A Snazzy Dad

Instead of figuring out who's taking care of Uncle Raymond when and how, Titi Janis and I are more focused on Dad who now has pneumonia and a form of diabetes.  There are many unhealthy choices he has made over the years but one that I find particularly questionable is that he doesn't like going out with a hat, something about real men not needing hats. So his idols Sinatra, Bogart, Cagney, Edward G…?

“Do you want me to die?!” he challenged to his younger daughter Christine when she dared to question his diet.

Rocky as their relationship is, she still said, “No this is me NOT wanting you to die!”

To me, he says things like,

“Did you wash the spinach?”

To which I reply,

“Yeah, dad”

And then he comes back at me with,

“I didn't hear the water running!”

As if I would try to sneak my way out of that step, lie about it, and serve you dirty spinach.

He scoffed at the husband pillow I bought him, after I was so excited/relieved to have gotten the last one off the shelves at Target. He's using it now as we wait for his new bed to be delivered tonight. I guess it's typical fussy patient where nothing is good enough vs.  frustrated caregiver figuring out what else could be done to make this more bearable.

Old TCM movies and Abbot & Costello routines help as well as company from fam and friends. My birthday gift to him, the box of wine, mocks him now that he can't partake in any of it. His insistence on 100% carrot juice which can’t be found anywhere now for some reason, has forced me to buy a juicer, something I wanted to get anyway. It reminds both my sister and me of Mom when she had cancer and the juice we'd make for her, particularly carrot juice. My memories of the juicer were more positive and encouraging like, “hey we're doing something super healthy for Mom!” whereas Christine who was only a child during Mom’s last months said, “No, for me, remembering Mom make all that carrot juice just reminds me of sickness and death”. She's still getting a kick out of this new one though, and we look forward to the yummy shakes we can make from now on.

I feel as though Dad’s childhood secret that he finally revealed a couple weeks ago is having a kind of aftereffect on him now. Is it a kind of release, this illness that hit him out of nowhere? Yes, years of what he's done to his body over the years (decades!), but also this release of finally telling someone after 55 years? I can't get over how respectful he's always been to each and every family member, especially his elders. This secret involves a family member who did some serious harm to him when he was a child and I'm trying not to get into it too much here; like I said before, it's not my story. I mean, maybe on some level it is, but I've got to squirm my way around it just a little more.

I've been praying for some kind of a breakthrough or something good to happen to my father lately, whether it's getting his writing noticed or his health to get better and so I wonder-  Were angels having a conference up there deciding how they should answer my prayers? Did they take all physiological logic into account and say, “well we can't exactly heal him just like that, he needs to learn consequences. Maybe we can give him a ‘scare’ and have him flip the script on his own.” And so maybe they gave him this excruciating pain he's never experienced before, shooting up his usual 130-135 blood pressure to 200, chest pains, fever, chills, spasms, the works. Will this willingly switch him up to a healthier lifestyle? Will he now see that he can't just live until he dies? That it’s not as cool and snazzy as it sounds and yes, I said “snazzy”  because what other word matches that ridiculous but fabulous Rat Pack style he idealizes? So… yeah, let's take this one day at a time. Let's find out about his Medicare plan and whether he was supposed to renew it or not... and let's just see how this all unfolds.

Ode to Billy

This is the journal that my last therapist gave me after I earned my Master’s degree in Education. Alas, it’s from a college that New York State does not care about too much because it’s not accredited and so they won’t give me my certification to teach English to ELL’s (English language learners) as of yet so, oh well (even though I took the necessary workshops and passed their ATAS exam, and I was aiming to be teacher’s assistant anyway, not an ELL teacher)… the point is, is that she was very proud of me that day in 2014 and gave me this beautiful diary as a graduation present. In it she writes an inscription that reads, “Dear Tennille, I congratulate you on your accomplishments and I admire your strength, belief, and perseverance. You are an inspiration and an asset to the field of Education. Keep imagining and nurturing your creativity”

Like with every diary before and after this one, I also use it as laundry/to-do lists and listing things like essential oil types, recipes, and resources (like which workshops are being taught where and when). When I was 17 I had this really nice looking bluish purple diary and after a while, after feeling spent from pouring out my soul I suppose, I used it to copy down pages and pages of Taoist breakdowns of food combinations and regimens as if I were a Nutrition student even though I’m anything but.

I wrote about Billy Joel here a few days ago. My son and I are going to see him in concert next month. He’s a bigger Beatles fan, but he enjoys Billy to a degree. I knew he struggled with alcoholism but  never knew that he once tried to end his life (with furniture polish? according to Pandora radio). One time in the late 80’s or early 90’s, VH1 did an all day Billy Joel tribute which I must have recorded on a VHS because I remember playing it a lot. 

I liked how he described his process when recording “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, how at first he toyed with the idea of doing it like a rap (“Harry Truman/Doris Day/red China/Johnnie Ray”) but then nixed it concluding that he wasn’t a “rap artist”. He didn’t use the word “rapper” (which is not even a bad word), but rap ARTIST. He wasn’t snubbing rap or hip hop, he was giving it a nod of respect like, “I admit, I don’t have the capacity to do that, that’s not my art form”. 

I also liked how he explained that as a writer he indeed can write about Allentown without ever having lived there or Downeaster Alexa without having been a fisherman. Pandora radio also points out that he was one of the few singer-songwriters from the 70’s who actually embraced the 80’s MTV video shift. In a way, I can attest to this, having been fascinated by his videos as a kid and then later on as a young adult, learning the beautiful lyrics of his 70’s songs.

March 4th, 2017 After the concert

“It’s like an airport!” my son and other people in line said as we squeezed into Madison Square Garden last night, walking through metal detectors and friendly guards checking our bags.

“What a LIFE this guy has!” one fan laughed and exclaimed to his friends.

“I should’ve paid attention in music class! Now later we’ll buy a $300 T-shirt that fades after 3 washes!”

I would have bought one for my son if he wanted it (prices were closer to $45-50), but he didn’t so I bought these refrigerator magnets instead.

I’m letting my Titi Janis pick one since she likes him too (except for the Stranger and the 52nd Street one; sorry Titi, those are ours lol). Her wedding song in 2007 was “Just the Way You Are”.

Sometimes he let us vote on which songs he'd play next, calling it the “viewers choice”. My ‘vote’ won every time except for when I wanted “Keepin the Faith”; “The Downeaster 'Alexa'” got the louder cheers. I’m amazed at how good his voice still sounds. The lights were good, flashing in time with the music. Last night was his 39th consecutive show in the Garden. I am 39 this year until my 40th birthday in June.

He wanted to know who was under 40 there and a lot of us cheered back. He sheepishly and adorably said, “Aw I wish you’d seen me when I was younger, I was a lot better back then”. Everyone continued cheering and I was just like, “noooo you’re just fine now!” And he was.  His lyrics, his playing, his voice and all the different video concepts I grew up watching throughout the years. His graciousness and friendliness towards his audience. He wasn't late, he did song after song, an old-school, no nonsense way, kind of like when my sister and I went to see Al Pacino on Broadway. Before the show we spotted him parallel park his car up to the theater to ‘report to work’.

“I've got a great job!” he mused as we all cheered.  

“At least I have a job!” he added as he segwayed into "Allentown", the song about factories closing down.

We left when intermission began, because my son was getting tired and it was too loud for him overall. We took a cab home and found my dad on the couch, on the mend, watching Young Frankenstein. Such a good Friday night!

Songs he did that night

Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway

Pressure

The Entertainer

Vienna

Zanzibar

Movin' out (Anthony's Song)

Guest showed up (the young rascals?) and played Good Lovin'

With a little bit of Rhapsody's Blues on the piano, turning it into New York State of Mind

Don't Ask Me Why

The Downeaster 'Alexa'

Sometimes a Fantasy

A little bit of Gloria in Excelsis Deo turned into My Life

Allentown

She's Always a Woman

What a Wonderful World

The River of Dreams

surprise guest John Mellencamp showed up and sang Authority Song

We Didn’t Start the Fire

Scenes From an Italian Restaurant

Piano Man

(intermission)

Songs I wanted to hear as well which might have been done after intermission

Honesty

Just the Way You Are

A Matter of Trust

I Go To Extremes

This is The Time

Big Shot

Tell Her About It

Keepin the Faith

It's Still Rock n Roll To Me

An Innocent Man

(there might be more)

Blips That Take Forever

I made a quick detour from Mary Wilson’s autobiography so that I could start and finish “Postcards from the Edge”, which took about two days. My sister and I have seen the movie version so many times on TV but we recently went to see it on the big screen. After that, I felt it was finally time to get my hands on Carrie Fisher’s actual novel. Her humor and writing style remind me of Nora Ephron’s  “Heartburn”, another book I had to get after seeing the movie so many times. The book is very different from the film. It has less of the mother and way more of the drug clinic she had to check into and her fellow patients. So as I was reading it, memories of my own time in Holliswood’s adolescent unit started coming back.

Someone recently told me that the idea of marriage and kids seems good on some days but not on others. My response was a strange one. In my attempt to emphasize that married/kids life can in fact be a good one, and to acknowledge that stressful times isn't just reserved for parents, husbands, and wives,  I said something like, “well, even before I became married with kids I didn’t always have it easy.” I knew it was a weird way to put it even as I was sending the text, but I didn't know how else to say it.  Because even though now my life is intensely about bringing and keeping food on the table, responsible for the well-being of others in a more direct way, what I dealt with before was in a way, harder.

When I recall Holliswood there are certain things I remember more than others. I don't remember the psychiatrist much now anymore, except for his all-brown jacket, hair, mustache, and glasses. I remember being given the Inkblot Rorschach test but I no longer remember what the shapes looked like or what I said I thought they looked like. One night in the living room lounge, “The Breakfast Club” was playing, a film about five teenagers that came out when I was a child and now I was seeing it again as a teenager.

“Hey, that’s like us!” we said even though it was the difference of mid 80’s and early 90’s. We joked that their Saturday morning detention was a shorter version of us being confined to Holliswood. Years later I saw the movie “28 days”. I've been wanting to see it again if just to see more films about people having to check into places like that against their will but getting better in the process; kind of like coming of age. I guess “Girl, Interrupted” is another example of this.

I remember in the mornings our group had to state our feelings in one word, and if the word we chose to say was less than positive, we were to explain and justify on why.  I don't think we always told the truth on that though.

I remember the ambulance taking me from St. John’s Hospital to Holliswood, catching a view of raindrops pounding against the rear window, moving along the highway, a day that I would've normally been in school or cutting it, reasoning with myself, “in a way, this is good, at least now my problem is in the light and is going to be dealt with, it’s no longer a secret”.

Tonight I learned my dad held a big ugly secret about what happened to him as a child, and kept it to himself for more than fifty years, not even revealed in his tell-all autobiography. It was something that was dragged out of him over the phone from his sister this weekend. If it weren’t for that call, he still would've kept it inside. And aside from writing, I imagine all the smoking, drinking, and getting high has been the various toxic ways he’s been able to cope.

When I took the Writing Our Lives workshop a couple years ago, the one where I met Jennifer, who encouraged me to start this blog in the first place, I remember assuring Vanessa, head of the workshop, that my flashbacks don’t surprise or pain me much because I’m so used to their attacks. I like to think that that’s mostly true but my time in Holliswood and what led me there is hard to dig into. But so far in this blog, a blog that started out with no particular aim, seems to dance around this central theme; my will to live and move on, times when I wanted to die, and others who feel low enough to want the same. I feel my inner voice tugging at me saying. “Go ahead, write what you want, be as varied as you like, but it’s gonna come back to when you took the most drastic measures to end your life. Until you write more of that, you can’t move on.”

Even though my time in Holliswood was brief (about 28 days actually), what caused me to end up there in the first place is a lot for me to look into. Like with my dad; the actual incident was a blip on the radar, but the effects it had were long-lasting.

I remember wanting out of Holliswood, wanting to feel good, be good and embrace life instead of skirting it.  I see these memories are gonna come back. Well, I'm here to make sense of them and gain all the insight, to have more fuel for my children when they go through their own tumult and pain. Because life gives us those things no matter where we’re from. But there are also ways to heal, and overcome, and thrive. And here I am, making room for all this.