Diane's First Memories
Diane's first memory : It was raining so hard, each raindrop made a big splash as it hit the street outside our front window. My older brother Jerry told me that the splashes were little mice. I knew they were just splashes, but I loved him for creating a story around the natural phenomenon, for me to consider. I may have been about 3 years old.Our father:
After I got to the age of 15 or so, I started calling him Sidney. I certainly did not respect him enough to call him anything else. After all, he did not respect me, or anyone else who was going end up as a grown woman. My father was a sexist and a racist. He made sure his sons went to college, but he couldn't care less about my education, because he thought of me as a baby factory. I have no children, out of choice. My mother and father had extremely low expectations for me. Both speculated I could work as an art teacher, and then I would get married, have children, and be a housewife. This made me crazy! I hated children, and certainly did not want to have any, let alone be a housewife!Both of my brothers, Jerry and Ronnie had to have Bar Mitzvahs, but I did not. So I did not have to get any religious training. That was the only advantage to being the girl in the family. This sexist stance poisoned me against any religion, and I held him accountable for much of my youthful misery, for many years. I remember as a little girl, he took me to a conservative synagogue, where the women sat in one section, and the men in the other. He was taking me there for Yom Kippur. When he told me I had to sit somewhere separate from him, because I was a girl, I was struck at being treated as a second class citizen of the world. Thankfully, the place eventually burned down!
Sidney told me an interesting story one day. He said before he married our mother, he found out that our mother's mother was suffering from mental illness, and that she was locked up in the Buffalo Psychiatric Hospital, a horrific and towering Gothic landmark surrounded by a tall iron fence. So, concerned the ailment could be hereditary, he went to ask the Rabbi if it was OK to get married. (After all, who would know best? The Rabbi, of course! Incredible!). The Rabbi told my father that Jeanette was a lovely girl, and he should not worry about the children inheriting any mental illness. This story illustrated to me how misled my father was by his own orthodox father. And it was the 1940s. No one knew much about mental illness back then, and we know only just a bit more now.
Our Mother
Sometimes I called her Jeanette, but most of the time she was mom. Mom loved us all, and she loved all children. So, when she was not raving mad, she was, in my mind, a great mom, and I loved her. The unconditional love was always there, and Sidney's was always conditional upon grades and behavior. I was told that her first breakdown was at the age of 18. Her family hid that information from Sidney, before the wedding, but after her first breakdown, he disowned her family, and they were not allowed in our house. She had to go to where they lived, if she wanted to see her siblings and her nieces and nephews. My mother was not allowed to drive or do much of anything, as she was not to be trusted. Eventually, she got a credit card for the department stores so she could buy us school clothes, household items, etc. , but she was never allowed to drive.Maybe Sid was afraid she would take off, and not come back. She was not allowed to have her own money. I never had an allowance, and we all had to go begging to Sidney to get anything we wanted. Hence, I am a poor money manager. In high school, I disobeyed my father by getting a job after school, doing some light housework, to get some spending money. When Sidney found out, he made me quit. Babysitting was out, because after the first try, I was done with children. They held no fascination for me, and I was not interested in the responsibility.
I was told there was an episode in Chicago (?), where Sidney had Jeanette with him, and Sidney had the station wagon full of fur coats. He left her in the car alone with the furs, and she flipped out. Perhaps the responsibility of guarding the expensive cargo was too much for her, but she lost it.
The first time I remember Mom being hospitalized, I was 5. Dad hired a black woman to come and fix us all dinner, and do housework, while we were at school and dada went to work. After about a year, Mom came home. But she was so drugged on sedatives, she could barely function. We would all try to drag her out of bed and try to get her dressed, so she could ..what? do laundry? Clean? Make dinner? Jerry was sympathetic, Ronnie seemed to blame her for stuff. He seemed embarrassed by her illness. I was not bothered by having a mother with issues. I was just glad she was with us.
Jeanette received shock treatments, which affected her memory. Gradually, she was weaned off the heavy sedatives, and she had a wonderful 10 years of health, while I went through the rest of my Kenmore schooling. We even snuck off to see cousins and aunts and uncles, and sometimes cousins were allowed over. I remember how much fun we had together, getting the Elmwood bus downtown to the big department stores, where she would take me shopping for school clothes. We would have lunch at Woolworth's, or the department store lunch rooms, which were a bit fancier..I always had a BLT, as it was my only chance to have a bit of bacon.
As she got older, her spells increased in frequency. I came home to see if I could help, as the other family members all tired of trying. Ronnie could not bear to visit her, so it was left up to dad, and Jerry was in Oregon, so it was my turn. She would bang the kitchen cupboard doors over and over and over again..she was not happy, but did not make any sense, either. One day, in the middle of her "off" spells, we had been downtown, and going home on the Elmwood bus she told me the entire saga of every foster home she was placed with while her mother was locked up and her father workedand how mean they all were to her. If only I had a tape recorder on me! I could never get her to repeat the information, no matter how much I begged.
Sometimes my father made my mother laugh so hard she cried. I loved to see her lose herself in non-stop giggling. She also enjoyed talking to her sister, Helen, on the phone, and over the course of her life, I saw her become very close to a number of girlfriends. I know those relationships, and the relationships she had with her family, her siblings and our own family, brought her a lot of happiness. She was extremely proud of us all. She and my father rarely went out on their own. I remember her best dress, a tan print taffeta, with a scoop neckline, and full skirt. She also had a dressy plastic lunch pail style purse. My father was a furrier, but the best mom ever had was an otter jacket. I would go into the closet and stroke the fur, it was so amazing. At one point I could identify about 10 different breeds of mink. No one ever could say what she suffered from. She was given whatever the "in vogue" diagnoses and treatment was. I think Lithium gave her the most stability, for the longest, but then that failed. Eventually, Sidney could not keep her medications straight, and they were separated. She was placed in a home, while he enjoyed a few more years of freedom, until felled by a stroke, on August 30, her birthday. They waited for the next day, before telling her. She died on Valentine's Day. I know they had loved each other, but that did not stop Sidney from cheating on Jeanette in his senior years, with an elderly British woman, who died of cancer, I think.
Jerry
Jerry was a God to me. Smart, handsome, strong, talented, righteous, and my protector. He was my perfect mother, father and sibling all rolled into one. I was in love with him, and would have married him, if society allowed. He was my ideal male. Who ever heard of an older brother WANTING to take his younger sister with him anywhere? He really loved me. Ronnie was the Devil. He humiliated me in front of my friends, he physically taunted me, teased me, and delighted in making me cry. I spent years considering killing him, but I also knew that I was too young and not knowledgeable enough to get away with it.One day I even confronted him about his true feelings..did he not love me even a little bit? I can't remember if he answered, or if I even really asked. I felt terribly unloved and worthless most of my youth due to Ronnie and Sidney. I shared this misery with Jerry, and his answer was to give me some Freud to readwhich I did. I may have been 13, and this is when Jerry turned me on to all the reading I really needed for the rest of my life: J.D. Salinger's Short Stories, Vance Packard, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Chairman Mao, Karl Marx and Engles.
Anyway, the Freud worked. I confronted Sidney about how unloved he made me feel, he made a joke, and that was that. He did not hate me, he just had no idea how his behavior affected me. "Parenting” would only become a concept much much later.and feminism came into being AFTER I had married.
Jerry taught me how to draw, taught me to lift weights, and taught me the Twist and the Pony. He taught me how to appreciate Jazz, taught me wrestling and Tai Chi. Unfortunately, he did not teach me how to beat the shit out of Ronnie. He did that himself.
The fighting took place every night at the dinner table:
- Sit down to eatSidney has had his one shot of whiskey. The ginger ale was on the table, and mom was serving our dinner. She was a great mom, but a terrible cook!
- Ronnie would do something to either make me cry
- Jerry would have to pummel Ronnie for upsetting me and our dinner.
Ronnie (Ron)
So Ron was the monster that ruined my life. I still blame him for most of my failures. Every time I pass up an opportunity due to the little voice that says, "don't bother, you are failure”, I blame him. All the times he just sat on me until I gave up, added to a state of perpetual victimhood. I am always giving up. Once in a while I go for it, but I back down much more often. Maybe if had been more supportive, I could have overcome the mental abuse, but with the two of them in their club of macho superiority, and then society's sexism on top, I never really recovered. Ron had a weird way of getting what he wanted by nagging Sidney, until he gave in. Neither Jerry nor I had the sticking power.Puberty changed Ron. At the beginning he was just a pig, but once he learned that being nice to girls could work to his advantage, he mellowed towards me. He had other fish to fry. His grades were not great, and Sidney's dream to see his sons become doctors was evaporating. Ron managed to get a degree in geology, and enlisted in the Peace Corps to avoid combat in the Vietnam War. Ron managed to have a normal life despite the marriage to an illiterate Nigerian woman, who suffered so badly in a foreign culture, that she flipped out, beat their adopted baby, and had to be sent home to Nigeria. Mom loved the baby, but to Sidney, they were just "Schwartzas”. When I tried to explain to Sidney that his racism was no different than Anti-semitism, he could not see it.
BUT..there was a VERY short window when all three siblings worked together to a common end. Ron was involved with the black community, almost passing for black with his dark tan, kinky afro, and full beard. Jerry was involved with the Anti-War movement. I was 17, and old enough to join the two of them on demonstrations. We were all protesting the war, and we were all in agreement about "The Man”. I speak to Ron now and then. It is the most boring thing imaginable. He can only discuss THINGS. Material THINGS. as they relate to him. His CARS. His HOUSE. His THINGS. It is hard to imagine two brothers further apart in talent, intelligence, and sensibility.
Racism
One day I was walking home from Junior high school, and I was all on my own, enjoying the day, when a kid, probably a few years younger than me, ran out of his house and up to me shouting "JEW!" over and over again! I had no reply, but just kept walking. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I never saw this kid before, had no idea who he was, and how he knew I was Jewish. Did he know? Did I look Jewish? I felt like wearing a paper bag over my head. The mystery was never solved. Sidney kept telling me, that Anti-Semitism would return, and I kept telling him he was nuts! He insisted the Germans would bring it all back"Just you wait!" Sure enough, some neighborhood kids painted JEW, or something, one time after Halloween, I think. We knew who they were, and were shamed into having to come by the house and apologise I don't think I was there, but they were the black sheep of the neighborhood after that. Their dads fought in WW2, so I don't know why they though it was cool to do it. More stupidity.Parents:
What we were not told: We were not told about their childhood, we were not told about bad times, we were not told about the depression, the war, illness, death. They were sparing themselves, and they were sparing us, but I felt denied, never having met ANY grandparents. The only elderly folks I had met were my cousin's grandmother, who spoke no English, just Yiddish so we never conversed. My best friend, Barbara, had a grandmother who had a stroke, so I could never talk to her either. I knew no babies and I knew no elders.