Embracing Storms, by Glenn Gehweiler
Lightning flashed, and the living room filled with a burst of light that seemed frozen in time. But my frozen moment didn’t last long, as the light would always fade away, always ebb away, leaving shadows to fill its place. The lifeless glass vases that my mother displayed so prominently, so vainly, as if they were worth something, would cast distorted images on the walls. Contorted freakish faces would appear and I labeled these faces as the people who lived in the lightning.
Once the lightning struck, I’d count the seconds till the thunder came–thunder so loud it made the floor vibrate. But I was never afraid; it was only a show, a great show just for me. My mother said that the reason why I was never afraid was because I was born during one of the worst thunderstorms in the history of Hudson County. And even though I wanted to believe her, because it sounded so cool… I couldn’t, because I knew she was a liar… I guess at five, I would have said fibber.
Even at five, I knew uneasiness around her. I knew too many things for a five year old. I knew she was a fibber, I knew I had to be careful of what I said around her, and most of all… I knew she liked to drink. So, it’s not surprising that the thunder-storms didn’t scare me. It was the storms inside my mother that held the real danger. The truth is that each one of them were individual storms in their own right, and when they combined, they became a hurricane. And so, for my entire childhood, I could say that I lived in the eye of a hurricane.
Years later, I realized that the reason why I loved the thunderstorms so much was because they drowned out the noise… the noise of them (my mother, grandmother, and grandfather) arguing all the time. My mother and father got divorced when I was two and I have no memory of him ever being around… I only know that he left. But it wasn’t all bad, at least I convinced myself it wasn’t… and I had plenty of toys to prove it!
I had hundreds of toys, and not cheap toys either, but great toys. If I had those toys today, I could sell then on e-bay and make a fortune. I used the toys as proof that they loved me, but the toys turned out to be as fragile as they were. However, living with them did have its advantages though. I learned how to be creative in my responses to them (lying) and I also learned to think fast on my feet. If I hadn’t, they would have ripped me apart like hungry lions. So, living with them helped me to became a pretty good little con man in my own right.
But in reality, their storms hardly ever touched me, and that’s why I say that I lived in the eye of the hurricane. Their individual storms raged and battled each other for supremacy–trying to swallow each other up, but they never could. The winds would always die out from exhaustion, or from the police knocking on the door, and then, the calm before the next storm would set in and rest heavily upon us.
The quietest of the storms was my grandmother. And to say that my grandmother was a character would be putting it mildly. The truth is that she was nuts, but in the beginning, she seemed “nuts” in a fun way. When I was too little to remember, she would take me shopping with her, and since she didn’t drive, we would always take the Bergen Avenue bus.
My Aunt Loretta, who used to think that evil spirits were sending her coded messages through the radio, said that whenever my grandmother took me on the bus, I’d begin squirming, laughing, fidgeting, and even dancing. And at that point, my grandmother would put this concerned look on her face and start praying to various Saints for my healing.
As if that weren’t enough, she’d begin dowsing me with holy water, while making the sign of the cross over me! And of course, her antics only served to make me even more hyper! Then, for the finale, she’d raise both of her hands up to heaven and begin wailing, “He’s got Saint Vita’s Dance!” Ending the performance, she’d actually beg the rest of the passengers to pray along with her for for my soul!
This must have been quite the riot to everyone on the bus, and even though it seems like a cute story from a fun loving grandma, it was really my baptism into their world of drunken insanity. Actually, nothing I remember about my grandma Sarah, who insisted on being called Sadie, and Nanny to me, was all that funny. She labeled herself, as a self-professed invalid, and used that as an excuse to never leave the house, or do much of anything else either.
For the most part, grandma would lay in bed watching soap operas all day, while occasionally moaning for someone to get her a beer, and usually that someone was me. The other thing that she liked to do was to sit at the kitchen table, with my mother and grandfather, doing what she labeled as the Irish thing to do–drinking beer. To which, my grandfather would hoist his beer in agreement, proudly proclaiming, “The kitchen is the Irishman’s living room!”, as if it were the most profound statement ever made!
My grandfather told me stories of how my grandmother would go into stores like the old Woolworth’s, find a chipped water glass, or some other sharp object, and then nick herself on the glass, or whatever, and threaten to sue. Gramps, which is what I called my grandfather, said that the manager would always offer her a few bucks, and an apology, to forget the whole thing.
That’s the kind of family that I came from, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you, to find out that I had larceny running in my veins too. At some point, I decided that I shouldn’t keep getting beers for my grandmother for free, so I started charging her a dollar for delivery. Actually, I wasn’t quite that mercenary, after all, she was my grandmother, so I’d get her three beers for a dollar. And I justified this by telling myself that she had no use for the money anyway. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she had secretly been proud of me–feeling that I was a chip off the old water glass, er, I mean… chip off the old block!
But it wasn’t only my grandmother that I got beers for, although she was the only one I charged; actually, I ran for beers for all three of them. Maybe they were training me to be a bartender or maybe they were hoping that I’d open up my own bar someday. Who knows? But believe it or not, all of this seemed normal to me. And why shouldn’t it? I had nothing else to compare it to.
As far as I was concerned, they were sane, and safe, and normal. Well, even then, I knew that my grandmother was a little off, but overall, they were okay. They were good providers, who loved and cared for me, and I had the toys to prove it! I had all the toys you could ever want and I was learning the bartending trade too… life was sweet!!!
At least it seemed sweet to this six year old, at least for five days a week… at least from Monday through Friday anyway. Because from Monday to Friday, they had to get up early for work, well, at least my mother and grandfather did. My grandmother, being a self-professed invalid, didn’t have to get up until she felt like it, which was usually around noon.
But my point is that since my mother, who worked as a secretary in New York City, and my grandfather, who worked in a factory in Jersey City, had to get up early for work, there was much less drinking going on Monday to Friday. Oh, there was still drinking going on, it’s just that there was less of it.
But come the weekend, mom and gramps, and especially my grandfather, sure made up for it. From Friday night on, Grandpa Jimmy went for the gusto, as one of those beer commercials used to put it. I think I remember one of those “gusto commercials” showing a man climbing a mountain. But from the shape of my grandfather, it was all he could do just to mount his barstool.
My grandfather was the second biggest storm. His name was James but he called himself Jimmy, and he was a Jimmy too, a nice enough guy when he wasn’t drinking, but how he loved his drinking. The thing is that he loved me to, as you can see in this picture of him holding me when I was little. I had on an Emmett Kelly clown hat and you can see in his eyes how much he loved me, but the sad thing is that he loved his alcohol even more than he loved me. 
Granda Jimmy had played semi-pro baseball when he was younger, but more importantly, he was very popular at the bar. He knew all of the politicians, in the Hague era in Jersey City, and could have had it made but the drinking did him in.
He even did some jail time for a while, nothing serious, just county jail, but jail time all the same. And the only reason that I found out about his jail time, was because I was snooping around in one of the dresser draws once and came across his probation card.
I was pretty shocked when I found it, and I asked my mother about it, but she was vague and said that it had to do with writing bad checks or something. But what shocked me even more was that she told me not to say anything to my grandfather about it. She said that it would only embarrass him if he knew that I found out. So, even with all of the drunken cursing and fighting between them, she still had some genuine feelings for her father.
I would like to say here and now, that there was never any physical abuse in our home, as strange as that may sound. Nobody ever hit me and nobody hit each other either. But I will tell you that even though we didn’t show any bumps or bruises on our bodies… we all felt them within our souls.
It’s funny the things you remember, I recall that our kitchen was a warm shade of orange and that the linoleum was soft and new. And I used to love to play on the floor, with my Matchbox cars and trucks, while they sat at the kitchen table talking and drinking. I remember Friday nights the most, because they were lighter and safer (at least in the earlier part of the evening) than any other day of the week. There was much less tension on Friday nights, and that was because my mother and grandfather didn’t have to get up for work the next day, so they could drink as much as they wanted to.
So, on Friday nights, there was usually this sense of false contentment in the air, as they sat around the kitchen table drinking, and making plans of how they were going to pay for this and borrow for that. My grandfather would often say, “We’re going have to rob Peter to pay Paul!” And I would find myself wondering what the other apostles thought about that. Anyway, they would refer to these Friday night table talks as “scheming sessions”, and for all I knew their schemes would work. But whether they worked or not, at least they were talking to each other and getting along… at least for a little while.
I was always filled with hope on Friday nights. Hope that these feelings between them would last, hope that they would see what they were doing to themselves, and most of all… see what they were doing to me. And so, for those few hours on Friday nights, before my grandfather took off for the bar, and before my mother and grandmother started slurring their words, life was good… or at least, that’s what I conned myself into believing.
My mother was the loudest and most vicious of the storms and nobody could stand before her. She never backed down and people usually gave in to her just to be rid of her. From this description, you might think that my mother was some kind of ogre, but the truth is that she was a very attractive woman.
Her name was Elizabeth but she would only answer to Betty, like Betty Boop, the “Boob-Oop-A-Doop” girl. And even though she didn’t look anything like Betty Boop, she thought of herself as a boop-oop-a-doop girl. She thought of herself as every man’s desire. And just like Betty Boop, she usually had all of the wrong men chasing her too!
The Betty Boop phase lasted until the mid-sixties, when she no longer identified with the sexually comical Betty Boop of cartoons, but instead, with the glamorous movie stars of the silver screen. She pictured herself as one of them, and I’m sure that she looked on this stage of her life, as an indication of her growth and maturity.
The apartment we lived in back then was very elegant. The living room was like its own little house and even had its own glass doors and a French style window. The living room was detached from the rest of the apartment, sort of like an island, and was surrounded by curving flowing hallways on either side. The French window overlooked one of the hallways, and my mother loved to pose in that window, while perched on the windowsill. But you’ll never guess who the photographer was? Well… okay, I knew that you knew it was me.
My mother would pose in slacks, or with her mink stole, or fox piece draped across her shoulders. And once, she even posed with a long black cigarette holder that someone had given to her as a joke. Actually, the cigarette holder wasn’t given to her as a joke, it was given to her because she was thought of as a joke, but I’m sure that her ego never allowed that thought to enter her mind.
Besides her mink stole and fox piece, she also had another symbol of sophistication–wigs! My mother had two of them, and of course, they both had to be red to reflect that temper of hers. And every Saturday morning, we’d make a special trip to Journal Square, in Jersey City, just to get her wigs done.
She told me that the reason why she bought two differently styled wigs, was so that she could change hairstyles, and keep people from guessing that she wore a wig in the first place. But the drama version, which she told the chosen few, was that the wigs made her feel like her true self… a fiery redhead! But I knew that her real reason for buying the wigs was so that she wouldn’t have to wash her own mousy brown stringy hair.
You see, mom was lazy, and as time went on, she also became too lazy to cook, clean, and even go to work. Pretty much, she became too lazy to do much of anything but drink. But alas, my mother, grandmother, and grandfather weren’t the only ones who drank in our home-sweet-home. No, there was someone else who drank there to… and that someone was me. And apparently, I drank even earlier than I can remember… talk about a blackout! According to legend, I drank even before the age of six!
When I was six years old, my mother was putting wine on my grapefruit to make it taste sweeter, or pouring it in my orange juice, and beaming that she had just made me an Orange Blossom! But way before then, the story goes that somehow, around the age of four, I managed to knock down a whole basket full of liqueurs from the top shelf of the bedroom closet.
Now, just how I did this no one knows? And not only did I knock them down, but I managed to polish them off too–quite a feat for a little guy! However, my mother felt that the truly sweet part of the story was how she had found me curled up, on the bottom of the closet floor sleeping it off–surrounded by all these tiny empty little bottles… I mean, how cute is that?
But, I guess you’d have to be as sophisticated, as someone who owns a cigarette holder, like my mother, to understand how the sight of a dead drunk four year old was cute. I’m surprised she didn’t take a picture of it? It would have made an adorable Christmas card! But my guess is that she was probably too drunk to remember where she’d put the camera.
Come to think of it, there was a picture of my mother (in the family album no less) sleeping on someone’s couch, while clutching an empty whiskey bottle in her arms. But when I asked her about it, she just said that she had gotten tired and fell asleep at a party once, and that someone had put the empty bottle in her arms as a joke. And whether that story is true or not, I guess it’s safe to say that the apple, or in this case… the empty bottle doesn’t fall far from the tree.
And that’s pretty much how life was for me until I was thirteen years old. At thirteen, the most traumatic event of my life happened, because that was how old I was when I found my mother dead. She died at thirty five, almost one year after my grandmother, who had died at sixty six. My mother’s death certificate read that the cause of her death was pneumonia but the truth is that it was her alcoholism that killed her. To make it even more traumatic, she got sick the day after Christmas and died the day after New Year’s. She hadn’t seemed that sick and was up and down the whole week, but she wasn’t drinking that much and that should have been a clue… and I’m not being sarcastic in saying that.
I was in the sixth grade at the time and on Christmas break. And on the day that I felt that she was taking a turn for the worse, I started getting some of her clothes ready for her to take to the hospital. For some reason, she had decided to sit in my grandmother’s old wheelchair. I asked her why she was sitting in the wheelchair but she just stared at me blankly without answering.
It was 11 a.m., and my plan was that I was going to wait for my grandfather to get back from the bar, so that I could force him to send my mother to the hospital. Imagine that, a thirteen year old boy having to force his grandfather to send his mother (my grandfather’s own daughter) to the hospital. I remember that it was 11 a.m., because I was watching the Dick Van Dyke show trying to get some relief.
All morning long, my mother had been moaning my name, the way my grandmother used to moan for beers. But every time I’d go to her, she would just stare at me with that blank look in her eyes, saying that she hadn’t called me. I was about twenty minutes into the show, and just starting to feel a little better, when she started moaning my name again. But this time I didn’t go to her. This time, I decided that I needed to take care of myself, and I forced myself to watch the rest of the show.
As soon as the show ended, I went straight to her. I was afraid that she was angry with me, so before I reached her, I said, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I just needed a break.” But she wouldn’t answer me or even look at me. Her head was slightly tilted down, which I took as a sign of her disapproval with me. It was a sign that I had seen many, many times before.
Trying to appease her, I said, “Mom… please! I came every time you called me except for once. I’m sorry. Please forgive me!” But as the saying goes… the silence was deafening. Trying to win her over, I put my hand on her shoulder… but as soon as I touched her, I pulled away in ghost-white terror, because she was lifeless… and I had never known lifelessness before.
As I took my hand away, her head slumped forward, and I just stood there frozen, unable to move. Panic overcame me and I couldn’t comprehend what was happening! Only a little while ago she had been calling my name! How could she be dead? I shook her and I shook her! Yelling! Crying! Screaming for her to wake up! But she wouldn’t… she couldn’t. No matter how hard I shook her, she just wouldn’t wake up! In a state of shock, I bolted out the door as fast as I could to go get my grandfather out of the bar.
It was winter time but I ran out without a hat or coat. I didn’t care… I was already too numb emotionally to feel the cold, or anything else for that matter. All I knew was that I had to keep running. So, I slipped and slid through the slush and snow, but I refused to fall–the only thing that mattered was finding my grandfather. I burst through the barroom door and scanned the room for him but he wasn’t there. I yelled, “Where’s Jimmy?” But the only response I got was from some barfly, mumbling into his beer mug, that he’d just left. I really didn’t want to go back to the sight of my dead mother again but what choice did I have?
I started to run back, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should have called an ambulance. But at the time, I just couldn’t think straight–it all happened so quickly. I cursed myself for not thinking fast enough, but the truth is that I knew that she was dead, as soon as I had touched her. Some things you just know, and God forbid, this was one of them. When I got back, my grandfather was standing over her, and without even looking at me, he simply said that she was dead and picked up the phone. He said he’d seen me running, and called after me, but I hadn’t heard him. And when he saw me running towards the bar, he knew that something was wrong.
The police came first and then the ambulance followed and everything went from being grimly silent to frighteningly chaotic. One of the officers pulled my grandfather aside, and told him that there might be an autopsy, because she had died so young. The officer told my grandfather that he would probably hate cops for the rest of his life, if they did an autopsy, and he wouldn’t blame my grandfather if he did. But nothing ever came of it, and I’m quite sure that it was evident to the medical examiner, and anyone else involved, that it was her excessive drinking and smoking that caused my mother to die at such an early age.
Once word got out that my mother had died, my so called relatives came pouring out of the woodwork like cockroaches. They pretended to care about me but were only there for show. But even though I knew this, I secretly hoped that at least one of them would feel sorry for me and take me home with them. Because, I was now acutely aware that I was left alone with an alcoholic grandfather. And even though I knew that there wouldn’t be any physical or verbal abuse… I also knew that I was more alone than ever. But no one offered to take me home with them… no one even came close. And as the next few weeks blurred into oblivion, it became clearer and clearer to me, that no one was coming for me anytime soon.
About a month after my mother’s funeral, my grandfather quit work and went from being a part-time alcoholic to a full-time one. For his retirement, he got a fifth of Canadian Club whiskey and a fake gold Timex watch. He promptly pawned the fake gold watch and gave the Canadian Club to me. And even though I knew that this wasn’t great grandparenting, I not only accepted the gift, but I promptly hid the bottle just in case he changed his mind.
We were living on Ogden Avenue at the time. Ogden Avenue is the last block, on the east side of the Jersey City Heights, and overlooks the New York City Skyline. So, not only did I have a great place to watch the thunderstorms by, but I also had my alcohol too. And the feeling that the alcohol gave me provided me with much more comfort than any of my toys ever could.
It was summer break, and the best part of summer, for me, was that the Mr. Softee ice cream truck would make it’s last run around 9 p.m. And there was nothing better than to get a banana split, read a Spiderman comic book, and down a couple of shots of the Canadian Club whiskey that my grandfather had gifted me with. And even though all of this may seem really, really off… it seemed way cool to me at the time! But what did I know? It never once occurred to me that I was following in the footsteps of my mother, grandmother, and grandfather.
But even though I had no idea of the damage that I was doing to myself, the truth is that I honestly don’t think that I would have survived, if I hadn’t had something to numb the pain with. Years… actually, decades later, a therapist told me that I had been using alcohol to self-medicate. But even though I used alcohol to try and numb the pain, I still thought about suicide on a daily basis.
Life often seemed hopeless, and in those times, I would tape a plastic bag to my face just before going to sleep. I would tape the plastic bag to my right cheek, and hope that the bag would get sucked over my mouth and suffocate me in my sleep. But no matter how many times I did this, I’d wake up the next day only to find the plastic bag on the floor, or under my pillow, or pretty much anywhere else but on my face.
I felt totally alone and beyond broken. And the only thing that enabled me to hang on was the illusion of hope that the alcohol provided. When I drank, it somehow felt like things would be better tomorrow… or most surly, the day after tomorrow. But of course, that never happened, and the next day only became an extension of the day before it. This life style of “hanging-on-until tomorrow” went on for many, many years, as I tried to find the way out. But truth be told… I hadn’t even a clue as to who I was, let alone knowing how to find the way out of the pain, or even knowing how to lessen it for that matter.
The Canadian Club had long run out, and I decided to switch from whiskey to scotch, because that’s what mom drank. So there I was, in all my imagined glory…. fantasizing against the New York City Skyline, raging with the thunderstorms, and drinking my scotch! I remember Saturday nights especially, because on Saturday nights, I’d watch Playboy After Dark, hosted by Mr. Hugh Hefner himself. I’d sit there drinking scotch, out of a huge brandy snifter, while picturing myself hanging out with Hef, at the Playboy Mansion, surrounded by all those bunnies!
As I sat there watching the show, I’d occasionally look out over the New York City Skyline and dream about how rich and famous I’d become some day! I was now thirteen and a half years old… life was bitter-sweet….
***
Thank you for reading about my early years and my best wishes to you always!!!
[Memoir by, Glenn Gehweiler: WGAE: #R22360]