We Never Used the F Word, A Memoir

By Teri Riendeau Crane

In this memoir, written in layered vignettes surrounding an object, the narrator chronicles her early to middle childhood as the youngest child in a staunchly Catholic family and how the death of her father when she was seven impacted her and her relationship with her mother. Told with insight,humor,and grace of spirit,she reminds us that grieving brings hope, and children need to speak about feelings. The narrator demonstrates how the loss of one parent contributes to the loss of the other parent for a time. She includes her life before her father's death, the grief process within her remaining nuclear family and the powerful influence of the Catholic church. She navigates her molestation by a family friend after the death of her father, the complex relationship with her mother, and how baseball, the Dodgers, and childhood friends can help to fill gaps. The book is written in two parts which begin with two questions from the Baltimore Catechism. First, "What is Prayer?" and second, "What is Hope?". The answer is, there is always hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teri Riendeau Crane
• Release date: Aug 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301522897

Teri Riendeau Crane

Native Southern Californian, writer, educator, marriage and family therapist. And more : )

Book preview

We Never Used the F Word

By Teri Riendeau Crane

Copyright 2013 Teri Riendeau Crane

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

PART I

The Baltimore Catechism:

Question#475: What is prayer?

Answer: Prayer is the lifting up of our hearts and mind to God.

Chapter One

The Houses

As a child, I romanticized my phantom family and the homes they lived in before my birth. I wondered what adventures I would have found in the home my parents owned-- a big Victorian house in Cleveland, Ohio with a rambling front porch and windows dotting the face upstairs and down, and with wooden steps for entering and for leaving and finding adventure. Would I have found a Spare Oom and a War Drobe that opened to Narnia? Brothers who teased me but dragged me along on fishing trips, or to the park? Sisters who let me wear their clothes to play dress up?Would I have found family gatherings with aunts and uncles and cousins from both maternal and paternal sides, along with two sets of grandparents who doted on me as the youngest of the six? Did the family play games and sing together and talk at meals? If I had been born at that time, I would have a real family together at one place, in one time, for a time before my brothers left for the seminary or my other brother left for WWII. But I was not born in this house.

Neither was I born in another house my parents owned-- a single level house on the acreage where my parents raised chickens just before the War and grew a Victory Garden of vegetables during the War. Where my sisters played and cemented sisterly bonds while my brothers continued their young adult lives. I imagined my life filled with adventure in the smaller house in Euclid, Ohio. Five acres and a woods, Sunday visits from aunts and uncles and other Sunday visits with grandparents, all four; my brothers reading to me and telling me stories when they visited on weekends. If I had been born in that house I would have had a family at one place, in one time, for a time.

Did my five brothers and sisters do chores together and fight over who got to ride shotgun when they went to our father’s Tool and Die Shop? I never lived with my brothers and sisters and parents when they all lived together. I envied what I imagined was their togetherness in Ohio .I came to call my brothers Walter, Bill, and Eddie and my sister Pat, my phantom family. My sister Jeanne Marie, although born in Ohio, was mostly raised in California. I thought of her as the bridge between us. The part of my family whose childhood homes existed in Cleveland and in Euclid must have been, I thought, so wonderfully different than my childhood family in homes in North Hollywood and Panorama City, California. 3,000 miles apart. A generation apart. My phantom family together enjoyed the closeness of and then the great loss of three grandparents before WWII. I envied their connection to grandparents. I wished I had been born in Ohio.

But, I was not. After World War II my father’s asthma worsened ( triggered by his mother’s death, I wonder), and his doctor suggested a move to a sunnier warmer climate. My father’s brother Harold while in his forties, looked for new opportunities and a change of scenery from Ohio. Harold moved his family directly after the war to Hollywood where he opened a television store. My father, at the urging of his brother, visited to search for his place in the sun. Impressed, he flew back to Cleveland to convince my mother to leave. My father, a Real Estate salesman and broker who, with not even a high school education, talked his way into a job at Lockheed in the early days of the Skunk Works (based on his tool and die work), was an excellent salesman. My father’s side of the family, with their mostly Irish heritage, had the gift of the blarney.

My father’s sister, Hazel, one of my mother’s dearest friends had also recently moved to California with her husband and adult children—the icing on the cake, the cherry on top for my mother who would have moved with my father wherever he needed to live without too many questions anyway. Knowing that Aunt Hazel lived in California encouraged my mother to leave her home in the East to make a new life in the Golden State—my life.

The real estate market after the war in California was hot, and my father, after visiting the local Catholic Church and praying for guidance, found divine intervention in a house that had recently fallen out of escrow in North Hollywood. He viewed and purchased it, hoping my mother would love its simple floor plan and large front porch. My parents made the trek across the United States, driving with my sister Pat (15), sister Jeanne Marie(4), and veteran brother Bill, leaving Walter and Eddie behind in the Blessed Sacrament Fathers seminary to complete studies for the priesthood.

By mid 1947, after residing in California for less than a year, my mother began to have what she believed were gall bladder symptoms. She gained weight. Her periods stopped, and she assumed, at 44 years old, she had entered menopause. However, the doctor’s examination proved different. She was five months pregnant. A new life in California. My father was excited. My mother at forty-four, with a four year old child and a young teenager, and three adult children, was incredulous. Changes, changes, changes. When she called Aunt Hazel, who often found a problem of hers to be bigger, bolder, funnier than any situation you were in to share the news, Aunt Hazel stared. Then she laughed. A loud boisterous laugh. Well, I’ll be goddamned, she said.

At my birth and forever after, my nuclear family never existed for one moment in the same place at the same time. I wondered if my family felt more connected, and happier when they lived in Cleveland, Ohio, or Euclid, Ohio. I thought they did and I longed to be part of that family.

My birth house. Tiled red roof house, white, Spanish style. Not rambling and rancho---three bedrooms—my sister Pat, or whoever visited in the front, my sister Jeanne Marie and I in the middle, my parents in the back-- living room with fire place that was never lit, dining room with paper cluttered table (cleared for Sunday dinner), kitchen with breakfast nook (used to eat lunch and dinner, too), service porch with wringer wash machine, two bathrooms (one with tub, one with shower and sink—my father’s bathroom). Round, circular floor plan. Floor heater with waffle grill metal that left an impression when I crawled over it as a baby. Walnut wooden planking on floors. Squeaks. Gray linoleum on kitchen-bathroom floors. Quiet, slippery.

Detached garage. No typical garage door. No place to park the car---a 1947 Packard, bought in the year before my birth, next year’s model. A small door that I never opened and a covered window that I never peeked into, too scary, formed the face of the garage. Two cement paths, separated in the middle by a dirt path often filled with mowed weeds, connected the garage to the street. My father parked the car next to the entrance to the front porch. My sister Pat parked her 1949 blue Chevy Coupe in front of the house.

The manicured front lawn of the house and the multi-armed cactus frozen in photos formed the backdrop of the changing photos of family life. Two babies on a blanket on the lawn. My niece, three months younger, black full head of hair, myself, thin brown hair, both lying on our chests, heads up, looking in different directions towards something unseen. My sister Pat and her boyfriend, father of her daughter, smiling. My sister Pat and her husband Wayne, not the father of her daughter, in his army uniform, smiling after their wedding. My sister Pat, my sister Jeanne, my three year old self, my sister Pat’s twelve month old daughter Michaela, in the last picture taken on the lawn before Michaela’s death a few months later after she and Pat and Wayne moved to Wisconsin. My four year old self smiling, looking towards the camera, happy to be home after returning from my grandmother’s funeral where I accompanied my mother on our first plane ride. My six year old bare-chested self with my bare-chested niece and nephew, after a romp through the sprinklers, arms around each other, musketeers, me smiling without my top teeth. My almost seven year old self in first communion dress and veil, standing with my father, whose arm protectively encircled my shoulder, and with my mother and my sister Jeanne, who each smiled coyly at the camera.

The La Maida house, the house of my birth. The house of the times remembered and feelings remembered. A place where I knew carefree capers with my nieces and nephews and a sister. A place visited by my adult brother Bill and left by my adult sister Pat. The house of the beginning of the California promise and the end of the California dream.

Another house to romanticize as a better place, a better time in the unremembered times.

In the summer of 1955, my mother moved us away from this house. The move came swiftly after my father died. We moved to Panorama City, without a moving van but with much help. My cousins, my uncle, my brother and some male friends moved the furniture in the back of a trailer attached to a car. I rode in the back of the trailer when it was empty between trips. I bumped along between regret and excitement.

My childhood remembered home in Panorama City. Composite roof. Sparkly rocks. Modern style. Even when I was seven years old, the house felt bigger than the other, not so contained, boundaries were weakened. Three bedrooms—a guest room on the driveway side of the house, usually empty but occupied for months by my brother Ed returning from Air Force duty, a bedroom in front for my sister Jeanne Marie, one for my mother, and I sleeping for a time in each--living room with black and white television, my sister’s black upright piano, maroon red couch and slip covered-chairs, small dining room with gray table and chairs, a small kitchen with kitchenette, one bathroom, no service porch. Covered in carpet, except for the kitchen. Tightly woven carpet—dark colored to hide the dirt but capture the lint which, poised on top of mini-mountains of fiber, waited for the weekly vacuum. Carpets covering unseen wooden floors that squeak. Gray linoleum on kitchen and bathroom floors. Not so slippery.

Attached garage. No typical garage door. No place to park the car---a 1953 Chevy Bel Air, last year’s model. Large redwood double-doors, crossed with two Z’s—one backwards, one correct, opening outward, that I sometimes opened from the inside, freeing the silver bar’s tip from its hiding place in the hole in the door jam by pushing up on the arc of the j on the bar and sliding the long part out.

In this new house I didn’t fear the garage, as I did the detached garage in my other house whose face with covered window that I never peeked into and small door that I never opened felt way too scary. In this new house I found a backyard I loved to be in with ivy on the ground, but no trellis covered in vines that housed unseen birds chattering that made me nervous in the La Maida house. Here I opened outward like this new garage door. I grew in wisdom and in age. In this new house I found adventure. I found hope. I found places to explore, new people to attach to outside of my family and within. In this house I was not caught in the vortex of a circle, I drifted on the winds of change. I did not romanticize this house and what happened in it. This house I remember as the beginning of my love of story telling and the hope that drives my life. For this house, I am especially grateful. Before this house of hope, however is the house of both the start of my life, and the monumental childhood trauma that has shaped it.

Chapter Two

The Plane

In order to get to Erie, Pennsylvania in a timely manner for my grandmother’s funeral, my mother and I-- she putting aside her fear-- me not understanding mine, flew in a large propeller airplane from Burbank, California.

My father drove us to the airport and my sister Jeanne Marie came along for the ride. They waited with us until the announcement to board the plane. My sister asked why she couldn’t go too. My father put his arm around her and said, I need one of my girls to stay home and take care of me. She smiled. I thought to volunteer, but I had never met my grandmother, the only grandparent still alive when I was born and I was excited.

As the announcement sounded, I kissed my Daddy and my sister goodbye and walked out the entry door to the tarmac with my mother. I skipped to the song of my excitement as I held my mother’s hand. Then I saw the airplane.

I’m not getting on that big thing, I screamed at my mother over the noise of the propellers.I pulled away from her. She pulled back.

Stop that. Get over here. She gripped my wrist and yanked me towards the stairway. My brown shoes skidded on the tarmac as I was tugged along. When we reached the metal steps I stepped up then rocked back, nearly pulling my mother down. She gripped me with both hands. Stop that.

Like a convicted felon going to the gallows, I started the climb. My shoes clinked on the metal, making a hallow sound. Quickly, I changed my mind. I didn’t want to go to see grandma. I didn’t want to be with my mother. I didn’t want to go on this plane. I wanted to be the one to take care of my daddy. I wanted to be in the car heading home. Let my sister go.

Come on, honey, a stewardess said as she came down the stairs towards me, there’s nothing to be afraid of. We get to go up, up in the sky. Up closer to the stars. It’s really pretty. Want me to take you to your seat? My mother loosened the grip on my hand, my wrists red from her pulling. I nodded my head at the stewardess, the pout on my lips fading into a shy smile. I inhaled her kindness and helpfulness. Her hands, cool when she touched mine, gently guided me up the stairs and into the plane. My mother stepped back at the door to let us go around her. She followed the stewardess to our seat. I felt special. I pranced down the aisle until the stewardess squeezed my shoulders. I stopped. These were our seats.

My mother, clutching her flat black strapless pocketbook under her left arm, made a sweeping motion with her right hand that indicated for me to take the seat by the window. From my vantage point I could see outside of the tunnel-like cabin filled with rows of seats. My mother sat quietly staring ahead. I didn’t understand her quietness as fear. I thought I caused her quietness.

The stewardess leaned across my mother and buckled my seatbelt. There, she said, Now you’re all ready. At home, words were often spoken on an as-needed basis, so I took that as a direction. Ready.I looked out the window and watched the propellers spin my quickly. I lifted my head high and stretched my neck as I tried unsuccessfully to see my Daddy and sister standing at the window of the waiting room across the tarmac. I imagined them waving as the plane began to move, so I waved back jiggling my right hand, palm facing outward, back and forth as the plane reversed away from the terminal.My mother folded her hands on her lap and gripped them together. The plane bumped down the runway, the propellers rotating so quickly the blades blended, and with a jar and a bump and a jump we lifted off into the night, towards the stars. How high would we fly? The noise from the engines became a constant din in my ears. I turned towards my mother and a trace of smile, like an exclamation mark, crossed her lips--the signal, relief, we were safe.

After a while, a red blinking light and a dong sounded and my mother motioned for me to unbuckle my seat belt as she did hers. After a while, I stared at the stars and my mother read a book. After a while, the nice stewardess asked us what we wanted to eat. I listened to the choices and wondered which one to choose. But my mother said, She’ll have the sandwich. I’ll have one too.

Two sandwiches--an opportunity to have a kind of picnic in the air. Peanut butter and jelly, I hoped. I liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, even though my mother always made bologna sandwiches. I ate the bologna sandwiches because of the rule. Eat everything put in front of me. No wasting food. No matter that I didn’t like it. Eat it. My mother had lived through the Great Depression and learned: you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, so be grateful for what you have. Eat everything put in front of you. This is what she knew. This is how she raised me.

I unwrapped my own sandwich. I tried to, that is. My mother played the part of the nice stewardess and helped me. Now that we flew on the highway of the sky my mother seemed more relaxed. When stressed, she quieted. Getting on the airplane was not fun for either of us.

When I saw the dark pumpernickel bread, a favorite of my mother’s but too sophisticated for my palette, I felt disappointed. My mother said, It’s good, try it. I knew it wasn’t. I looked at the white filling between the two slices of dark bread and hoped for salvation.

The filling reminded me of white icing on birthday cakes and I liked the white icing on birthday cakes. I opened my mouth and aligned my teeth with a small part of the left half of the sandwich. I chomped. This wasn’t white icing. It was thick and cold and lumpy. Cream cheese on pumpernickel. It’s very good, my mother said. The inside of my mouth disagreed. My stomach rebelled. My esophagus stood ready to act as a two lane highway between the town of Up and the town of Down. I managed to close down the interstate with a small burp. Mommy, I’m not hungry, I said. My mother looked at me and continued her kindness, Wrap it back up, maybe you’ll be hungry later.

I knew I would be hungry later, but I also knew I would never be hungry for that sandwich. How to get rid of it? If the windows opened, I’d throw it