Nightmares of my Father and other things

I must write this out because I fear if I don’t this day could be worse than I’d imagined.

I already clawed my way out of bed 10 minutes late, had a cup of coffee and a small bowl of cereal and knew, just knew that I would have to call off sick today.

I didn’t want to. I hate calling off sick. But the overwhelming tiredness, the shaking hands, the seizing feeling in my chest told me I would be a complete, useless mess if I went in to work.

Waking up at 9:45 a.m. confirmed that feeling. I am still feeling out of sorts, tight, nervous, jumpy, etc.

I went to my new psychologist yesterday. It was part two of ‘everything that ever scared the shit out if you – family edition.’ Last week was work and modern times edition.

I should say something about getting a mental health diagnoses. Most of the time, you can only get an ‘official’ diagnosis from a qualified psychiatrist, that is, one with an MD after their names. 

Occasionally a Psy.D (Doctorate in psychology) will do the trick. But getting one from an MSW (Master’s in Social Work) counselor is a bit rare.

Yesterday’s session – ever see those Hitler scenes from the movie ‘Downfall’ or pretty much any movie featuring Hitler and his emotions get the best of him and he rages and gesticulates and such? You know, pretty standard Hitler stuff (note: I hate using Hitler as an analogy but right now the bastard is the best one I can think of)?

That was me. Talking about my family. I was shocked at how worked up I was. I had covered this ground with other shrinks before but I never gotten quite this worked up.

My shrink was concerned and told me we needed to get off the topic because she wanted me to leave in a settled state of mind. I understood this as Turnpike driving is bad enough without me processing another beating from my father.

She wanted me to look her in the eyes. I had not been doing that the entire session or the one before. Because what I was telling her embarrassed and ashamed me.

“There is no doubt in my mind that I can diagnose you with PTSD,” she said. I questioned, she was firm. I asked her to talk to my psychiatrist since Dr. H-S is protective and cautious of her diagnoses.

My shrink would. But she held firm. It was that obvious after two sessions? Yes, she said, and, really, nobody has ever broached PTSD with you before? No, I replied, no one had.

And so, I went home and everything seemed OK. I had dinner, did a little Internet surfing, watched Jeopardy, talked about it with my wife, all the usual.

Then I went to bed and the gates of Hell opened.

Not even here, not even now or maybe even later, will I recount the dream that woke me, finally at 3:15 a.m. It was one of those dreams that you clutch the covers and look around a darkened room convincing yourself that this is the real world, not the one you just left.

I clawed my way backwards out of bed, trying not to wake up my wife, downed an Ativan and went to the bathroom to try to get my shit together.

I will tell you the dream was about my father and a cat my mother had. It involved a weapon. And that’s as far as I will go.

It was, without a doubt, the worst dream of my life. And, it had seemed to go on for hours. In dreams, it may have indeed lasted that long.

I must have sat there for 20 minutes at least – shaking, breathing hard, trying to concentrate. Our cat came and sat next to me. Our cat seems to know when we need some company, so I was not surprised. She did not nuzzle me and jump up and demand petting as she normally would. It’s like she knew I didn’t want to be touched but just to have someone there.

The other thought I had is, it’s interesting that my father, dead since 1983, could transcend the decades to reach out and touch me again and make me hate him all the more. Some shrinks talk about giving someone space in your head. I guess he never left or something else is going on I’d rather not believe. Because this is not the first time I’ve had a nightmare about him – just by far the worst.

I managed to go back to sleep with more Z-Quil, a half Ativan and some meditation music. I knew that if I stayed up from that point I would just be re-living this dream over and over.

It didn’t work. I woke up less than two hours later and knew I had a problem. But I did my best to get up and try to shake it off and go to work.

So here I am. I have a day to try to work my way out of this, forget the feels as best I can, and not fear sleep tonight although I think that’s a given.

So, I understand my shrink’s concern about covering certain subject matter. Yesterday’s session must have somehow planted a ticking time bomb in my subconscious that went off in my sleep. 

Recounting the subject matter covered in the session and in my dream, I think it’s a good bet.

Why this reaction now when previous re-tellings didn’t spawn this reaction? All I could think of is the cumulative aspects of the last 10 years – taking care of my infirm mother, watching her slowly die while trying to protect her estate from a sister whose boyfriend threated to kill me (in front of my mother). Also: my job, the SWAT team raid on the house and then the 18-month inquisition at work that followed – all of it, wrapped up in one awful package.

Here on the couch, in a darkened living room, trying to write it out, am I. It looks like rain. The cat has left me and I just had a piece of raisin bread and a cup of tea. I don’t know how to process the rest of the day. I don’t know what my co-workers are thinking of me having taken the balance of the afternoon yesterday to attend this session with an eye appointment looming Thursday.

Yes, I always worry what they think. Because one time what they thought about me almost got me killed in front of my wife. A ‘mistake’ the current director refused to apologize for since wasn’t in charge then. I thought I’d forgiven that; I guess I haven’t.

I know when I come in tomorrow, I will work twice as hard, twice as fast, to make up for it – out of fear, no more, no less. I can’t escape the place, I told my shrink, so I will have to deal with it or lose everything.

I remember years ago, the Most Giant Asshole Rush Limbaugh pontificating that “fear is a great motivator.” It was, as he admitted, easy for him to say. Decades later, that fear would produce Trump. Fear is never a great motivator. If you rely on fear to motivate other or yourself, eventually, you’ll break down your people or yourself. Perhaps some thrive off it, I don’t know. The Limbaugh legions (who have now moved on to the even more execrable Bannon bastards), would probably attribute it to being a ‘snowflake.’

The personal is the political indeed.

But somewhere, deep down inside, a little growing voice tells me I am stronger than I know. To have gone through all of this and not jumped into a homemade noose is a good thing – taking nothing away from the poor souls to whom the pain was too great. We live in a society where the suicidal are hounded into their grave as a kind of sport. But my heart aches for each misguided soul to whom the pressures of the world and the fight against their illness, have become too great to bear. They have my sympathy – not my condemnation.

I feel battered this morning. But for some weird reason, I will get up and go back there tomorrow – a place that pains me every time I step on its grounds. I will fight the fear, not only of that, but of crowds, traffic, cops, my own government, and, most of all, the demons of the past. There’s still something in me that wants to fight – that insists I fight.

But today, I must get my shit together.

Dad, you ever hear of The Tubes?

I always prided myself on thinking on my feet. In my family, it was a survival skill and often the result of the mercurial nature of my other three family members. 

It was a fine summer afternoon back in 1976 I was 13. Dad was firing up the grill in the backyard and turned on the radio for some summer tunes.

Unfortunately, my sister had tuned the radio to WMMS which other than being a Cleveland legend, earned it’s chops by playing music other stations wouldn’t play. 

I was up in my bedroom reading some random history of the Second World War when I heard the music start – it sounded like some kind of gothic biker anthem from the 50s.  

Oooo baby,
Move closer to me
I've had all that I can stand
Take hold of me with your hands

Ahhhhhhh, shit. 

My dad compounded the frightening embarrassment I was feeling by striking a pose with his arms spread wide pretending like he was singing to my mother – who was looking out the kitchen window at him, no doubt smiling. 

Dad obviously thought this was a forgotten oldie from his time with the greasers.

Oh baby,
You give me the chills
Whisper low in my ear
Let knows how it feels
just to know you are near

Aw, FUCK! I knew I had to get down there and distract both of them before they listened really close to the lyrics and found out what this song was really all about.

We probably wouldn’t be allowed to listen to the radio for the rest of the summer.

I flew down the steps, my fevered brain putting together a plan. I raced past mom, out the side door and must have looked like Secretariat rounding the home stretch at Belmont as I reached the backyard.

Your body gives me a thrill
as it leans against mine
I love how it feels
with your jeans against mine

“HEY DAD,” I was nearly panting out of breath. “HEY WHY DON’T YOU TAKE A DIP IN THE POOL AND I’LL GET THESE STEAKS ON FOR YOU!”

“Kid, why are you shouting,” said dad. “I’m not deaf.”

The smell of burning leather
as we hold each other tight
As our rivets rub together
flashing sparks into the night
At this moment of surrender darling
if you really care. . . 

“WHOOPS, SORRY I KNOCKED OVER THE RADIO,” I said sounding like a frenzied Kevin Arnold. “HERE, I’LL TRY TO GET THAT STATION BACK.”

My dad just looked at me. “What the Hell is wrong with you kid,” he asked.

“Sorry, just a little clumsy dad; too much reading in bed,” I said as I surreptitiously cranked the dial over to nice, safe, teeny-bopper G-98. 

“Ah, too bad that song is over, here’s another one,” I stammered. 

Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight
Gonna grab some afternoon delight. . .

I paused and my heart skipped a beat. Nah, they’ll never figure that one out.

The other song I stopped just in the nick of time? 

Happy Bloody Thanksgiving!

The latest thing in journalism and sociology on the eve of Thanksgiving is writing ‘survival guides’ for dealing with relations who may not share your political beliefs. This isn't anything new, but after this election, many familial relationships are turning fratricidal.

What I mean is that people are being threatened with hellfire, being disinherited, having their college money pulled and things of that nature. This is really getting sick and the country is getting sicker by the day. Thankfully (ha!), I won’t have that issue this Thanksgiving as my wife, my son and I are in total agreement.

After dipping my toe in enough political talk on Facebook, I’ve had enough. I will enjoy my bubble of personal friends and acquaintances while keeping my eye on the Trumpsters through the Internet. Life is too short to argue with intractable hateful people.

Just try not to think about it

Anyway, so I had a Thanksgiving family memory to share. I call it ‘Thanksgiving 1975: The Year of Blood on the Turkey.’

It started out as a usual Thanksgiving. Mom was struggling with the whole turkey dinner and tension was growing between her and dad. This happened for many reasons. The first was that my mother was a failed cook in the eye of my dad’s mom, who could create the greatest feasts known to man and boy I miss them.

Not our family

Mom had a tendency of boiling everything which accounts for my dislike of most vegetables that are good for me: asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts – all boiled to limpness. The smell of such atrocities still makes me retch so my wife has standing orders never to prepare those dishes, well, like my mother.

So my mom would try her best and inevitably fail. WE never said anything but my dad would occasionally offer a small critique here and there, just enough to set mom’s teeth on edge. Inside she knew, she KNEW she was being judged.

Another reason was when my father decided it was time to eat, it was time to eat. However, inevitably, mom wasn’t quite finished with everything and kept rushing back and forth to the table to put the rolls out (inevitably burned), the side dishes, etc. My father would yell “Jeezus Christ, would you please just SIT down already – we’re all (I’m) hungry.”

And, also without fail, the tension would get to my mother by Christmas which would be observed by the annual ritual of her smashing a dish to the kitchen floor and screaming “Merry Christmas God-damn it!”

Yeah! Like this. Except, um, not her.

Well anyway, the tension was so thick this particular Thanksgiving that you could cut it with a knife which was exactly what my father did.

As the former Marine who should know something about using knives started to slice the turkey, he cleanly sliced into his own thumb, going almost to the bone.

Do you remember that old Saturday Night Live bit from the 70s with Julia Child cutting herself spurting fake blood all over the kitchen? Well, that’s pretty much what this looked like except the blood was real.

After this I don’t remember too much except there was a lot of yelling and screaming to get a towel to wrap the thumb in and for mom to drive dad to the ER.

My sister and I sat and looked at the Turkey which looked like it had been freshly butchered except we knew whose blood it was and it was gross.

Gratuitous Sarah Palin turkey photo here

I went off to watch the Cowboys-Lions game and we waited for dad to come home. When he did, he had his entire hand wrapped with a metal splint to keep the thumb in place. He would wear that for week and then spend weeks more squeezing a rubber ball in his hand to get his strength back.

Mom offered to clean off the bloody parts of the turkey and re-heat it but we had long stuffed ourselves on mashed potatoes and rolls and wanted nothing to do with the bloody beast. After all, the blood had now soaked even deeper into the bird.

“Christ Con(nie) just throw the damn thing away,” my father said. Not quite as dramatic as old man Bumpus’s dogs hauling the carcass away but my mother had this look of eternal sadness that was shared by Ralphie’s dad in ‘A Christmas Story.’

You will never know the feeling

It wasn’t her fault, but in her eyes, it was.

And we did not go out for Chinese. At the time there were no Chinese restaurants in Chardon and dad was expecting a big ER bill anyway so he wouldn’t have spent the money.

All in all, it really sucked that year, but I learned my lesson – buy an electric knife and let it do the work for you.

I actually have this exact knife - Parents wedding gift

I hope none of you deal with a Thanksgiving disaster in your life and for God’s sakes, toss the giblets. Who the hell really wants to eat those?

Me and a tree

In the backyard there was a pine tree. 

  Where I used to sit on the roof. The tree is marked with an arrow. The pool was not there when I climbed it.

On the trunk, some branches had been cut off leaving protrusions that one could imagine as ladder rungs. Up about 12 feet there was a Y-shaped branch split that my neighbor, a guy a few years older than me, would climb up and sit on.

Just for reference, I was eight-years-old.

He would try to cajole me to come up.

“Aw come on,” he’d say. “It’s easy.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I’d say. “I don’t think my parents want me to climb up there and I don’t think they want you up there either.”

But if my parents weren’t home, he didn’t care what I said.

The bully kid a few doors down would come over and make fun of me for not climbing the tree. I guess it was a rite of manhood that my fear of heights was preventing me from passing. He was the kind of kid that would hit me in the head with a baseball when we played ‘running bases.’

So I as did then and do now, I stewed and ruminated until the whole issue got under my skin. 

You ever see weightlifters psych themselves out before a big lift? I saw this guy on TV walking around the barbell shouting about how he was not going to let this weight ruin his day. And then he lifted it. 

I was thinking the same thing about this tree. 

I waited until none of the neighbor kids were around and gingerly climbed up the first few ‘rungs.’ That was easy – I’d done that before. 

There were the last two larger tree branches and I grabbed one with both hands and went over on my stomach with an audible “oof!”

I had one more to go to the Y branch which was about a foot wide on both sides. I remember looking down. I remember thinking going up one more branch would be a lot easier than going down at this point. And then I could say I did it.

With one more heave, I did and sat on the Y branch with a sense of accomplishment. I imagined myself as the frog from the story that sat on the largest lily pad and “was the king of all he could see.”

That sense of accomplishment lasted about a minute. I looked down and all of the sudden the branches that seemed so doable going up now seemed so perilous going down. It was all a matter of perspective, another lesson I would learn that day. Looking up, the Y branch didn’t seem like such a high place. Looking down from it was akin to the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

So there I sat, trying to think my way out of this when the neighbor kid comes sauntering over.

“Hey you finally did it,” he said.

“Yep,” I said. “I made it.”

“So come on down and we’ll play catch,” said the neighbor kid.

“Ummmmmm . . . in a while,” I stammered.

“When,” he asked.

I looked at him and he looked at me and he knew. 

“You’re too scared to come down from there aint’cha,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. 

“OK look, I’ll help ya,” the neighbor said. “I’ll stand here under the tree and guide ya down. OK first slide down and put your foot on that one branch.”

I did and then froze.

“OK, swing your other foot over to the same branch,” he said.

Yep, I was stuck with my legs doing the splits, ass-side up in a tree.

To make an excruciating story shorter, gradually, other neighborhood kids came over to gawk at my ass in the tree, each one alternating between giving me advice and laughing at me. One kid, I don’t know who, just said “jump – “you won’t get hurt bad.”

Oh, that was all I needed to hear.

Then my dad came home. He looked around at his son making a spectacle of himself in his own backyard.

“Geez-us-Christ get down from the tree already,” was the first thing dad said. 

The neighbor on the other side came over. He went hunting with my dad.

“Well, well, well,” he said with that Southern Ohio drawl. “Your boy seems to be stuck in the tree.” 

So he stood under me and offered some advice. I managed to get my other leg down and now my hands were on one branch and my feet on another. Next was the tough part. I had to bend down from here and squat to get my feet to the next branch down. After that, it was only the smaller rung-like branches and I was home free.

But if I squatted, I was afraid of losing my balance. I was already embarrassed and I felt falling would add more embarrassment and a broken neck.  I’ve always feared the worst, as you know.

Eventually, dad got so frustrated with me; he stood directly under me and ordered me, as only a Marine can, to get down one more branch.

What I did was slither down vertically, shaking like a leaf in a, well, you know; doing a kind of half-sit until I was sitting on the lower branch. From there, I lowered myself and my dad grabbed me and pulled me to the ground.

Everyone had a good laugh and since the show was over, they left. I felt like Charlie Brown. I always wished Charlie Brown was real so I could commiserate with him.

I don’t remember what dad said. He wasn’t as mad as he was channeling a yet-to-be Hank Hill: that boy ain’t right.

I did the walk of shame back to the house. 

On the last day at the house after selling it, I went to the backyard as part of my ‘goodbye house tour’ and took one last look at the tree, remembering that humiliation from 42 years before.

It’s strange how we forget so much in our single digit years and the things we remember are usually moments of joy and triumph mixed with moments of shame and pain. I guess that’s normal.

What isn’t normal is this: I believe that tree, in all its innocence, started me down the road to being risk-averse. I guess that’s the nice way to put it.

I never climbed a tree again and remained scared of heights. There are folks who get an adrenaline rush from things like skydiving, motorcycle riding, bungee jumping and so on. I will never know that.

How I got through the obstacle course in basic training is still a wonder to me. Extreme peer pressure and a screaming drill sergeant will do that. In like for Ft. Jackson’s Victory Tower, – a tangle of logs to climb and ropes to swing from, one of the drill sergeants saw the fear in my face. 

“Hey you got one of your troops that’s looking a little too hard at that tower,” one drill told my drill.

I found myself on one side of the rope swing (over a net) and everyone was calling my name and it felt just like. . . you know. I had no choice -- I grabbed the rope and jumped. I didn’t quite make it and my jaw hit the lower log post with a resounding ‘thwack.’ I ate out of one side of my mouth for a week.

I remember that moment as I looked at the tree, cursing it and myself. Thankfully, one only had to do the tower once. The ropes gave me calluses I still have on my hands.

The funny thing is when I get a real good dose of hypomania, I’ll take all kind of risks with relationships, careers and money. But I still will not take physical risks. 

Some people wear their bruises, bone breaks and scars with pride. It is a sign they have challenged themselves and have no regrets. 

I look at them and feel small and wonder what part of life I have missed. 

I took one last look at the tree, sighed, took my wife’s hand and walked slowly back to the house and to the rest of my life.

Footnote: on this day in 1987, I shipped off to basic training at Fort Jackson, SC.Hua!