TEENAGE YEARS

A Time That Was Not All Joyous

Not every story in this book will be joyful. My teenage years were quite tumultuous, and sprinkled with some incredible difficulties. I was not sure if I should include this part of my life, but it happened, and it explains quite a bit about the person I grew up to be.

We go through bumps in life that shape us into who we become, or maybe even who we were meant to be. Sometimes those bumps are significant, so much so that they can make or break us.

And as we mature, we learn how to make sense of those situations. We learn to give grace to those who may have hurt us. And to understand there are “gray areas” all around us – nothing is black and white.

And so, we learn to forgive. And most importantly, we finally see how all of these experiences added to who we became as we grew into adulthood.

There are some things that happen in our lives, which we probably believe at the time are the worst thing that could ever happen to us. And up to that time, they may be the worst thing.

Somehow we do whatever we need to do, and manage to go on. And then other things happen. And then more things.

But then as we get even older, it’s quite a gift to realize that life was not meant to be easy. And once we have the maturity (and extra years!), we can look back and ponder about what happened in our past, and see how it contributed to who we became (as John Tillman explained in the Foreword).

I recently told a high school friend (one of my only friends back then) way more details about what had happened to me in my teen years. She knew some of it, but not all of it. I had probably been too afraid to tell her.

Marianne looked at me empathetically and said, “I didn’t know.”  And then she asked, “How could you forgive your parents and get past that?” I’m not completely sure.

But I think one has to look at the overall picture of the people in our lives.  What shaped them to act the way they did? And did they make up for what happened, even if they didn’t say they were sorry for their actions? Did they do the best they could with what their own life experiences had been?

And also, with even more maturity: How did that experience shape who I became?

And how did it help me to help others?

More than Strict

My parents were strict. My Mom could be very fun, and she was lively, but she still had strong expectations of us. That was OK. She was a wonderful mother to little kids.

The opposite applied to my dad - he was never fun. At least not that I could ever see. He was scary to me and my siblings, and as we grew up we knew that once he came home from work, we needed to stay out of whatever room he was in.

Dinner time was stressful as well. Our parents loved to argue and yell at each other; they seemed to enjoy it. My father would complain about the quality of the meat, and my mother would yell back at him that she had bought the best stuff. We ate as fast we could to get away from the table.

When I was 11-years-old, we moved to a part of Long Beach called Belmont Shore. Many moms did not work and stayed home with the kids, but my mother was a residential realtor, and she loved her job. She adored finding the perfect home for new couples and families. My father was always very supportive of my mom working, which wasn’t always the case in some families. They were quite a team in this way.

My father wanted to try investing in some property, and so by the time I was 12, my parents had saved enough money to put a down payment on a duplex. It was right up the street from our house on Covina Ave. in Long Beach, California. My parents were super proud they had accomplished this. Their plan was to fix up one place, rent it out and care for it, build on the equity and save money, and then buy another property.  And, over time, that is what they did.

My father believed in hard work, plain and simple. He grew up on a farm and he helped his father every single day. Even if it was a school day, he got up when the sun came up and worked a few hours before school. Then after school, he headed straight out to the cornfields again.

So that is what my father expected of us. We were expected to help him with the apartments, and we did. Every weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, we went to whatever apartment was empty and we painted, swept, and cleaned toilets. We all had to be there, even if there was not enough for four kids to do; it was a requirement. Even my nine-year-old sister painted and swept, but her favorite job was to ride her bike to Jack-in-the-Box up the street to get our lunch.

Our father was a firm boss as well. He didn’t like when we talked very much, or especially if we laughed. This was serious business. I remember painting with my older sister and we had laughed about something and he got mad. “When your mouth is open, your hand moves slower!” So, we painted quietly.

None of us really liked having to do this every single weekend. But in retrospect, all four of us grew up to be hard workers. And it is a credit to our father (and our mother) for instilling in us that work ethic. I don’t think we understood this at the time.

I think it was easier for my parents when we were younger, but as we grew into teenagers, I believe they parented more in fear. It was very clear where they stood on dating, and especially on premarital sex. Mainly, don’t ever do it or you will pay a heavy price. My mother had been brought up Catholic and my father often said, “I would never have married your mother if she had been ‘used.’” He seemed to think that was funny, and she didn’t seem to mind him saying it either. Sometimes he said it much more sternly though, as a strongly veiled threat.

It was just better to avoid these subjects at all costs. We wouldn’t dare say out loud that we had a boyfriend or liked a boy. We all learned to hide almost everything we were doing, and we looked out for one another, mainly helping each other not “get into trouble” which was always our term for having our parents be mad at us.

I Was Never a Bruin

Lately I have run into someone who, every time he sees me, says, “Ahhh, you’re a fellow Bruin!” in reference to the fact that we went to the same school, Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, home of the Bruins.

For me, I will never be a Bruin. I never was a Bruin. I don’t even know what that would feel like to look back fondly at high school and think, “I’m a Bruin.” But honestly, I don’t blame the school. Woodrow Wilson High School had nothing to do with how I feel about that.  And I’m happy for anyone who has positive memories of going there.

I started at Wilson in the 10th grade when I was 15. My favorite class was trigonometry, where I sat next to a girl who had lots of freckles and the greatest laugh I had ever heard. She had a sort of ongoing, never-ending giggle, that was so completely authentic. I loved seeing her in class every day. Her name was Marianne, and we became good friends.

I then met some of her friends from childhood, but beyond that I remained very introverted and quiet. I didn’t join clubs or sororities, or bake cookies for football players. I went to class and listened politely. Then I rode my blue Schwinn bicycle home, and once there, I did my homework, and then watched TV as I sewed or baked.  

I loved sewing with a passion. I made all of my own clothes, almost all dresses, but also sometimes midi-length skirts with accompanying white eyelet crop tops to go with them.

But I didn’t dare share my love of sewing with anyone. It was the early 70s, and the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment was supposedly imminent, and it was all everyone talked about. Back then, it was a new referendum, and women were excited to move forward and have equality, which I understood. But it was also clear, in an underlying and unspoken way, that it was not cool (or hip!), to enjoy traditionally girl-like projects, like sewing, or baking, which were my two favorite things.

My older sister was a real activist. She formed a club at the school, called S.E.R.A., which stood for “Support of the Equal Rights Amendment.” I was always in awe of her – I would never even know how to form a club at the school, or how to even “fight” for anything.

She was dating a guy who was the eldest of 10 kids in a Catholic family. He was wildly funny, and wickedly smart, just like my sister. They seemed like a perfect match.

My sister’s boyfriend had a good friend who was one year younger than him. His name was Danny; he came from an Orthodox Greek family and had four sisters.  He was very quiet and soft-spoken.

Sometimes after school, my sister’s boyfriend would stop over to our house, and often Danny was with him. I was always drawn to Danny’s energy – it matched mine completely. He explained he had learned how to listen after growing up as the only brother to all of his sisters.

He was extremely humble as well, which made him even more attractive. There was an annual swimming contest put on by the local Greek church, and he had quietly won it the last three years in a row. I use the word “quietly,” because he never even mentioned it. I only knew about it because his friend bragged about it on his behalf.

I liked this about him so much. He was super handsome with his Greek chiseled face and muscles, his dark brown hair and eyes. But he didn’t even seem to know he was so attractive. I don’t think he even realized how many girls had been flirting with him and trying to connect with him.

Danny and I had a mind meld of sorts. We were instantly kindred spirits, both quiet, both pensive and thoughtful, and both kind. We didn’t want the attention to be on us, and we were good kids, and, dare I say it, even obedient – we got good grades and cared about what our parents thought of us.

Danny and I fell in love.

Neither of us had ever had a serious girlfriend/boyfriend before. We understood each other and felt safe together.

In January of 1974, we had been together as a couple for a few months, I was a junior and he was a senior. But we both remained our introverted selves and did not usually express our feelings about each other around anyone else. It was our private special connection.

That year, “streaking” was a big thing – a guy even streaked across the stage at the Oscars ceremony on TV.

Someone challenged Danny to streak across the quad at lunchtime. This was so out of his comfort zone. But he agreed to do it, wearing a brown bag over his head (with the eyes cut out) to hide his identity. On the designated day, I brought a camera to school, and was sitting under a tree waiting to see him do it. The quad was especially crowded that day, as everyone seemed to know what was about to happen.

This was WAY before any type of social media! But even then, teenagers knew how to talk and quickly spread the word.

All eyes were on the entrance at Park Ave. and 10th St., where he was slated to begin. And then, there he was!

Barefoot and completely naked! Looking like a Greek god and running from the entrance between the 200 and 300 buildings, straight through the quad, and quickly to Ximeno Ave., where he had friends waiting for him with his clothes. I was so proud of him.

This was the closest I came to ever feeling like “a Bruin.” Maybe because I was in the quad experiencing something with other students.

But even then, it was really just me and Danny.

Our Special Time in the Snow

Danny and I always enjoyed every second we were together.  Neither of us were big talkers, we just needed to look at each other and we would start giggling; we just had this knowing of each other’s soul.

We both loved music, and would ride around in his little silver car after school, listening to the radio and singing together. Well, mostly I was the one singing, but he would look over at me constantly, with a shy smile and his eyes filled with so much love.

By December of 1973, we had been together a few months and we decided to take a road trip up to Big Bear, about a two-hour drive from Long Beach. Being 16 and 17, we didn’t think too far ahead about where we would be staying. We figured we would just sleep in the car. We brought along sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows, and a bagful of snacks.

I probably told my parents I was spending the night at a girlfriend’s house.

I had only been in the snow once before, so I had almost zero experience with being anywhere that cold. But I wasn’t worried at all. I always felt safe with Danny; he always looked out for me and took care of me.

Neither of us had ever skied, but we knew there were a couple ski areas up the mountain. We decided to rent our skis locally at a sporting goods store before heading up the mountain - I used my babysitting money to pay for the rental.

We left early one afternoon and drove the two hours up into the mountains. It had started to lightly snow as we had headed up the hill.  There was a storm coming in, which we didn’t know about because there were no weather apps back then, and neither one of us watched the news to see a weather report.

Once we got to Big Bear, we parked in a big parking lot that surrounded a large lodging area near the ski slopes.

I think we got out and checked out the lodge, and walked around a bit until the snow was just blowing absolutely everywhere and it was no longer fun to be out walking in it. We decided to head back to the car to take shelter at about 6PM.  A man saw us getting in the car and laying out our sleeping bags inside, and he told us (very nicely) that there was no way we would stay warm enough in a car during a blizzard.

We didn’t believe him, nor listen to him. We just got all cozy and watched the snow around us. But it was quickly piling up on the roof of the car and around all the wheels. Danny got out many times and cleared as much snow as he could off of the car. He would then get back in and turn the heat on for a little bit, and then turn off the car so we wouldn’t get carbon-monoxide poisoning.

But, eventually, no matter how tightly we held on to each other, and even with using all the sleeping bags and blankets, that man’s advice turned out to be right. We were never going to stay warm enough in that little car with no insulation, especially with a blizzard happening all around us.

We decided to head into the lodge; we walked over and huddled near the fire in the reception area.  We didn’t bring enough money to get a room, and neither of us had a credit card, so we made the (ignorant) decision that we would just stay in the lobby all night.

At some point, the hotel personnel told us that we definitely could not do that. They didn’t allow people to just hang out in their lobby all night, for free.

We didn’t know what to do. It would be really risky to try to drive back down the mountain late at night in the storm. There happened to be a few other couples hanging out in the lobby – they were in their early 20’s, and they were all staying together in one room. They were quite friendly, and when we shared our predicament, they said we could come with them to their room and sleep on the floor.

I was a little nervous, but they were really nice, and I knew Danny would protect me. So that is exactly what we did. We brought our blankets and pillows along with us, and slept on the carpeted floor of their double room in the lodge. Thank goodness they had offered, because I doubt we would have been safe staying in the car all night, or even worse on an attempt to drive down the mountain in the dark night of the storm.

In the morning, the storm was suddenly completely over, and the sun was shining brightly over all the powdery snow, which seemed to already be quickly melting. We decided to skip paying for the ski slopes, and headed on home down the mountain.

Part way down we spotted a parking area near a field with freshly fallen snow; we decided to stop there and park. We got out of the car and carried our skis over to the edge of what seemed like a large meadow. We both put on our skis and attempted to propel ourselves around in the snow. Neither of us knew what we were doing, so we didn’t get very far. But still, we laughed and were just happy to be together.

I don’t remember that I carried a camera with me very often as a teenager. But somehow, I had brought one with me on our little excursion. And I captured those moments of the two of us playing in the snow. Danny was even able to hold the camera way out, and take a couple “selfies” of the two of us, which was not something done way back then!

I always loved those pictures of the two of us together in the snow.

And I’m not sure why, but I always kept those photos.

Introverts can be Risk Takers

There came a time when we knew we wanted to be intimate. We were both virgins.

Because my sister was involved with every kind of women’s rights movement that was happening, she knew all about Planned Parenthood, and she gave me the big-sister advice to go there if I needed birth control. And that’s what I did. I was a straight-A student who was meticulous and responsible.

Danny had his little car with the surf racks on top; he was an avid surfer. Sometimes he would sneak over to my house after school when I knew my parents would not yet be home.

One afternoon we were upstairs in my bedroom and we heard someone coming into the house way earlier than normal. Thank goodness we were already dressed and just hanging out. I could tell it was my father. Oh no! I wasn’t really allowed to have boys hanging around upstairs, much less to be doing what we had been doing. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to distract my father in order to get Danny back down the stairs and safely out the door.

I panicked. And then it got worse. Suddenly, I could hear the plod, plod, plod of my father coming slowly up the stairs.

My parents’ bedroom was on the first floor, and all of us kids were upstairs. Neither of my parents hardly ever came upstairs, and especially not my father. He never did. But now I could hear him coming up. I told Danny to go out on the upper deck area that was located off of my bedroom, and to hide in the little storage shed out there.

My dad came up to my doorway and stood there. I acted like everything was normal, even though we both knew this was not the least bit normal, and not something he ever did. He sat down in the antique rocking chair my mother had given me, and asked me how my day had been.

This was something he never did either. It was starting to seem like a game of cat and mouse as we made small talk.  He rocked back and forth for about 10 minutes, and then he finally got up and went back downstairs. He probably decided he would just wait down there, because “that boy” would have to come down at some point, right?

Wrong.

Once I could hear my father safely downstairs, I rushed out to the deck where Danny was hiding. We thought about another way to get him out of the house without my father seeing him. It was easy to climb down the front of our house from the small balcony in front because of the decorative black irons on some of the windows – I had done it many times. But if my father was in the living room, he would be able to see him.

On the back deck, there was an old clothesline that we never used. Danny untied it from the posts and decided he would use it to climb down the back side of the garage where there were no windows where he could be seen. He tied the clothesline around one of the posts and made sure it was knotted tightly. Then he hoisted himself up and over the wall, and while still holding onto the wall with one hand, he grabbed the clothesline with the other.

“Are you sure you can do it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered as he smiled back at me.

The plan was for him to go slowly down the rope until he got to the bottom. But as soon as he took his hand off the wall, and grabbed onto the clothesline with both hands, it snapped. It was too old and frayed to hold his weight. He fell all the way down from the second floor to the ground behind the garage.

My heart stopped. But then he looked up at me and smiled. He whispered that he was OK, and I was so relieved. But when he stood up to walk, he was really limping, and mostly hopping on his other foot. But he headed off anyway, limping away, and looking back at me, reassuring me with gestures that he was fine.

I’m sure that evening my father was very perplexed. He had obviously seen the little silver car with the surf racks parked out front, so he knew he had been up there. But he never saw anyone come down the stairs. I acted like nothing had happened.

The next day Danny’s mother took him to their family doctor because he was limping so much. He had told her he was walking on a high curb and not paying attention, and he had slipped off of the curb and twisted his ankle.

At the doctor’s office, he and his mom were both called into the examining room. He repeated this story to the doctor. The doctor looked over at his mother, and asked her to please go wait out in the waiting room while he examined him. Once she was gone, he turned back to Danny and said, “OK, Dan, now what really happened?” 

And Danny told him he was escaping out of a girl’s bedroom, so her father wouldn’t find him up there. His doctor shook his head and chuckled; he was not surprised. And luckily it was just a sprain and nothing was broken.

Claremont Avenue

We didn’t dare go back to my house after school anymore. It was just too risky. Usually, we just drove around and hung out. But one day we were trying to find a place where we could park and have sex.

He suggested we park in the beach parking lots on Ocean Blvd. But I said no, I was too nervous. Even though I couldn’t think of any reason my father might drive down Ocean Blvd., it made me too scared. What if he saw the car and came over?

So instead, we turned up from Ocean onto Claremont Ave., one of the small one-way streets in Belmont Shore. We parked on that very first block. It was a cold overcast January day, and there was no one around. It felt about as safe as we could get.

We were very passionate, and it wasn’t long before the windows were completely fogged up, so who could see in anyway? Right? But suddenly, there was a sharp knock on the window. We both stopped what we were doing and gasped, and quickly sat up. Danny peeked out the window, and said, “Don’t worry, but it’s a cop.”

We were both already quickly getting dressed. I was wearing my favorite turquoise sweater with the big butterfly applique on the front, and some light-colored blue jeans. I got dressed so fast that I didn’t bother putting on my bra.

At some point Danny rolled down the window to talk to the officer. I’ll never forget his name: Officer Richardson. The reason I will never forget is because he lied to us. Officer Richardson said he needed to take us down to the station so they could just “talk” to us. And then they would “let us go,” he said. We believed him.

He put us in the back of his patrol car and took us to the police station. Once we were there, they separated us and then they immediately put me in a jail cell with some other girl, and told me they were calling my parents. I felt so betrayed.

I knew my life was going to change forever.

The walls of the jail cell were this ugly mint-green color, and I paced back and forth, over and over again. I don’t remember much about the other girl except that she kept asking me why I was so worried. I tried to answer her, but there was no way to explain the amount of trouble I knew I was about to be in.  “You don’t understand!” I kept repeating over and over to her as I paced. “My father is going to kill me.”

She thought I was crazy. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“No, no, no, he won’t. He will hate me, and I’m afraid he might hurt me.” I could barely breathe; I was consumed with fear, and it was mounting.

 At some point they unlocked the cell and slid the bars to the side. They told me my father was there to pick me up. Because I had left my bra behind in Danny’s car as I hurried to get dressed, I shyly walked down the hall of the police station crossing my arms over my chest as I followed the officer. They led me to a room where a chief (or someone) sat behind a desk. My father was sitting in a wooden chair across from the desk and against the wall to my left. I glanced at him.

I knew.

I already knew, but when I saw his face, I knew even more. I was in so much trouble. My father could barely contain himself as he looked up at me and glared. He was seething. His anger was like a bubbling volcano, but he knew he had to contain it in front of these police officers.

They made me stand there in front of the desk facing the chief guy. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but the officer reiterated something about how awful we were, and about what we had done and how disrespectful we were and what bad kids we were. I had to stand there and just nod my head, and blindly agree with him that I was a terrible person. Just a horrible human being. I looked as repentant as I could.

We were then excused from the small office, and told we could go. My father walked out ahead of me. I followed with my arms modestly crossed again over my chest, and my head down. My father reached the elevator ahead of me and pushed the button.  I knew his fury was ready to erupt.

There was a police woman behind a desk near the elevator. I took a chance, and leaned in and whispered to her, “I’m really scared of what my father is going to do to me.” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “If you have any problems with your father then just give us a call.”

That’s when I knew it was hopeless. My father would always know how to act in front of authorities; no one would ever believe me.

The elevator door opened. My father went in and I followed. I was terrified. He pushed the button and the doors closed. Out of sight of anyone, he turned to me and started screaming at me while he punched me over and over again in my upper arm.

“How could you be so goddamn stupid?!?”

“How could you be such a goddamn whore??”

He just kept punching me over and over again on my arm until the elevator doors opened, and then we headed to his car and got in. He had a red Volkswagen beetle, with a stick shift. 

As we drove home, he continued to scream and yell at me and make sure I knew I was a total disappointment as a daughter. And every time he moved the stick shift to the next position, he raised his fist and pounded it into my left thigh. Over and over and over again.

“I can’t believe you’re a goddamn whore!!”

He made some other comment about how I was probably sleeping with the entire football team. I wanted to tell him I didn’t even know anyone on the football team, and I loved Danny, and he was the only boy I had ever been with. But I knew to stay quiet. And just take it.

When we got to our house he had us hurry inside. He told me to go up to my room. I ran up as fast as I could. But he followed. Slowly and methodically up the stairs, I heard that slow plodding sound. I knew I was doomed.

When he got to my room, he told me to lay face down on my bed. I did. Then I could hear him taking off his belt. And then, he took the belt and he began whipping me over and over again with it. Over and over and over. And while he was whipping me he kept telling me how horrible I was. That I was such a disappointment. That I was a failure. That I completely disappointed him and my mother.

He said I was a goddamn whore. And he hadn’t raised me to be a goddamn whore.

The belt lashes stung and were painful, but his words were just horrific and humiliating. It cut me deeply to be told I was a disappointment, that I was worthless, that I was now worth nothing to him. He was breaking my spirit.

I don’t know how long it went on. At some point during the beating, my mother had come home. She ran upstairs screaming, asking what was wrong, what had happened. When she got to my room, he stopped hitting me with the belt and said to my mother, “Let’s go downstairs so I can tell you what your whore of a daughter has done!” They left my room and went downstairs and there was a slight pause. And then I heard my mother wailing. Absolutely wailing like an injured animal, as if someone had just died.

I was already beaten down both physically and mentally, but hearing my mother wail like that just cemented for me what a disappointment I suddenly was. I was in a mindset that is hard to describe. Every part of my body was shaking; I was trembling so much that I could barely stand. It is hard to describe the absolute terror that I felt. The shaking was overwhelming; I felt like my world was ending.

Here I was, a 16-year-old girl, and a good girl. I was a good student; I did whatever my parents wanted me to do. I worked on the apartments. I babysat. I worked at Woodies Goodies. I was a good girl. I was a good daughter.

But suddenly none of that mattered. I was now a complete failure.

My mind raced to find a way to alleviate how my parents now felt about me. How could I fix it? What should I do? I looked at my bedroom windows on the second floor that looked out over Division Street. I wondered if I should jump out the window. I didn’t want to die. But I remember distinctly thinking, “Maybe If I break my legs they won’t be so mad at me.” It was the only solution I could think of – to jump out the window and break my legs.

I didn’t realize exactly how bad of shape I was in, until my younger sister, who was just 13, came quietly to my door. I looked at her and immediately began backing away. I was terrified of her. I didn’t know who she was at first. I couldn’t stop shaking. I held up my shaking arms as if to say, “Don’t come near me!” as I kept backing away.

I was so frightened. As she slowly walked toward me, I cowered in the corner. I looked at her, and I knew that I knew her, but I was just so terrified that I huddled into a little ball. I peered up at her. She just kept reassuring me. “It’s me. It’s me. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s me, your sister.”

I finally let her come over to console me. But I cried very quietly. I thought if they heard me crying they would come back upstairs. I did not dare leave my room, not even to go to the bathroom. Everything frightened me.  And I felt like such a weak person. Why didn’t I stand up for myself? Why did I lie down on the bed like that and let him whip me?

After some time, I could hear my mother making dinner. Then we were all called down to the table. No one spoke. We passed dishes around to each other, and I remember my mother saying to one of my siblings, “Pass the mashed potatoes to the whore.”  It was clear my parents were on the same team, and my mother thought I was just as disgusting and disappointing as my father did.

Later that evening I heard the dreaded slow plod, plod, plod of my father’s footsteps coming once again up the stairs. I braced myself. Now what??

He came into my room, and over to me where I sat on the edge of my bed. He seemed calmer, and almost pensive and thoughtful. He sat down next to me. “I just want to know why you did it. Why?”

This was new. He didn’t sound mad. I was amazed. I felt like he might be able to hear me, maybe he would even understand me. He had asked with seemingly no judgment. This was my chance, my chance to be like my older sister and stand up for myself. Surely he would understand. My father had been 18 when he met my mother, and she had been 17. He would understand being in love.

I took a deep breath and said simply, “I really love him.”

There was a silent pause. Then my father slowly raised his fist all the way up near his head, and then quickly slammed it down into my thigh. “What do you know about love at your age?! Don’t you ever talk about love like that to me again!! You’re so goddamn stupid!!”

I remained silent. There was no grace. There was no hope. I would never get through to him.

I never forgot that moment. As his fist slammed into my thigh, I went into survival mode. At that instant, I knew I had to become two different people – the perfect daughter that was everything he wanted me to be, and the real me that I would keep very hidden. I was not strong enough to stand up to him. He was too powerful; he would crush me. I was smart enough to know I couldn’t do it.

I split my personality in two at that very moment, and I knew that hiding myself was the only way to survive. I turned to him and said, “I don’t know why I did it! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry I disappointed you! I made a terrible mistake.”

Believe me, I wasn’t sorry. I loved Danny. But I needed to survive. And I didn’t know what he would do unless I acquiesced.

This was the beginning of a new way of life for me.

House Arrest

The physical part was done. Now came the mental part.

My father warned me over and over again if I ever saw that boy again, he would “have him arrested for statutory rape!” I believed he could do it.

And my parents decided the only way to control me was to basically imprison me. The next day I was allowed to go to school, but I was to come home immediately afterwards, whereupon my mother would be waiting for me. Once I was home, I was to go straight to my room. My older sister Julie had gone off to college, and I had moved into her room. I so wished that she was still home. I could only leave my room to go to the bathroom or come downstairs for dinner. But I was not allowed to go to my younger sister’s room to watch TV. And I could not talk to anyone on the phone.

My younger sister and brother were not allowed to speak to me at dinner. I was even forbidden to talk to my siblings at all, so as not to taint them with my horrible behavior. Or to give them any “ideas. 

Up in my room, I could play my records though, so that’s what I did all night, every night, until it was time to fall asleep. Every day, it was like that.

And I was never shown any love. I was shown only disdain and disgust. I was basically disowned and shunned, but my parents knew they had to provide me food and shelter, and of course, they didn’t want anyone outside of the family to know of my evilness. Neither of them ever hugged me, asked me how I was, or told me they loved me. I was treated like a piece of furniture, only worse, because every day I was shown that I was unworthy of even being spoken to.

There were some times when my mom had her real estate friends over. She would cheerfully call me downstairs to play the piano for them. In front of them, she would act fun and treat me like she used to, and she would act so proud of me after each song I played. She would smile and pat me on the back and act so loving in front of her friends.

And then I would go back up to the solace of my room, and my records, and close the door. “The Who’s” album, Quadrophenia, was my best friend. So were albums by the Rolling Stones, the Moody Blues, and Led Zeppelin.

For weeks and months, both of my parents kept up the looks on their faces that said, “I hate you. You’re a disappointment and the worst daughter that ever lived.” I was always allowed to come down to eat dinner, but rarely did anyone speak. Sometimes my parents would talk to each other about their day, but I was never to comment. I had to remain mute. After cleaning up the dishes, I was relegated back to my room.

It was basically house arrest, or maybe it could be called “room arrest.” On the weekends, I never bothered to get dressed – there was no point. I stayed in my pajamas and in my room the whole time, every weekend. And listened to my records.

One Saturday, my father needed a letter mailed. He called me to come downstairs, and he told me he wanted me to go up the street and mail the letter for him. I couldn’t believe it! He was going to let me out of the house on a Saturday?

I ran back up, quickly got dressed, and then went downstairs. He handed me the letter and stared at me like he wanted to kill me. It was the same look he had given me at the police station. He wanted to make sure I “stayed in line.”

“Come right back after you mail the letter!”

I went out the door and headed up Covina Ave. toward the post office on 2nd St., which was one block over on the corner of Corona Ave.  It seemed like such a pretty day; I remember I even started skipping with happiness! I was out of the house and not just to go to school, I was going to go to 2nd Street! And on a Saturday! I was so excited as I reached the mailbox. I pulled open the lid, and I put in the letter.

Oh. Then I realized it was over. I had to go straight back.

My shoulders slumped, and I dropped my head as I slowly headed back the one block over on 2nd Street, and then the one block down to my house on Covina Ave. When I got there, my father was waiting and opened the door. “Did you mail the letter?!,” he demanded. “Yes,” I said dejectedly. It was more demeaning than I even realized at this point, because how hard was it to mail a letter? He didn’t think I was even capable of that?

I went back upstairs to my room and stayed there for the rest of the weekend.

I Still Loved Him

I still loved Danny. And he loved me.

We spoke at school the day after it happened. He felt just terrible about how my parents were treating me. His mother had come to pick him up at the police station and she barely shrugged her shoulders as they headed out and on home. He felt terrible that he had believed Officer Richardson (#asshole). He said, “I should have blocked him in some way and told you to run.” But it was all hindsight at this point.

Danny said we should immediately stop seeing each other. But I didn’t want to do that. We loved each other. We understood each other.  We saw each other as much as we could on passing breaks at school, and for just a little while after school. I would meet Danny after my last class, and we would have 30-40 minutes to be together, mostly just in his car. There was nowhere else for us to go. I was terrified that my father had spies watching from everywhere and I didn’t want anyone to report back to him that I was with Danny.

I was so afraid that as soon as I got in Danny’s car, I automatically put the seat back so I was riding in a prone position. I would never sit up in the seat and take the chance that anyone would see me and tell my parents. And then before the bewitching hour of 4PM, Danny dropped me off in one of Belmont Shore’s many alleys, and I would walk home.

After a few weeks, my parents were not always home at a strict time like they had been initially to stand guard over me. Instead, they would call the house by 4PM, and if I answered the phone, they trusted that I was obeying and being a “good girl.” Then they could convince themselves that the house arrest and limitations were working, and that I was capitulating to how they felt.

And they had every reason to feel that their actions were working, because I became a total actress whenever I was around them. I was absolutely perfect in front of them. I was the best and nicest daughter they could ever have wanted. Of course, before all this, I had already been a good daughter, but my “big giant sin” had completely wiped that away. I now had to regain that position by majorly sucking up, being inauthentic, running scared, and never, ever ever showing my real self. That was to be kept hidden away. This was the only way I could protect  myself.

A few times Danny and I took chances and would go to his house at lunchtime, or for an hour after school so we could be together. But I made sure he dropped me in the alley a few minutes before 4PM.

And every time when I opened my front door, I was not only filled with dread, I was filled with fear. My stomach hurt, and my heart raced. What if my father had found out? What if he saw us? What if someone told him?

I couldn’t relax until one of them called to check up on me at 4PM, and I could cheerfully report that I was home and doing my homework. Whew! They hadn’t found out; I would take a deep breath.

But the lying and sneaking around was wearing me out. I loved and needed Danny, but the terror that followed after being with him was really difficult for me.

“Getting Stoned” – that’s what we called it

I had tried marijuana a few times before all this happened. But I rarely used it, and I did not drink at all. (See? I was a good daughter).

I now needed something to calm me down after I got back into the house each day. Not only to help me with the fear, but to be able to tolerate being alone in my room for the whole evening by myself. I bought some marijuana, and I learned how to roll a joint.

In the afternoons, once I was home at the appropriate time, and my parents had checked on me that I was there, I would go into my closet and smoke a joint. I had to - it was the only way to cope with being alone in my room all night, every night, just listening to my records.

It was a blessing that my parents’ bedroom was downstairs, and all of us kids’ bedrooms were upstairs. Sometimes, if it felt safe, my brother and sister would sneak me in to watch TV with them in my sister’s room, but we were always alert for my father’s footsteps, and we had a back-up plan where we would say I was just using the bathroom on their side, across the hall. But when my father was in a foul mood, which was often, we couldn’t chance it. My siblings always felt bad that I was over on my side with the door closed, while they watched TV.

My parents had splurged and put in a second phone line because they were sick of how much we, as teenagers, were always on the phone. There were so many nights I wanted to call Danny but I didn’t dare – it was too risky. Sometimes he would have one of his sisters call and ask for me. If my younger sister answered, she would come get me. And his sister would give the phone to him. But we only talked for about fiveminutes though, just in case. I was just too scared.

Because the phone was located right outside the bathroom, I always had that contingency plan to explain why I was out of my room. I could always say that was where I had been, in case I heard the slow plodding footsteps coming up the stairs. I always had to be aware and have a plan.

This “incident” had happened in January of my Junior year of high school. I spent the remainder of 11th grade locked away like that, for six months, becoming more introverted than I ever had even been. The few friends I had mostly fell away, which was quite understandable. They were busy being teenagers in Long Beach, participating in school activities, sports, and other things they were interested in. I couldn’t really talk about what had happened.

Everything in my psyche changed dramatically after that. Suddenly, being at high school became totally different. I couldn’t relate to anything that the other kids would talk about. If I heard someone say to a friend, “let’s do something this weekend!” I would be grateful no one had asked me because how could I explain that I wasn’t allowed out, that I just stayed in my pajamas. I mostly kept my head down and didn’t interact with anyone.

And I suddenly felt so much “older” than everyone else my age. I couldn’t relate to anything that my peers were talking about, like football games and dances, or other high school type things. I never even went to even one football game. It all seemed so superficial and trivial compared to what I was experiencing. It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for my friends, I was, I just could not relate. I felt like I had been through something (and was still experiencing) that I could never tell anyone about. No one would understand.

I didn’t feel like a “high school girl.” Ever. And that’s why, to me, I’ve never been a “Bruin.”

“I’m Taking You to a Doctor”

A month or two after the police station experience, my mother informed me that she was taking me to a gynecologist. I did not need to go to a doctor; I was on birth control pills so I knew I wasn’t pregnant. And Danny and I had both been virgins, so I didn’t have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases. But I knew I was not allowed to question this. When she told me, I just said,” OK.”

I knew I could never tell my mother I had already gone to Planned Parenthood. There was this theory my parents were going with that I was “swept up in the moment” or that maybe “that boy” had “given me beer” and I lost control. It was all so stupid. I had been completely responsible. And I would never drink a beer anyway. I didn’t drink at all. Ever. I couldn’t believe how little my parents actually knew about me.

But I was filled with fear at my mother taking me to a doctor. I was scared. Would the doctor give me some kind of blood test?  Would the doctor be able to tell I was taking birth control pills? If the doctor could figure that out, she would surely tell my mother, right? I was so terrified that this could happen. So, I decided to stop taking birth control pills before the doctor visit. 

A few weeks later, we were at the doctor’s office. It was so uncomfortable. My mother looked at the pictures of newborn babies on the walls, and kept commenting on how cute the babies in the pictures were. She had a big smile on her face when we were out in the open around other people. She pretended that everything was normal and we were this happy mother-and-daughter.

I was led into an office alone, without my mother. That surprised me. The doctor came in and was smiling. “What’s going on?” she said. “Your mother said you are having trouble with your periods.” What? No, I wasn’t.

I looked at the doctor and told her I wasn’t having any trouble at all with my periods. “Then why are you here?” she asked quizzically. I began to blurt out a few things.  “Well, I got caught having sex in a car by the police, and my parents are really mad at me.”

That was really the understatement of the world to me. It eliminated the beautiful relationship I had with Danny, and made it sound like I might get grounded for an hour or two, instead of my nightly lock-up in my room.

The minute I said it out loud, my fear kicked into high gear. I suddenly felt like I was in “fight or flight” mode. What if this doctor told my mom what I had said? What if she felt the same way as my parents about teenagers having sex? What if she told my mother I had told her the truth about what happened, and that I didn’t have any problems with my period?  After all, Officer Richardson had betrayed me, this doctor might too.

I think the doctor saw my terror, and she softened somewhat, and I felt less scared.  She asked me if I wanted birth control. What? Was this a trick?  I didn’t trust her. What if I said yes? I was now certain she was a spy for my mother. I told her I didn’t need birth control because “I had broken up with the guy.”

My mother and I rode home and I said absolutely nothing. She made small talk and didn’t ask me anything about what had happened when I was alone with the doctor. It was always so surreal to me to live in this pretend environment where we acted like everything was normal and happy. I was now used to living as two different people. And I always knew it was risky to show any of my real self. 

I was so relieved to get home, and go back to the safety of my room. The minute I closed the door, I put on “Quadrophenia” by the Who. When my mother left for work, I smoked a joint in my closet, and I lay on my bed and listened to “Love Reign O’er Me,” over and over again.

I felt safe. Back in my room.

Why did I put up with this?

Why didn’t I run away? I berated myself over and over again for not standing up for myself. I was never strong like my older sister. She stood up to everything. I just didn’t have her moxie. She would never have laid down on a bed like that at age 16, waiting for her father to take off his belt and whip her.

I knew I had tried on that first evening to stand up for myself - I had told my father the truth. That I loved Danny. But that’s when he had slammed me in the leg and I knew I wasn’t safe. I would accept the punishment. And where else could I have gone anyway?

Danny and I started to see each other less and less. It was just too stressful. I could never stop being nervous. His mother had gotten a full-time job so no one was home in the afternoons at his house and we could steal away there for an hour. Any time more than that and I was convinced there were spies outside of every window.

My junior year ended and summer started. It didn’t really matter to me. I still wasn’t allowed to go anywhere anyway.  It had been more than six months of being confined in my room every night, of being left alone with no one to talk to, of becoming incredibly paranoid that I was being watched from everywhere and I was never safe.

In July of 1974, all that changed.

My older sister came home from her first year in college. She was 18. While she was out of the house one day, my mother was unpacking some of her things, and she found my sister’s birth control pills. When my sister came home, my mother was waiting. She confronted her about what she had found. She lay down the law to her, and threatened to tell my father once he came home from work about what she had found, unless she agreed to what would now be expected of her:

1. She had to move back home

2. She had to give up her boyfriend.

3. She had to give up her pre-med studies at UC San Diego and now go to Cal State Long Beach

If she did all those things, my mother said she would not tell my father.

My sister went upstairs and packed up everything she owned and moved out that afternoon, before my father even got home from work. She would have none of that. I was in awe of her strength. I wished I could have been strong enough to do what she did.

I felt really sorry for my sister, but somehow with this new development, my whole world changed. For my parents, it became a huge “a-ha!” moment. Suddenly, they decided that I wasn’t that bad of a daughter after all - it had been my sister all along, encouraging me. Of course, that wasn’t true, but I was suddenly seen in a better light. I was not the worst daughter anymore.

I really admired my sister - I could never do what she did. She walked right out. She knew she would have to give up college at that point without any money to pay for it. She found a waitress job and started working. She got a tiny apartment on Redondo Ave. at 2nd St. True to form, my parents forbid the other three of us from having anything to do with her.  But I snuck over to see her all the time. 

My life changed overnight. I had been in my room every night from January 16th until that day in July, for six whole months, but I was now suddenly trusted. I was suddenly good again. I was given more freedom.

I was Late

I had gone off the pill when I knew I was going to be forced by my mother to go to the gynecologist. I was still seeing Danny for an hour here or there, but I wasn’t yet worried about getting back on birth control. I had heard this rumor. Someone had told me that if you had been on the pill, and then went off of it, that its effects would continue to work for about three months. So, you didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant for three months or more.

I don’t know why I believed this and accepted it as fact. But I was too afraid to go back to Planned Parenthood to get more birth control pills. What if someone saw me there? What if they told my father? I lived in constant fear. 

And then …. my period was late.

Back then, the only way to know if you were pregnant was to go to a doctor or Planned Parenthood and give a urine sample. Danny went with me to the facility in North Long Beach. After I took the test, this lady came out and led us into a small room.  She told us the test was positive. OK, now I was 16, and pregnant. And I wouldn’t have been if my fear of my parents hadn’t made me go off the pill.

I asked the lady what I needed to do to get an abortion. She asked if I wanted any other kind of counseling or to consider other options. No. There were no other options for me. The thought of my father finding out I was pregnant, and realizing I had still secretly been seeing Danny for months after, was too terrifying for me to hear about any other options.

Abortion had become legal the year before, in 1973. My parents subscribed to Time magazine and it came in the mail every week. There were lots of articles about abortion. I remember seeing one very graphic cover of a drawing of a woman with a coat hanger near her, and she was slumped over and seemed to be dead. Inside the magazine was an article that told of botched abortions, with women using coat hangers, and women ending up dead after going to Tijuana to get the procedure.

Once I found out I was pregnant, I knew if I couldn’t do it legally, I would try all of those things. I would do anything and everything to make sure my father wouldn’t find out. The coat hanger, Tijuana, all of it.

I couldn’t believe it - I had finally just been released from being in my room/prison for so much of each day for six whole months. I was finally thought of as a “good daughter” again. But if my father ever knew I was pregnant, it would be over. I feared he would punch my stomach in, over and over until “it“ was gone.

We scheduled the procedure at a place in Los Angeles five days later. Those five days were excruciating for me. All I could think about was how I didn’t want to miscarry before I got the abortion. I didn’t know what a miscarriage was like, and I was worried that I would not be able to hide something like that from my parents. What a weird prayer I was saying, over and over again, “Please God, don’t let me miscarry before I get the abortion.” The fear of my father controlled me.

The day finally came. It was a Saturday and I was allowed to go out for longer on the weekend now that I was suddenly “good” again. I don’t remember where I said I was going for the day as I rode away on my bike. I locked my bike somewhere and Danny picked me up in our usual alley between Covina and Corona Avenues, just north of 2nd St. We drove silently to Los Angeles. He offered to go in with me, but I made him stay in the car while I went inside alone. I was too scared to be seen with him. Any of these people could (and would) call my parents, was what I was thinking. I could not be too careful.

There were women of all ages in the waiting room. It looked nothing like what I expected from things I had seen on the news. I think at that time, women getting the procedure were depicted as uncaring, and just using it as their form of birth control if they got pregnant. But this was a room of sadness and seriousness, and there was no one in the room who was taking it lightly.

A nurse came out and gave me two Valium to relax me, and I sat down and waited for my turn. I had never had any medication like that before. When they did finally call me to go in, I stood up, and then I fell against the wall, in fact, I almost fell completely over and could barely walk. The nurse grabbed me and guided me to the procedure room.

Under the effects of the Valium, I was more than relaxed, I was totally loopy and almost weirdly giddy. I had never felt like that before. The room seemed to be spinning, but not in a bad way. I actually felt very euphoric, but I did remember hearing the sound of the vacuum-type machine being turned on. It was eerie and hit me like a punch in the gut.

When it was done, I made it back to Danny’s car, and he was a nervous wreck. It had taken far longer than either of us thought it would, and he was fearful that something had gone wrong. He wanted to go in and check on me, but he did not want to violate my request that he not come in. He was so relieved to see me. We drove back to Long Beach, and Danny dropped me off in our alley.

I was too nervous to ride my bike home, so I left it locked where it was and walked slowly home, and in the front door. My mother was overly cheerful and talking about something that seemed so inconsequential to me. I remember how much disdain I had for her cheerfulness – it made me sick.  She had absolutely no idea what her daughter was going through. I was her little girl and she knew nothing about me. And I couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t tell her anything. I knew she would turn on me and disown me again.

I had to hide the physical discomfort, the cramping and bleeding, and the emotional pain I was in, and put an equally cheerful smile on my face as I headed up the stairs to my room. I wondered what it was like to have a mother to share with, to confide in, to cry with. A mother who would dry your tears and console you.

My mother had been that type of mother when I was a little girl - she was wonderful.  She was fun and kind, and was nice and soothing if we fell down or hurt ourselves. She protected us in her own way by reminding us not to go into the living room when our dad was resting after work. She always made things better and dried our tears.

But I think with her strict Catholic upbringing, she just had zero acceptance of anything that did not fit in with what she believed was right. She just couldn’t provide kindness and understanding to me as a teenager, because for her, I was violating a sacred covenant, and nothing else mattered.

And I can only guess that she was convinced she was doing the right thing, that by making me feel guilty and horrible I would turn into a better person somehow. And I don’t think she wanted to go against my father either.

Reflections

It was weird that for someone who wanted to be a mother her whole life, I never once thought of that pregnancy as a baby, as a soul. To me, it was just a problem to be gotten rid of. And for me, getting rid of it was paramount to my actual survival.

Years and years later, I thought about this baby many times. I told it I was sorry I had not even said goodbye or anything like that. Or had even considered it at all. And how bad I felt that I actually just thought of this baby, this soul, as an “it.” I had been too terrified to get to any place of depth or thought. Fear had controlled me. I had a lot of guilt. 

In some way I always imagined it had been a boy. I don’t know why. Many years later, after I was married and had had my son, I got pregnant again, but had a miscarriage very early in the pregnancy. I was sad and distraught, but in the days that followed I always felt that the “miscarried baby” was now with the “aborted baby.” These two souls were now together. It gave me closure for both losses.

Back to 1974…. after the pregnancy and abortion, my fear level was so high there was no way that I could keep seeing Danny anymore. I didn’t trust anyone, and I was consumed with paranoid thoughts. I now thought my father was around every corner watching me. I could no longer live with the sneaking around, and riding on the floor of the car, and being dropped off in alleys. I couldn’t live with opening the front door and wondering, “Do they know? Did they see me with him?”. Danny didn’t want us to break up, but he understood my decision and respected it.

My senior year of high school is basically a blur. Danny had graduated and was in his first year at our local college, so I didn’t see him at school anymore. I was allowed to go to school and do other things. My parents began to speak normally to me again. I missed Danny, but I could now come home each day and not be terrified anymore as I opened the front door. I had to give him up in order to alleviate the fear. 

I spent much of my time in Recreation Park across the street from the high school, getting stoned. I still got good grades though. I had almost no friends, and I didn’t get involved in many things. I did go to some concerts now and then, but I had become quite a loner.

There was no one I could really talk to. I still felt so much older than everyone else my age - like I was a 40-year-old woman in a 17-year-old’s body. I found it difficult to carry on a conversation about “teenage-type” things or anything that seemed superficial or trivial, like what should I wear to the football game on Friday night? I never even went to a football game. I didn’t have a bunch of close girl friends who talked about makeup and clothes. I kept mostly to myself.

And, in front of my parents, I continued to be my good-daughter-self at all times, and was only my real self in other places. And actually, almost nowhere was I my real self, because I no longer opened up to anyone.

My parents and I never spoke about what had happened. We all pretended that it had never happened at all. In some ways I hated my parents. How could they treat me that way? How could they do that to me? But on another level, I thought maybe I had deserved it. I had disappointed them after all - maybe it really was my fault, maybe that’s why I could not stand up for myself.  Maybe I deserved what I got.

But I could never get past how someone could turn on their child so completely. How could they love them one day, and then after one “misstep” completely take away all their love, and deliberately cause their child so much pain and angst? And so much fear and terror. And why would anyone want to make them feel so low and so bad and so defeated?

I knew I would never treat another human being like that, ever. I vowed if I ever did become a mother one day, my children would always know I would be there for them. No matter what.

A Profound Effect

This experience shaped so much of me and who I became. It explains why I married my husband, Walt, who was 22 years older than me. He had once asked me, “Something once deeply hurt you, didn’t it?” How did he know that???

I never felt the crazy kind of love for Walt that I had with Danny. But that was OK with me. I decided that wasn’t important. Here was someone who loved me for who I was. I didn’t have to pretend with him. I didn’t have to be two different people with him. He knew me. He got me. He understood me. I was safe with him. And, as I always liked to say, he didn’t just love me, he liked me too. I knew he would never pull away his love if I made a mistake.

My parents’ treatment of me when I was a teenager shaped the kind of mother I became. I wanted my children to feel loved no matter what. I was determined that I would never turn on them, nor make them feel bad or disgusting for something they said or did. I wanted them to know I loved them no matter what. And no matter how difficult some experiences were, I never took away my love. I never shunned them or made them feel bad for who they were as people.

My teenage years also completely shaped the type of boss I became at my restaurant, La Strada. I was blessed to provide an environment where I got to watch so many young people grow into competent adults. Most of my employees were in their teens or early 20s. I made sure they felt welcome. If they did something wrong or incorrectly and were nervous, I just gently corrected them and reassured them it was OK. I let them know I appreciated them and they were still part of the team. No one would be disowned.

There were many evenings when a young staff member would stay late after we closed to sit and talk with me. Sometimes they just needed someone to listen. Sometimes they had problems with school or their home life, or with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes they had a problem and were afraid to tell their parents about it. They knew there would be no judgment from me ever. I only gave out love and encouragement. And total acceptance. And they knew that.

The deep love I felt towards my employees did make one part of my job way more difficult - when I found the need to fire someone. There will always be a time when an employee will not not work out for one reason or another, and it’s never easy for any boss to fire someone. But for me it was especially rough.

Even if someone had wronged me, such as being caught stealing, or being too unreliable, I still found firing someone so very difficult. It activated something so deep within me. It felt like I was ostracizing them and turning my back on them, like I was telling them they weren’t good enough anymore, and that they were no longer worthy or needed. I never wanted anyone to feel discounted the way I had been.

We cannot change our past. “It is what it is” sounds like such a trite phrase, but it is so very true. Instead, we can look at what happened and see how those events shaped us and our lives. We can see how our past affects our reactions, and shapes the decisions we make. And we can be more forgiving of ourselves when at times we may not act, or react, in a positive way.

My experiences during these teenage years were thoroughly life-changing for me; they affected every part of my life afterward. But acknowledging my past, learning from it, and accepting that it made me, “me,” is what makes life, “life.”

And after that, life can be an adventure.

Forgiveness

Remember how my friend, Marianne, asked me how I could ever forgive my parents? There are many reasons.

Probably number one on the list was how wonderful they were as grandparents.

My husband died when my children were very young. I felt sorry for my children that they would be missing the precious love of their father. And for me, there was now no one to turn to daily, to talk together about how wonderful we thought our children were. I was now the only person in the world who would love my children the way he and I had.

I would now be alone in my wonderment towards them. When they reached a milestone or said something funny, if they just walked or talked or laughed…. there was no one there to glance at knowingly, and smile and feel so much pride. This made me incredibly sad. It was one of the most difficult parts of losing him.

But when I started helping out at the restaurant, something magical slowly began to happen. My kids were with my parents every evening. They loved going to their house and being with them. My mother was fun and loving; she read to them every night, and had them bathed and asleep in their pajamas by the time I returned each evening.  And my father was just crazy about them, and he made them feel safe and protected. 

Over time, as I returned each evening to pick them up, both of my parents were full of stories about what my kids had done that evening. Their faces would light up as they told me every funny thing they said or did. They would marvel at how special and smart they were. They were completely opposite of what they had been like as parents - there was no harshness, only kindness and love.

At some point, it became so obvious. My parents now looked at my kids in the same way that I did, in the same way that Walt had. This eased the angst I had about my children having only one person in the world who would love them completely. Because they now had three.

For my father, being strict was all he knew. He had grown up with a father who expected him to work many hours on the family farm, to follow rules, and to honor his parents. I later learned from my aunt (my father’s sister) that his father had whipped him with a switch almost every day, even though he had worked on the farm from sunup to sundown. 

For my father, there was a right way to do things, and a wrong way.  Everything was black and white. There was no gray area. There was no grace - that was for weaklings. He always said, “I don’t want excuses, I want results!” He believed you were either good, or you were bad. That’s all he knew.

The other reason I could forgive them was because of my dear Walt, because of all he taught me in the 11 years we were together. Walt saw nothing in black and white; for him, there was nothing but gray area. No matter what anyone did or had done, he would say, “Honey, you don’t know what that person has been through in their life.” And he never even thought badly of my parents. He thought their actions were stupid and even horrific, but still, he didn’t fault them for anything.

But after Walt died, something so strange happened. My father’s grief for me was overwhelming and palpable. He came to my house afterwards and wept in my arms. And from that day forward, my father treated me like a saint, like an angel. He never said one unkind thing to me ever again. He never gave me those stern looks anymore. Instead, he looked at me with reverence. 

And if it wasn’t for my father, Caffe La Strada would never have existed. He had noticed I was spiraling downward in my grief at the loss of my husband, and he had asked me to come help him, so I could focus on something else. It was the light I needed to recover. I knew I had to let it all go and move on. I had kids to raise alone, and my parents became my biggest champions. I knew how much they loved me. They were always so proud of me, and would beam with pride at anything I accomplished.

To me it was all now “in the past.”

And it was basically the same with my mother. She didn’t have the best upbringing either. Her father used his belt on her two brothers all the time, so that was normal to her. And she went to Catholic school all the way through high school, and it was drilled into her that you honor your mother and your father. Any sign of disrespect or disobedience warranted strict punishment. I think she actually believed that all those hours up in my room made me become a “good girl.” We never talked about it again.

And her love for my children was pure adoration. Every time I saw her look at my children, with so much love in her eyes, and when she hugged them so tightly, I knew she was hugging and loving me at the same time. My mother died peacefully in 2010, after suffering from dementia for more than 10 years. It was a blessing for her to finally be released from her illness.

In 2013, my father suffered from Parkinson’s disease and was fairly crippled – it was hard for him to move. And it wasn’t always easy to understand what he was saying either.

Just a few months before he died, his caregiver, Martha, called and said he was terribly upset and wanted to speak with me right away. “Your father is crying and crying. He said he wants to talk to you.”

I left work at the restaurant and walked the couple blocks to my parents’ house. My father stood in what my mother called “the Galleria,” a very wide-open hallway with glass doors that looked out onto her patio. The walled side of the Galleria was covered with family photographs.

I walked toward him and he was overcome, and pointed at the wall, at some of the pictures of us as children. He could barely get the words out because of his now not-working voice, and the tears flowing down his face.

He was leaning on Martha for support, and then he took a few steps forward and held onto me. He looked directly at me, and then he said, “I think maybe I was too hard on you kids.” He could barely get the words out, and then he really started crying.

I couldn’t believe it. This was not like the father I knew. The stern man who was all powerful and could hold it together in any situation. Getting older and being sick had really softened him. For him to cry like that, openly in front of me, and for him to say those words to me… Well, I just couldn’t believe it was happening.

I had always rehearsed in my mind for the day when I would be strong enough to say to him, “You were so mean to me! Why did you do that to me when I was 16? Why did you hurt me so badly? I loved Danny. I was a good daughter. Why did you take away all your love, just because of something I did that you didn’t like?”

But now, I was a woman in my mid-50s. That had been so very long ago, so far away in the past. In that moment, standing there with him, I realized that maybe he had never forgotten what had happened, way back on January 16, 1974, even though we all pretended it hadn’t. I wondered if he had thought about it, and questioned if he had done the wrong thing that day, and for the months following.

He continued to stare at me, waiting, with tears running down his face. I thought of maybe just saying, “Yes, you were too hard on us.”

But I didn’t. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “You were a wonderful father. Everything you did is OK now.” I smiled and leaned in, and hugged him. He put his head on my shoulder and started sobbing.

I could tell they were tears of relief. I knew he loved me, he always had. I don’t think he meant to be so hard on me, and on my siblings. It was all he knew how to be as a parent, it was the way he had grown up.

We stood there for a long time together before he let go of me. I kissed him on the cheek goodbye, and headed back to work.

I couldn’t believe it. He had known. He had realized it. And I knew then that was all I ever wanted. His acknowledgement and tears were all I had needed. And he needed forgiveness. And he did deserve that forgiveness for being the most wonderful grandfather, and for the decades he had treated me like a saint, and looked at me with deep love and reverence. That was his way of making it up to me.

A few months later on the morning he died, very early, I was the only family member the hospital could reach and I raced over there.

His heart had stopped twice and they had revived him both times. He was no longer conscious, but I held tightly to his hand and whispered over and over to him that I loved him and everything was OK. His heart stopped again, and as they tried to resuscitate him, I prayed to my mother to take him, to let him go. And he did.

I felt so blessed that I was the one there with him when he died. I felt so much peace. I was so glad I had given him the grace he had needed.

He was a wonderful father.