Of Bicycles and Fishes

I need to preface this tale with a social history lesson.  I suppose most young women in this so-called post-feminist age don’t remember, couldn’t place, or perhaps even wouldn’t understand the famous quote concerning gender relationships made by the writer and feminist critic Gloria Steinem, but those of us who came of age in the late 60’s know that it was she who quipped “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” 

My wife’s college days coincided with the heyday of feminism, and she was steeped in writers like Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin.  She was still conventional enough to agree to marry me, thank God (and in a Catholic church, no less); and though I’m pretty sure Steinem wouldn’t have cared one way or the other about that, Dworkin and Brownmiller certainly seemed to have an issue with inter-gender relationships, with marriage – and its patriarchal underpinnings – being one of their favorite targets.  However, their influence on her apparently only carried so far, since she actually showed up at the church on that beautiful June day, dressed in a wedding gown that took my breath away, then took my hand in front of Fr. Thomas P. Ivory and all our guests, and hasn’t let me go yet. 

Anyway, the reason I told you that story was to tell you this one.  The other day we were expecting company for dinner.  I had done the grocery shopping and prepared a farro salad over which I planned to serve some sockeye salmon and roasted asparagus.  After getting this all organized so as to minimize what would need to be done once our guests arrived, I started in to tidy up the house, dust the furniture and generally get things ready for the evening.  I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and was vacuuming the kitchen, living room and dining room while my wife reclined on our sofa with her laptop computer, catching up on several work-related projects.  As I ran the vacuum under the sofa, I shouted to her over the din: “Boy, I bet you this is quite the Gloria Steinem dream for you, isn’t it?”  She looked up and laughed, and after she had thought for a moment, shouted back to me “Well, I hope you know that I’ll always be your fish if you’ll always be my bicycle!”

In June of 2015 we will have been married for forty years.   I have this lovely image of a Dr. Seuss-like cartoon of a fish, in a fishbowl, perched upon a bicycle seat and riding pell-mell down a country road, the water in the bowl sloshing left and right as the bike careens along, but ultimately coming to rest, safe and sound, in the hands of some friendly Seussian creature.  I’m sure my wife, while she was in college, never thought she’d ever need or even want a bicycle; but here I am, supporting her as she rides through life, helping her to get safely to wherever this journey of ours takes her; eternally grateful that this one particular fish thought that riding a bicycle might just be a good idea.

Hi Ho, the Glamorous Life!

A while back I was called by a casting agent in Boston who was trying to round up some Union extras to work on a network TV pilot that was shooting in Plymouth, New Hampshire.  The first thing she asked me was what kind of vehicle or vehicles did I currently own, and did they have New Hampshire license plates on them.  I assured her that, as a legal resident of the Granite State all my vehicles were duly registered in my little town of Wilton and sported genuine state-issue “Live Free or Die” license plates replete with images of moose and the now-defunct Old Man In The Mountain.  The agent practically squeaked with excitement when I told her that one of the three vehicles currently in residence was a blue 1994 Ford F-150 pickup.  “Great!” she said; would I be available for a day’s extra work up in Plymouth with my truck?  Now, the great thing about the Union is that, not only would I be paid the standard scale rate for my time on set, I would be reimbursed a set fee for the use of the truck as well.  I’d be driving by or through the action being filmed, ostensibly to lend a certain small-town New Hampshire verisimilitude to the scene.  “And, oh,” she added, “don’t wash the truck before the shoot date.  It should look grungy.”  I assured her that the truck was sufficiently dinged, dented and dirty and would definitely pass muster for the cameras as what we up here lovingly call a “beater truck.”  I was told when and where to report; furthermore, I had to bring a large sampling of my own clothing that would represent what a rural New Hampshireite might wear.  So, at 4:00 AM one late winter morning, I loaded all my normal, everyday duds -- flannel shirts, barn jacket, some pairs of jeans and work boots, my overalls and a sampling of ball caps sporting the logos of several local tractor and feed stores – onto the front seat of the truck next to me, and set off up I-93 to the production company’s staging area on the outskirts of Plymouth.

On occasion, friends who aren’t in the business (the ones who made sensible career choices) ask me questions about what my working life is like, especially as concerns the few feature films and TV projects I’ve been involved in.  All they see, of course, is the world of “showbiz” as it is presented on the E! Entertainment network, or in the celebrity magazines – the “red carpet” at the Oscars, the Emmys, or the Golden Globes, with the designer gowns and millions of dollars in rented or loaned jewels; the multi-million dollar paydays; the retinues of personal assistants, lunches and dinners at the trendiest of celebrity chef-owned restaurants.  This is certainly a part of the life of those at the top of the food chain -- which the Union estimates is about 1 to 3 percent of the membership -- however, what my friends don’t ever see is the long (sometimes as much as 14 hours per day), tiring, maddeningly repetitive and decidedly un-glamorous process that is the making of a motion picture or TV show.  It takes talent and amazing skill and concentration to deliver even a basically competent performance under those circumstances, and the truly brilliant work that is turned out on a regular basis by many working in film and TV is all the more amazing to me, because I have been (albeit briefly) to the sausage factory and I’ve seen just how these things get made.

Celebrities, of course, do get perks – a car service to get you to work in the morning, personal wardrobe, hair and makeup people, a raft of PA’s  (production assistants) to fetch and carry for you, not to mention the money, fame and further opportunities that come to you. I’m reasonably sure, for instance, that Tom Hanks doesn’t have to show up at an audition where there are twelve or fifteen or twenty other guys, all his age and type, and all dressed alike, to wait his turn to read three lines into a camera in a windowless room somewhere.  For the majority of actors the grind of auditions (and rejections) and more auditions only occasionally resolves itself into a real, paying job.  If you are hired as a principal – that is, for a speaking role -- the Union contract to which you are signed sees to it that you are treated reasonably well and paid a decent sum of money for your time and talent (not to mention the residual payments – the gift that keeps on giving -- as the film is sold to cable, broadcast TV and Blu-Ray ).  As an extra, however, you are basically walking scenery -- the pay scale is considerably lower than that for a principal, there are no residual payments, and you’re pretty much herded like cattle during your time on the set.  Or, as was the case with this particular experience, forgotten about entirely.

I arrived at the production company’s staging area well before the dawn; the sky was clear and the stars and Moon were still out; there wasn’t even the tiniest sliver of rose-colored light to be seen yet on the horizon.  The place was a beehive of people and equipment; trucks full of lights and cable, trailers for the principal performers, and a makeshift production office.  A PA came over to me as I pulled up in front of the motorhome labeled “Wardrobe;” I told him who I was and he directed me to report to the assistant wardrobe supervisor while he went into the office to get the Union paperwork for me to fill out.  The wardrobe supervisor had me pull all the clothes I’d brought out of the front seat and hang them on a wheeled rack that stood outside his trailer.  He poked through it all, then came over to me and looked at what I was wearing – my old barn jacket over a worn flannel shirt, a pair of dirty blue jeans, and a pair of steel-toed work shoes.  “What you’ve got on is just fine – but would you mind changing your shirt?  I like one of the other ones you brought better.”  So, in the pre-dawn hours of a February morning in New Hampshire I stripped off my coat and shirt, fished out the one he had indicated, buttoned it up hurriedly and presented myself to him once again.  “Great,” he said, heading back into the trailer, “one of the PA’s will tell you where we’re shooting today; that’s where you can get breakfast and they’ll let you know when they need you.”

The PA who had gone off to get my paperwork was back by now, so I flagged him down and he gave me the forms I had to fill out for the day’s work – pay voucher, W2 form, I9 form – and while I was writing out my Social Security Number for the third time, he gave me directions to the house where the crew was setting up for the day’s filming, about a 5 minute drive from where we were.  I handed him copies of each of the forms, hauled my clothes back into the front seat, and drove off. 

The shooting location was a large house on a quiet residential street; it was clear they had been filming interior scenes in the house for a while because there were large numbers of lights and miles of cable visible in all the rooms on the first floor.  Craft Services (the catch-all name for caterers on a film set) had set up steam tables and equipment on the front lawn, and already there was a line of grips, PAs and other technical folk lined up for breakfast.  While I scarfed up a plateful of pancakes, sausages, and toast with jam, all washed down with very hot and very strong coffee, two other actors – my fellow extras for the day -- joined me.  All three of us were there with vehicles, and all of us were to be doing the same thing – driving through the scene to be filmed that day as part of the background action.  While we sipped coffee and went back for seconds, yet another PA came up to us, checked our names against the roster on his production schedule, and told us “Just hang out here for a while.  We’re shooting about three blocks away and either I or somebody else will come to get you when they’re ready for you.”  By this time Craft Services was clearing away breakfast and it was clear that we would be doing our waiting sitting in our vehicles.  The house was off limits because it was a “hot set;” meaning that all the lighting equipment, furniture and props were all ready to go from the last time the set was used and could not be moved or even touched.  So, each of us hunkered down, piled on a few more pieces of the clothes we had brought for extra warmth, and waited.

To this day I still marvel at how comfortable the front seat of my truck turned out to be.  Every twenty minutes or so I’d start it up and run the heater until it was reasonably warm, then shut it down and stretch out on the bench seat with the book that I’d brought “just in case.”   I think I even fell asleep for about two hours at one point during the morning.  Long around 11:00 AM (and mind you, we’d been told to arrive at the location at 5:30), my fellow extras and I noticed that the crew that had been working at the house seemed to all be leaving. We flagged down one of the grips (a lighting and rigging tech), who told us that lunch had been called.  So, in the absence of other instructions (there were no PA’s to be seen anywhere) we followed the departing crew to yet another part of town, and yet another building (I think it might have been a church hall) occupied by the production company that was serving as a makeshift lunchroom.  We joined the technicians on the lunch line, and sat with them as they regaled us with stories of how the shoot had been going so far.  To a person they all agreed that things had been consistently running well behind schedule; their considered collective opinion was that the director was treating this more like a feature film than a TV pilot shoot, requiring multiple close-ups, two-shots and master shots from many different perspectives, each of which required complicated and time-consuming re-sets of lighting and camera equipment each time.   While we ate, the PA who had checked with us earlier that morning came over and said  “Oh good; somebody told you where to go to eat.  Sorry, but things are running behind and we’re pretty hectic today.  When lunch is done just go back to the house and we should be ready for you by 1 or 1:30 at the latest.”

This is the part where, if this were a film script, the direction would read something like this --   “Scene dissolves to: Exterior – Later that Afternoon.  Camera dollies slowly past three vehicles, each of which has one person in the front seat bundled in large amounts of clothing, trying to stave off both frostbite and boredom.”  By now it is almost 2:00 PM, and we are getting excited because, in one hour, we will have officially gone into overtime without actually having done any work to that point.  Finally, yet another PA wanders by and we ask him, point blank, if there is any hope in hell that we will get used at all today.  His answer shows us just how important our presence on set is to the overall project – “So, what exactly were you supposed to be doing here today?”  After the three of us stop laughing, he assures us that he will check into this, and leaves, returning about 30 minutes later.  The verdict is in; things are running so far behind schedule such that they are nowhere near ready to shoot the scene we have been contracted to do, and there is no point in our remaining.  He notates the time on our pay vouchers (we miss going into overtime by fifteen minutes), signs them, and thanks us for coming out today.  Furthermore, we will in all likelihood not be called back at a future date to shoot the scene we were supposed to have done today; it appears that the situation on set has gotten so out of hand that the network production accountants have come East to get the expenses under control -- stuff is being cut out of the script left and right in order to keep on time and on budget.  So, the three of us bid each other a fond farewell, and head to our respective homes to wait for the checks that will pay us modestly for a day spent waiting in our cars, punctuated by periods of eating the production company’s food.

The coda to this little adventure comes about six months later, when the first episode of the series finally airs.  As it turns out, despite all the money and time that had been spent to make it, the network was not at all pleased with the pilot shot in New Hampshire.  The whole thing was scrapped, several of the principals were fired and the roles re-cast, and a new pilot shot – this time, in a small town in Northern California.  After only six episodes of the series aired, it was cancelled by the network because of low ratings.

The Best Day of My Life, Revisited

It was fifty years ago today (just writing it down gives me a shudder!) that my mother took me out of school for the day -- my 11th birthday -- to take me to the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows NY (see my blog post of 3 April 2010 -- "The Best Day of My Life").  Fifty years ago.  It seems so stark, in black and white like that, such an overwhelmingly large number.  That something significant, something worth not only remembering, but writing about, happened to you half a century ago wreaks havoc with one’s sense of time, I have to admit.  How in the hell did I get to be 61 years old?  It isn't that it seems like only yesterday, or some other such cliché about the passage of years -- in fact, I can readily admit that it all feels like -- well, like a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away -- but I still have a hard time trying to draw a line between that 11-year-old boy and the grown-up (no, let's face it, the old man!) I saw in the mirror this morning after I rolled out of bed at 5:30 and stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth quickly before heading downstairs to feed the dogs and let them out.  

So here I am, more than a bit bewildered, trying to figure out how I got to this point – how do I connect the old guy in the mirror to that newly-minted 11-year-old, out for a day's adventure with my mother, entering the gates of the 1964 World’s Fair -- the Walt Disney Meets The Jetsons, brought to you by General Motors version of the World of Tomorrow; corporate America's vision of the future that was firmly convinced my children would be living in domed colonies on the Moon, but somehow managed to miss the Internet, the smartphone, and my laptop computer.    

I suppose that one of the reasons for the disconnect is that I've been an orphan for so many years -- I don't have the continuity that my parents would have supplied me had they both been able to accompany me on into my adulthood.  A chunk of my life was snapped off the day my father died (four days after my 9th birthday), and my mother's death -- coming only 18 months after the birth of my first child -- severed me much too soon from the web of family and memory that might have helped me keep the years of my childhood and adolescence truly present to me as I grew from young married grad student to 30-something Dad to 60-something paterfamilias.   I miss them both so very much --I think, more than anything else, that there is this connection to my younger self they would have helped sustain in me as I grew older. They could have been -- they should have been -- the bridge that spanned my younger self to my adult self, helping me to keep that part of me always present in my life.  

Fifty years is a long time to be without a father; thirty years is a long time to be without a mother.  I have lived my life the best I could all these years, trying to be the husband, father, friend and neighbor that I know they would have wanted me to be.  But there is so much I never got to ask them, so much I would want to learn from them, so much of my life that now seems a distant memory --  things that they could have helped me keep present and alive into my old age.  Nobody's parents live forever; but the thought that my mother never got the joy of seeing her granddaughter grow up, or that fifty years ago we didn’t have my father to celebrate my 11^th birthday at the World’s Fair with us, is sometimes more than I can bear.

An Act of Faith

I have been spending a small part of each of the last several days participating in one of the ancient New England rites of Spring – stacking next winter’s cordwood in the shed, something I have been doing every year for the last twenty-nine years since I’ve lived in this house.  A massive row of green, newly-cut wood sits in the driveway next to the woodshed (I’ve had to move my truck to the neighbor’s for the duration), taking up almost thirty linear feet of space in a pile four feet high and nine feet wide. I try to put away just a bit over a cord per day, a task that takes me about two hours.  The State of New Hampshire Agriculture Department distributes a brochure (published by the National Conference on Weights and Measures) titled “How To Avoid Getting Burned When Buying Firewood,” which states (after first establishing that a full, legal cord of wood is one that measures one hundred and twenty-eight cubic feet) that you should “stack the wood neatly by placing the wood in a line or a row, with individual pieces touching and parallel to each other, making sure that the wood is compact and has as few gaps as possible.” I start by picking through the pile and pulling out the larger pieces, laying down the bottom of the first long row across the length of the woodshed, on top of some pallets which raise the pile up off the floor to allow for air to circulate, then placing several other large pieces, one for each subsequent row, in a line down one side of the width of the shed, the last piece of which is almost butting up against the big sliding doors at the back. 

I construct each row carefully, stacking the wood close and tight.  Doing so serves two purposes; first of all it allows me, when all the work is done, to measure the pile with a degree of precision so that I can track just how much wood I’m using daily, weekly or monthly  (I typically burn about one cord per month in the dead of winter, less in the Fall or early Spring); it also means that I can pack a large amount of wood in a relatively small space, while the idiosyncratic irregularity of each piece still allows for some gaps and spaces throughout  -- once again, so that air can circulate through the pile through the rest of the Spring, and on into the Summer and early Fall, drying the wood out so that it will burn hot and clean. Then, an armload of wood at a time, I build the row up to about five feet high.  When that’s done, and I’m sure the row is steady and stable, I lay down the bottom of the next row and then stop for the day, my sweaty shirt and the aches and pains in my back and in my arms (this was a lot easier on me twenty-nine years ago!) a confirmation of the old saying  “wood warms you twice; once when you stack it, and once when you burn it.” 

Is it coincidence, I wonder, that I find myself doing this during Lent?  That realization lends a certain rightness to my task; the phrase “the mortification of the flesh” keeps popping into my head every time I have a hard time straightening up after I bend over to pick up more wood.   The monks in the ancient Church understood that physical discipline was both a way to subdue earthly desires during this time of penance as well as a remembrance of the impermanence of earthly life itself  – in this case, my sore back and aching fingers are letting me know in no uncertain terms that I am not getting any younger.  Paradoxically, though, the time spent stacking wood in the Spring implies a certain forward-looking mentality; an act of faith, if you will -- a Novena to the trinity of maple, birch, and oak.  Each stick I lift and put into place is like another bead on the Rosary, an affirmation of the belief that -- despite the reminder of my advancing age that I get from each twinge in my shoulders and back and hands -- I will be here on that day in the late Fall when the evening chill prompts me to start a fire in the woodstove, the first of the many fires that will warm us through all the long winter yet to come.  

Name Tags for World Peace

I’ve often said, to anyone who will listen, that if I were the Benign Ruler of the Universe the second thing I would do, after establishing an era of World Peace, would be to mandate that everyone wear a name tag.   Not the cheesy kind; the ones on sticky paper that you have to write your own name on with a pen or some sort of Sharpie ™ when you go to a meeting or a fundraising event.  No, I mean a really nice brass or silver engraved one, with the option of a pin or a magnetic catch to hold it to your shirt, blouse, jacket or suit coat. 

Your name tag wouldn’t say anything about what you do; it wouldn’t have your job title or description or anything like that; just your full name and then, beneath that, what you prefer to be called.  Mine, for example, would read thusly:

Michael G. Dell’Orto

“Michael”

From this, you now know my full name and that I like to be called Michael, not Mike or Mickey or, God forbid (and NOBODY ELSE besides my mother – and she’s dead – should ever presume to call me this) Mikey.  Short, simple and to the point.  Part of this comes from my own increasingly frustrating inability to remember names, even of people I’ve known for a long time.  This way, whenever you meet someone, you can instantly greet them in a manner that pleases them; most importantly, you can avoid the embarrassment (and we’ve all been there) that comes from running into someone you vaguely recognize who immediately launches into a cheerful and pleasant conversation with you, all about your wife, your kids, and your coaching record on the local Little League team.  During this colloquy you nod and smile, trying desperately to say something that makes some modicum of sense, vamping madly while that part of your brain that has been, up to now, screaming “who the hell is this person?” at you scrambles to come up with some sort of name to put to the face before you.

All in all, a practical and, may I say, an ingenious and simple solution to a nagging problem we all face at one point or another in our day-to-day living.  There is an ancillary benefit here as well – think of how much more pleasant and polite the world would be if we could all greet anyone we meet by name.  People would smile more, hearing their name and a quick “hello” called out by everyone they pass; if someone hurrying by you on the street or in a crowded corridor bumps into you and knocks what you are carrying onto the floor or the pavement, think  of the potential anger and frustration normally generated by such an encounter that could be wiped away in an instant – “I’m sorry (looks at name tag), Katie; I was hurrying by so fast I didn’t see you there.  Let me help you pick your things back up.”  “Why thank you (looks at name tag) Steve, that’s kind of you.”  “Say, Katie, I was on my way to the Starbucks for a mocha latte, would you care to join me – my treat?  It’s the least I can do.”  “Why, that’s awfully nice of you, Steve; I think I will take you up on your kind invitation.”  Who knows where a chance encounter like that could lead?

And then it hit me.  Maybe, just maybe, I had been thinking about this all backwards.  Perhaps it was the name tags that needed to come first all along; and then, as their use spread from town to town, city to city, state to state, then all over the globe, it would follow, as the night the day, as inevitable as the common cold – world peace! Barriers would fall, civility would reign triumphant. 

Just think, for one moment, how this might work.  For example, say you are at an airport in a foreign country, waiting on line to get through security.  There you are, dragging your luggage behind you, in your stocking feet, your shoes clutched in your hand. The guy ahead of you is bearded, dark-skinned, carrying a backpack.  He seems to be singing, or perhaps he is praying, softly to himself as the line moves slowly forward.  Leaning precariously out of a torn pocket in the backpack is what looks suspiciously like a copy of the Q’uran.  The book falls out of the pocket when the bearded man moves forward; you swiftly catch it before it hits the floor, and the man turns to you:  “Excuse me (you look at his name tag) Abdullah Muhammad, but I think this fell out of your backpack. I caught it as it fell.”  “Salaam Aleikum (he looks at your name tag) Bob, thank you so much for not letting it touch the floor.  I can’t help but noticing by your accent that you are an American.  I was always led to believe that Americans had no respect for the Q’uran, but I can see I was mistaken.”  “That’s great of you to say that, Abdullah Muhammad; heck, I was always led to believe that anyone who was a Muslim just hated everything I’ve ever stood for, but I can see in your face that you’re not like that at all.  Hey, when we get through security let me buy you a drink!” “That’s generous of you, Bob, but devout Muslims don’t drink.”  “Oh, bummer.  Well, Abdullah Muhammad, how about I find us a place to get a couple of milkshakes instead?”  “That’d be just great, Bob!”  And they slowly head off to the airport gate area together, pulling photos of their kids out of their wallets and discussing their mutual love of World Cup soccer.

Name tags  -- world peace – think about it . . . 

Father's Day

I’ve been having much more fun than a man of my age should be having, playing with my train set – vintage Lionel “O” gauge – set up on the floor in one end of my barn. I began building this collection over the past several years, in an attempt to re-create, as best as my aging memory would allow, the set-up my father and I had put together in our basement when I was a very small boy.  Alas, all of the trains I had as a child were stolen out of my mother’s house in Jersey City many years ago; but I’ve bought an engine here and some track there, slowly snapping up 50’s era cars and accessories where I could find them at antique shops or flea markets.  


This collection was recently augmented by a most generous gift from my wife’s best friend, whose own dad had recently left his house to move into assisted living. One of the things she came across while cleaning out the place prior to putting it on the market were several cartons of trains (in their original boxes), track and accessories, all dating from the late 1950’s.  No one in her family wanted it, and she was actually going to throw it all out.   She mentioned this to my wife while they were both attending their 40^th High School reunion some months ago, and the upshot of that conversation was that several boxes and bags of Lionel products were delivered to me (through the good offices of my daughter and her young man, who schlepped the stuff up here from New York) just in time to be a most wondrous 58^th birthday surprise.

This gift has spurred me to begin something I’ve thought about for a long while; namely, building a real train display, complete with multiple track layouts, bridges, tunnels, landscaping – you name it.  It will be a while until I can properly prepare the space for all of this to occupy, and so for the time being I’ve set up some track, a few buildings, and some working accessories temporarily until I can begin the project in earnest.  I’ve done this for two reasons; first, because it allows me to test the functionality of the cars, the accessories and the various switches and relays I’ve bought, and second, because it is just so much fun sitting on the floor and watching the trains go around, hearing the whistle blow, and watching the little flagman come out of his hut, waving his lantern as the train rolls by.

On Father’s Day I found a set of passenger cars; items for which I had been on the hunt for a good long while, at a local antique shop.  I brought them home and took them out to the barn, where I hitched them to an engine to test them out.  I watched them go round and round the track, and as I did I was overwhelmed – it is the only word I can use – by a memory.  I was six years old, certainly no older but perhaps a year or two younger.  It was a winter evening; in fact, it was close to Christmas.  My father and I were in the basement, working on the train layout together.  He was putting the finishing touches on what I think was a raised trestle so that we could run a second set of trains – those very passenger cars, as I recall -- above an already completed layout on the board.   I was doing what I always did, fetching and carrying for him as he busied himself connecting and fastening down track, cutting wood to shim the trestles that held the track above the table, and running wire from the Rotating Beacon through a hole in the table, under the layout, and connecting it to the transformer. At one point he realized that something was missing, though I don’t remember what it was; perhaps we were short of track, or we needed a switch or a relay, or maybe he just wanted to go and buy another car, but he bundled me up and we set out together, walking in the glow of the streetlights through a lightly falling snow. 

He was holding my hand, and what I remember most about it was the feeling of happiness I had just being with him.  In those days (if I am six, then it is 1959), the shopping districts of the city were all decorated with lights, wreaths and garlands strung across the streets; the stores played holiday music and there were brightly lit Christmas displays in every window. It was so exciting, because it was almost Christmas; and it was the most wonderful thing to be out in the cold night air, walking with my Dad to the toy store, leaving a trail of our paired footprints (his so big, and mine so little) through the snow.  We finally made our way there, my father bought what he needed, and we walked home as the snow began to fall harder and faster. When we got to the house we headed straight downstairs to do whatever it was with whatever we had needed that compelled us to set out on our journey in the first place.  Our work done for the night, we came upstairs. My mother had made us both something warm to drink, so Dad and I sat together on the couch in our parlor; and I can still, after all these years, remember the feel of his arm around me and how safe and comforting it was just to be there with him. 

The trains I've been buying, and those that were so kindly given into my care, are, after all, only objects; and objects are worthless without context or memory.  These trains are a link that stretches out over the almost fifty years that he's been gone, to remind me that this man, my father, can yet be truly present to me here in the home I’ve made for myself and my family, where I am now the Dad.  I find that since I’ve set them up I play with the trains almost every day.  I do so, I think, because in that moment, sitting on the floor in my barn, I know he is there with me, as though he had never left.  While those trains circle around and again on their track I can have him, once more, sitting beside me with his arm around me, and I close my eyes and know that I am happy again.

Child of Choice, Part 2

The Search, and What I Found

The details of my adoption that I am sure of, or have documentation for, were gleaned over the course of several years after I learned of it, and are these: I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what -- in the days before the sexual revolution -- was called a “home for unwed mothers.”  Its name was the Door of Hope, run by the Salvation Army; a name that always struck me as an admirably brave attempt to put the best face they could on what was, certainly in the 1950’s, a delicate situation.   My birth mother, who had wanted to keep and raise me on her own, was convinced by friends and the few family members who were still speaking to her that the best thing to do was to surrender me for adoption; to that end she had finally gone to seek counsel (good Catholic that she was, pre-marital sex and unwed pregnancy notwithstanding) in the bosom of Holy Mother Church.  Catholic Charities (then, as now, one of the largest social services organizations in the world) arranged that I be placed in St. Vincent’s Nursery with the Sisters of Charity, in whose veiled and wimpled care I was to spend the first six months of my life, prior to my adoption. This was not an easy decision for her (that much is clear from the notes and comments from her file that the adoption agency sees fit to share with me), and my desire to find her was bolstered by a letter from those files that was given to me wherein my birth mother writes for permission to come visit me in the orphanage, something she has apparently done on several occasions.  If nothing else, I owe this woman the comfort of knowing that I am alive, and well, and happy.

And that’s as far as I got.  In writing the story down, I mean.  I tried, for a long while, to write this second half of my adoption story; how I came to glean the details of my adoption from the highly redacted information provided to me by Catholic Community Services (part of the larger umbrella group Catholic Charities, and formerly called Catholic Children’s Aid); how I tracked down and subsequently found my birth mother and my half sister, still living in New Jersey, and what I learned from her about the story of my conception and birth, and her life after surrendering me.

I began attempt after attempt at relating this story in some coherent form, but I always found that I was getting bogged down in too much detail, or not enough detail; there was always something that was nagging at me while I was writing that caused me to stop and put the project aside again and again.  I figured that I just needed to get some distance, think on it a bit, and it would all become clear  -- a revelatory insight, a flash of inspiration and clarity of thought, and I would be able to write it all down, finally, once and for all.

The revelation I'd been waiting for came to me, one afternoon, working in the barn.  While I was repairing a hayloft door that had been damaged in a windstorm, I found myself thinking about this out loud, and out of nowhere I heard myself say “I just don’t care.”   What I meant, I think,  is that after I learned I was adopted, the specifics that made up the next part of the story – who gave birth to me, who got her pregnant and why – weren't especially significant to me; the acquisition of that knowledge was never an urgent matter.  I suppose that’s why it took years to begin the search in the first place.  As I’ve said before, the question that kept coming up when I first told friends that I had been adopted was “are you going to look for your real parents?” Their insensitivity (unintended, no doubt, but there nonetheless) annoyed me no end.  I know who my real parents are, thank you.  I am their son, for good and ill; I couldn't see what relevance two strangers whom I'd never met (and in all likelihood would never meet) could have to my life here and now.  


The search for my birth mother was, honestly, more an intellectual than an emotional exercise.  I was curious to find the answers to this puzzle; and I thought it would be good for her to know that she had done the right thing by giving me up.  I was not, however, looking for parents, or a family, or an identity.  I had all of those; and I'm sure this is why it took me almost eight years before I started my search. I realized, when I came to write it all down (the flash of insight I had been hoping for in telling this tale) that my difficulties in relating the story were a reflection of that initial reluctance I'd had, which was playing itself out all over again.  So, this story is really about my ambivalence around what being adopted actually meant to me, as much as anything else; and it is this story, not necessarily the details of my birth, that I believe has some value in the telling. 


When I began my search in earnest, several of the organizations I contacted that help with matters of this sort all told me much the same thing – keep it low key, and search as anonymously as you can for as long as you can, because you just don’t know what sort of person you are eventually going to find, and you cannot allow your desire for answers get the better of your common sense; the person you find may not necessarily be someone you would want to have in your life, or the life of your family.  My own experience, fortunately, encompassed none of the horror stories I had read -- adoptees coming to rue the day they had begun their searches, finding parents who were alcoholics, drug addicted, or only interested in extorting money from their long-lost child.  The reality of what I ultimately found bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one-act play that, I’ll admit,  I had constructed in my mind (despite all the advice warning me not to do so lest I be disappointed) about what she might be like.  Because there was the trap, you see; it was easy, at the point where you decide to begin but as yet have no information, no clues, to get caught up in the excitement of the idea of the search, and give in to the temptation to create, based on no evidence whatsoever except the endless possibilities of the unknown, a back-story for yourself into which you could handily fit all the details of your life as it is now. 

Scenario # 1; or, The Story As I Would Have Written It If Anybody Had Asked Me:  A young actress in New York (living in New Jersey with her widowed mother); she has a brief affair with a fellow cast member in the musical in which they are both appearing; the pregnancy, the realization that she is simply not prepared to give up the career she’s worked so hard to build for motherhood just yet; the decision, difficult but brave, to surrender me, always saying a silent prayer for the child she’ll never know every night just before she steps out on stage.   It would explain my choice of theatre as a profession; I hoped that she’d be glad to know I had followed in her footsteps.  Maybe we’d actually get to work together, someday; in the meanwhile she comes to see me in a show and greets me afterward, tears in her eyes, telling me how very proud she is.  Nice story.  Simple, and sweet.  In fact, I think it might just be the plot of some old 50’s-era B-movie I saw one night on the Late Show.


Scenario # 2; or, The Real Story: In Which I Discover That God Has A Peculiar Sense Of Humor:  A young woman in Northern New Jersey, growing up in a large family in very comfortable circumstances (her father owned a drapery/upholstery/decorating business); nice clothes, big house, parties.  Her mother dies, and her father remarries soon after.  He and his new bride, a woman not overly fond of her new stepchildren, buy a new house and leave her and her youngest sister to manage on their own; she takes work as a waitress. She had previously attracted the attention of an older man in the military, someone who had been advising and vetting small business owners (including her father) who wished to establish apprentice or training programs under the GI Bill.  She is wooed, and flattered, and ultimately seduced into his bed; he disappears once he learns she is pregnant.   She is dissuaded from her original intention, which was to raise me by herself, by the few family members who still deign to speak to her.  She later discovers that her seducer may already have a wife and children in Pennsylvania.  Finally, in a twist worthy of Dickens, he contacts her from (of all places) prison, which was the last she will ever hear from him.  It seems that he and a partner had been running a little graft, a little scam on the side in their dealings with civilian businesses wishing to get GI Bill money for themselves; things had gotten a little hot in New Jersey and he managed to get himself transferred up to Fort Devins.  The petty stuff proved to be not interesting enough, and so it was that he and his partner decided to rob a bank in Worcester MA, where they killed a guard in the attempt and were subsequently caught, prosecuted and jailed.  Some years later, she marries and has a child – my half-sister – but the marriage fails (he is an alcoholic) and she must assume the burden of being a single mother, raising a child on her own under very strained financial circumstances.  Not such a nice story, and not at all so simple.

This scenario, told to me in bits and pieces in phone conversations and, finally, on the occasion of our first face-to-face meeting is far more dramatic than that which I had dreamed up; here was a story that really did appeal to that sense of theatre I spoke of before.   But still, there was this feeling of detachment -- as I've repeated many times, I wasn't doing this to find a mother or a father.  There was one thing, though, that I couldn’t have known until I made the search, the only thing, I think, that I was always ready to accept, even to embrace, as a real part of my life. Something that I hadn’t ever articulated a need or desire for, throughout this whole process; but in the end the one fact more than any other I was happy to discover -- that I had a sister. 

My sister is a terrific woman, brave and strong, living happily in Tennessee, and married now to a man who loves her and cares for her.  She has her own story to tell, and one I would not presume to tell for her; but suffice it to say she has had her share of grief, and pain, and loss.  We speak, not often, but we have grown to love each other.  I’m glad that she is in my life, and I would hope that she could say the same of me; it is good just to know that she is there.  Of all the reasons for entering into this search, finding that I had a sister made the whole process worthwhile. 

I cannot, alas, say the same for my birth mother.  Good drama comes at a price.  At our first meeting, my immediate impression of her (not surprisingly, given her story) is that of an unhappy and disappointed person whose life simply did not follow the arc she had envisioned, as a young woman, that it would. In addition, the emotionality of our reunion was leavened by the unmistakable feeling, which grew in intensity the longer I spent in her presence, that I just didn’t like her.  This sounds harsh, I know; but it was provoked in part by how she spoke to my sister when we first met in person -- a situation where, you would think, we’d all of us be on our best behavior.   She was by turns rude, dismissive, and belittling of her during the 5 or so hours we were together.  Not constantly, mind you, but enough such that I came away from that first meeting with a sense of unease that never really left me.  Instead of joy or exhilaration, or even some sort of peace of mind that I assumed I would feel in discovering this long-buried truth, all I could muster up, as I drove back home, was relief – relief that she had given me up, that I’d been turned over to the care of the nuns, and delivered into the hands of two loving parents.

I tried to be good – I phoned her from time to time, sent cards on Mothers’ Day and her birthday, but I have to confess that my heart really just wasn’t in it.  I had found my answers; I had done what I thought was the right thing by contacting her, but I was done now, and I felt all the worse because I really didn’t want to pursue a relationship of any sort with her, though I knew that I had to, if only because it was the decent thing to do.  She’s gone now; she’s been dead for a good many years.  As I said, I still call my sister from time to time; she has told me on more than one occasion that I will never fully understand just how difficult their lives were together, and how fortunate I was to have been spared their struggle.

So this is where I’m going to leave it.  I was conceived by accident, born a bastard child, given over to the care of the nuns in an orphanage, and then adopted by two people who loved each other and me as well.  I have a sister, and I’m glad that I found her; the rest of it, while it makes a good story to tell, doesn’t really matter to me all that much.  What does matter is that my father Mike was a fine man who was, by all accounts, admired by everyone who came into contact with him; a man who loved his son and died too soon, a man I miss to this very day.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.  My mother Vickie was a funny, loving, good-hearted woman who had every right to fall apart after his death, but she didn’t – as sad as she was, and as much as she missed him, she got up every day and went to work to keep the roof over our heads and the food on our plates, doing what she had to do despite a grief and loss I cannot even begin to comprehend, because she knew she needed to take care of me.  Neither of them lived long enough; and, lest you be tempted to think otherwise, neither of them were perfect, God knows, but they are my parents -- simply because I am the one they chose to be their son. 

Epilogue: In our first conversation my birth mother asks me if I want to know anything about the man who had put this whole business in motion all those many years ago; was I going to look for him?  Did I want to know his name?  She tells it to me, that first day I meet her, and I remember writing it down somewhere.  I suppose that it speaks volumes about my attitude, or my state of mind, or even my definition of what a “father” is, by the fact that I have long since forgotten it and have no idea where the paper is on which I wrote it. 

Mom & Dad, ca. 1960