ACT I: My Father's Side of the Family
Because of the unknown event(s) which made speaking of them (his parents) so painfully difficult, it fell to me the dutiful more detached son and grandson to go to Oregon with my father to make arrangements to have my grandmother put into a nursing home for her health and safety. An institution she detested so much she escaped twice and walked several miles home. No easy feat since she had broken her foot in her seventies and never seen a doctor for it. The foot healed improperly and walking gave her quite some pain. I had to later, at the request of the city where she lived, take charge of demolishing her home: my father's childhood home. It had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it had become dangerous and my father could not bear to deal with it. While on that trip, I took my grandmother out to dinner at the local Denny's and pumped her for information. A simple meal of a hamburger, fries, and a strawberry shake --her favorite treat. Coincidentally mine too. She was a bit senile but I got a good story several times during the course of that meal. During the great depression and before, large families which could not support all of their children would farm out their excess children to families who wanted to and could take care of them. A sort of indentured adoption. This was the case with my grandmother. She was born into the Sweigert family somewhere in the Midwest and shipped off to the Allen family in the tri-cities area of Washington. She had several sisters one named Myrtle who lived in San Diego, California and the rest I never discovered. While she lived with the Allen family she was fed and clothed, sent to school (only through elementary school) and otherwise she worked to earn her keep. Kind of a Cinderella thing.
Sometime later she met my grandfather Wilton Edward Minckley. They courted as was proper and eventually married. He always referred to her as "little mother." She too was barely 4'10 tall by the time I met her. She told me nice things about my grandfather like how tall and handsome he was and that he loved to work with wood as did my father as do I. He had been a logger, a soldier (WW I), a longshoreman, a restaraunteur, and a tugboat captain: guiding huge ocean going vessels up the Columbia River to Portland. He got very sick shortly after my birth and left home one night rented a motel room and died there-1955. My father found out about his father's passing via telegram. I don't know if he attended his funeral. This left my grandmother all alone and ill-prepared to cope and my father still was not emotionally able to bring himself to be with her or help her. She had always been told what to do or had it taken care of for her. Banking and taxes and such stuffs were not her strong suit.
However, she managed with the help and kindness of her friends from her little Methodist Church where she had sung in the choir and taught Sunday School for over fifty years. She knew four generations of children from that church. Her friends from church taught her how to survive on her own. She was left enough money to get by on and had Social Security as well. When her home began to sink into the poorly drained soil she actually went out and bought another house with a huge barn. She even rented the barn out to various entrepreneurs--boat wrights, mechanics, and even a surfboard maker.
The old house continued to sink so that by the time I was called in to demolish it the main floor was actually a few feet below ground level. My father once told me he could run and play under the house until he was in Junior High School. It had to have sunk at least six feet into the soggy bog that was the yard. The cause of this catastrophe was the city of Warrenton, Oregon. They offered to trench the property for proper drainage for a fee that grandmother thought too expensive so they drained everybody else's property onto hers. The city engineers never explained the details or dangers of not trenching the property would cause. The city of Warrenton, where she lived, sits about as far north and west in Oregon as you can get without standing in either the Pacific Ocean or the Columbia River. It is surrounded by three large rivers one of which is the Columbia--more than a mile across at the mouth. The rain never ends there either. The property just turned into a big sponge and started to suck the house back into itself.
I also had the onerous duty of taking my grandmother to the site of the demolition where the local volunteer fire department practiced putting out fires on the rubble that was the remainder of her home. This obviously crushed her spirit. Her little shoulders shuddered and sagged even more than normal. She also asked me if I would take her to her husband's grave site which brought tears to both of our eyes. She told me I was a good boy for doing all of these things for her. I felt like a complete schmuck.
I had one more task to help her with and that was to take her shopping for foundations ; undies and stuff. I left her alone as I thought she'd be embarrassed to have me hanging around while she bought such things. I was approached by a very red-faced bald man who instructed me to remove my grandmother from his store and never to bring her back as she had been busted for shop lifting. Her excuse was that they simply were charging too much for such things. I had to chuckle as this also seems to be a genetic trait in our family. I explained to the red faced store manager that she was in her nineties and probably just forgot she had the items but he retorted with the fact that she was regularly caught doing this. I paid for the items and we left. I took her back home and had to return to my home, then Salt Lake City and within three years she passed away in her nursing home. It was then that I found out my calculations were a bit off. She died at 101 years old. She passed quietly in her sleep. Her heart just gave out after a long and fruitful life.
The lack of information or misinformation I had from my father led me to believe his father's name had been Jesse, So when it came to naming our twin daughters, Jessica seemed a logical choice for one since I thought it was my grandfather's name and Jesse is the tree of life in the Hebrew tradition. Erin was named for her mom's Irish heritage. All was good. Until I was informed that Jesse was my grandfather's twin brother. Still all in the family. Besides who would name a girl Wiltonia in this day and age
Anyway, on March 1, 1923, my father Wilton Frank Minckley was born in Seaside, Oregon. And grew up in the now sunken and burned house. He attended Seaside High School. Learned to play the violin, and run track. He was a popular, funny guy according to the letters I have found from his old high school girl friends. He attended Linfield College where he graduated with a dual degree in Mathematics and Music. About this time World War II broke out and he joined the navy, only barely meeting the minimum requirement for service because of his height. He made it by one-half an inch. He served one tour of duty in the Pacific Theater mostly patrolling the coast line of Alaska--the Aleutian Islands. A cold and Godforsaken place. Temperature without wind chill factor are about the same as the north pole. He left the service as a Lieutenant.
He returned home and had some sort of huge blowout with his father over use of the family automobile. He left home the next day and went back to school at the University of Oregon to pursue a degree in architecture which he did. Some where around his birthday in 1952, he had a fling with Elizabeth Jean Bechtolt and nine months nearly to the day of his birthday out sprang a bouncing baby boy--me. I don't know if my parents married before or after my birth but it was not destined to be. Five years later he bailed on us. He sent child support. Showed up sometimes for his weekend visitations. He even remembered my birthday sometimes. Now granted, in hindsight, I can say my mother was crazy and an alcoholic but he just left me there to deal with it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
ACT II: My Mother's Side of the Family
Elizabeth Jean Bechtolt was born somewhere in Germany. Her parents like many other European Jews saw the handwriting on the wall with the rise of Nazi-ism and fled to the America when she was very young. Details of their trip and their settling in Oregon are vague due to reasons discussed later. She grew up on a farm in Medford, Oregon. Her parents were Levi(LAY vee) and I can't recall ever hearing my maternal grandmother's name spoken aloud. Betty Jean as my mother preferred grew up with two or three brothers and a sister--Judith. Judy lived somewhere near us in California. One brother was a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton. His name was Ronald. He always seemed angry when we saw him. The other two I never met. On two occasions I recall going to Medford to visit her family on the farm. I loved it mud everywhere and a cow named Bossie. I got to ride her. My grandfather Lee (as he Americanized his name) was huge. He was a logger and farmer and I remember watching him buck bails of hay from a wagon pulled by Bossie into the hay loft which seemed twenty feet in the air. Grandmother Bechtold cooked marvelous pies from fresh berries and apples she collected from the area surrounding her farm or from her own little strawberry patch. They were practicing Hasidim or Hasidic Jews. I always liked the ceremonies at mealtime with them. They both were very kind to me. My mother had pretty much given up on the faith and I was not well schooled in the religion or culture. I just knew I was one. She told me very often to never forget it.
My mother had a string of loser boyfriends (who were generally referred to as "uncles" when they had sleep overs) after my father divorced her. And she worked at pretty unskilled sales type jobs even though she had a college degree also from the University of Oregon. She was a tall and strikingly beautiful woman with long auburn hair (which I found out later came from a bottle)who always dressed to the nines. She worked at the make-up counter at Macy's for a while and then at Pier One Imports for a while. A beautiful woman who drank to excess and who had a mean streak a mile wide and many times longer. Combine the two and look out. Once I came home five minutes late from my friends house and she met me at the door with Gallo wine jug in hand and as I climbed the last step to the house she smacked me with the bottle sending me sprawling and bawling back down the steps. She cracked my jaw that day. Other times it didn't seem like I had done anything and I got whipped with a belt (the buckle end) or a coat hanger. Anything seemed to do. I bore the brunt of here depression and anger since my father had cut out. I told him about these things but he couldn't bring himself to confront her.
The responsibilities of grocery shopping and liquor and cigarette runs fell to me as she came home from work and fell into bed. I would be given money and a note to go get wine and smokes from the guy at the bowling alley and money and a list to go grocery shopping. The house had to be spotless when she got home too or my ass was grass. This set of duties started when I was about seven. I got pretty good at it too. A gallon of Gallo Burgundy and two packs of Pall Malls every three days. Groceries once a week. I was lucky thee grocery store was only four blocks away. I had to bring the groceries home in a cart and then take it back.
Soon after the jaw incident, Betty found a new loser to take up with--Eckhard Heinrich Jessen. He was a German national with an ex-wife and two children of his own. I met his kids once. We didn't get along well at all. I was told that they had gotten married and that Eckhard was my new stepfather. Great He knocked me around too only he used his fists. The second trip to Medford, Oregon to visit my grandparents took place in mid October when I was nine years old. I suppose the reason for that trip was to introduce my grandfather and stepfather to each other. I remember a lot of shouting inside the house. I was sent outside to play or pick fruit or something. Just before leaving for the trip back to California they bought a Mallard duck. He sat in a box in the back seat with me the whole ride home by car. We became best buddies. Once home he had free roam of the yard and all the snails he could eat. I couldn't wait to get home from school to play with my duck. Then came the day before Thanksgiving when my mother gave me a large knife and told me to go out and cut the duck's head off God I cried for hours and couldn't bring myself to do it. So I was slapped around a bit and then forced by Eckhard to watch him slaughter my pet and then he made me pluck the bleeding carcass of my best friend. For that alone I hated him with a passion and I ate only mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving that year. Within a year, we were packing up our house and moving to Hamburg, Germany. I was nine years old and had taken a two week, crash, Berlitz course in German and off we go to New York by plane and then to Germany by Ocean Liner. I remember only two things from the trip--I got to see the Statue of Liberty as we left New York harbor and barfing my guts up for several days as we crossed the Atlantic. I still get sea sick to this day. Maybe psychological.
We arrived in Germany on a rainy day. Caught a cab and went to his parent's home. His father's name was also Eckhard but he was a calm, patient man and nice to me. His wife, I was told to call her Nana, had been cooking all day and laid out a feast for our arrival. She even let me help her cook Gooseberry pies. They were so totally opposite their son I thought and think to this day he must've been a changeling. We stayed with them until an apartment could be found and then saw them only infrequently thereafter. Eckhard's father owned a kind of hardware/housewares store in Hamburg and he was pretty old so Eckhard the younger took over so his father could semi-retire. I worked on Sundays cleaning the floors and emptying the trash and such. My mother spoke no German but was supposed to be a sales person at the store. Instead she would send me on cigarette and wine runs until I had to go to school. She became a housefrau so to speak. She rarely went out. She'd cook and clean house and I'd go explore the neighborhood around our apartment house. The exploration ended all too soon with the advent of school.
I was to have gone into the sixth grade back in America so the closest translation to that was Sechste Klasse or sixth class. Unfortunately much was lost in translation. The Sechste Klasse was the last year of high school in Germany and most of the rest of Europe. If you passed the year you could go to the University, if not you were sent to a trade school. So my classmates were all 17 and 18 years old and I was nine. I learned to speak German while they learned English. I read Steppenwolf in German and learned calculus before algebra. And there was no fooling around, corporal punishment was severe. I only got nailed once for asking a classmate when recess was. But that once was enough At break times and lunch all of the guys played Fussball or soccer on a gravel covered field with a ball slightly larger than a softball. They ate bread and cheese and had wine or beer with their lunches. No such luck for me. I always got a good old American sack lunch my mother or I made each morning. I learned to swim there as well. The only two sports anyone did were swimming or soccer and I hated swimming--too much like work and you don't get anywhere except the next wall. Toward the spring of that year my class took a long bus tour field trip visiting many lovely little towns still functioning at their pre-war pace. We visited the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) where I interrupted some American soldiers playing war games, that was kind of cool. The were using wax bullets and one of the let me shoot his gun. It was kind of hard to explain to them why a ten year old American boy was out in the forest alone in the middle of their war games but we figured it out. The class slept in youth hostels as we traveled. While in the Black Forest the teacher made it a point to stop at a lookout spot that scared me to death. We stood on one side of a barbed-wire fence looking at guard towers and angry barking dogs less that three hundred yards from us--the East was all I was told, It was the point at which East and West were at their closest. I could see hatred in the eyes of the guards in those towers like they'd mow us down and not even blink. I cried but no one noticed or cared if they did. The next stop was Munich, a beautiful modern rebuilding city. We took a side trip of a few miles to visit another historical monument: Dachau. I cried and vomited. Everyone noticed this time and wanted to know why but I had lost my lunch and my voice. I just walked around like someone dead staring at the buildings and machines and fences. I didn't really understand at the time what I was looking at but I knew the place was evil beyond all compare and wanted to run away and hide. I stayed in the bus while the others ran around and played at things. I didn't understand until years later. I didn't speak a word until we were back in Hamburg two days later and found it difficult to eat or sleep on the way home.
Life at home became more and more tense. The adults drank and yelled at each other and I tried to do homework or played with the few toys I still had. Turns out we didn't really pack up our whole house. Most of it was sold or given away. As the tension between my mother and Eckhard grew, he began to hit her more. The last straw came when I stepped between them while he was beating her and called him an "aschloch" - asshole. Pow! He knocked me ass over tea kettle, across the kitchen and into my room. He then preceded to wail on me while I was screaming about my arm hurting and thinking it was broken. The neighbors came to the door and asked if everything was OK but they were told to mind their own business. Thankfully, one of them called the Polizei who didn't want to mind their own business. Eckhard left to sleep at his parent's house that night and my mother and I packed our things and caught a flight home to San Jose, California via Greenland and New York and never looked back. When we arrived back in San Jose aunt Judy picked us up and we went to stay with her for a while. A very short while. When she saw me all bruised and arm in a sling (unbroken, just bruised) she called my father to come get me. Which he did while my mother slept off a long flight's worth of drinks.
ACT III: Do Overs
While I was away, however, my father had remarried and was living the high life. He and his new wife Barbara (a Catholic) went camping, skiing, sailing and were devout party animals. Meanwhile, my mother came to collect me when she sobered up since she had legal custody of me. At the urging of Barbara my father did the honorable thing and sued for custody. I'm not totally positive that he would have done it of his own accord. My mother told me that I would see the judge the next day and told me quite emphatically what to say so that I would stay with her. The emphasis was with a hanger this time. The custody battle came down to a meeting with just me and the judge. I sat in the judge's chambers with him and he asked me who I wanted to live with and why. I told him I wanted to live with my father and lifted up the back of my shirt to show him why. The last time I saw my mother she was sitting on a bench in the courthouse hallway waiting for me to come out. I left with my father and Barbara. I was eleven. I haven't seen or heard from her since and frankly I'm rather glad. But because of this I know very little of my mother's family history. I did find out later that she had never actually married Mr. Jessen so that part of the family tree can be erased.
Synopsis of ACTS I-III: We Put the Fun in Dysfunctional
Thus far, I've had three sets of grandparents I barely knew. A painfully clam-like father and a violent mother whom I never saw after age 11. And a fascist stepfather and now a snobbish stepmother. My father married and had one child. Divorced. Married again. Divorced again because of a 27 year long affair with a Texan(female.) My mother married had the one child mentioned above. Divorced. Disappeared.
ACT IV: My Contribution to the Family History
Life with a step parent can be a challenge for the step parent and the child. Coming to terms with an eleven year old boy must have been very difficult for stepmother Barbara who had divorced her first husband and left her three daughters with him to raise. I had been through plenty myself so we all just tried to maintain a peaceful coexistence for the most part. I went to school. They went to work. This would go on for the next six years. When I came back from my rather rigorous German education, I was placed into sixth grade and was bored out of my mind. The childishness of the education system left me wanting, especially in mathematics. Sixth graders learn pre-algebra math. I had already conquered calculus in a foreign language. I didn't make good grades because the teacher didn't or couldn't understand how I got the correct answer without using his/her method. I still have a copy of a note sent home by my counselor saying that I should be placed in a trade track curriculum as I didn't seem to grasp mathematics even though I seemed to get fine grades in all of my other subjects. This caused quite a few problems at home. I tried to conform but it just wouldn't happen. Major Barbara had a cure for that I needed discipline. So for the next five summers I was shipped off to a Summer Camp in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. At first I thought I would hate it but it grew on me. Not a militaristic kind of place but a place where you learned to rely on your mates and they on you. For eight weeks each summer we hiked and backpacked the Rocky Mountain National Park rode, groomed, and mucked horses and their stalls. Short straw always got to ride the Honey Wagon (a large wagon loaded to the gunnels with horseshit) out to a dump site. It took a week to get the stink off. I preferred the mountaineering and rock climbing part there you just stunk of smoke and your own sweat. I liked it so much I went as I said for five straight years and won every major award to be had. While I was away having fun my parental units were in Europe. One new country each year. So I figured they were just trying to get me out of their hair figuratively as my father had been bald for as long as I had know him. Again I digress some.
In seventh grade I became the class clown. I thought I was funny and my classmates seemed to agree. I had far more female friends than guy friends and was picked on quite a lot as I hadn't grown like the other guys. Probably from malnutrition and stress. I got to know Mrs. Mamie Brady, my counselor from seventh grade through high school, very well. She went to bat for me several times. My father, at the behest of my stepmother, enrolled me in a Chinese self-defense class in San Francisco. I rode the train from Palo Alto to San Francisco three times a week for the next five years to learn how to defend myself. I did and the bullying dropped off substantially when I got to high school and hit a major growth spurt in tenth grade. I escaped/graduated out of junior high distinguishing myself only on the soccer field, a new sport in America, and in chorus. I could sing. Who knew?
Once I hit high school it started to feel more like a place of learning for me and I excelled. I had German and Chinese discipline on my side now. I took German for my language until the teacher found out I had spent more time there than she had studying the language. So I opted for Latin, where I first learned the parts of speech of English. I loved English and History classes because I could speak my mind and not be punished (so long as it was germane to the topic at hand.) European History came especially easy for me as I had been there and actually seen some of the places we studied. Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics were my forte though as I had already had these at a higher level than American schools presented them. I still played sports: football for a year (it bored me spitless), Soccer of course and Tennis. My coupe de gras, however, was choir. I actually made into madrigals as a sophomore I made many more guy friends and fell in love every time I turned around. High school girls were heavenly and ephemeral. I always chose to pursue the girls who were older than I or already had boyfriends. My love was dashed against the rocks too many times. I had my share of successful relationships too. Oddly enough they came when I wasn't looking. There was a lesson too late learned Of all the things I did in high school choir, madrigals, and school musicals were probably my forte. I sang and sang and sang. I loved it. It was in choir that I made my most lasting and best friendships. The two who come to mind I only recently reconnected with: Cesar Cervantes and David Grandstaff. We did everything together when I could pry them away from their girlfriends. Cesar ended up marrying his first high school sweetheart Chris Cuisinot and David ended up marrying four times. There were many other friends and good times but there all just fond memories now.
I did meet one character when I was sixteen who had just moved into the neighborhood. Right behind my house in fact. Cassius Smith and he spoke German too. His father was a Colonel in the Army and he had lived all over the world. We hung out and he invited me to go on a camping trip with his Boy Scout Troop. This was the Sixties man I said, “OK but no uniforms and NO saluting.” Their Scoutmasters were Cassius' father, a hugely obese man, and a sixty-something year old guy with a bum leg who had been at the job for most of that time. Even after all of my objections, I was in a uniform the next week and a member of their troop for the next two years. In that time I won or achieved every award possible. And for twenty-five years thereafter, I was a Scoutmaster myself.
I turned eighteen during my senior year and two tremendously significant things happened that day. One I grabbed the morning paper first thing to check for my draft lottery number: 100. I was screwed. They were taking up to 150 or 180. The other happened as I was going out the door to go to school all hangdog with the sword of Damocles (the draft) already hanging over my head, my father said, "You had a brother." No elaboration, no explanation, no follow-up, nothing. Just you HAD a brother. Obviously I had not known. That was my birthday present that year. He never spoke of it again and refused to elaborate when quizzed.
Graduation came and just like our caps, we all scattered like Autumn leaves in the wind. Some to college, some to work, some to war, too many who never returned. I don't like talking about that part of my life, so we'll fast forward to me entering Linfield College in beautiful, isolated, backwards, McMinnville, Oregon. Why There? Well, my father made it very clear that he would pay for any college I chose to attend , so long as it was Linfield College. OK. Enough said. I went to Linfield College. Did I mention that at that time Linfield College was run by the American Baptist Church? Mandatory daily, one hour morning chapel, coat and tie, or no breakfast. Everywhere I turned there I ran into trouble with one hyper-Christian group or another. You had to belong to one of them or you couldn't be in musicals, play sports, write for the paper. I tried out for the football team and made the coach's cut but a player still had to be accepted or approved of by the Federation of Christian Athletes panel. It was like the inquisition revisited. They asked many questions regarding my religious philosophy and beliefs. I made the mistake of not taking the whole thing seriously. That's when I got myself in trouble. Not only was I cut from the team but later that week I was invited to a good old fashioned blanket party. For the novices, that's when a group of big dumb jocks catch you between buildings at night, throw a blanket of your head and kick the living shit out of you. They did leave me a consolation prize though. They branded my arm with a Star of David.
If I'm anything I'm determined. I stayed there for two years in spite of the constant threats. I joined a fraternity of like-minded guys and either studied or drank for those two years. I began as a vocal music major but when the choir director grabbed my crotch to get me to sing higher, I pretty much gave that major up and took up Chemistry but the only things older than the periodic tables in the classrooms were the professors. I finally settled on political science with law school in mind. I helped start a Soccer team at the school and earned my Varsity letter. I joined the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. And I did meet one girl brave enough to associate with me and we fell deeply in love. So much so, that when she decided to move back home after her sophomore year, I followed her to Renton, Washington and we made plans to get married. We got engaged and set a date. Meanwhile, I went to work for the Boeing Airplane Company for a year and a half. One fateful day I came home a little too early and found the bed occupied by two folks only one of whom I knew. I left, she moved out and kept the ring and the TV. I went to work and drank for the next six months until the owner of the pub I was frequenting told me I was wasting my time pining away and should go back to school and that I couldn't come back to his pub until I had graduated. I took his advice and applied and was accepted to the University of Oregon for the next semester.
I arrived in Eugene and lived in the College Inn (a sort of private dormitory/apartment house) for the first year there and studied my butt off. Then I decided it would be great to have the fraternity experience again but the chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha had folded ten years earlier. So I began to recruit a core of guys to start a colony. That gave me something to work on. I did meet a Sorority girl who swept me off my feet. We saw each other for nearly a year during my senior year. She was the only girl friend I had at the University of Oregon. When graduation came she had already moved back with her family for the Summer and I had no way of contacting her before I left to go figure out the LSAT/Law School process. I never got to say good bye or find out if she was interested in me staying around. I was also scared out of my wits as to what I was going to do and become in addition to being flat ass broke. I left like a big chicken and pined over her for quite some time. Even some today.
I had other interests as well, I played rugby and lettered. I was a Teaching Assistant in both the Classics and Political Science Departments. I worked as a waiter, a bar tender, a pump jockey at a gas station, and painted houses. I graduated with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis on revolutions and minors in Anthropology and Classical Languages (Greek and Latin.) All with the intention of going to law school. While I was away at school my parents had moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where my stepmother got a position in the Nursing School at the University of Utah as an Assistant Dean. So when I left Eugene I went to Salt Lake City. It took about twenty minutes for me to remember why I went out of state to college. Pa and Ma had their comfy little life and it was clear that I wasn't really welcome in it. I took the LSAT and applied to five law schools and was denied by all. Oh God, now what was I going to do? Within the month I had found an internship at the University of Utah with the Fraternity and Sorority Coordinator and found a one bedroom apartment. I moved out while they were away for the holidays visiting my stepmother's eldest daughter; another event to which I was not invited. And so began my adult life.
ACT V: The Working Years and More
I worked at the internship for two years. Then I worked for a year or so in the University Bookstore as an accounting clerk until I found a position open at a small college in Salt Lake as the Student Union Director. The job entailed running the Union Building, advising student government, coordinating cultural and social events and concerts for the college. I did that for two years --the pay was shit: $4500 per year. It paid the rent and bought groceries but that's about all. Always looking, I found a position as a full-time math tutor for a Federally funded program back at the University of Utah. It paid better, had benefits, and I took it. I worked there for fifteen years and worked my way up to second in command as Coordinator of the Upward Bound Program and an Associate Instructor's status in the Mathematics Department.
It was while working at the Student Union at Westminster College that I met an attractive woman who reminded me of my long lost love from Oregon. At first we had a cordial, business-like relationship. She was an intern in the Women's Center which was housed in my Union Building. Later she invited me over for lunches and then dinners. She had recently divorced but hadn't told me. It wouldn't have mattered. We dated for the remainder of her senior year and when she graduated she moved the very next week to Seattle with very little warning. As we dated I met her roommate and became good friends with her. Karen, the roommate, and Barb, the love interest, had been friends throughout their twelve years of Catholic school education. I could ask her questions about her roommate (my love interest) and she could give me insight into her behavior. When she moved I was kind of in shock. Karen helped me through that period. Unbeknownst to me she had a crush on me from our very first meeting. We continued to pal around and then started to get serious. She was my best friend and now a lover. On December first, 1979 we got married by the Justice of the Peace in Jackson, Wyoming in her sister's double wide trailer to the tune of Here Comes The Bride played on a harmonica. I married and Irish Catholic woman. I shoulda known betta.
Karen was in Nursing School and I was working full time and working on my Master's Degree in Education. We got married when we did because we were both on break from school and I think she planned it that way so I wouldn't ever forget our anniversary. It's the day before my birthday. I think our marriage went so well through the rough years everybody else has because we were friends before we got married. We also had been completely independent for years, had our own pots and pans, towels and sheets, etc. Karen had been renting Barb's house and I had my apartment now a two bedroom unit. My rent was cheaper so we started out in my now two bedroom apartment. There was a problem though. It was a man cave and a greenhouse. It was decorated in early fraternity style and every surface had a plant on it. I had even made the little balcony into a greenhouse. I hardly ever had to turn the heater on. But I had to make room for her things and compromise on decorations. Many of the plants had to go. And they went, after a fierce Irish tirade: Karen opened the freezer door and a plant which lived on top of the fridge fell on her. We yelled and screamed and the plants went out the balcony door and into the apartment complex parking lot three floors below. Most of the plants anyway, I kept a few of my oldest and dearest and largest friends. We shared all of the household duties cooking, cleaning, laundry. Got our first joint account at the bank. We played house and studied for the next year and a half. Eventually we both graduated. I still worked for Upward Bound and she went to work as an Emergency Room nurse. She worked the swing shift and I worked until 5:00pm. We saw each other after midnight and on weekends. A perfect arrangement; can't get into a fight by yourself.
Life went on like this until Karen said she wanted to have two kids--I opted for one but lost that battle. On April 1, 1982 we went to a friend of Karen's from high school who is a radiology technician and had our first ultrasound. She moved the little monitor thingy around and got a full view of a little person in there. Then she pushed some buttons and two appeared. I thought she was just duplicating the first electronically. But no. We were having twins. I started crying out of pure joy. Karen started crying because she was mortified. Her older sister had twins who were the children from Hell. We opted not to know the gender. We had narrowed boys names down to a reasonable ten or so but hadn't even considered girls names. I think one of my birthday presents was a set of twin daughters. On August 24th, 1982(just about nine months after my birthday) my life changed forever. The twins went to full term and they weighed fourteen pounds combined(6 pounds fourteen ounces and seven pounds two ounces.) The ultrasound just prior to delivery showed an umbilical chord wrapped dangerously around someone's head and neck so the doctor recommended taking them by Cesarian. I was in the OR for the whole thing gloved, gowned and ready to do whatever I was supposed to do. Karen held up like a champ and as I was talking to her a nurse handed me this little tiny baby all covered in cottage cheese and said clean her up So I, while being petrified of dropping her and breaking her, gingerly, delicately, cleaned little fingers and hands, toes and feet face and head all the while crying my eyes out. Then the nurse got snippy and said, get a move on daddy another one's waiting. The second cleanup wasn't as scary but I was still crying holding my second daughter while Karen held the first. Then I had to go out carrying the most precious commodity on the planet: my daughters to get weighed, foot printed, and suctioned out and stuff. Meanwhile Karen was having stuffing put back in. All together she lost twenty-five pounds during the operation from babies water and placenta(e). The OBY-GYN took cell samples at the placenta end of each umbilical chord and placenta to see if they were identical or fraternal. He swears they are fraternal. Their dentist, much later, swears they must be identical because of dental anomalies they both share that only identical twins could have. We never cared too much about that, they were always two different people to us. However for the first three days of their lives they were named baby A and baby B because we couldn't decide on girls names Finally through high level negotiations we settled on the fist born as Jessica Lee (Jessica, as mention before erroneously, Lee for my middle name and my mother's father) second born (by three minutes) became Erin Jean (Erin for Ireland and Jean was my mother's middle name, Karen's mother's middle name, and Karen's middle name.) Up to that moment, I had always thought babies were ugly. But mine were beautiful. I finally got something right.
Karen tried breast feeding but she couldn't produce enough to sustain the girls and she eventually dried up completely. That meant of course bottle feeding which meant I could have quiet, personal time with my girls from a very, very young age. Something that continued up to the point in sixth or seventh grade where friends became more important than parents. Karen went back to work after only a month's recuperation from major abdominal surgery. So we went back to: I worked the day shift teaching and she worked the swing shift in the ER. That really meant we worked two shifts back to back. Teaching then taking care of the babies or taking care of the babies and ER nursing. We were exhausted most of the time. Friends went by the wayside, hobbies were put on hold and 100% of our time was invested in the girls. We tried babysitters but they just couldn't handle two babies or kids as they grew older. Most, if not all, of the romance in our relationship died of exhaustion. We barely saw each other because of work schedules and when we were home together Karen napped a lot. The one saving grace in all of this was that they slept through the night most of the time from the very beginning. We were fairly democratic about who got up with them when they did wake in the night taking turns to let the other sleep. I am pretty much a night owl/insomniac so I just took care of it because I was up. But Karen took her share of turns even after working a long shift, sometimes 13 hour shifts.
The girls grew like weeds and it seemed like it was overnight they went from preschool to graduating from high school. But I have many fond memories of their growing years and the time I spent with them making dolls for each of them. Putting together a train set that took up a whole room in our basement. Brownies and Girls Scouts, school plays and musicals and art work everywhere. The growing up years is their part of the family story to tell.
I decided to become a high school math teacher so I started taking evening classes to complete my certification. I eventually quit my Upward Bound job of fifteen years and completed my teacher certification and went to work at St. Joseph Catholic High School in Ogden, Utah (about 45 miles from Salt Lake City.) Then I took a position at Highland High School where the girls were going to school. I worked there for five years until I got sick of the administrators and their interference. I moved to West High School, still in Salt Lake, and stayed there until we decided to move to California to be closer to the kids who had both gone to colleges in Southern California. It was no problem finding a job teaching math so again I worked at a school with condescending administrators for three years and moved to another for two years. That is when my health problems came to a head. In 1999, I had my Gall Bladder removed in an emergency surgical procedure as it had become completely necrotic--it had died. Each year thereafter I had increasing numbers of pancreatitis attacks. They increased in intensity as well. The first few years the attacks put me in the hospital for two to three days. The doctor's treated the symptoms but not the cause. They couldn't find one. As time went by the attacks took longer to recuperate from--days to weeks. Finally, while at Jurupa Valley High School, I went to one of the country's experts on pancreas problems. He probed, did internal ultrasound, and took many biopsies. The outcome of all of this was a six month stay in the hospital. I was fed through IV lines and went from bad to worse. I was left with more pain than I had ever had and constant nausea and vomiting. I missed the first half of the school year. Just after Thanksgiving I was released as things had finally quieted down and with mediation I could function moderately well. I lost 100 pounds and was as week as a baby. After the holiday break I returned to school and had three more episodes with a week stay in the hospital each time. In April of 2006 my father passed away and the stress of that, the funeral, and the mess he left me to deal with set off another attack. This time the principal asked me to resign as I obviously wasn't doing my job.
So in May we moved to Austin, Texas and into my father's house which came with a woman he had been playing house with for twenty-seven years. I had one more major attack and this time I started leaking pancreatic fluids into my abdomen. One of the pockets of fluid blocked off my biliary duct, stomach, and pancreas. I was dying. One surgeon had guts enough to try a risky surgery to clear up the leakage and the blocking fluid body. The surgery was obviously successful. But I was weak, and still had all of the same symptoms: excruciating pain and uncontrollable nausea. I live on major doses of narcotics and anti-nauseants. I was declared disabled in 2007 and now live on $1300 a month. The house is in a state of disrepair and what would have taken me a few weeks to repair now takes me months and months. I haven't had an attack for almost a year now. Although I feel like I'm always waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor. Meanwhile while Karen was working to support us and I'm in and out of the hospital, she is diagnosed with Sjogren's Disease, Lupus, and Rheumatoid Arthritis. She is also declared disabled and her monthly income is reduced to $1700. So here we are in the middle of Texas trying to make a house payment, Cobra insurance payments, and pay for the other necessities of life all the while going further into debt.
ACT VI: The Future: Still under construction in my dreams.
