in the upper floors, surrounded by walls of fire, choosing to jump to their deaths. A video of firefighters with lowered heads in the Tower’s ash-filled lobby, as the thuds of bodies could be heard as they hit the ground.

• My cousin’s husband in California unable to focus on anything, fearful for his childhood friend who worked in one of the towers. (He later received news that his friend was okay, having walked down several flights of stairs in the dark, with a terrified woman behind him clasping his pant belt loop.)

• Covered in ash, and stumbling through debris, random strangers handing their car keys to people who needed to get home to their families.

• Jon Stewart, with shaky voice, tearfully sharing with The Daily Show viewers that because the Twin Towers had fallen, he now had a clear view of the Statue of Liberty; freedom for all. He was chastised for showing emotion on television.

• The free concert in New York City given in gratitude for the firefighters, including The Who and Paul McCartney, whose father had been a firefighter.

Some of the best people

My grandparents were so cool. As a child, I knew they were the parents of my parents, but I couldn’t connect those dots. They were older people who made me feel special, and introduced me to different perspectives.

This poem resonates with me, so I wanted to share it with you.

My Grandparents’ Generation

by Faith Shearin

They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,

their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.

They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,

their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnics

and perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped in

lipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubs

with feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised me

and now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,

a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.

I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chicken

fried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with them

in that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,

collecting two hundred dollars.

From here to there

Vehicles not only transport us from one location to another, but they also represent transitional moments in our lives. It’s a fun beginning point if you want to record the life story of a loved one.

For example, my father shared memories regarding the above photograph, in which he’s sitting on a 1948 Harley he bought in the mid-1950s, while attending college in San Francisco. Pre-helmet-days, he wore an upside-down sailor hat to keep hair from blowing into his eyes.

“I bought it from a man who kept it in his barn. It was good-sized. I had never ridden a motorcycle in my entire life. He showed me the elements of it in his field. It was not a foot shifter. You had to shift it by hand, and jump-start it. You worked up a sweat to get it going. I drove it a few times around.

That was on Friday. On Sunday, I headed to San Francisco, with two days’ experience. I’m driving down 101, and the wind is starting to blow. I’m not used to leaning into the wind, and it keeps blowing me toward the center line. I had to keep slowing down to get where I’m supposed to be; speed up a little bit, I’m back at the center line. I get to the Golden Gate Bridge, and my hands, from gripping the handlebars, were closed like claws, and I’m trying to get the wallet out to pay the bridge fare. Cars behind me are blowing their horns.

I was living with my grandmother in San Francisco at the time, and she had a garage below the sidewalk. I loved the motorcycle so much, that I would go down there, and just sit on it; smell the oil.

I had it for the rest of the school year. That July 4^th holiday, I thought it would be great to take it to Yosemite [from Fort Bragg], and to take my kid brother, Steve, who was only 13 at the time. I was 18. I told my mom we were going to Yosemite, and then to Carson City, and Reno. She said, “Oh, okay.”

We were about half-way to Yosemite, and I start getting a flat fire in the front, and the front end is shaking back and forth. I could hardly hold onto it, and there’s a big semi behind us.

I said, “Hey, Steve, get ready to jump, because I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this.”

He said, “Get ready to do what?”

I managed to pull it off to the side of the road, and the truck went by. The motorcycle was so heavy in the front end, I couldn’t lift it. There happened to be a husky farm boy who lived near there, who helped me lift it up, put some blocks underneath it. We took that wheel off, hitchhiked back to the nearest town, where they fixed it; hitchhiked back to the motorcycle, put it on, and started heading to Yosemite.

After about 15 miles, the tire started to go flat again. It started to shake a little bit, but not as bad as it did before. If I kept the speed up, the shaking wasn’t too bad, so we made it to the next town. The tire shop said the previous guys did a crappy job of repairing it; didn’t cover the hole completely.

We finally got to Yosemite, camped out on the ground, drove around Mirror Lake, and other places. Beautiful place to drive a motorcycle.

In the middle of the night, a big thunderstorm came up, and we got soaking wet in our sleeping bags. I said, “Why don’t we just cancel Carson City and Reno, and head back to Fort Bragg?”

We drive back through St. Helene to the Becks’ ranch, where I used to go when I was a kid, driving kind of slow, and the motorcycle tipped over. We didn’t get hurt, but it spilled a lot of gas. I kick-started it, and it burst into flames. So, I had to beat it out with a rag.

We had to make it back in one day from Yosemite to Fort Bragg. It was getting foggy and dark. We were on Navarro Road, which had pea gravel all over it, because they had been working on it. One thing motorcycle drivers don’t like is pea gravel, because you skid. So, I’m gingerly working my way along, and finally pull onto Bald Hill Road, totally exhausted. But, we made it back alive.

That was my big motorcycle adventure with my 13 year old brother. He doesn’t realize how many adventures I brought into his life, because he’s gotten really cranky lately.”

When he needed to downsize his closets, he gave me that bomber jacket in the photo. Yes, it’s too large for me. Do I care? No.

Personalities

“The thing about death is that you can’t remember what a person sounded like. You forget all the little things that you once knew. The sound they made when they opened up the front door, the way they walked, the way they laughed.”

Anderson Cooper

 

The other day, I watched something online so hilarious my left eye closed as I laughed, and I thought of my mother. Her left eye would also close during deep laughter. She passed away over 30 years ago, and while I will obviously never forget her, sometimes these smaller aspects of her fade away. Fortunately, my family has old home movies, and every few years, we’ll get together for a home movie night and I can once again see my mother’s bright smile and gestures that belonged to her alone. Back then, sound wasn’t an option, but her personality shines through nevertheless.

If you were lucky enough to have someone in the family who filmed holidays and other events, those films can be converted onto DVD’s, so you can “revisit” those favorite (and not so favorite) relatives who have passed on or have aged a few decades. Consider sharing these DVD’s as holiday presents this year.

Don’t forget about the future! Videos taken of family events with your camera, smartphone, Pad, Notebook, etc., can be compiled and shared with the family globally.

You also have an opportunity to sit down with your favorite people, and film a one-on-one conversation about his or her life — how obstacles were tackled, funny anecdotes, lessons learned, his or her favorite people, etc.

If a family gathering approaches where a few “old timers” will be present, consider filming them as a group, asking them to share stories about when they were kids. The different personalities will be revealed, and their interaction will provide another layer of insight into your family dynamics.

As this popular vintage photograph montage demonstrates, personalities exist behind formal portraits, so even if you’re taking a formal or quasi-formal group photograph, be sure to take a couple of candid shots of the group being themselves.

That’s a keeper.