The following piece is from my journal of 1970, verbatim. I was twenty-years-old. Recently, someone said to me that my father was worth more to me and my sisters when he was dead than when he was alive, because we collected Social Security payments on his behalf. Cruel statement. I forgive because it is not my truth. When we forgive, we have to let go of our own feelings, our own ego, our own offended identity, and find our identity at a completely different level — the divine level. I don’t think it is possible to know God at all — outside of the mystery of forgiveness.

In some ways, Daddy’s death brought new problems, including this story with his Social Security money.

Note: Mom took the lock off the bathroom door so we could not lock ourselves in the bathroom to escape her rages. The following scene takes place in the kitchen on Noroton Avenue (subsidized housing), with Mom, Donna, and me.

MAY, 1970, JOURNAL ENTRY
If you only knew the misery of it all.
“I don’t know what you kids were doing yesterday, drinking or what – but you all came home whacked out,” she bitches.
“Mom, can I have my $50 Social Security check? I need it to pay for my doctor’s bill,” I ask.
“No. I have to pay bills. I have to pay your expenses,” she bitches.
“What expenses?” I hurt saying the word. I feel anger.
“Look at the phone bill,” she bitches.
I look at it lying on the radio, and find that the long-distance calls do not belong to me.
“None of these belong to me. That check is my money. And, if you want me to pay board, I will.”
“Donna, you have to give me that money back so I can pay bills,” she bitches to my sister. She had recently given her her check because Donna needed it to pay for her loan or something. And, of course, Mother gave it to her. Donna gets anything. Mother’s favorite. We all know that she says this to Donna just so I will be quiet. So I won’t bother anymore about a check.
I feel hurt. Tears flow down my cheeks, and I hide them from everyone by turning my back and washing dishes. I think of my mascara. I bang dishes. I finish and leave the room, and go into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. It doesn’t even lock. I look at myself in the mirror and laugh. My mascara has run down my cheeks, leaving tracks where my tears slid down. Rubbing it away with a wet washcloth, I feel relieved. Crying always makes me feel better. I have cried because of my mother, and I have cried because I am tired of living.

Hey, I’m not preaching religion, just sharing a quote that I came across in my research this week. How we can change life just by the way we view things!

“Jesus commanded us to love; so we know love is not just a feeling, since we cannot command feelings. Love is mostly a decision.”

What kind of woman will I turn out to be, as I reflect upon my fights through childhood, struggles through young adulthood, to the time of a responsible adult? What will make me do things and take control, be responsible of situations, if I ever have, or will do in the future, and show my personal courage as it slowly grows up, as a seedling through the dirt, in my garden to the sun? Through this reflection will I be able to succeed at change, to act on people, situations, things that get in my way, instead of them acting on me?

I have decided I’ve had enough of feeling stepped on. When will I stop reflecting on long-ago times of being stared at, analyzed, made fun of? The memory of emotional turmoil outbreaks of Darien’s exclusivity, mentally thrown at me, a society too pretentious to notice a poor teenager living in a token plot of town land, in subsidized housing. The poor and the rich, live side-by-side, in a rich man’s town. The adults try to do the right thing for society, however, they just don’t get it. It is one thing for a society to create subsidized housing, but it is another thing for people to treat one another on an even scale when income levels blend into thoughts, words, actions. Teenagers tie their parents’ money to their social attitude toward the poor. Teenagers see themselves bigger than they are, more important than others, as their exclusive lifestyles suck into their brains and control how they act towards others. Teenagers hurt teenagers that are stuck in a place they can’t get out of.

Why do people think that their thoughts, their financial situations, their exclusive positions in society, their lives, are any better, more important, more deserving of enrichment, whether by money or by love, than any other person? Are we not deserving of all of the same things, alive, or dead? Shouldn’t a dead man’s wishes, desires, wants, be followed through? If a man has money and wants to give it to someone in particular, shouldn’t we as a society, be responsible to process his plan that he has written on paper, by the might of his workhorse hand? If a man decides to leave his money to someone in particular out of love, shouldn’t we be responsible to let his love continue after his death and follow his wishes?

Death. Forgiveness. Responsibility. Wishes. Desires. Wants. Reflection, reflection, reflection.

When Daddy decided to abandon his children, to abuse his wife, to make nothing of his life, and took no action, let things happen to him, and wallowed in the pitfalls, the outcomes of his lackadaisical attitude blamed the Johnny Walker Red whisky bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, do I blame him, abandon him, stop loving him? Or, do I ask DEAR, SWEET, JESUS the reason why he was so? Do I charge the nakedness of mankind and the disabilities of the brain as it renders destruction to lives?

I study old photographs for answers, hoping the subjects will turn, look at me, speak to me. There’s one of Daddy and me. He sits on a lawn chair in Nanny’s yard, his back to me, under the great maple tree that Mom’s Uncle Mike planted. I would give him another chance in a heartbeat to love me, even if this hurt Mom. I take his pose as a sign that change is hard to come by, and will not happen to him. He turned his back on Mom and my sisters and me, however, he is a connection to us. As I scrutinize the image, I silently plead with him to turn around, smile at me, say, “I’m so sorry, Jeanne.” Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.

In the black and white photograph, I’m about three-years-old. I sit cross-legged on the grass, close to the camera lens, head tilted in hand, elbow on knee, looking up, serious as all heck, a furrowed frown frozen on my dear, sweet, little face. Ever-pondering me, unusual to be photographed without a sister next to me. Whatever am I thinking about? Am I feeling the affects of an argument Daddy and Mom had that morning? Mom’s sweating stress filtering through me as she rushed about, readying her three, young daughters, pregnant with her fourth child. Worrying about how the day at her Italian family’s gathering might turn out, if Daddy drank too much. I wear a gingham-checked dress with embroidered tulips on the front. Donna’s hand-me-down, Easter dress is a little too short, as my plump thighs peek out.

I don’t see the black and white image though, I see the colors. I know the check is powder blue, the tulips pink, yellow, white, with green leaves, stitches tight on the smocked front. The colors are stuck in my mind. Today, the little dress sits in a box, a saved memento of the past. Responsible me collecting the sparse, family mementos that I could catch, remembering wishes, desires, wants.

So serious for a little girl, trying to control an uncontrollable situation, trying to deal with a responsibility placed upon me, much too young to handle. I wish, desire, want, the little girl to take her head off her hand, her elbow off her knee, get up and run over to Daddy, jump on his back, beg for a piggy-back ride with his strong arms holding her tight, her laughter filling the air as it races up through the spring-green maple leaves, past the white clouds in the Easter sky, her soft, brown hair falling back, as her mouth opens up freely to the world.

I wish the little girl would turn from the photograph and talk to me. I’d tell her to beg Daddy to do everything he possibly could, so she wouldn’t have to grow up as a teenager, in Darien, in subsidized housing. I’d tell her to beg him to love Mom. I’d tell her to beg him to figure it out, to get it, so she wouldn’t have to reflect on this interior journey of self.

I am not preaching the Catholic religion. I am just sharing a small prayer that is getting me through recent days, as I contemplate those who judge me.

Lord, righteous Judge of the living and the dead, in order to prevent the condemnation of the world you allowed the world to condemn you. By your condemnation, free us from the sentence our sins deserve. Give us the grace to be patient with those who judge us, and free us from proudly judging the people around us.

Written In November 1979, At Twenty Years-Old

(Today’s clarification is in parentheses).

My roommate sits and watches t.v., and talks about people on Welfare and how people try to squeeze money out of the government. What a shame! I sit and laugh, and cringe inside. I think bitterly – accusing her, in my mind. You try and raise four children on your own. Clothing, feeding, helping them grow, doing everything possible to help them grow in a Catholic, private school. Tuition and uniforms for each child. You try to make them happy on Christmas and birthdays, and the first day of school. It’s hell.

Welfare is the worst thing on earth, and the best. Best for helping people, worst for tearing apart personal lives. Making each person a status quo.

My three sisters and I were on Welfare when my parents were divorced – when I was 10 years-old. But, this isn’t what this story is about.

I have chosen to write about my mother, the parent that brought me into this world, and the parent who brought me up. (Raised me).

I felt in my heart that I should write about her all of the time. (Only write about her, and not my father). Yet, my mind always said to write about my father. My mind said he was the one you never knew, the one you loved as a child, and the one you want to know as an adult.

My mind is a terrible thing to listen to. All of my life, I wanted to write about my father because I loved him. Even though I never heard from him, even though he never supported us with anything, even though I never saw him. I loved him and that was enough.

Last week, my father died. Eve of Halloween. Halloween shall never be the same.

I am in school. I go to college in New Haven, CT. I am a Junior, majoring in Studio Art. I love ceramics and graphic design, and I am still confused as to which direction my life should lead.

Anyhow, last Tuesday, my little sister, Maria, called and said he had died. A policeman had come to my mother’s home and had told her. The policeman had gotten a call from the police of a neighboring city, saying that the body of my father was in the city’s morgue.

Anyhow, I am off the track. Details don’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how he died. He was an alcoholic.

Scene: Christmas at Nanny’s. Parents divorced. I’m about ten years-old, Donna’s twelve, Barb’s eight, and Maria’s six.

We leave Nanny’s house late on Christmas night, under a cold, clear, winter sky, the bright, white moon follows us home. The moon twinkles at me, shivers, won’t let me get out of its sight. I shiver in response, huddle up to my baby sister, Maria, to try to keep warm in the blue, cold Dodge, as Mom drives through the quiet back roads of Darien to Stamford. We are the last to leave out of our extended family’s gathering at Nanny’s – the last to leave due to the fact that Mom doesn’t want to be alone, with just us girls. She wants to put us right to bed. We are the last to leave because it’s lonely to go home to our little apartment on Seaside Avenue after the divorce. I can’t help but feel badly, as cousins leave Nanny’s, with both of their parents. How weird life is, as we try to find our way, fatherless, husbandless.

My body pushes against Maria, who is in the middle of the back seat, as Barb pushes against her on the other side, to steal the heat given off by a bundled up, snuggly girl. I try not to touch the cold metal harshness of the car door. Donna sits up-front, in her usual spot, next to Mom.

Sharp air startles our sleepy eyes, and not until the car warms up will they slowly, tiredly close to little girls’ dreams under the light of hundreds of stars, a canopy over our bedtime.

Christmas Day spent at Nanny’s: The whirl and chatter of adults with booming voices, laughter, and the singing of carols, as radio music whips through the house. The sounds flow up the chimney, along with the sparkling flicks of Uncle Pippi’s fire from the crackling logs in the fireplace. In our matching, floral, holiday dresses, my sisters and I have to sit on the sofa next to Grandpa, instead of at our usual place on the hearth, with our legs sprawled out on the soft, bluish rug. Even Grandpa seems uncomfortable as he places a gnarly hand up to a cheek, quietly contemplating, as he’s told where to sit, his usual armchair given over to one of my aunts.

“Be good, girls. Be quiet. Don’t get your dresses dirty. Behave! Wish everyone a Merry Christmas!” says Mom. She tries to keep normal what is not normal.

“There’s something special for you on the tree, Jeanne,” says Aunt LaLa.

With these simple, little words, I feel loved, wanted. It helps me deal with the pain of missing Daddy. The pain of not feeling wanted by Daddy. Whether it’s true or not, I know it hurts as Mom coldly pushes him away from us. There are no presents from Daddy.

Joyous is the white envelope with “Jeanne” written in a swirly hand, a red curlicue ribbon bobbing at my name. The ribbon is Aunt LaLa’s trademark, found on gifts for everyone. Inside, a ten-dollar bill awaits.

I jump to the tree. It’s a fake tree, yet pretty, with blue tips and red, satiny balls hooked to the branches. I smile as I can’t help wonder why Aunt LaLa has an artificial tree when the yard and the gardens, a step outside the front and back doors, are a nature wonderland. The artificial tree, a product of the 1970s, clean and neat, perfectly shaped, fit the house’s simple décor, with its turquoise, paisley-swirled slipcovers on the livingroom sofa and chairs, and the maple, Windsor-style chairs in the diningroom, all from Sears, Roebuck, and Co., where Aunt LaLa works in the Customer Service department in Stamford. Customer Service fits her, as she’s a giving person. It is no small feat how Aunt LaLa helps fill the void this Christmas.

Ravioli hands roll the dough towards me. I sit at the rectangular, formica-topped table at Nanny’s, brush my white, sock-covered feet along the flour-dusted floor. Mom turns to my little sister, Maria, to find something to keep her busy with. My sisters and I are indoors on a winter day, and Mom needs to keep us out of her hair. Freezing New England, it’s much too cold to be outdoors in the yard. Otherwise, we’d be lying in the snow, waving arms to make wings on snow angels, packing snowballs to team two against two, or sticking tongues out to catch snowflakes, chins tilted up, red, woolen hats matching the red cheeks and noses of four girls.

The snow falls thickly outside the kitchen window that overlooks the driveway. Whispers of sun sprinkle through the frost layering the outer window side. Steam from hot food cooking on the stove, a roasted chicken and potatoes, onions, peppers, in the oven, warm bodies loving hard through cooking, steaming the inner window side. My elbows sit on the light-turquoise, silvery, metallic-flecked, swirled tabletop. Nanny flecks pasta dough with a swirl of her hand, swishes flour over a wooden rolling pin, flattens, smoothes the dough paper thin on the table. She is making raviolis by hand. Aunt LaLa pitches in.

“Here, Jeanne, take the fork. Pinch the edges all around to close up the dough, to hold the cheese inside. That’s it…all around,” says LaLa. Her broad shoulders strongly suggest leadership. She’s the boss of this Italian kitchen. Everyone listens to her and does what she says, including Nanny and Mom. I don’t mind obeying her as kindness shimmers, though I wonder how on earth does she get Mom to listen to her, as Mom won’t listen to anybody.

“Marie, grate the cheese.” LaLa hands Mom the parmesan cheese and the metal hand-grater with its sharp, raised, bumpy edge ready to greet and shave the wedge.

“Make a mound with the flour, then a hole in the center. Break the eggs, then pour them into the hole. Keep a finger bowl of water nearby! Add the olive oil – just a little! Take the fork – that’s it! Quick, quick, quick! Mix it together. Don’t let the eggs run…push the flour towards them. Fold them together. That’s it! Now, we knead.” LaLa runs the instructions to make more dough, as Nanny confirms, in Italian.

I don’t understand her Italian words, but get the gist of it. I watch Nanny’s hands, sticky-covered dough glues, then releases the flour mixture from her fingers. She kneads the dough into a ball. I watch Nanny’s motions, follow the English words sprinkled here and there, and learn how to make pasta dough. I get the job done along with her.

“Watch Nanny, Jeanne. That’s how you’ll learn,” directs Mom. Mom doesn’t need to tell me that. I’m already absorbed into the soothing motion, the pattern, the process of the flour as it turns into dough, then to pinched pockets of cheese.

“Take the glass, turn it in the dough, put the circles on the breadboard. Take a spoon – no, not the soup spoon, the teaspoon…that’s it! Put the ricotta cheese mixture on the circle of dough. Try to get some parsley into each ravioli. Not too much cheese, though, or they’ll break when they’re cooking in boiling water.” LaLa orders warmly, places her hand on my hand, turns the glass, shows me how to do it. She flits, like a mother bird, from sink, counter, table, stove, oversees the ravioli-making, cooks the gravy, chops the parsley, washes the dishes.

I turn an upside-down water glass into the flattened dough to cut the dough into circles, lift the circles out with a fork, put the cheese on one circle, place another on top, pinch it all together with the fork running ’round the edges. I learn the pattern of the ravioli, the routine needed to turn them out by the hundreds to feed our army of a family at a Christmas dinner.

The raviolis stack up on the lightly floured breadboards, the puffy pillows of dough and cheese build up a proud pile.

“Lavoro piacevole, Jeanne, avete imparato buon. Nice work, Jeanne, you learned good,” says Nanny. She tells LaLa that she’s tired, and goes to her bedroom to nap, alongside Grandpa.

LaLa gathers the scraps of dough and kneads them into a ball. She grabs a sharp knife and cuts the flattened dough into ribbons, for noodles. I place them on a wooden pasta drying rack that stands on green-striped dishtowels laid out on the washing machine. The noodles hang over wooden dowels, moist dough with flour flecks, and wait to dry overnight in the warm, moist-air kitchen.

On the counter, the percolator’s plugged in and the smell of coffee percolates the air as Mom fixes a slipping barrette in Maria’s hair, hands Barbara a star-shaped cookie with round, colored sprinkle dots on it, and tells Donna to go turn the t.v. on.

“Be quiet. Be good. Nanny’s sleeping,” says Mom.

Not one to talk much, I think, think, think. I don’t tell Mom that I think we already are good. Good, good, good, with Aunt LaLa, in Nanny’s kitchen.

For the second time in my life, (Dear, Sweet, Jesus!), I learn of the burial of a loved one after the fact. First, Daddy, in 1979. Second, Aunt LaLa, in 2013. Regardless of the thoughtless lack of communication by relatives, my love for these two people remain unchanged.

Aunt LaLa helped me find my way in this world, and I thank her for teaching me how to love. I thank her for treating Mom and my sisters with love. I thank her for giving me the name, “Jeannebird.”

Here’s a bit from my book:

“Hi Aunt LaLa!” I call, opening the screened kitchen door off the little slate porch. She lived there with her parents, and brother, Pippi. My words zip through the house to find their way to her.

“Hello, Pop! How are you doin’ today?” Mom says, then orders us to say “hello” to him, as she follows my sisters and me inside.

“Hello, Grandpa!” Four girls greet him as he turns from the window towards us. His bright, white, wispy hair circles the bald crown of his head as he leans against his gray, wool sweater on the back of his chair, placed there by Aunt LaLa. She takes good care of him. He holds a gnarled, sun-tanned hand up to wave “hello” as Mom sits next to him at the kitchen table. Mom’s high cheeks, squarish jaw line, squarish forehead, big, brown eyes, and sun-tanned skin match her father’s.

Aunt LaLa comes into the kitchen. Her grayish-brown hair is beauty-parlored-curled under, right at the shoulders. A pink, flowery blouse matches the pink lipstick on a smiling mouth, curving gently to show pearly teeth. A gentle twinkle in brown eyes reveals the kindness in her heart.

On this lucky day, Aunt LaLa hands me the big, black, metal scissors that rest in a kitchen drawer.

“Go cut some zinnias, Jeanne,” she says, handing me a basket to hold flowers from Grandpa’s garden. Zinnia bouquets will carry her cheerfulness home.

Sometimes, late at night, long after Mom put “her four girls” to bed, she and Daddy watch t.v., in the livingroom. Mom sits on the small, green sofa against the wall behind my bedroom, and Daddy sits across from her, on a matching sofa. Mom sews a button on one of my sisters’ parochial school, white-starched blouse, or hems, up or down, a blue and green plaid, pleated, uniform skirt. They sit quietly, talk quietly, quietly in the poetry of sweetheart love with one another.

Bedtime for my sisters and me is seven o’clock sharp, as by that time, Mom has had enough of us for the day, though I wonder about that, because she orders me to watch my sisters most days.

“Teach Barb and Maria how to play hopscotch,” says Mom as she closes the green door on the front porch.

I draw the shape of squares into a cross shape with white chalk, and show them how to play. I concentrate on the shaky chalk lines that stumble over the concrete sidewalk, the chalk roughly bumps grains of sand in the concrete. I wonder if the sand comes from Cummings Beach, where we swim. The wavy squares, the big, loose, hand-drawn numbers, the chalk in my hand, absorb me. I am with my sisters, and yet, I am not. I am inside of myself.

“Don’t step on the cracks, you’ll break your mother’s back,” says Donna, who joins us.

I feel sorry for Mom as I imagine her with a broken back.

At seven o’clock sharp, my sisters and I share one bedroom, with two twin beds, two girls to each bed. Cars pass by the house, headlights strike Venetian blinds’ shadows to the wall. I watch the shadows’ slow, swaying, lullaby movements and listen to trains’ rumble and whistle at the train station, a block away, until I fall asleep.

Sometimes, I wake during the night, and listen for Daddy and Mom’s voices. I can’t figure out what the talk’s about, and it doesn’t really matter, as I’m just happy to hear humming voices for a change.

Sometimes, I wake, scared, a choking knot in my throat and thoughts of a murderous fight my parents had earlier in the day. The quiet house and my sisters’ sleeping, in-and-out breaths, and a little prayer to Mother Mary, give me courage to slip out of bed, pull the blanket over Maria’s shoulder, slide into slippers, and on tippy-toes, with the shish-shish-shish of my flannel nightgown against my legs, go to the dark kitchen. Out of sight, I kneel on the gray linoleum floor near the stove, to watch my parents in the livingroom together.

Other times, they’re asleep, beyond the French glass doors that separate the livingroom, in their bedroom, that has just enough room for a bed, two dressers, a nightstand, and before baby Maria could share my twin bed, a baby’s crib. I slip into Daddy and Mom’s bedroom, and climb into bed between them, a safe spot. They don’t hear me, don’t feel my touch, and don’t wake, because I’m as quiet as a sneaky mouse. Sleeping Daddy and Mom give me the chance to find comfort without drawing attention to myself.

Nestled in a valley with their backs to me, Daddy’s mountainous, white shoulders loom above, and Mom’s soft, easy breathing slows the beat-beat-beat of my heart. I lie there between them, take them in. Daddy’s light brown, reddish curls, slightly damp from sweat, a sleeveless, white, cotton undershirt, exposes muscular, white skin, brown-freckled dots surround a U.S. army tattoo. Mom’s dark, black hair sprawls against the pillow, a dark halo in the night.

Here, I lay, as the very early morning sunlight starts to slither in, with the starts of sparrows as they flit and chirp in the front yard. Listen to the peaceful breathing of my parents. Listen to the house, so very quiet. Listen for a waking sound from my sleeping, Polish grandparents upstairs. Listen to the gentle whispers of baby Maria, if the crib is still there. Listen to the beat of my very own heart. Listen to the house as it tells me to shush-shush-shush, Jeanne, it’s okay, you’ll get through what’s yet to come.

CHARACTER
I am dependable, like the tight, gold button that never loosens on a favorite, red-hooded jacket. I am constant, like the yellow, embroidered French knot on the back of blue jeans that never frays away, no matter how many times washed in Mom’s washing machine. I am reliable, like the metal and wooden tool, the hoe that hangs on the garage wall, ready for a hand to use the following spring in the garden. I am honest, like Dear, Sweet, Jesus taught me, and cannot lie, steal, or deceive.