Children of Light

By Colleen Tozer

A walk down Memory Lane often yields grief, resentment, and the sad reality that parents can sometimes be their children's worst enemies. How to reconcile a damaged past and move forward to lead fruitful, happy lives? Sarcasm and false witness are effective tools until we discover that they have a shelf life. But Someone is there to help us clean up the mess, if only we call on Him. Read on to find out more about your faith and His love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664178045

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Copyright © 2021 by Colleen Tozer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/28/2021

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Part I: Angels By Pride To Demons Turned

Chapter 1 When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Chapter 2 An Accursed Femininity

Chapter 3 All You Need is Love…Right?

Part II: First Child, Last Place

Chapter 4 Only Loved Ones Can Truly Betray Us

Chapter 5 Words in the Balance

Chapter 6 Reluctant Student

Chapter 7 In Sickness and in Stealth

Chapter 8 Come to Daddy

Chapter 9 Hearts are Meant to be Broken

Chapter 10 Melancholy and Mayhem

Chapter 11 Days of Whine and Roses

Chapter 12 All’s Well When You Head Toward Hell

Chapter 13 Redoubled Grief

Chapter 14 They’re Heads of the Family and They’re Here to Help

Chapter 15 Wholly, Wholly Holy

Chapter 16 Somewhere Else Would be Nice

Chapter 17 My Brother’s Keeper

Chapter 18 New Girl and a Casual Stroll

Chapter 19 Nice Day for an Outing

Chapter 20 Might Makes Right

Chapter 21 Try, Try and Try Again

Chapter 22 Paradise Lost

Chapter 23 From Six to a Half Dozen

Chapter 24 Slowly I Turn…

Part III: Heartbreak’s Silent Cacophony

Chapter 25 Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss

Chapter 26 A Drowning of Sorrows

Chapter 27 When Truth Matters Not

Chapter 28 Trading Words for Music

Chapter 29 From the Lips of a Good Friend

Chapter 30 Proper Endings

Chapter 31 ‘Tween Earth, Childhood and Womanhood

Chapter 32 A Darker Turn

Chapter 33 A Turn of the Screw

Chapter 34 A Parting of the Ways

Part IV: It All Comes Out In The Wash

Chapter 35

Part V: All That Matters Is What We Have Done

Chapter 36

Afterword It Is Finished.

Help Is Available Today

PROLOGUE

Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him.

- Psalm 127:3

There is little question that we are presently living in uncertain, even dangerous times. The civility that was once a hallmark of the American character has all but disappeared. Political factions are poised to bring down one party or the other, one candidate or the other, and in any way they can. The race war, thought to have been ended by Civil Rights legislation, has again caught fire and is more perilous than ever. Record numbers of people aren’t sure what sex they’re supposed to be. Dubious global influences have crept into our government and our society, producing an America that has shed the apparent simplicity and decency of a bygone era.

The year of my birth, 1955, was a ‘tween time - right smack in the middle of the Baby Boom. World War II had ended ten years before and General Dwight Eisenhower’s reward for his heroism was the presidency. The Korean Conflict was over, and America was just getting its foot into the door of Vietnam. War abroad was keeping the military busy and adding its two cents to the economy. Another decade would pass before the country’s young would rise up against authority, the government, even against God.

The civil unrest which would boil over in the mid-1960s was starting to simmer in the mid-50s. It would ultimately be brought to fruition by love children, hippies, yippies, college students, draft dodgers, and Westerners inexplicably dressed in Nehru jackets. There would be massive riots, life or death struggles between students and law enforcement, cities on fire, and no small amount of hallucinogenic drugs fueling the flames.

With the eruption of civil chaos still a few years away, the middle of the twentieth century was, by certain standards, an idyllic time. America had fallen in love with Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Labor unions with an iron grip on manufacturing afforded great prosperity to their members.

White-collar types only attended college if they aspired to elite management. For the most part, the high-school-educated, male white-collar did pretty well. Mom stayed home with the kids; Dad went off to work. It was commonplace for a large middle-class family to live on only Dad’s salary. There was a car in every suburban driveway and a chicken in every pot, along with a bunch of other food. The concept of frozen food was finally taking off. Though it was introduced decades earlier by Clarence Birdseye, the process was perfected and universally marketed to yield competitive prices.

Most stay-at-home mothers had a high-school education at best. The thought of a mother working outside the home was almost scandalous. Women had their place back then, and it wasn’t in the board room or union hall. Their mission was to keep the kids quiet and tend the home fires, thereby allowing their husbands leisure time outside of working hours.

In general, fathers didn’t spend a whole lot of time bonding with their children. They widened their horizons through employment experience, man-jobs around the house, and the revered nights out with the boys. These outings usually involved several men gathering in a bar or club of some sort, acting raucously and drinking very heavily.

Three centuries before my birth, British Common Law put forth the idea that a man’s home is his castle. In 50s and 60s America, that policy was taken quite to heart. On the surface, the arrangement worked quite well – though there was the occasional exception in which things were not as they seemed. In those cases, the castle’s gates were sealed shut. Most of the time, its secrets were not revealed to outsiders. It made no difference if ugly whether secrets became known because the authorities lacked the will to interfere in any substantive way.

According to a 1964 article in TIME Magazine, one of the country’s pre-eminent publications, the psychiatric community overwhelmingly believed that a little domestic uproar was actually therapeutic for the family. It was presumed that a man slapping his wife from time to time was a good thing:

The periods of violent behavior by the husband, the doctors observed, served to release him momentarily from his anxiety about his ineffectiveness as a man, while giving his wife apparent masochistic gratification and helping probably to deal with the guilt arising from the intense hostility expressed in her controlling, castrating behavior. (1)

It was therefore incumbent on the female to be subservient rather than assertive, always striving to understand her husband’s mental quirks. She was to ensure that her temperament didn’t overpower his, thereby rendering him unable to control his violent tendencies. In other words, the power to stop the abuse lay in the woman’s hands, depending upon whether or not she wanted to behave like an ass – in which case a little slap on the behind or elsewhere was just what the doctor ordered to bring her back to center.

Quite an interesting concept: that a smaller, weaker person struck by a larger, stronger person would shoulder the blame for her own battering.

Well, Henry VIII got away with beheading two of his wives for having female children. What a hoot it would have been had he lived long enough to find out that his sperm cells determined the sex of those undesirable females. Yes, a real hoot, indeed.

While the wives of men with ‘spirited temperaments’ suffered in silence, perhaps the most adversely affected victims were the children. Some fathers turned their fury not only on their spouses, but on their children. Abused women stayed with their husbands for a variety of reasons, from blind-stupid love to the fact that they needed their husbands’ incomes to survive. This made mothers complicit in the cyclic mistreatment of their children, no matter how well-meaning their reasons for staying in abusive situations.

Until the 1960s, child abuse was thought to be relatively rare. (2) There were no laws applying to domestic disturbances, so police summoned to the scene made their own judgment calls. More often than not, law enforcement would be called to the home by the injured woman. When police arrived, they would break up the fight and politely ask the husband if he would please stop hitting his wife and/or children. They would then ask the wife if she wished to press charges. Almost always, that was a negative, so the police left and went on to the next case.

Time after time, this was the face of a domestic violence call in the 1950s and 1960s. There were no laws protecting children who faced this abuse day in and day out. Their fathers hit their mothers with or without reason. They hit their kids and verbally abused them. The battered mothers watched their kids suffer the same abuse and failed to act. There was nothing and no one to protect these children from the nightmarish memories which would haunt them for a lifetime.

Ultimately, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others were to become the bulwarks of a feminist movement that would call attention to battered women and seek to improve the lives of women in general. They all played a key role in the institution of laws meant to protect abused women and children. Sadly, their sense of protection did not extend to kids who were inconvenient, unwanted, or preborn. For many, it seemed that the message of feminism’s leaders was mixed and off-kilter.

I was born in an age when children were seen and not heard; when they were mute unless required to speak; when they were still unless asked to stand; when they were dead inside unless something inspired them to come alive. No such inspiration existed in an abusive environment.

Humanity must indubitably be the universe’s most exquisite paradox. We extol the virtues of courage, intellect, compassion, artistry, athletic ability, justice, even saintliness – all testaments to mankind’s righteousness. By endearing ourselves to these attributes, we seek to downplay the baser side of humanity, quickly condemning and banishing to the outer fringes of society and consciousness the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Epsteins of the world.

It stands to reason that the human potential for good must be counterbalanced by actions of the most cruel and most evil sort. Though extremes are arguably rare, the potential for them is not. This would unfortunately mean that those of us in the netherworld of the middle would be tempted to one extreme or the other, to some degree, and at least once in our lives.

I have made many friends and enemies in my long life. Like me, they’ve worked hard, paid their bills, raised their kids, and continue to strive for a peaceful existence. They shop at Wal-Mart or Target and like to take a vacation once a year. Some vote Republican, some Democrat, and some are apolitical. Every last one of them – myself included – can recall that one moment, that one action, when we succumbed to an evil or a depravity we have tried very hard to suppress. But that solitary dark thought, idea, or act persists in our memories like the obdurate weed that it is.

Disguised as a man with a broken leg and cast, a brilliant Ted Bundy is known to have slaughtered thirty innocent young women who came to his aid. Jeffrey Epstein lured an untold number of minor girls into sexual subjugation. He made billions catering to perversions of the wealthy and powerful. In our current culture, youth is where it’s at. Almost any measure is taken to preserve and prolong it. Revenue from cryogenics, cosmetic surgery, and chemical alternatives is at a record high. Everybody wants to be young and stay that way.

Those who truly are young do not have the sensibility to grasp that, like anything else, youth has its downside. Though we arbitrarily designate eighteen years old as the age for legal adulthood, my experience and that of many people I’ve known would add ten years to that. Even in their early 20s, people say and do things they never want to think about or admit to ten years down the road. They have not been ‘marinated’ long enough to acquire full mental or emotional maturity. This makes children, adolescents, and very young adults sitting ducks for all manner of predator. Such predators effortlessly target and victimize the young physically, emotionally, and sexually.

It’s bad enough when evildoers and naysayers from the outside world pull out all the stops to vanquish us. It’s particularly appalling when the transgressors are parents who wage war on their own children, who are unable to cry out or defend themselves.

And yet, there is hope for children who’ve been battered or harmed by those they trust and hold most dear.

Many believe that wickedness originates with Satan, or Baal, or a nameless evil force. But science has repeatedly affirmed the existence of opposite polarity in all things.

That being the case, there is Someone or some force on the opposing side of the conflict. That Someone would be our Benefactor – in our corner at all times, helping us fight the good fight at any age, enabling us to come out the other end as better human beings than we otherwise may have been. He stands beside us during the harsh days of lost childhoods, such as the one described in the coming chapters. He champions us in our tormented adulthoods when no one else is up to the task. And now, we stand tall and reveal to the whole world the viciousness heaped upon our most helpless, so that mankind’s compassion will ultimately rescue us and others from the storm. One day, He will prevail and all malevolence will cease. The still-excellent side of humanity bears this out.

In 1866, the ASPCA was established by Henry Bergh. The group’s noble goal was to safeguard the lives of domesticated animals all over the country. Its good works continue to this day. In 1874, a young girl named Mary Ellen was repeatedly beaten and raped by her guardians in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City. A missionary worker who knew her plight tried to get help from the law and charitable agencies, but the funds and support were nowhere to be found. In desperation, the missionary took the case to Henry Bergh, who referred it to a lawyer on retainer with the ASPCA. The lawyer was able to argue the case on a variance and have Mary Ellen removed from the abusive guardians’ home. (3)

It wasn’t until the latter part of the last century that battered children received the legal and charitable protection they needed. What a miserable commentary it is that animals had a voice fourteen years before the child Mary Ellen’s situation became known. An even sadder irony is that an animal rights group was the only recourse to plead the case of a broken human child. Most outrageous of all is that child abuse remained an uncorrected, open secret a century after Mary Ellen’s rescue.

God must have been shaking His mighty head all along. The price of society’s hesitation to intervene on behalf of the abused little ones would be high. Before all was said and done, the broken children would be paying the highest price of all.

(1) Excerpted from 9/25/64, Time Magazine, 50 Years Ago, Doctors Called Domestic Violence ‘Therapy’. Eliana Dockterman, 9/25/14.

(2) Prezi, Kyle Pisko tweet 5/4/15.

(3) A Short History of Child Protection in America. 2008. John E.B. Myers, Professor, Pacific McGeorge School of Law.

PART I

ANGELS BY PRIDE TO

DEMONS TURNED

CHAPTER 1

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great. May the Lord give you increase, you and your children!

- Psalm 115:13-14

S adly or happily, we are who we are because of our forebears – first and foremost, our biological parents. Through them, we receive the genetic blueprint that will either serve or hinder us for all of our lives. Medical professionals are deeply divided about the extent of genetic influence vs. rearing influence comprising the finished product.

At some point, most children express curiosity about their parents’ lives before. Did they get together at a very young age, or were they older and wiser? What places did they like to go, and what sort of friends did they have? What were their parents like when they were younger? Were they pretty or handsome before they began looking as (uncomplimentary adjective here) as they do today? The answers to these questions are usually quite mundane, and as the child grows he/she realizes that the folks hadn’t been much different from him/her.

For kids who view the world through the prism of extreme discipline, however, the question that hangs in the air is: What made their parents so frightening, so unyielding, in later life? As kids grow to adulthood and the gift of reason comes upon them, the answer becomes clear. The potential energy for cruelty or unbridled intimidation had always lain within the parents. All that was needed was the right circumstance, or trigger, to turn this sleeping demon into a kinetic energy with the power to destroy everything in its path.

My paternal grandparents were born in the late 1800s. Though both were of 100% Irish lineage and determined to keep it that way, no family member had actually set foot on the shores of Merrie Olde Eire in two generations. Their Irish Catholic-ness was worn on their sleeves like a gold star, as was the case with many families who, despite being solid Americans, kept their foreign ancestry in the foreground.

After their wedding, Grand-Dad and Grandmother moved to a middle-class neighborhood in South Philadelphia. They owned a modest, two-story row home. Grand-Dad was fairly tall, and handsome in a very stern-looking way. He worked as a low-level manager at an oil company then called Socony Mobil – now Exxon.

Grand-Dad was a bright, self-made man who never made it to high school. He taught himself to read and write beautifully, and even mastered calculus. At the time, no laws existed to protect workers from religious or racial discrimination. Grand-Dad was openly informed that there was one small detail impeding his progress up the corporate ladder: his Roman Catholic faith. A senior manager who saw Grand-Dad’s potential and desperately wanted to promote him urged my grandfather to convert to Episcopalian. After all, it was close to Catholicism but still classified as Protestant. Conversion would be his ticket to success! Grand-Dad politely declined the offer and kept the Faith. Lack of advancement caused the family to live very frugally, and Depression cooking continued long after the Depression itself ended.

Grandmother was a homemaker who deeply loved and, as the times dictated, unflinchingly obeyed her husband. His pet name for her was Girl - just, Girl. But the way he said it was brimming with affection and respect.

In her youth, Grandmother was very tall for a woman and more Irish-cute than classically beautiful. By the time she reached her mid-30s, her hair had turned completely white, just like Carole Lombard and Anita Page – though their white hair originated in a bottle. Some of the neighborhood kids got decked when they referred to her as her kids’ grandmother. Also in her younger years, Grandmother developed a crippling arthritis whose pain would dog her unto her death.

Grandmother was clueless and ineffectual against Grand-Dad’s two faces. While he never touched his wife and placed her on a pedestal, he had a brutal vision of child-rearing. His belief in extreme discipline, coupled with Grandmother’s gentility and deference to the father of her children, created a perfect incubator for a cruelty that would ultimately affect a long line of people.

My father was born in July 1929, when the Great Depression was just gaining steam. He was the fourth son born to my grandparents. They must have been pleased as punch to welcome another baby with the country’s economy imploding. In 1935, my grandmother gave birth to the couple’s only daughter. The little girl would wait for Dad to come in the door after school, at which time she would collapse into his arms and mispronounce his name. Dad loved her dearly and treasured the time he spent with her.

Born with a heart murmur, which was a death sentence at the time, the child only survived until the age of two. Dad was about eight years old at the time of her death. At a young age, my father had suffered a devastating loss. Before it was all over, he would lose much, much more.

While growing up, Grand-Dad’s boys were regularly flogged and pressed into doing nasty chores for hours on end. They were forced to become altar boys and wore heavy wool suits to dinner each night, regardless of the heat. Silence was maintained during the meal, except if Grand-Dad spoke or asked a question. In that case, a suitable answer had to be given if that person hoped to avoid a backhanded slap or a bleeding wound from a flying steak knife. No elbows or lip-smacking was allowed at the table. Napkins were placed neatly on every lap, not to be removed until each boy was excused from the table by the master of the house.

Fear was the currency with which relief was purchased.

By all accounts, Dad was the problem child. Though he was brutalized more frequently than his older brothers, he had no compunction about engaging in further acts of mischief. In seventh grade, Dad skipped school one day to go on an airplane ride with one of his classmates. A note from the nun went home and BOOM! On another occasion, he and a friend had a fist fight with a 250-pound nun, who rolled up the sleeves of her habit and brandished at them the ponderous crucifix dangling from her neck. Another note from the nun went home and BAM! BOOM! In eighth grade, Dad and two other altar boys were caught smoking and sampling the wine selection in the church sacristy. A note went home from the priest kicking Dad out of altar boys – which was an extreme blot on the family - and BOOM! BAM! WHAM!

Dad was a brilliant kid, the sort who mastered most subjects without cracking a book. But there were those subjects requiring a little more elbow grease, so his failure to expand his study habits cost him dearly. Successive report cards sent home bore ‘F’ grades in Latin and Spanish, with a ‘D’ in algebra, and WHAM! BOOM! BAM! RIP!

Dad grew to be a strikingly handsome dude. His dark brown eyes looked down his Roman nose to bore right through people like a laser. He wanted to get deep into minds, find out what set them off, what they were made of. Dad only kept company with those few who survived such scrutiny.

Though women must have found Dad gorgeous, they were likely intimidated by his insistence that they be pure, submissive, and beyond reproach, ready to do his bidding without question. In short, he was seeking the Virgin Mary with a little less of her willfulness. Not many ladies could fit that bill, so they let him be. And he let them be, with no regrets.

After high school, Dad joined the Navy to expand his horizons. What he found was a world full of inferior, incompetent men and loose, dizzy women. He was surrounded by ineptitude and unworthiness. That is, until Dad mouthed off to a rough-and-tumble sailor who was unimpressed by Dad’s insolent opinions. The guy beat my father to a pulp and crushed one of his testicles. Dad’s body wounds healed but the nut never did.

For a long time, Dad worried that the injury would reduce his ability to have children – if he ever did find the Disney Princess lucky enough to capture his heart. Dad’s search for the Perfect Woman wouldn’t have been possible without the help of his dear friends, Schaefer and Schmidt - whichever brand of beer he consumed daily by the case as he got older. That sub-plot had a happy ending, since Dad eventually found his princess and got to keep his best friends at the same time.

My mother’s parents were several years younger than Dad’s parents, and their lives were very different. They were forced to grow up long before they should have, since both lost their own parents at a very young age.

When Pop’s parents died, orphaning him and his twin brother, they were lucky to find a place at Girard College. Girard was a boarding facility/school for homeless and orphaned boys, established by wealthy philanthropist Stephen Girard in the mid-1800s and still operating today in Philadelphia. Other than the death of his parents, Pop’s early life seemed unremarkable and he was happy at Girard, until he came of age and set out to build his own life.

Gram’s life as a young orphan was a bit more complicated. Gram’s parents had befriended a well-off spinster and her mother. Gram was years younger than the spinster, so when Gram’s parents died, the older woman brought Gram to live with her and her mother. The understanding was that Gram would do their cooking, cleaning, mending, and anything else they needed done in exchange for a roof over her head. She gladly did that for several years and became servile in her loyalty to them.

The woman who took Gram in had a familial tie which would later cause an explosion. It turns out that she was the first cousin of the man who would be my paternal grandfather. And there was a raging animosity between the two of them.

I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in. Take all the time you need.

The cause of the rift was never fully explained, but I take it there was an issue of jealousy on the part of Grand-Dad. In those days, women were expected to get married and produce heirs. Aunt Mary – and who back then didn’t have one of those? - went against the grain. While Grand-Dad was working his behind off and barely able to keep a roof over his family’s head, Aunt Mary had decided to forego marriage and continued working as a secretary/Gal Friday at a prestigious real estate firm. She never met a man she cared enough about to give up her career or her money.

Auntie and her mother lived well. While still a young woman, Aunt Mary paid off the family home and took on the responsibility of Gram. With her burgeoning income, Aunt Mary also purchased and rented out two other homes in South Philadelphia. Her prosperity seemed unjust and undeserved to GrandDad’s side.

The rumor of Aunt Mary possibly being a lesbian was planted and advanced by Dad’s family for years, at a time when homosexuality in any form was not tolerated. Why should a lesbian be so successful and find life so easy, when she should instead pay the price for being an abomination? The whole ball of wax irked Grand-Dad’s traditionalist sense of pride, and so began the feud - a burning hatred that would follow many to their graves.

Like my father’s parents, Gram and Pop were of Irish descent and staunchly Catholic. Pop was a short, but quite handsome, man with dancing, ice-blue eyes and tattoos on both arms. In later life, he lost much of his head hair but made up for it with body hair. Gram, on the other hand, was thought to be on the plain side. A life of servitude with little attention paid to one’s looks tends to do that to a woman.

When Pop struck out on his own, his religion wasn’t a hindrance because he got into union construction. He and Gram met when they were eighteen years old and they knew they would make a life together. Except that Gram wanted a kind of prenuptial agreement shocking for its time. The life she would build with Pop would include not only them and any children they might have. This was to be a package deal.

I’ll give you another moment to let this sink in, as well.

Gram felt indebted to Aunt Mary and her mother – her adoptive family, so to speak. She couldn’t see herself riding off with a new husband, leaving them without the service to which they were accustomed.

The solution was that whither Gram went, they would also go.

Aunt Mary suggested that Gram and Pop move into her home after their wedding and raise a family there. Pop’s substantial union income pooled with Aunt Mary’s would provide great prosperity for all. That was an offer Pop couldn’t refuse, and with his proposal to my sweet Grammy sealed a deal that would provide long-lasting financial security.

As the couple looked to the future with promise and hope, the specter of emotional weakness and mental illness hid in the weeds, waiting for the perfect moment to make an appearance. All the money in the world couldn’t have bought it off.

Gram was a very gentle, very busy, very private woman. All of her life, she rose from bed in the dead of night and immediately set about cooking, cleaning, shopping, and ironing Aunt Mary’s brassieres into points. She fancied herself an indentured servant and those who benefited from her servitude were happy with the arrangement.

My Grammy was more preoccupied with keeping house than actively raising her children, leaving policies and discipline to Pop or Aunt Mary. We were always told laudatory tales about the kids’ teen and adult lives. Few substantive comments were made about their children’s early lives. It was almost as if none of them existed before high school. There were no stories of mischief or exploits, leading one to believe that every kid was born at the age of fourteen.

One big detail of Gram’s and Pop’s early life together did emerge, but it was brought to light by the enemy camp.

Gram had a history of what used to be called nervous breakdowns and was sometimes taken to the funny farm. Back in the day, any kind of nervous disorder (now called mental illness) was kept under wraps. Those with mental issues, even simple depressions, were objects of great shame and ridicule – especially to an upper-class woman like Aunt Mary, who had fought so long and hard to attain that status.

So as dictated by social customs, when Gram’s nerves were shot, they waited until dark to escort her out the back alley of the house. From there, she was spirited off to the funny farm in Pop’s car, or staff of the funny farm came to collect her - depending upon how badly her nerves were acting.

Gram was transported to Philadelphia State Hospital, affectionately known as Byberry, since one side of the grounds ran along Byberry Road in Northeast Philadelphia. It was the quintessential funny farm - everything one imagines about a classic mental institution. I know this from firsthand experience, which I acquired later and under quite distressing circumstances. Those harrowing details will be described in an upcoming chapter.

I never heard what, exactly, the shrinks did for Gram while she was there. What I do know is that she couldn’t stay for long, since the cupboard was bare, figurines were collecting dust, and the brassieres were starting to flatten out. So Gram would do a short stint of now-illegal medication with shock treatments at the hospital, only to return to the very same situation that caused her depression, or anxiety, or sense of pointlessness in the first place. She seemed well until she no longer seemed well.

When that happened, the solution was to fry her brain again, numb her senses, and send her back to the battlefield.

The only good to be remembered from Gram’s experience is that at least there was some sort of help for the mentally ill at a time when mental illness was considered a sin or a shame on a family. Today, we congratulate ourselves for libertine outlooks, technology, and know-how with regard to mental or emotional disorders. Mental health professionals beat their chests about how in-tune they are with the human mind; how many weapons and medications they now have to combat illness. But mental hospitals like Byberry have been razed to the ground by wrecking balls, their patients long ago in the wind.

Most mental health facilities are gone, and social workers have been elevated to mental health experts – the only professionals most insurance will pay. Credentialed shrinks stand ready to help for $300.00 an hour. That steep charge will buy you a script for an addictive opioid or a medication of huge price but little effect. It’s a wretched reality that in our enlightened society, mental help is reserved for drug addicts under court order.

The unwilling get the spoils, while the helpless become the hopeless. But I digress.

Amidst all the comings and goings in Pop’s house, the folks were able to see their way clear to having four children. When my mother arrived in November 1933, she was brought home to a toney South Philly neighborhood in which stood three-story row homes much larger than my father’s family home. Mom was the second child and second daughter. A brother and sister followed behind her, positioning her as a middle child.

My uncle’s youth was hard and Pop was very strict with him. He beat the boy and yelled at him frequently. When my uncle graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Army for obvious reasons. After his tour was over, he entered the seminary with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest. After he was molested by one of the priests, my uncle packed his bags and moved back home. There, he was told never to speak of the incident because, after all, his tormentor was ‘a man of God’. So for the next three decades, my uncle led a reclusive life and, courtesy of the Veterans Administration, was given antipsychotics which kept him from hitting people and breaking stuff. He lay in his bed zonked out on medications and tuned in to sports radio, smoking himself into an early grave.

For all the rigid discipline my uncle endured, lassitude in the same degree was showered upon the females of the family.

The eldest daughter was naturally cute, easily influenced, and never possessed of original thought. Aunt Mary wanted her to marry into wealth, so she did. The couple had a vacation home at the Jersey shore, where they regularly entertained the in-laws and hoity-toity friends. But guess who was never invited – never even saw the place? Gram, Pop, and Aunt Mary.

One time, when the youngest sister dared to pop in unannounced with her kids, they were sequestered on the porch like dogs who had defecated in the living room, while the merrymaking continued inside. The sister caught on, quickly gathered her family, and left, never to return.

Despite all the evidence that the eldest daughter had cast her family aside like dish rags, any word uttered against her was met with great consternation: she was wealthy, she had two big houses, her life was perfect, and she was so sweet, and how could you not love her? One thing hit me long ago: this aunt was living proof that you can be rich, but no amount of money can buy intellect, mental fortitude, or class. I often wondered if she would have gone a little batty had she not found Mr. Moneybags.

The youngest child was a bit of a rebel. She rejected the prescribed rules and did things her own way. Grades didn’t mean much and school wasn’t a priority, though she graduated from high school and had steady employment. My aunt was a very pretty girl without makeup, but insisted on wearing as much of it as would fill her pores. Her fiancé drove a delivery truck for a local newspaper. He was part Polish and part Native American, which was a ground-breaker in those days. She married very young and had children quickly.

My youngest aunt was a wife, a mother, a caretaker of her family whenever and wherever they needed her. She had a mouth that would have shocked a drunken sailor, but she was one of the most caring, most loving people I ever knew. She was also the only normal one of the litter. Each summer when we were teenagers, she invited us down to her shore house for two weeks. Those times spent with her and her family were among the happiest of my life.

And then there was the female middle child: my mother. Mom was the golden girl who couldn’t seem to fail. The kid was on auto-pilot: straight-A student; full scholarship to a private high school; captain of the field hockey team and president of the French club; student council officer and Homecoming queen. You name it, she did it. As if that weren’t enough, the cake came fully iced. Mom was beautiful, and I do mean beautiful. Dark brown hair that waved perfectly; bright, liquid-brown eyes; a finely-sculpted nose and full, pink lips; skin of softest silk; straight, white teeth. Pop could never stop bragging about her.

As Pop would freely admit, there was only one teensy-weensy problem with my mother, which drove him out of his mind. That problem was boys: the endless parade of males who surrounded Mom in high school and young adulthood. They were on the phone, begging for a date with her. They stood outside the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of this beauty as she came and went about her business. Pop chased the boys from in front of the house and, kids being respectful in those days, they obliged and moved – across the street!

After high school graduation, Mom got a job as an operator for Bell Telephone. In an age where ‘customer’ and ‘service’ actually meant something, she was one of the live voices greeting callers needing directory information or help in making long-distance calls. All or most operators were women, and the job paid quite well, considering.

When Mom was about twenty years old, she fell in love with a guy named Eddie. Once she took up with him, the other drones dispersed because she was officially taken. Eddie worked and went to law school while Mom did her operator gig. It didn’t take long for them to announce their engagement, with marriage to follow when Eddie got his degree and a job with a law firm.

As Robert Burns said, The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

One fateful Sunday, my mother and my father – who barely knew one another - happened to attend Mass at the parish church in South Philly. The church was crowded, and the two were sitting in close proximity. She noticed that the tall, drop-dead-handsome man with an almost royal comportment looked at her just a moment longer than he should have. He noticed that the slender, alluring woman in a nearby pew fixed her doe eyes on him just a moment longer than she should have.

And that, as they say, was that. Mom soon broke her engagement to Eddie and at the same time broke his heart. Eddie asked Pop to have a word with her, but Mom wouldn’t budge.

The jilted Eddie eventually became a lawyer, got married, had several kids, and lived in a sprawling home in New Jersey. Mom’s future took quite a different turn.

My parents soon announced their engagement, much to the dismay of their respective families. My father’s father didn’t want to welcome his hated first cousin and her family into the fold. My mother’s parents shared Aunt Mary’s animosity toward my father’s family. But all knew that they couldn’t stop the marriage, so a truce was called.

Given the relative wealth of my mother’s family, a major splash was in the cards: high Mass, lavish reception, rich delicacies, and endless hooch at the exclusive Warwick Hotel in Center City.

Bookings were made, dresses were fitted. Plans moved ahead with no doubt on the part of either the bride or the groom that the future would be anything less than stellar – until one particular night, when Mom and Dad had an important date to meet another couple.

Dad was running more than an hour late, so Mom went looking for him at his favorite watering hole. My father indeed was there and seemed in no hurry. My mother found him talking to another barfly and feeling no pain. When Dad spotted Mom waiting off to the side and motioning to him, he asked her to step outside. There, he backhanded her – THWAT! – right across the face. Dad told her never to come looking for him again, never to enter a bar without his permission, and that he would come for her. Then Dad calmly walked back into the bar. Date night was over.

Mom wore lots of makeup to hide the bruise on her face as she went about making wedding plans. She put the incident out of her mind, figuring it was a one-time thing, something she could change as time went on. Mom knew some guys tapped their women once in a while, and maybe she deserved it after all. She should have waited longer for Dad to appear, and not tried to tell him when it was time to go. She got too pushy, so maybe he was just putting her in her place. Figuring, maybe-ing, shouldas, wouldas, and couldas led her to a most unfortunate conclusion.

There’s nothing like deciding to take a cross-country drive after the ENGINE light in your car starts flashing.

There were various other instances of ‘swatting’, in which Mom needed to be disciplined, shown who was boss, who was in control. A few months before the wedding, Dad demanded that Mom quit her job as a telephone operator and maintained that no wife of mine is ever going to work. Could it have been that Mom’s salary was as good as, or better than, his own?

Mom accepted the whole enchilada as part of her role to prop up the man she loved. Maybe in a perverse way, she was flattered by Dad’s ever-watchful eye on her, never realizing how difficult would be an escape from the prison he was building. Loving him would be worth any price - no matter how many were to pay a cost of their own.

Ah, love...the most glorified notion in all of human history. They say it makes the world go ’round. Some believe it conquers all. But this is the stuff of songwriters, poets, and other dreamers. As I would learn, love is the most misrepresented, misused, misbegotten, and misspoken emotion of all. When we’re in it, we go big or go home. When we fall out of it, pain is left in its wake. Care must be taken with it, for love itself is a jealous mistress who always leaves a calling card.

It’s wonderful to truly love and be loved. But when love takes flight, there’s no other sentiment capable of sending us so quickly or so completely to our ultimate undoing.

CHAPTER 2

An Accursed Femininity

I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart. - Jeremiah 1:5

M y parents’ highly-anticipated wedding took place in August 1954. The affair went off as advertised, packed with business associates of Aunt Mary’s and union officials who had guided Pop to success in his labor career. Rich food flew off the plates, booze flowed unabated, and a highfalutin orchestra entertained the guests. I can imagine soft lights flashing while violins and other wind instruments contributed to the fairy tale ambience. A good time was had by all, and an expansive notice appeared in the local newspapers.

Immediately following the event, my parents took off to the Pocono Mountains for their honeymoon. Back in the days when people waited until they were married to drop their drawers, the honeymoon was a pivotal, if not reverent, point in a new marriage. According to Mom’s account of things, her honeymoon wasn’t quite what she had expected. Perhaps that was because her groom wasn’t quite like anyone else she would ever know.

When I was a young woman, my mother intimated to me that she had tried, prior to the wedding, to ‘bait’ Dad into a little premarital hanky-panky using every tool in her admittedly small toolbox. Her efforts were for naught; Dad refused to touch her in any way except to wrap an arm around her shoulder or waist, and to kiss her. He was determined to have a wife who was unblemished, pure. Sort of like that smooth surface you see in a new jar of peanut butter or a fresh container of yogurt.

While Mom didn’t elaborate on The Act itself during her honeymoon (much to my relief), she did tell me about other goings-on that were decidedly alarming events.

As most married couples can attest, the people we encounter on a honeymoon are special in that they are among the first strangers with whom we spend time as a married couple. A bond is almost always formed between certain couples during their stay at a honeymoon resort. Those bonds sometimes last for a short time when the couples return to everyday life. Other of these bonds will endure for a lifetime.

There was no such bonding on my parents’ honeymoon. Dad didn’t require the company of others and took a dim view of other men gawking at his new wife; so it was just the two of them the whole trip. Only mealtime would lead to dressing up and taking an outdoor stroll together. Dad would often ‘strongly suggest’ that Mom wear a certain dress or earrings, and she willingly complied. If it wasn’t time to eat, they remained secluded in their cabin. Heavy smoking was the main activity, along with maximum beer-slinging for Dad.

On a few occasions during the trip, my father’s drinking caused him to cross the line from fawning, overattentive husband to angry, confrontational drunk. He would then provoke arguments with my mother, calling her ungrateful if she hadn’t eaten all of her food, or accusing her of staring at other guys. Mom’s efforts to defend herself against such accusations were met with slaps and punches. He threw her on top of the coffee table one night, and the table broke. Housekeeping cleaned up the mess, but Dad got a bill for the table. Any guess who was blamed?

Despite the incidents during the honeymoon, my mother remained google-eyed over my father. She expected these incidents to go away because – after all – Dad loved her very dearly. He chose her above all other women who had desired him. Things would settle down when they got home and spent more time together. And people who really, really love each other don’t resort to violence on a long-term basis. Do they?

When Mom told me years later that she had no clue of what lay ahead, it occurred to me that she must have been in the grip of a strong delusion to have overlooked these red flags.

Following this most unusual honeymoon, the newlyweds moved into one of Aunt Mary’s rental homes. The previous tenants had received an untimely eviction notice to make way for the lovebirds. The house was on a street so narrow that drivers in moving cars – which were much larger than those we drive today - had to crawl along to avoid hitting parked cars.

Though small and shabby, the neighborhood gained brief notoriety when the bakery at one end of our street appeared in the 1976 motion picture, Rocky. The hero was a down-and-out, lower-middle-class South Philly wrestler who trained his way to victory over a big-name rival. But I digress.

The home itself was nothing to write home about. Its most attractive feature was a tiny vestibule, which kept out drafts and reduced dirt tracked into the house.

The parlor had enough space for a sofa, two dinky chairs, and a television. The dining room accommodated a table and four chairs, a tiny buffet, and a small china closet. Those furnishings had been purchased by both sets of parents. The kitchen was a virtual shed with a stove, sink, and refrigerator. Moving along to the upstairs, there were two bedrooms the size of postage stamps and a bathroom as big as both bedrooms combined. A short hallway completed the picture.

The backyard was a real stunner: a concrete slab about six feet deep with a wooden privacy fence that listed to one side and was rotting away. Every so often, a plump, fanged sewer rat would fall from the top of the fence onto the concrete and perish there, adding a wildlife flavor to the neighborhood. Nothing a shovel couldn’t handle.

Dad worked for Chrysler but I don’t know in what capacity. People got all dolled-up for work unless they were laborers, and Dad was no exception. From my earliest memory, Dad went to work in a suit that was professionally dry cleaned. In order to beef up his salary and secure a future, Dad decided to pursue a college degree in the evenings. For some