In Pursuit of Radio Mom: Searching for the Mother I Never Had

By Terry Crylen

In Pursuit of Radio Mom brings the reader tight to Terry Crylen’s side as it traces her path from frequent and debilitating anxiety, loneliness, and shame—and a dysfunctional marriage that mirrors the dynamics of her relationship with her mother—to the discovery of her authentic self and the happiness and fulfillment such a transformation brings.

Radio Mom also illuminates the ways in which one generation impacts the next—both wittingly and unwittingly—when later, while pressing along the difficult route of raising her own daughter, the author is challenged to confront, yet again, the legacy of her past.

A book that also makes transparent the process of psychotherapy, In Pursuit of Radio Mom’s message is this: the excavation of pain clears space within the mind and heart—affording the growth of new insight, overturning fear, and making acceptance and forgiveness possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781647425760

Terry Crylen

Terry Crylen’s thirty-five years in the mental health field, thirty of them in private practice as a PhD Licensed Clinical Psychologist, served to enrich her understanding and appreciation for the emotional power of the mother-daughter relationship. A graduate of Northwestern University, her career in mental health focused largely on working with adolescent girls and adult women presenting with clinical depression, anxiety, and complex mood disorders. A lifelong Chicagoan, she is committed to supporting community efforts aimed at creating opportunities for the city’s economically disadvantaged youth and is an ardent supporter of the arts. Along with her husband, Phil, Terry is also a “frequent flyer,” devoted to maintaining strong ties with family—most of whom are scattered across the US. When not on the road or writing, she can be found hanging out with four-legged friends or with her nose in a good book.

Book preview

Part One

My Radio Family

Thanksgiving comes late

in this museum of childhood,

flower painted at the bottom

of a porcelain teacup:

cracked saucer, no sugar, no milk.

—Joyce Peseroff,

Museum of Childhood

ANYBODY HOME?

1958. Chicago’s south side. I was not quite five years old as I sat there in front of the living room’s radio console, attempting to rouse my imaginary family by brushing my pinkie against the glass front. I can see my reflection: an explosion of hair, mouth set in a line. Crouching low, certain this miniature group must be at home nestled together in the rear compartment of our second-hand Zenith, I pressed my ear against the cool surface to listen for any movement coming from the set. Anybody home? I called again, telegraphing them with my finger and keeping my voice to a whisper so that my mother wouldn’t find me in the living room.

I wasn’t looking for a new family because I didn’t like my own. A dreamer, I was a girl who lived elbow to toe with nine blood kin—the sixth and next to youngest child. At least for the time being, since baby number eight had yet to arrive. The problem was that my real family was both everywhere and nowhere. A three-ring circus with too many acts performing all at once. A place where I couldn’t grab hold of the ringmaster—my mom. Her attention always seemed focused on someone else in the tent or on performing her own magic act. The one where she could make herself disappear for long parts of a day.

We were packed into our six rooms in a house that, at a thousand square feet, was hardly bigger than a box. Perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising, then, that when I went out scouting for a fantasy family, my search fell within a similarly small space.

Like the console, most of our furniture was hand-me-down stuff, functional and nicked around the edges. On the mantle stood a ceramic statuette of the Blessed Virgin Mary; a large oil painting of Jesus at Gethsemane hung on one wall. All shadow and gloom, the picture seemed not so much haunting as haunted. Early on, I developed the habit of scurrying past Jesus, no direct contact. If brave enough to do so, I shot him only a sideways glance.

But in the Radio Family’s living room there was a luxurious velvet sofa with crocheted doilies stretched across its wide arms. A thick, floral-patterned rug warmed the room, and the polished wooden end tables had lamps that threw light into even the darkest corners. In the kitchen, the table was set, readied for the meal to come. With seating enough for everyone, and chairs that matched.

Every night in bed, I strategized about how I would at last coax Radio Mom out from where she and the others huddled together. My desire for her had grown increasingly intense. I was sure that once Radio Mom saw me, everything else would be easy-peasy—it was getting her attention that was the problem. Now, taking a deep breath, I made up my mind to be more forceful if necessary, even willing to risk discovery. I reminded myself that this tiny clan just out of reach would be the perfect fit to adopt me.

On this day, I’d already planned for the hours when kindergarten had ended for me but the bigger kids hadn’t come home yet. I’d waited for the lull in household activity. Still hunching forward on a patch of the worn carpet, I stared for as long as I dared, adjusting the volume on my thoughts and tuning out the static of my younger brother’s background clamor, content to be in the company of just the old radio.

As I let my nose kiss the glass, I imagined Radio Mom to be as beautiful as my own mother, with dark eyes, and curly hair that always looked neat even when she was bustling about cooking and cleaning. But unlike Real Mom, she also spent time just sitting with her children, or playing a game. And, being surrounded by her own family who adored her, she loved sticking around the house. If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear Radio Mom humming, her voice silky, warm enough to carry me toward sleep.

Just as much as I was certain that Radio Mom had magical powers to soothe, I could see that my own mother was like a bundle of wires: tangled and frayed. The mother who gave birth to me could light up a room with her high voltage power, but was also prone to bouts of short-circuiting. Good looks aside, the truth was that Real Mom and Radio Mom bore little resemblance to one another, except that they both lived behind a wall and were impossible to find on the dial.

Yoo-hoo, I sang.

I could hear my mother washing dishes in the kitchen.

On the other side of the console window, tall numbers marched across the width of the case. If I gazed at them long enough, the numbers began to glow, like a visual doorbell. Now, gazing through the picture window that only moments before had been the radio’s glass partition, I sensed something else. Little figures hugging tight on the other side of that rectangular wall.

Listening!

I tapped again, this time with my knuckles. Then harder, my heart beating wildly.

No response.

Time passed and eventually I rocked back on my heels, struggling not to cry. Nothing I did was working. The tiny family dreamed on behind the glass without me.

A bitter taste on my tongue. I shifted my gaze toward the front door.

She wasn’t coming out and would always remain just a mom behind glass. I would never sit in her lap and feel her hand untangle my hair. She would never slick a Band-Aid over a cut on my elbow, never make me a peanut butter and grape jelly on white. The realization cut through me. Radio Mom hadn’t heard me after all, despite my determination. The fantasy of being a special and cherished child faded.

After that, I spent little time in front of the radio.

By the time I’d begun to withdraw from my relationship with the Zenith, my family and I had lived in our house on Peoria Street for three years. We’d relocated there in 1955, from the two-bedroom apartment in which my parents had lived since their marriage in 1939. Although at three years old I was too young to remember that move across twelve city blocks to the west side of the Englewood neighborhood, in my mind’s eye, I can easily imagine Mom behind the wheel of our old Plymouth—with six kids hanging halfway out the car’s windows. Arms flailing, everything noise. And my father following behind in a produce truck borrowed from someone in his childhood neighborhood, its bed packed high with tables and mattresses.

The Peoria house grew steadily smaller in the five years we lived there, its shrinkage hastened by kids growing taller and the birth of an eighth child, my fourth brother. Ten people, a snarly cocker spaniel, three tiny bedrooms—one of which was crammed with a bunk bed for my two older brothers and a double-size bed for my next older sister and me. My two oldest sisters shared a room and the youngest brothers slept in small cribs tucked into a corner of Mom and Dad’s room. Rough and tumble and always fighting for space, my bedroom-sharing brothers and sister resembled a litter of puppies in a too-crowded crate. I never ever considered calling for Mom to make them stop. Asking her to do even one more damn thing, as she often put it, would only make her madder.

After staking claim to the people who lived in the console, only to have the whole effort go bust, I stumbled on a new favorite pastime: surveying the world from the perspective of the top step of the front porch. Scuffing my shoes through the occasional flakes of paint that fell from the wood siding to the floor, I watched the neighborhood kids roam the streets like stray cats, hearing Dad’s voice in my head.

Don’t wander off—it’s not safe, he told me, over and over.

At one point he had rigged one of my brother’s toy rifles to the back porch ceiling, its barrel aimed straight at the screen door. In this working-class version of a home alarm system, nighttime prowlers were supposed to think that any attempt to open that door would be met with gunfire. I never knew if this makeshift deterrent was why we were never robbed during our time on Peoria Street, but I took comfort in my father’s determination to keep his family out of what he believed was harm’s way. Out front, weeds grew so tall and thick, I thought they were palm trees planted long before we arrived. The narrow windows at the front of the house refused to open, or to welcome a breeze. With fogged glass panes that repelled the sun’s rays, no natural light spilled into the rooms inside.

My dad took a summer photo the year I was five, a copy of which I first came across as a teenager, when I could not have fathomed the metaphor it presented to the viewer; in it, my mother was seated on a bottom stair of the front porch, surrounded by two of my brothers, two of my sisters, and me. I had positioned myself close to my mother, and in this sense, the photo is perhaps not surprising.

There was Mom, looking straight ahead—a remote island, surrounded by a wave of activity. One sister was bolting through the screen door and back into the house, another had one foot forward, as if she were about to race down the stairs. A younger brother held tight to what resembled a metal lunch box, his smile wide. An older brother, a book in his hands, wore no expression at all. Each projected a sense of mission—even those not moving about, around or behind my mother—as if absorbed by thoughts of reaching some destination beyond the range of the camera.

I imagined the day to be a sweltering one, because all the days of childhood summers in Chicago were oppressive. In hardscrabble neighborhoods like ours, air conditioning was found only in movie theaters. As members of the underclass and a family without distinction, we knew, as children, not to complain. Because Mom and Dad weren’t shy about talking about their childhoods, we knew that they had grown up with nothing, in cold-water flats, and that when she was little, Mom often sat in a parlor lit by a single bulb hanging from a low ceiling. The message was clear even for a small kid like me: Don’t gripe. You’ve got it good.

Still, as evidenced in this black-and-white photo, I was the poster child for what poor looked like: my hair uncombed, unkempt, dressed in clothing tailor-made for children who wore shame. The picture captured something more, as well: the intensity I carried as a young child. Despite my deadpan expression, I looked as if I might spontaneously ignite.

How untethered I appeared—unbound to any member of my family—though my keen desire to be harnessed to my mother’s side is palpable. I leaned toward her, straining, but our bodies did not touch. One of my hands gripped the edge of the step, my fingers curled tightly around its lip. It was as if I was working hard to keep myself grounded.

Mom’s good looks shone in that Polaroid. Like the Hollywood actresses she and the women of her generation idolized, she always paid attention to her appearance despite a lack of money for frivolities. In the photo, her dark hair waving thick to frame her slender face, she wore a sleeveless square-patterned dress that showed off long slim arms. Her hands stretched gracefully over her knees.

As I examined the photo throughout the years, my mood always determined the expression I saw on her face as she sat there. Sometimes, it seemed to me, she looked preoccupied and other times simply unknowable. But as I looked into her eyes, I could sometimes perceive a dreaminess that made it easy to remember why I had found her enthralling. Her look off into the middle distance captivated me—not only because it made her features more striking, but because it allowed me to bring her close to me. I saw that she had dreams, too. Dreams of escape, of wanting more. Dreams not so different, perhaps, than the ones awakening in me.

Next to Mom, tucked in the folds of her summer dress, was her ever-present handbag. Where’s my purse? and Get my purse! were two of her most frequent questions and commands. Where’s my purse? signaled that she was headed out the door. Leaving. The photo gave no hint about her arrival or departure status that day, but that get-away bag was there, the reminder that Mom might fly off at a moment’s notice.

I hated that she always had her purse nearby.

Like my sisters and brothers, I tried to avoid long hours of separation from Mom by finagling ways to leave with her. Capturing her attention when she was home was difficult enough, but when she was out of the house, the hours stretched long. Most times, she was with her mother, my Grandma Healy, and getting permission to accompany her represented a real coup—the better part of a day in her company, away from the other kids. The way to wheedle an invitation was never to ask to join her, but to wait patiently until she was about to leave. Then I would position myself, like a newly trained puppy, near the door.

My mother’s level of enthusiasm for these field trips with Grandma was hard to measure. Was her participation propelled by guilt, or perhaps a desire to keep her own mother close?

Okay, Ma, she’d say in a subdued tone over the phone. I’ll pick you up and we’ll go for a cup of coffee. Cup of coffee was code for we’ll window-shop down Halsted Street and have a nice lunch along the way. Taking my mother out to eat was part of my grandmother’s ritual. Grandma always slapped her hand over the scribbled slip that the waitress dropped on the table, and I marveled at her skill in snatching the bill.

The rules of these outings were inviolable: Keep still, don’t ask for anything, and don’t interrupt Mom’s conversation with Grandma. For me, the rewards were worth following these directives. As for my mother, who knew? While these trips allowed her time away from taking care of all of us, they didn’t seem particularly relaxing.

Skinny Grandma could spend hours searching for a cheap, embroidered handkerchief or a plastic rain bonnet. Skinny Grandma scoured through long rows of bins filled with clearance items, never tiring of the hunt for some small treasure. A prim and fussy lady, at seventy she resembled the woman in the American Gothic picture, except she wore thick wire glasses. She dressed the way she expected everything to be: as neat as a pin. On her coffee dates with Mom, she wore a pastel, cotton shirtwaist dress that was as starched as her personality. My job while she was bin-rummaging was to focus on her back and follow her from aisle to aisle.

The highlight of the day came around noon: Florence, she’d say to my mother, why don’t we stop and have a little something. Once in the diner, I’d wait for Grandma to declare, I think I should just have the special. Which meant we would all be eating roast beef with a scoop of mashed potatoes, our food drenched in gravy. This was far more exotic fare than what appeared on the dinner table at home. There, ground beef smothered in ketchup and tossed with canned peas was a staple that, due to logistics in our kitchen, we ate in shifts.

As we sat waiting to be served, Grandma held court, presenting a litany of complaints—most of which featured her bad stomach, my bachelor uncle’s drinking, and her attempts to prevent this middle-aged son, who still lived with Grandpa and her, from squandering his monthly disability check.

I have a lousy life, she’d begin, shaking her head.

I didn’t doubt that Grandma’s life was lousy, not only because I’d heard her declare it as such at least a million times, but because even at a young age I knew some of her sad backstory: how her mother was sickly and died when Grandma was nine, and how Uncle Buddy’s twin had been dropped by a nurse attending at the birth and hadn’t survived. Also featured was the story of Mary and Robert—Grandma’s oldest children—who had contracted tuberculosis in their late teens, and, one after the other, succumbed to the disease. Now, sadly, only Uncle Buddy, my Aunt Dorothy, and Mom, the youngest, were left.

Over time, I would hear my mother reminisce about what she remembered: Robert and Mary’s deaths—her brother’s when she was twelve and her sister’s when she was seventeen. The stories were always about how they had died alone, and dying that way became a fear that obsessed her for the rest of her years. In contrast, when Grandma talked about all the things that proved her life was lousy, including her children’s deaths, everything focused on her. Maybe all that illness and all those deaths had been too crushing, making it hard for her to focus on the rest of her family. It was as if she’d called dibs on all the suffering there was to be had. Misery, it seemed, belonged only to her.

According to Grandma, Uncle Buddy, the one other person in Mom’s family who’d had his own brush with TB, was not a bad person, except when he’s ‘pifficated.’ Grandma never used the word drunk. But from the way she described it, I knew pifficated meant he was eligible for free rides in the back of a paddy wagon.

Except for the talk about Uncle Buddy, which scared me, Grandma’s predictable lunchtime recitations mostly bored me, like a white noise that could induce coma. I’d stay alert by watching her fiddle with the creamers: thumb-size glass bottles of half-and-half that usually ended up spilled on the table after her fingers lost their battle with the lids.

Throughout Grandma’s litany, Mom looked as if she were listening, her eyes on her mother, her lipstick-stained coffee cup clutched with both hands. Grandma alternated between taking bites of food and speaking her mind; gesturing with her fork held high, she talked until every last morsel on her plate disappeared. And then ordered rice pudding with raisins for all three of us.

After lunch, the browsing down store aisles continued until, finally, my grandmother announced that her feet hurt. It was time to go home. I liked her the best when these outings came to their end, as an afternoon of Mom’s entertainment would soften her irritability and she would take notice of me at last. Sometimes Grandma would ask about school, or press a nickel into my hand. I’d hold her arm as we headed back to the car, slowing my pace to accommodate her wobbly gait.

As the car pulled up at the brick building where she lived, Grandma would turn slightly and tilt her head toward me as she got out.

Goodbye, peaches and cream, she’d say.

Thrilled to hear her liken me to a sweet dessert, my eyes followed her as she moved toward her apartment. When she reached the entrance, she turned back toward my mother and me, her hand extended in a little wave. Her vestibule was dark and I felt a jolt of sadness as she walked into its shadows.

Stop! I wanted to yell. Grandma, get back in the car. I imagined Uncle Buddy peering out at me from behind the window’s heavy curtain, his tuberculosis-ravaged lungs rattling like chains.

My uncle became the Bogeyman whenever he was in need of drinking money, which was whenever Grandma had confiscated his disability check. She always phoned Mom to let her know he was probably on his way to our house to look for a handout. It wouldn’t be long then before the sound of Uncle Bogeyman’s cane thumped against the stairs of our front porch.

Mom, Mom—he’s here! I’d scream, as I dropped to all fours and got away from the windows.

Did you put the envelope in the mailbox like I told you? she’d shout from the bedroom, where she’d run to hide.

Placing money in the mailbox seemed the surest way to prevent the Bogeyman from attacking us, but my six-year-old brain always worried that I’d forgotten to lock the front door behind me. What if Uncle Bud jiggled the doorknob, opened the door, and came reeling into our house?

Was he really a harmless drunk or would he kill us all?

If he was harmless, how had he come to know the inside of a paddy wagon so well?

All I could do was freeze in place and pray that whatever was in the mailbox would be enough. Only when metal on metal slammed did I dare to breathe, exhaling with each thump-thump of his cane as Uncle Buddy retreated down the stairs.

After a minute or so, with the Bogeyman undoubtedly on his way to the nearest tavern, I’d rush to where Mom was in hiding.

He’s definitely gone, Mom, I’d announce, pride now added to my relief.

I’d protected my mother from her older brother. Instead of worrying about what I would have done if I’d been caught by the hook of my uncle’s cane, I focused on the way I’d kept her out of danger.

What a good little girl I was.

If only my mother’s disappearing acts were simply running from Uncle Bud or the occasional neighbor who dropped by. Instead, when Mom began using Grandma’s phrase to describe her own lousy life, a wave of worry swept over me. I was too young to understand why she was so unhappy; all I knew was that Mom was about to grab her purse and leave.

On her bad days, the air crackled with tension. From the pantry where I pretended to be looking for food, I’d watch her. Slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, she’d tap her fingers on its Formica top and stare out the window. Too scared to go near her and too scared to move to another part of the house, I’d wait, hoping for a miracle. Maybe this would be the one time when Mom would rise up out of her chair and say something—anything that might indicate that the mysterious black spell had been broken.

Being alone with her thoughts made her edgy. After a while, she’d stand, throw her coffee spoon into the sink and wander from room to room. Only then would I sneak from my spot in the pantry, and from a distance, track her movements. Picking up speed, she slammed doors, pulled at drawers and then grabbed her purse, which hung on the kitchen doorknob. Without a word or even a glance, she’d fly out of the house.

On those days when my mother bolted out the front door, my anxiety zoomed high. Even when my brothers or sisters had witnessed the same scene, even if my eleven-year-old sister, Flo, stepped in to take care of the younger kids, I felt scared and alone. Shell-shocked. We did not comfort one other. Like strangers at a funeral, we moved slowly past each other, our heads bowed to avoid eye contact, each of us on our own to grapple with our loss.

Waiting for Mom’s return, I spent hours worrying. Like a small animal trying to find its way out of a hole, I scrambled to figure out what I should have done to make Mom stay rather than run. Though I was hardly big enough to push a broom, I swept floors and picked up clothes that were scattered around the house. All as a way of demonstrating to my mother that I was her good helper. All as a way of making her life less lousy.

Mom always returned, having spent those long hours, I later learned, in a darkened movie theater watching double features, but experience soon taught me that when she did reappear, things would not necessarily improve. Rather, a day or more of seclusion in her bedroom was required before she re-emerged and became normal. Helpless to change the course of events when Mom had one of her episodes, I swept harder and tried to keep a low profile.

No mention was ever made of my mother’s disappearances. It was as if she had become possessed, and afterward no one wanted to revisit what had occurred. By the time she finally climbed out of her bed and rejoined the family, my body would be weak with anxiety and relief. Once Mom began talking to me again, I cared only that she was back, not why or where she’d gone.

I was almost seven, and getting ready to make my first Holy Communion, when Mom chose the Catholic Church’s sacrament of the Eucharist as an occasion to become my fantasy mother. For a moment, Radio Mom was within the circle of my arms and my first communion became its own blessed event. The day I accepted the communion wafer—the food of eternal life—was the first time in memory that I’d bathed in Mom’s unadulterated attention. I was in communicant heaven.

Days before the celebration, the head of our school, Sister Anastasia, ushered me down to the office and instructed me to wait for my mother. Baffled by the fact that Mom was obviously picking me up from school when I usually walked home, I sat in an uncomfortable chair, nervously eyeing a row of tables where Communion accessories were neatly arranged. There, near the full color pictures of Jesus baring his chest to reveal his Sacred Heart, was a separate door, and in walked Mom, her purse hanging from her forearm as she smiled politely at Sister.

I was shocked. Mom had a strict policy of refusing to be seen anywhere near a nun. It seemed impossible for her ever to be at our school where a flock of them might appear at any moment. Even as a second grader, I knew how much my mother loathed telephone calls from the church office reminding her that her account was overdue.

Oh! Yes, Sister. Yes, Sister, she’d say then, quickly, groveling. Tomorrow morning for sure.

After she hung up, she’d swat the air with her free hand. Why the hell didn’t one of you answer the damn phone? she’d yell.

But on this afternoon in the principal’s office, Mom was entranced by the process of buying accessories for my Communion outfit. Without any detectable embarrassment in being around Sister, she thumbed through prayer books, compared different types of rosaries and examined the square cloth of a scapular that was meant to be worn like a necklace. Selecting one of each, she transferred the items into my outstretched hands.

As we moved toward the office secretary to pay for our purchases, Mom paused in front of a stack of child-sized patent leather purses. She worked the clasp on one she’d pulled from the pile. Click. Open. Snap. Shut. With crossed fingers, I waited to see if the shiny pocketbook passed Mom’s sturdiness test. Raising her eyebrows, she asked, Should we get this, too? Clutching my bounty to my chest, I floated out of the building.

More was to come. The night before I made my Communion, she had me kneel on a chair in front of the kitchen sink, and measured a capful of White Rain shampoo over the back of my head. Lathering my hair, she slowly worked her fingertips across my scalp until it tingled. I’d never dreamed of such a thing, not even with Radio Mom.

She massaged my temples, the space behind my ears, and finally, the muscles at the nape of my neck. Next, taking a pot from the dish rack, Mom filled it to the top and rinsed my hair clean. Luxurious. Then, just when I thought my time in beauty-shop wonderland had ended, she began untangling my wet hair as if performing a delicate surgery. Each pass of the comb became a show of affection, her breath soft against my neck. With my hair still damp, she twirled strands into circles, then fastened each with two bobby pins, one crisscrossed over the other.

There, she announced, as she wrapped toilet paper around her handiwork. You’re all set, and it’s time for bed.

I moved reluctantly toward the bedroom I shared with three siblings.

In the early morning, sleep still in my eyes, Mom sat on a kitchen chair and pulled me in between her knees. Carefully, she unwound my toilet paper