Pension

Fred Arnold did not make it past eighth grade. He was a scrapper, honed by pick-up hockey on the ice of the Nashwaak River and the competitive pushing of six older brothers whose exploits were always larger than his. (Fred did not envy them their military service, however...he felt eternally fortunate to have been too young for the First World War and too old for the Second.) As he grew up, Fred's mother told him many times that as the seventh son, she believed he had a gift, and he should become a physician. She cited his mathematics ability, his competence, and his good heart. He glowed with her confidence, but somehow, school was not a venue where Fred could fulfill her hopes. His teachers compared him unfavorably to his brothers, and his schoolmates often had better clothing and a calmer home life, all of which Fred resented deeply. Day to day, Fred rebelled enough to have his nose broken against a blackboard at one brutal teacher's hand. Later in life, the tendons of his palms crinkled inwards where teachers had smacked them repeatedly with 12-inch rulers. These childhood flashpoints did not dim his seething determination.

When Fred's mother died--in the midst of his grade 7 school year, and with little forewarning to her youngest son--the die was cast. His already pugnacious persona became hardened and exasperated. He battled his way into grade 8, hated every minute, and jumped off the academic track for good. During that same dreadful year, his father remarried, and Fred left home to live with his beloved uncle, who lived in the same town. It is a grace note in Fred's life that no one intervened in his departure. Even today, to imagine his 12-year-old turmoil is almost unbearable.

The early 20th century was Dickensian in its cruelties. In modern times, "survival of the fittest" conjures abstract evolutionary happenings among lower animals. For our forebears, it was the name of the game. Fred survived, oh you betcha. He left Atlantic Canada for Maine, where a new railroad was enabling unprecedented travel and commerce in the northern counties. In this, he followed in his beloved brother Mel's footsteps. Most recently, Mel had served with bravery as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in two theaters of WW1, signing up before his 18th birthday and lying shamelessly about his age. This, too, was in the horrible aftermath of their mother's death...I can almost feel the hot tears behind Mel's eyes, not emerging, as he gritted his teeth and signed on the dotted line for service and sacrifice. What the hell did he have to lose? His mother had been taken just three months prior. His father already showed signs of moving on. What remained but death or glory?

Mel was a signaller in the war. A mustard-gassing in Russia (and multiple medals for bravery) finally convinced him to give up the fight and come home. Thence, he parlayed his war experiences into a career as a railroad telegrapher. As Fred joined him in Maine, Mel taught his eager young brother everything he knew about this most crucial means of communication. The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad hired Fred in the mid-1920s, and he was officially an adult. Courtship, marriage and a newborn followed.

Fred's professional life led him to the Great Northern Paper Company, the largest employer in his newly adopted hometown of Millinocket. He hated leaving the railroad, but a supervisor questioned his integrity over some transaction he'd processed, and Fred bristled. With his newfound sense of adult stability, he cut and ran. That the GNP hired him so readily is a testimony to his evident intellect and assertive personality; in fact, despite his lack of a high school diploma, he never worked on the factory floor, instead taking part in the end-stage aspects of the paper production process.

Fred retired in 1962 as the supervisor of the Finishing Room. He was 58 years old. From that moment until the day he died, he received a monthly pension check and guaranteed health insurance from the GNP and its successor owners. He and his wife lived frugally, but they never wanted for a thing. Both nearly made it to age 90, so their financial comfort is especially noteworthy. Think of it: no stock investments, a house worth $20,000, SSI checks, health plan, pension. That's all. Yet they were provided for by a system that our country shaped carefully as a reaction to the privations of the Great Depression, and the shortages and strifes of two major wars.

Was Fred fulfilled by his work? Well, as his close confidante in later years, I can tell you that tapping out myriad messages on a telegraph set under deadline stress was his greatest professional joy. Sitting at that station desk and waiting for the shadow of a locomotive to cross the window, bearing the fruits of his labors--that was his idea of a happy routine. But Fred also took subsequent pride in the papers he helped make, the men whose careers took place under his supervision, and the tiny town that bustled with work and camaraderie, where literally everybody knew your name.

I think about Fred constantly in these messed-up, terrifying, bewildering economic times. I can see him at his home desk, carefully and competently tending his modest household finances. During my youth, my own mother confronted numerous financial hurdles, and Fred--her father--never failed to provide when asked. Because that's what you do. The fact that he could do it was what he expected after a long, productive work life, faithful to one company. Even moreso: it was the WHY behind his full-time efforts. When local people in a similar situation recently lost their pensions and insurance a few years before retirement, I felt bereft and infuriated on their behalves. Forty years of toil, and now: nothing awaits. The world has changed, you see. Your company does not value you as an individual American anymore. And God forbid your rights as a worker should be valued, protected, and propagated.

Fred, I long to hear your words, in your voice, from your living-room armchair of observation. You would be moved to copious outbursts of fury, and bless you, I know you would be picking up the phone and blasting every representative, every official whose turncoat ways led us to this hour. "This is Fred H. Arnold," you would begin--as you did every time you called anyone to complain about anything. You weren't shy, and you persisted until your way was clear. And you felt that stating your identity at the outset was worthy, that they owed you their attention.

I'm tempted to quote Wordsworth and his "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour." But that's not quite it. I am horrified at the thought of bringing my grandfather back to see this world that is the upside-down-wrong version of what he strove for and achieved.

Still, Wordsworth stated his generation's ire beautifully, so here 'tis. Grampy would have loved to hear me read it to him, the fulfillment of that college education he paid for--the betterment of his descendants always his highest goal.

LONDON, 1802.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In chearful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

After the hurricane

(Honestly, I'm not all grim all the time. Not even like 10% of the time. But sad things have happened, and I am driven to write about them...to gain understanding, mastery; to give shape.) So:

It's a famous case. There's a popular movie with an Oscar-winning actor, and a Bob Dylan song beloved and believed by people all over the world. I found out today there's a new autobiography by the man who claims he was falsely accused and framed. Nelson Mandela wrote the foreword.

 45 years later, and I still yearn for a woman I can't remember, my grandmother, whose life was tangled up in a dark, evil night, and there destroyed. The details of her wounding and death were horrific; given the subsequent literal hurricane of accusations, court papers, slippery evidence, conflicting testimonies, and raging controversy, Hazel's murder will never be solved. I accept that I will never know who did this to her, and I embrace the peace of that. But today, cnn.com commenters are debating all over again the innocence or guilt of the convicted man. And someone actually posted: "... after all this time, not sure it matters anymore."

What matters, then: Hazel was beautiful, truly. She had a lilting singing voice, coupled with a mischievous smile and a winning personality. She parented lovingly and fiercely, after a childhood of abandonment and poverty. She was mine, and I'll never have her. Needing my grandmother is one of the reasons I embarked on my genealogical journey in 2000. Piece by piece, and never with ease, I've reassembled and claimed her fragmented life story. Dates, names, places, from France to Québec, New England to New Jersey. Found the love, and the sadnesses too. Made my family whole.

 The poem I wrote about her a few years ago came out of me like water wrung from a cloth. It needed to happen, but it wrenched. I'm posting it now because this wound keeps getting seared open, and the poem is as close as I can come to wailing: STOP. Let her rest. Let her be Hazel. Give her back to us.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Grandmother, Lost

Fingering the corner of a faded photo,
I find myself in Hazel:
eyes that light and scrinch with grins,
appled cheeks, shy teeth,
chin, softly doubling,
dark wavy hair.

I've been told she feared aging
yet laughed uproariously and kidded often—
sardonic bend of her Jersey voice teasing,
sway of ample hips knowing as she walked away
carrying a loaded tray of food and drinks,
serving at a country club.

Dad kicked us out when I was four months old.
A family in shards, swept up,
discarded; then I was
shielded from everyone sharing my surname,
that lingering verb: Burns.

So Hazel dwelled in handlebars, silver as a mirror,
on the gleaming blue tricycle she'd given me
(only, living in the city, I maybe got to ride it once)—
cool sheen of the handlebars' curve
under my baby-plump palm, a tricycle
hopelessly parked indoors, new black tires
ready to move.

Today I move a smooth mouse, pointing
on the Internet, finding
an image when I search on her name:
the window of the Lafayette Bar and Grill, 1966,
"Rheingold" spelled in neon script
with a bullethole in the upper corner,
glass cracked like a twinkled star.

That's Hazel's bullet, one of five
that pierced her and left her for dead,
blasting from shotguns wielded by strangers.
And I am one of ten grandchildren:
a club that never met.

Sweetheart

An imagining from last night.

In an alternate universe, in Queens, NY, there was a Father-Daughter Dance. Let's say, February of 1978. Valentine's Day week, festooned with red and pink paper silhouettes of cupids, hearts, and arrows. A crowded gym, a deejay playing shiny records he stored upright in milk crates. A veritable swirl of girls' skirts and heeled feet...every color imaginable, all heights, toddler to preteen. Dads in suits, some of which looked like office clothing repurposed for the event...others who were stiff in more fancywear than their blue-collar jobs would ever merit. And then the fathers, boisterous, in brightly floral polyester shirts, chains glinting inside the wide collars, and flare-leg slacks with platform shoes: the dads who "got" disco.

Not my date. My father wore a simple suit, almost '60s throwback. He didn't draw attention to himself, but he looked right for the occasion--even though I knew his tie was too narrow and his collars too subtle. My dress came from Lerner's, a clothing mecca right up the street from my house. I wandered Lerner's for hours to find it, circling through and around the spinning silver racks, a dizzying obstacle course of preteen fashion. Touching every single fabric as I passed them, musing, mulling. I decided on this one because of its pink and beige color combination--soft and different. I liked it on my Irish-pale skin. Long sleeves, because it was winter, but they were puffy floral cotton with elastic at the cuffs. The bodice was shirred and puckered all over, with a rectangular lacy neckline, and the skirt was full. No ruffle at the bottom: felt like a ladies' dress. Mom finally let me wear the wedge-heeled sandals from her closet that I always tried on, because now they fit me for real. With nylons, sheer ones. I had to wear snow boots over to the gym, though; they joined a marching battalion of fur-cuffed footwear near the doorway. My stockinged feet were still icy from the trudge over.

Dad and I were not the types of people to fully buy into the concept of a Father-Daughter Dance. A little too ironically distant, we, and both of us burned by our mutual, unpopular reality: we were eggheads. Never quite in the mainstream. Always suspecting mockery from gaggles of our peers. But we agreed to do this because some of my friends from class got their dads to go--and, as submerged as I kept it, I really did want to feel popular, somehow.

Dad was a jazz drummer, but surprisingly able to dance nonetheless. This was another trait we shared. Early on in the evening, the deejay picked up on the overwhelming craze for all things Bee Gees, and spun "Night Fever". The room, predictably, erupted. Dad never indicated any particular affection for this music as it thumped from my homework-strewn bedroom, but he definitely allowed himself to dance to it, and I found myself grinning--which I did not expect, not at all. In fact, the gym was pervaded by a temporary dismantling of preteen embarrassment about our parents and their uncoolness. I stole glances around as Dad and I, yeah, boogied, and everyone else seemed equally unaware that if the overhead lights were on, we'd be fleeing from this dance floor faster than you could say "get down tonight".

After "Night Fever," the deejay pulled out "Love Is (Thicker Than Water)," which kind of called for a closer dancing posture (and had an uncertain beat, besides). I asked Dad if he wanted punch, and he nodded, so we made for the paper-covered table, loaded up on red sugar fluid and pink cookies, and found steely folding chairs to sit in. The gym was so cavernous that we could converse and hear each other, just.

"I can't believe I'll be graduating in this room, like, 5 months from now."

"I can't believe it either, sweetheart," Dad said. He sipped the punch and grimaced, making a sound something like "grack". "Even in my boozing days I wouldn't have choked back something like this," he said wryly, setting the cup far away.

I was always relieved when he made a comment that placed alcohol in his rear-view mirror, so I smiled happily, even though I agreed the punch was putrid.

"So is this," he paused, "disco the kind of music they'll be playing all night?"

"I don't know," I replied, honestly. "I hope they play a little rock, at least."

He nodded assent and bit a heart-cookie. I looked over as the song ended and the deejay flipped on the next turntable. "Native New Yorker". Shook my head at Dad. Although I did love this song, I just didn't want to dance to it. He didn't seem interested either.

"Do you feel ready for your high-school entrance exams?" he asked. Just the thought of them made my stomach cramp.

"Sure," I lied, hoping my lack of words might kill the topic.

"How many do you have to take, again?" (No such luck.)

"Four," I squeaked. "The overall exam, and then three schools have their own."

"I know you'll do fine," he said with a hand-squeeze. I gulped, cookie crumbs chafing my throat. Then I smiled again to cover it.

People had been making requests; I could see shadowy goings-on at the deejay table. The next song kicked on and I was initially stunned--Led Zeppelin...?

"'Misty Mountain Hop'!" Dad crowed. "Let's go!"

We were still holding hands, so we made our way in tandem into the dance throng. Dad's enthusiasm over Led Zeppelin had me astonished (and he knew the name of the song! I never did, with Zeppelin), but here we were, rocking out, almost choosing the same moves. Robert Plant's vocals pealed and shrieked over the crowd, and the deejay must have had a subwoofer, because the drums and bass were shaking the floor. Dad did not shout "woooooo!" the way some of the wilder fathers were doing, nor did I jump up and down as some of the frilly girls were doing, but we were into it nonetheless.

And then there was a slow song, throwing the mood sideways. Bee Gees again (was that a sigh I heard around the gym?) "How Deep is Your Love". Which I swooned over nightly--not thinking about my father, of course, but wishing for a boyfriend like some of my classmates had. Still, Dad went into his 1950s arms-bent, dancing-with-a-lady posture, and that was fine. Before we started moving, he leaned over and whispered in my ear: "John Bonham on the drums, that last song. Killer." I had to laugh a little, because he was such a music nerd. (And he was right about Bonham, but I didn't grasp that fully until later.) We let the Bee Gees' harmonized warbles wash around us and we swayed with it, twinkling lights along the walls seeming to flow with the melody.

It seems so trivial in the writing: this alternate universe, this father-daughter spot carved into a cold February night, this gym that would revert to a sweaty game space with Sunday sunlight, all guided by the music that mattered to me (and ever evokes my eighth-grade year). Whereas, in the universe I actually lived in, I honestly did not know that I yearned for such moments--because I wouldn't have known to imagine them. I never, ever saw my father, until I was an adult myself.

Now, every year, as a mom and wife, and even moreso as a deejay, I experience a local Father-Daughter Dance and I see in countless other couples what could have been; what was right to expect; what pure happiness and fun looks like; what touches the heart and bonds the daughter to the daddy, and vice versa. Placing 1978 Nessa and Dad in that scenario...absent the many, many reasons that I did not know him at that time in my life, stripping away what was negative, while keeping our essences...this is a healing, rightful vision.

Because, I can attest, it is painfully possible to miss what you never had.

How to Save a Life

First, find a girl. Not just any girl—no, this girl is the nerdiest urchin you’ll ever meet, and her home life is, well, frayed. (Pause to relish unintentional title-pun.)

This girl is keenly pining for something, anything. She thinks it’s a boyfriend she needs—because, cue Brothers Grimm, he will rescue her from the rapunzeltower of her sixth-floor bedroom window. She’s always attracted to young men’s arms: their enfolding, swooping-up, holding and protecting powers draw her magnetically. (She wonders if these boys notice her noticing them, but probably they don’t, because she is nondescript, a veritable vacuole of brown-haired plainness.)

You don’t actually know this, but she sits in that sixth-floor window every chance she gets—its square frame supporting her entire body, scrunched into a C sitting shape. She leans her head against the screen, headphones clamped over her ears, craving escape from the stepfatherly rage occurring behind her, in the smoky living room of the apartment. Music swirls into her mind and becomes woven there, as a protective garment. She breathes street air and watches the transition from daylight to dusk like a sworn witness, night after night. She feels as if everything beyond the tiny gray screen squares is potentially magical, as sooty and city-streety as it is. See? isn’t that a vivid green tree down there amidst the blocks of sidewalk, just burst into spring bloom and jazz-handing the sky? Don’t the airplanes landing over at LaGuardia, just beyond her neighborhood, glimmer in the darkening sky like moving stars? She watches, all the time wordless, but pleading. Someone, anyone.

But wait: there are two of you. Two princes, and not rivals—no, you’re staunchest allies. You’ve already saved each other’s lives myriad ways, through a friendship that started in the doggiest days of grammar school…greasy hair, glasses with tape, braces, zits, and brutal teasing from classmates. Now you are high school sophomores who have crested awkwardness and are full-steaming towards awesomeness, exuding confidence that was forged in shared battles and common experiences. Not only does Nerdy Urchin Girl need you…she is a lot like you in temperament and intellect. But she doesn’t believe it. Yet.

Prince #1 will meet the Girl in the deepest recesses of a cave. Well, all right, it’s the New York City subway system, 59th Street station. As though a fairy’s wand has blinged this dingy place, the sheer fact of your meeting will cause the Girl to feel an upswell of hope and anticipation in this subterranean waystation for years to come. What are the odds, that—after years of attending the same grammar school as she, and never crossing paths—you appear on the (grimy gray) steed of the Number 6 uptown local, are introduced to the Girl by a mutual friend, and instantly become a gallant and constant companion on the arduous (truly, yes, arduous) weekday journey to high school? You, Prince, are indeed gallant, and never in the snide James Joycean sense. Your demeanor is ever respectful (well, of the Girl—everything else is fair game for the constant joking wordplay between you both). You stay positive in almost every situation. Do you know that, before she met you, the Girl found her freshman-year subway journeys terrifying in their unknown randomness? Any given day, who knew what horrors could happen on the screeching, graffiti-ridden trains—or even standing in the station, waiting for the next tube to barrel in and fearing someone could push her onto the tracks in its path? (She read the New York Post, y’know. That happened uncomfortably often back then.) Yet now she gains a faithful fellow traveler. He banishes boredom with crisp sarcastic commentary, he shares poetry without irony (and encourages sharing of hers, releasing the catch on a cage), he adores all the music that fills her headphones, and his very presence makes her sigh with safety.

Prince #1, you probably knew within minutes that the Girl was smitten. Or perhaps you still nursed some uncertainties deep within, which obscure her looks of adoration. However long it takes, this Prince will finally recognize the Girl’s ardor, and here he shall make life-saving gesture the firsteth: he understands that she needs him as a friend more than as a quick-burning early teen boyfriend. He rejects her without in any way rejecting her, with calm and sincere words. The Girl will take years to grasp these wisdoms; she is, as stated above, needy and immature. Yet as a grown woman, she will finally grasp the profound good sense that Prince #1 showed to her. Could not their hearts be connected, their destinies joined, without the iffiness and tanglings of a romance? You prove it so, Prince #1.

But see, even her hopefulness, that deep-seated infatuation the Girl bears all throughout that school year…even those months of wanting are a potent gift. Something to strive for. A reason to try new hairstyles, and dress herself with newfound attention. A reason to want to attend school dances. And seriously, a reason to get up in the mornings. Because Prince #1 meets her on the corner of 30th Street and Broadway like 7:50 am clockwork, and together they climb the long dual stairwells of the RR station and head for the Upper East Side, where their respective brownstone schools open for them “a whole new world” a la Aladdin. One block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the verdant wonders of Central Park…avenues of bookstores, movie houses, and old-timey Yorkville neighborhood fixtures like Schubert Hall. (Schubert Hall? the reader asks. A musical conservatory? a society devoted to the works of Franz Schubert? Ummm, no. An old-man bar that serves the high-school masses and has the best jukebox ever, anywhere. A welcoming harbor; a teenage Cheers.)

The Girl’s adult self pauses to assure you that, as culturally wrong as it’s now deemed to be, in that era she benefitted from the occasional alcohol escape valve. Her homelife was indeed that painful, her self-esteem that fragile. She was by no means an afterschool special in the making; she was just trying desperately to grow wings. Prince #1 contributed untold amounts of wisdom and daring to her wing-growth: gleeful decadence combined with savvy self-preservation. Fun first, responsibility constant, boredom never. She learned, emulated, and survived. Prince #1’s tools for living become clanging, practical old mainstays in her toolbelt. (He also was a fantastic kisser, which he kindly proved to the Girl on a starry March night. A few heady times, and no more. Just enough to know and move along to a new adventure. The Girl is eternally grateful.)

We promised two princes, and it is thus. Prince #2 will enter the Girl’s life in an equally dramatic manner: they will approach each other in the orange-streetlight mist, as though crossing a moor or a mystical bridge. Rain had fallen all day, and was evaporating all around them. The Girl had boldly contacted Prince #2 by telephone, never having met him, because another friend had explained to her that Prince #2 might hold keys that could help decipher and release Prince #1’s ardor. At this stage, she will take whatever she can get. But also, on subway mornings she’s been told tales of Prince #2’s wry sense of humor, his undying friendship, and his wondrous garage replete with pool table, stained-glass hanging light fixture, and bar. He sounds like a hoot. The Girl arranged the meeting, and Prince #2—undoubtedly having heard things about her himself—readily agreed.

And so they approach each other on 37th Street. The Girl is tasked with procuring her parents’ Friday-night Chinese takeout, and Prince #2 says he will walk her there and home. She notes immediately upon his coming into focus that he has very cool permed hair and awesomely chunky Frye boots, and he walks purposefully. This Prince decides that the Girl is not as nondescript and mousy as he had been given to believe, and for a short while—a few months, maybe—he pines for her. But now it is the Girl who will comprehend that romance is not their shared destiny: bonded, total friendship is. (Appreciation accrues to Prince #1 for that knowledge, clearly.) Some details play out the same: they share poetry, mercilessly joke and banter, protect each other’s interests fiercely. But this Prince is actually acquainted with the stepfather who terrorizes the Girl’s homelife, a fact she does not realize until they meet. Thenceforth, Prince #2 double-bolsters her sense of safety by demystifying this domestic dragon gradually and completely. The Princely garage, the supreme hangout that is just as cool as described, becomes a safe haven. In fact, his entire demeanor—the way Prince #2 is game to talk about anything, anytime, and the way he empathizes with the Girl at every turn…his universe of friendship is another life-saver. Also, Prince and Girl watch and savor the same soap operas. Do not underestimate the unifying power of The Stories.

To this day, if the Girl cradles her hand into a telephone grip, she imagines his sweet, sassified voice awaiting her ear. Over years and years, in talks that range over hours of long-distance time, there is nothing she will not tell him, and he the same. O, the rocks that their tentative boats could have crashed upon in tempests past! the surging, unpredictable waves of fate and post-adolescent choices! yet their support of one another guides them like beacons. And the mishaps that did happen…the Prince and the Girl knew all and helped each other fervently.

It’s a long fairytale, this. The Princes and the Girl all depart their homeland kingdom of Queens. They become teacher, hairdresser, and (eventually) shopowner in three different corners of the United States. Marriages, parenthood, losses, misadventures and actual adventures abound. Prince #2 dies, and his survivors’ hearts suffer ever in his absence. But the Girl knows, and will never forget, that but for her meeting these pivotal men, she might not have escaped the window and the kingdom. Would she have found her writerly voice? perhaps, but never as surely as she did with their eager reading and encouragement. She also ditched the mousy urchin persona and embraced honest bravery, in appearance as well as the spoken word. In short, the Girl cannot imagine her self as it exists without the Princes who rescued her. You are worthy, they showed her (instead of telling). And you are valiant, she herewith proclaims in response. 

the season of aloneness

I have a trove of teenage poems exploring my dire emotional winter landscape...it was a time of intense creativity for me, even as it was despairingly lonesome because of home-life factors and the repetitive failure of my h.s. relationships to make it past Thanksgiving. Anyway, unlike some folks who despise their adolescent written voices, I'm an unabashed fan of my own, even as I acknowledge my naivete and creaky language choices....

the season of aloneness

and you,
shed like crisp autumn leaves--
still fragrant, still reminding;
summer wasn't so long ago...
painless, timeless, hopeless,
a curious reminiscence--
full of romance and
our temporary innocence

lost:
love, leaves, summer, warmth;
memories guarded
like a brilliant fallen leaf
and our friendship preserved.
gingerly possessed
as we drift into winter
the season of aloneness

NBR 11/30/81

Pathfinding: A Loyola Memoir

The first week of my freshman year at Loyola was unseasonably hot, even for late summer. The wool blazer—which took some getting used to under any circumstances—was even harder to tolerate during that early September of 1978. So the deer-in-the-headlights feeling familiar to any new freshman was compounded by the stifling New York City heat. I can remember feeling basically stunned that whole week.

 

So when Louis Tambini began one of our first history classes by standing in front of us, silently holding up a silvery dime, I felt completely mystified. He was an impressive figure to begin with, sartorially elegant, with a laser gaze and a bottom-line voice. In my years of parochial school in Queens, I’d never seen a teacher like him. Then he spoke, emphasizing his words with the dime between thumb and forefinger. “This is all you need to get into the Metropolitan Museum,” he said. “Don’t ever feel like you can’t go there because you don’t have enough money to get in. It’s a suggested donation. So go to the Met.”

 

Many teachers at The Loyola School made a lasting impression on me. Charles Winans, who nurtured my writer’s soul and extolled my Irishness; Ellen Fee, the calm, collected artist, who helped us all create in the serenity of her studio; Father Ferrand, the unforgettable dynamo en français; Daniel Sullivan, a rigorous communicator of the events that shaped our modern world; Richard Vogel, under whose tutelage I became a full-fledged writer and editor; Sister Maureen, a most unique theologian with a sunny outlook; Joe Hanser, who tolerated my mathematical blocks with gruff kindness; Colleen Ranney, with her unabashed enthusiasm for science; and Jim Lyness, who taught so many of us how to express ourselves before a crowd with confidence. These people truly set up the building blocks of my life and career—what I learned from them I still utilize to this day. But as I seek to summarize my Loyola experience, I turn to Lou Tambini. He opened up this scholarship student’s world with that dime.

 

Does anyone else still have their “Tambini Bible”? (For the uninitiated, that was our history class notebook.) Mr. Tambini’s approach was brilliant: he wrote carefully outlined notes on the blackboard which we copied word-for-word into our notebooks. Those notes described the great ancient civilizations, starting with archeological evidence of early man and ranging through Egypt, Greece, Rome and Europe. They were matter-of-fact and tailor-made for efficient exam studying. But he took our note-taking to a higher level by demanding that we illustrate our Tambini Bibles. Not with drawings, but with photographs clipped from any source we could track down. Travel agencies were our best bet, he advised—they were chock-full of glossy, free brochures that depicted the wonders of the ancient world. Old encyclopedias, National Geographics, any source would do. And each picture had to have a caption. Thanks to this latter requirement, my Tambini Bible still serves as an excellent learning tool about the development of civilizations. I’ve proudly shown it to my own kids, who love to see the pictures of old statues, ruins, castles and other remnants of the distant past…the ancient world at our fingertips.

 

Moreover, I took to heart Mr. Tambini’s admonishment that we should go to the Met. I spent many happy afternoons there as a Loyola student, particularly in the Egyptian galleries and the beautiful Temple of Dendur hall. For a kid from Astoria, Queens, this was a transporting experience. In fact, all of Loyola was. “Diversity” is an oft-heard buzzword in education these days, and well it should be. But Loyola represented a kind of reverse diversity for me: an introduction to the world of diplomats’ children, Park Avenue dwellers, students attired in haute-preppy wear and accustomed to more freedom than I had ever imagined. It was not an easy transition to make; I suffered silently about not being able to shop at Bloomingdale’s and wear Izod-Lacoste shirts, and excursions into New York’s nightlife required Herculean arrangements to get home safely and on time. It seems trivial now, but my otherness was a major heartache then. As my sophomore year commenced, however, the school’s accepting atmosphere finally penetrated my psyche and I realized it didn’t matter. I was valued for my own self, not for what I looked like or where I came from.

 

And along with that brand-new revelation of individuality came the expansion of my intellect. I was by no means a model student, but I learned that certain subjects were native to me, and teachers in those areas helped me to thrive. That prepared me for the challenges of college, where one has to select carefully the courses that will advance one’s goals. But the social lessons of Loyola also prepared me for my stint at Bowdoin College, where my Queens-ness really stood out against the L.L. Bean-dominated, ultra-preppy landscape. I made my way regardless. Loyola had taught me to do that.

 

Ten years ago, I married the son of a classical history teacher (she taught at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia). My mother-in-law still drills her children on significant dates, events and places. She took her son to Greece and he experienced the beauty of that civilization firsthand. So in a way, Lou Tambini even helped me prepare for my married life! I deeply mourn his loss but am fortunate indeed to have been his student. And I thank the Loyola family, too, for helping me to find and follow my own path.

M'athair

Until I was 22 years old, I never called anyone Dad. In fact, when I said the word aloud as a kid, it felt weird, like a new word I was supposed to memorize for French class. I cringed like I wasn't pronouncing it correctly...like no one who heard it would understand what I was talking about. "Dad." Gulp, try again. "Dad." Thudding consonants with a short a in the middle. Foreign.

On the first day of kindergarten, I came to realize what an effective social tool this fact could be. Seated at the blue table (bright blue-gingham circle pasted in the center of a cool, smooth wood surface), the assembled kids were offering snippets of their life stories and talking about what their dads did for a living. As always, this irked me. Wait, I thought. Just wait for your chance. And then Warren, at my left, said, "My father is a mechanic."

"I don't have a father," I announced brightly.

Eyes bugged; little voices said, "Huh?" "What?" "You have to have a father!"

"Nope," I said. I savored my big word: "My parents are divorced."

"Oo-ooo-ooh"'s went around the blue table, as divorce was still relatively rare in 1969. My classmates looked at once admiring and wary. I've elicited that facial expression many, many times since. Call it a pioneer's survival skill. Maybe even a badge of honor. It's who I was for years and years: a searching, fatherless child.

Mom tried not to talk about him--and eventually, my stepfather didn't allow her to. Any discussions Mom and I had about my father were furtive and gloomy, and there was never a chance to bring it up again later; each conversation was self-contained, so I had to get my questions in immediately. The factoids I gleaned about his drinking, his anger, and his irresponsibility as a parent were no more enlightening than the National Enquirer. Meanwhile, my stepfather's comments about my father were pretty clear: "That asshole has no right to see you. I'd kick the shit out of him if he came anywhere near here."

I called my stepfather by his first name, because calling him "Dad" would have been like bestowing "Your Highness" on Miss USA; the two just don't equate. He had no clue that, deep in the recesses of my bedroom closet, I hoarded the single photo album that showed my parents together, sometimes even looking happy. My mother had no idea how often I plied the album's yellowing paper pages, onto which scores of black-and-white photos had been rubber-cemented. The album smelled like a lost past, keen and musty. The photos still shone, crisply focused by my father's photographic skill. Rarely, his own image surfaced in there, and I scrutinized it like a detective for signs of similarity to mine. So close to the face in the photo...as if I could start a conversation with it.

We never saw my father's family members; they were cut out of my life before I was old enough to know who they were. I have a gauzy memory of seeing a crowd of them at some event; I recently surmised that it must have been after my paternal grandmother's funeral in New Jersey. Tall, talking adults drifting around a kitchen, far above my bewildered two-year-old head; a screen door and blurry green trees beyond it...pressing my nose up against the screen. I remember watching a cousin playing on a swingset outside, but my tentative attempt to join her was interrupted by a bee scouting the yard. I was outlandishly afraid of bees, so I stayed inside. My father must have been there, but I had no reason to recognize him amongst all the similarly featured Burnses. People spoke loudly as the afternoon dragged on, and I cringed as I always did at adult voices being raised.

So, I was consigned to rummaging in the closet, shooting glances over my shoulder to make sure no one opened my bedroom door. Carefully pulling out the album--Mom actually put these pictures in a nice one, not some cheapo plastic thing. This album had a leathery cover, black, with gold embossed on it. The pages were supple and organized chronologically. Once, I guess Mom figured she would want to look back.

I'm the only one who wanted to look back, as it turned out. Do I look like him? Would I have liked him? ran through my head as I flipped through the precious five pages of pictures where my father appeared (the rest of the album was taken up by baby pictures of my brother, a bonanza of images that dwindled as the marriage listed sideways...and then the album goes to Kodacolor and I'm born. A few pages to cover five years of my life, then...done).

Try as I might, I could never connect the black-and-white pictures with 3-D reality. In them, Dad's smiles and gestures are frozen. He's not a whole person, just miniature moods on film that don't change. (Mostly good moods, when you looked.) And he was young...goofily, affectlessly young. I suspected that I looked like him, but I never had anyone in the room to second me on that. And whenever I asked my maternal grandparents (in the safe haven of Maine), as kindly as they were, they would immediately rush in to reassure me. "No, dahlin', you don't look anything like him. You don't want anything to do with his people. You are just you, that's all, and we are so glad of that."

They wanted me to feel loved and cherished...I don't think they realized I was yearning for them to link me up with the Burnses. And knowing how much they disliked my father (in fact, had never liked him from the first meeting, and continued to compile a list of offenses that would not let any positive feelings creep in)...well, I did not want to challenge them further, forcing them to remember him too vividly.

I did come upon one other fragment of my father's life. The third drawer in my bedroom dresser was stuffed with papers and documents: the legalese story of my family's life. (In a three-room apartment, no one truly has a room or even a dresser to herself.) Left to my own devices, I adored pawing through that drawer, even then showing signs of a budding obsession with genealogy. Awkwardly shoved into the space was a folded stack of photostatic copies (dimly grey, shiny, smelly pre-Xeroxes). Mom must have copied these pages in some office setting, probably before I was born. They were poems--a meticulous, lofty manuscript. The faint typewriterly words seethed with anger and intellectual disdain. My father was a poet. This revelation came to me after my own writer's voice had made itself known, rendering the discovery ever more magical. For years, I puzzled over his works, which were denser than T.S. Eliot in places, positively Joycean in others. I had no idea what this man was ranting on about, but he was difficult to cleave to; his casually dropped Gaelic and classical references were not exactly bread to Gretel. It was not until high school that I could begin to decipher the verse-heavy, word-laden works. Quickie summary: that residual anger my mom was carting around about him? He flung his own back at her, fueled by a wounded youth and penchant for infidelity. This poetry, even as it became more comprehensible, still left me at sea.

Some years later, the fall after I graduated from college, my mom called me--I lived in Maine full time by then. She said, completely apropos of nothing, "Do you want to speak to your father?"

For a bewildered second I thought she was about to hand the phone to him or something--after all, the stepfather was long gone. But, no, she had decided to track his number down because I was an adult now, and it was up to me what I went and did with it. This was pre-Internet--it's a miracle she found him at all. In California, no less. (And what a classic Mom thing to do: practical, emotionless, just thrusting the ball at me: here.) Shall I define mind-blown for you? Mom's question pretty much clinches it. I practically swayed. To this day I can still picture the room I was in as I clutched the phone and let Mom's deed fully dawn on me, breaking across my mental shore in waves.

I might have waited one night before I made the fateful phone call...maybe. Despite my terrified nerves, uncertainties bubbling in my brain, wild imaginings about how wrong this could go...I punched in the numbers Mom gave me. He came to the phone immediately and I swear to you, I knew his voice. The man of poetic, liquored fury had been domesticated and sobered by his third wife, and was now a wry, productive eighth-grade English teacher (talk about penance!). Thus began a relationship that closed so many books, opened my mind, and made me whole. Also, it placed into my mouth a word I had always deserved: Dad. And in his mouth, a word that made a girl of me: "Sweetheart."

We called each other weekly and wrote epic letters to bring each other up to speed on lives that had never intersected. We exchanged pictures--expanding my visions of him a hundred times over, and giving him something tangible of his daughter. Peter was new in my life then, and Dad wholeheartedly approved. This had not been the case with all of my relatives, who warmed to my eventual spouse a little more slowly. Dad knew personally how the right person could alter the course of your life, leading you to better choices and happier days (and nights). Not for nothing did my own sobriety coincide with all of these events.

After five years of phone calls and the aforementioned barrage of correspondence, we finally met in 1992. I was pregnant with a son, and Dad had just been diagnosed with cancer. Being together in-person was suddenly urgent--and how fortunate, indeed, that I could make the trip, as it was the first and last time we ever spent time together. Dad's treatments had just begun, and he was vigorous and engaged by my visit. For my part, I tried to adjust to the alien landscape of Los Angeles in February, and hugged this man as often as I could. Our stomachs--mine swelled with six months of fetus, and his swelled with 56 years of living--would bump, and we'd giggle. We spent hours tucked into plaid-cushioned chairs across from one another, talking, comparing notes, absorbing. Every night, I puttered in his kitchen and made dinner Reifsnyder-style, since his treatments mandated extra nutrition.

One afternoon, Dad told me about the day of my birth, and that may have meant more to me than anything else he said in our time together, because it was vivid and true and connected me to him as never before.

It was the day after the Beatles had arrived in New York City, and Manhattan was swirling with screaming hordes and bemused journalists. The city winter cold was charged with an undeniable cultural electricity. Meanwhile, in a delivery room on the Upper West Side, my father's head swirled with a vicious red-wine hangover, the result of a Friday night house party my parents had hosted. The hospital staff insisted he wear a surgical mask while he watched Mom give birth to me; now, the wine fumes steamed from his mouth up to his nose, recycling, fueling the hangover. Still, he hung in there and witnessed my emergence, gamely.

Joy glimmered into the pain when Mom's female obstetrician displayed me to Dad immediately after my delivery, flawed and bloodied and human, his daughter. Dr. Ammann had allowed Dad to bypass the smoke-choked waiting room, the soundproof glass, the tightly blanketed infant in nurse's arms and the empty congratulations. This was rarely done in that era--I know Dad must have really wanted to be there. Perhaps we even bonded, in the parlance of latter-day infant researchers. Did his eyes--bleary above the mask line, but proud--meet my steady newborn gaze, that deceptive moment of lucidity before the long first nap sets in? Did he reach for me? Enraptured by his words, I forgot to ask him.

I had been conceived in a spirit of detente between my parents, I was told. A one-last-try for the marriage, an upswell of love and loving. But despite that auspicious beginning in the delivery room, Dad was out of my life within weeks. Vanished. By his own confused, conflicted, alcoholic choice. And my family unit sealed up behind him, to stanch the pain.

Had I never found Dad and gotten to know him, I know I would never have become fully adult. Some part of me would have stayed girl...a keening, unanswered invitation. Robert Leo McAllister Burns: I look like him, I laugh like him, and I write like him. It's my pride and distinction to call him Dad.