A couple of photos caught on the sly during our belated Easter family dinner. We haven’t been able to see these two cherubs as much as we once did, so hopefully that’s changing soon with the turn in weather and the ability to see them safely outdoors. We’ll have them over soon for another day with Uncle Al, like we did in the fall. A lunch with the twins is good for the soul.
PS – Emi is starting a double-hat trend and I’m here for it.
There were more than a few tragic turnings of the past year of COVID, but the one that may be most regrettable is the time we have lost with loved ones. That feels especially sharp when I think of the fact that the Ilagan twins turned eleven today, and I feel like I’ve only see them two or three times since they turned ten – and that’s literally the truth.
There was this day of spooky fun around Halloween, and a rustic garage Thanksgiving, and that’s been about it before the weather turned and bound us indoors and without social distancing. That’s about to change, as their birthday alway indicates the shift to spring – a shift to hope and outside gatherings and the chance to re-connect to my niece and nephew. People have occasionally commented on what kind of influence their crazy fun Uncle can have on them – sometimes I wonder if their influence on me is more important. I think we can be of benefit to each other, and lately I’ve been missing their fun, rambunctious adventures.
The good news is that we are rounding the seasonal turn, and outside get-togethers will once again allow us to be together, where we last explored treasure hunts and Smashburger lunches and Starbucks siestas. Happy birthday, Emi and Noah – eleven is one of the last childhood years, so let’s make it a memorable one!
Time is a remarkable thing. It bends and warps itself into the strangest waves and patterns, some rigid and predictable, some wild and seemingly uncontained. Three decades is a drop in the sea of history, yet it’s an entire ocean when it’s the amount of time since you lost someone you loved – especially if that someone is a parent.
Thirty years ago my hometown of Amsterdam lost one of the most unique and wonderful pillars of the community – Dr. Sok Nam Ko – and a family lost its soul. He’d been sick for only a short time it seemed, and suddenly he was gone, and the shock was jarring for everyone. Suzie and I were only fifteen years old when her father died – it was a hurt and loss I couldn’t fathom, and I held my own father a little closer to my heart from that moment forward. The pain that the Ko family was enduring was terrifying to me, and I was only on the periphery. ‘Uncle Sok’ – whom I don’t ever recall addressing in such a way, but who would always be that figure for me, protecting me in ways that some of my blood uncles never could or would – the man whose spirit inhabited and dominated the Victorian home where our happiest childhood memories were forged – was no longer there, and as we walked the interminable pathway from the street to their front door on that tragic day, I didn’t want to know what it would feel like without him.
The house that had always been a source of light and love and safety and warmth was immediately different. Though the wind carried the first hints of spring on it, it felt colder than all the Christmas mornings we’d made this walk from the street to the Ko house as a family. The heart of that fire had gone out, extinguished too soon, and none of us would be the same. His wife Elaine – Suzie’s mom – and a mother to all of us in some way – greeted us at the door with hugs. I remember the feel of her dress, I think it was dark green, and she had worn it at the holidays. That already felt far away.
The kids were upstairs. My brother and I trudged slowly along the staircase up which we usually bounded in excitement. Neither of us had known death this closely – even our Grandparents in the Philippines, whom we had never met, hadn’t elicited this same fear or sorrow, with Dad holding onto his grief quietly and out of sight. They were literally half a world away – and we hadn’t spent all our birthdays and holidays with them around. Uncle Sok was someone we had grown up with – he was there when we were babies, there as we started walking, there when we were at the kids’ table for holiday dinners. And as my best friend’s father, and my father’s best friend, his loss was unimaginable.
My brother and I reached the top of the stairs and turned right into the master bedroom. I will carry the sight of the Ko kids assembled sadly in that room with me for life. Suzie was on the bed. All the faces were red and puffy from crying, stained with tears old and new, and I wondered if they would ever stop falling. Seeing Suzie like that was something I didn’t want to do. We were so young. I didn’t know how to act. There was nothing to say. I sat at the foot of the bed and pretended to watch what was on the television.
“Hey Al,” was all she said, and the happiest girl I had ever known was suddenly gone.
It was the day our carefree childhood ended. Never again would we feel complete. Never again would we be whole. Forever after that moment something would be missing – something we once had and didn’t even realize – and instantly the world shifted.
In all my years of knowing Dr. Ko, I never once told him I loved him. He wasn’t that kind of guy, and I wasn’t that kind of boy. But my way of showing love was as quiet as his: it is in remembering those that mean the most to me, and holding onto them in my heart. He’s been present here always, in the thirty years since he physically departed, whenever he comes up in a conversation with Suzie, whenever we pause in holiday revelries, whenever I see a boat, or an awkward old man’s outfit, or anyone doing something remarkable or out of the ordinary.
On emotionally indulgent days I’ll wonder how our lives might have played out if he’d been here all this time – what his grandchildren would think, how he might have changed or softened or stayed doggedly true to form. I’ll think of his friendship with my father, and how much more they might have shared, how many new hilarious stories they would have spun working together for just a few more years. (A couple of years after her father died, Suzie was able to look beyond her own grief and say that one of the things she felt bad about was that my Dad had no one to talk to at the holidays. That stayed with me, as I pondered this pair of immigrants who had come from Korea and the Philippines to find a better life, and who found themselves alone yet together in a tiny town in upstate New York named after a place in Europe.)
I’ll wonder what Uncle Sok would make of the world today, and then I’ll stop myself for sadness. The truth is that what we shared stopped in March of 1991, and there’s no way to change or go back or create an alternate reality in which he was still rushing around the world in his ongoing quest for knowledge and connection and meaning. Instead, I can only hang onto the fifteen years I was lucky enough to have with him, and share stories and memories of those who had even more, and carry on in the spirit of everything he did and accomplished.
At some point in the summer of 1986, my Mom dropped me off for a few days at Gram’s in Hoosick Falls, where the magic of my grandmother would rub off on me in ways that I’ve held onto through this very day. For all her crushingly introverted attitude, the way she seemed so painfully shy when making her way through much of this world, she also held a fascination with glamour and old-school Hollywood, regaling me with tales of Greta Garbo, and she liked to accentuate her outfits with little bits of splendor and sparkle – colorful jewelry and beaded purses. Part of her was drawn to such drama, as seen in her love for NBC’s daytime drama line-up, and she imparted the gift of the dramatic to me in my formative years. We’d sit and watch ‘Days of Our Lives’ and ‘Another World’ and somewhere among those waning summer days she taught me how to crochet.
The earliest hints of fall were seeping into the open windows of the living room, where I slept on the tufted velvet couch – it was a gorgeous shade of green that I would forever love, and it functioned as a cozy bed at night. During the day it was where we sat to watch television, and where she taught me how to tie the first loop for my first crochet chain. Somehow we both knew that crocheting would be a good skill to learn to see me through the fall and winter, a way of conjuring coziness and warmth and hygge – decades before I even knew what hygge meant. In that pocket of summer days, I learned how to make the most basic crochet moves, perfect for scarves or blankets – and that’s where the skills ended, but that was more than enough.
I’d sit on the large couch and Gram moved to the smaller couch across the room, and we’d crochet our projects as the daytime shows ticked off the hours. It was idyllic for a gay boy – as thrilling as exploring Gram’s jewelry boxes, or listening to her tales of tawdry silver screen gossip. By the time it was ready for that late-summer stay to be over, and Mom arrived to bring me back home, my Grandmother had gifted me with the art of crocheting – something I held close to my heart for the rough school year that was about to ensue, and for all of the colder moments that would soon descend. Those days of crocheting with my grandmother are still part of my happiest childhood memories, even if I didn’t see it at the time.
That fall I developed severe allergies from a new cat I insisted we give a home to, which led to severe asthma and a rigorous series of medical tests to treat the cascading sicknesses that left me out of school for lengthy periods of time. Stuck at home, I started crocheting a blanket, making it thicker by using two strands of yarn – a twist that I taught to my Gram, but one which she didn’t decide to utilize. I had visions of a grand bedspread in some brightly-lit loft. It felt like I had all the time in the world, so I made a long-term master plan.
Good young gay lad that I was unknowingly blooming into, I was stuck on the idea of a rainbow, made of a multitude of different shades of each color, and I planned on doing five rows per shade, five shades per color, and then deciding to determine later whether the starting row would be the width or length of it. At first I wanted each band to symbolize a special person in my life, assigning and imbuing every color to represent someone who meant something to me, but I started with too many people, then I had too many bands, and then I had too many people again so it never worked out that way. Besides, a big part of me didn’t want to share this blanket with anyone other than Gram. That fall and winter, as I was out of school more than I seemed to be in, I worked diligently on the blanket. It saw me through the loneliness, and brought me back to those happy summer days at Gram’s. There was coziness and warmth – literally and figuratively – in the crocheting of a blanket.
Eventually, summer returned, and my focus shifted outside, so I put the blanket down, and then for a couple of years I put it away completely, but it never remained entirely out of mind. I knew it was there, and its simple existence was a comfort, a way of reminding me of Gram and what was important in life.
Every few years I’d pick it up again and crochet a few more bands of color. It followed me to Boston for a couple of dismal and stormy winters. I took it up again while Andy and I spent our first winter together in Guilderland, and each time the years between working on it elongated – this last stretch has been the longest, as it’s been over a decade since I had it out and worked on it – and before this winter leaves I intend to get a few more rows in. It is the ideal way to end another winter season.
I’m nearing the completion of it, and I haven’t yet decided whether to go around the rough edges with a more thoughtful style; it would be a way of continuing something I may not be quite ready to finish.
Mortification plays a big part in one of the memories that, quite rightfully, never made it into ‘The Way Back Home’ – the biography of Sok Nam Ko, my best friend Suzie’s father – which I recently revisited (and is still available here). It was our first night of a three-week trip to the then-Soviet Union, and we had arrived at a hotel in Washington, DC, where we would spend three days preparing. The year 1990 feels very far away, and yet my recollections of that trip remain as vivid and clear as if they happened yesterday. While bunking with a star of the Amsterdam football team named Justice and another boy named Dan, I was a little bit homesick, but comforted for the fact that Suzie’s Dad was right next door. In fact, we were sharing a bathroom between us, so it felt like I had a second Dad there. It was no doubt part of why my parents allowed me to go halfway around the world for almost a month; they trusted Dr. Ko implicitly. On that first night away from them, as we prepared for our journey, I felt the bond between our families as something that might sustain me upon whatever journeys Suzie and I would embark in our lives.
In the hush of that impossibly painful shyness that descends upon boys when their numbers dwindle to two or three, and especially at the time that they are about to retire to bed, no one answered when I asked – twice – if anyone was in the bathroom. When there was no reply I figured it was safe to go in, at which point I opened the door only to find Dr. Ko sitting on the toilet and going about his business. Unperturbed, he glanced my way as I hastened to back out of there and close the door, muttering profuse apologies and almost passing out from embarrassment. The other kids didn’t seem to notice or care, but for me it was mortifying, not least because Dr. Ko was one of the main people in my life who I wanted to impress.
All those memories – happy, amusing, embarrassing, sorrowful, and regretful – came flooding back when I realized it’s been almost thirty years since he passed away. I picked up our copy of ‘The Way Back Home’ and started re-reading about his life’s story, and the way he came to America and made a home and family and career for himself, along with a number of momentous friendships along the way. The book stands as something more than a traditional linear biography – it’s a collection of memories and scrapbook cuttings, that now speaks to a generation of readers who will be more accustomed to its quick sound-bites and stories, and as such it seems a proper time to revisit its magic.
Lovingly, movingly, and often amusingly brought to life by family, friends and just about everyone who made his acquaintance, the spirit of Dr. Ko transcends time and place to tell the story of an immigrant who made an impact on all the people who came into his orbit. From New York Yankee Phil Rizzuto to the fishermen who navigated the seas for him, he touched a wide swath of denizens the world over. In many ways, that was the lesson he taught to me, because in the all-too-brief time I knew him, I was still a shy and reclusive young boy, who watched from afar but gleaned valuable lessons from the father of my best friend, and the best friend of my father.
Perhaps somewhat ahead of its time, ‘The Way Back Home’ offers a multi-media experience for an audience whose attention span has flitted away to two-minute bursts. It contains photos as well as newspaper clippings and a comprehensive collection of the filaments that make up one man’s life – especially one as varied and intricate as Ko’s. A marvel of contradictions and unique ideas, he seemed to relish in the most convoluted way of getting to a solution; that it often worked out was a master lesson in making your own way. Never one to conform, he took his trials as lessons, while his successes he acknowledged with a sly smile, as if he was the only one not surprised by how well they all worked out.
It’s impossible to tell the whole story of one person’s life. We are too hidden, too imperfect, too guarded to make the biographer’s job an easy or even accomplishable one. But this one comes close to capturing the essence of my best friend’s father, and brings him back to life in a way that I didn’t realize I’d been missing all these years later.
{If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of ‘The Way Back Home’ please visit the Sok Nam Ko Educational Exchange Foundation, or contact Elaine directly at elainekotalmadge@gmail.com.}
My brother waited, or didn’t wait, until the day that was farthest from my birthday on the calendar year to be born. Ever since then we’ve been perfectly complementary, or perfectly at odds, and rarely has there been a consistently happy median. Over the years, we’ve both retreated from our polar opposite ends and met closer to the middle, while realizing that we are so different we will never be best friends. Once upon a time I mourned that – now I celebrate it as the only way it can be. He’s finding his way toward peace in the best way he knows, and I’m doing the same, and once COVID is done, and better weather is here, we will hopefully have more opportunities to hang out together.
It always struck me as unfair to him that his birthday had to fall during the school year, that there were times when he would have to be in class on his special day. Yet that didn’t seem to bother him, and it was all he had ever known. He tended to have a few more people for his birthday celebrations than I did (I preferred to spend my day with Suzie at a distant destination like Beaversprite or something). His birthday parties were louder, more rollicking affairs, that found the group of us stomping on balloons tied to our ankles while a clown named Shrinking Violet led us in games and activities.
These days, as a father of twins about to turn eleven years old, he may wish for something quieter – but maybe he doesn’t. Quiet has never been his brand or his way of life, and on his birthday he deserves whatever form of celebration he wants. We’ll find a way to get together for this one (and Christmas and New Year’s…) one some finer weather, right around the corner. Happy birthday, baby bro!
It was a cold fall day, not as frigid as the days we’re having this week, but we felt it more sorely, the chill unaccustomed after a summer of warmth and sun. Gram was babysitting us, so I couldn’t have been much older than ten or eleven. My brother and I had been outside playing in the leaves, jumping and tumbling in the piles beneath the maple trees. The chill and damp eventually got to me, so I came in for a lunch with Gram. She hovered over the warm stove after pulling a plate of leftover chicken out of the refrigerator. Stirring in some flour to a pan of melted butter, she briefly described the steps of making creamed chicken on toast, prompted by my inquisitive curiosity. Years later, I would understand that she was making a roux, the standard starter of any decent cream sauce.
She didn’t expound upon her method, mistakenly assuming I wasn’t as interested in this as I was in the later, reclusive years of Greta Garbo, but I was, and I paid attention to how she went about it. Adding some milk or cream, she stirred steadily, eventually adding the chicken and heating it through. The sauce became thicker, and she deftly toasted a pair of bread slices, buttering them just as the chicken and sauce were coming together. That butter seemed extra indulgent, but it also worked to keep the bread crunchy even with the creamy topping of chicken she spooned onto each slice.
It was a simple plate of comfort food, served by my beloved Gram on a frigid fall day. It was exactly what I needed when I didn’t even know what I needed, and I’ve kept that simple lesson with me for all these years. Nowadays, I’ll modify it for more flavor – the addition of some fresh garlic at the start, and my Mom recently mentioned she uses some celery salt when she makes it. It keeps Gram alive, and keeps us comforted on the cruelest winter days. There’s nothing fancy or excessively bombastic about its basic make-up, but much like my Gram it has its own subtle sparkle, and like her love for us, it came from the heart.
A very happy birthday goes out to my Mom today – and even in this pandemic-riddled world I hope she finds a bit of the joy and happiness that she so richly deserves. By the time this post goes up, she will have already received her gifts, so I’ll get into the slight change-up this year brings. Traditionally, I’d be gifting her with a Broadway show or something to wear to said production.
That proving impossible this year, I’ve replaced the outfit with a cashmere cowl-neck sweater, for maximum luxury and comfort while staying cozy at home, and a perfume from Henry Rose, because there’s no reason why we can’t be slightly glamorous even while home. (Henry Rose also has an environmentally-sound and friendly history, with a transparent ingredient list that is as impressive and feel-good as its end result is exquisite.) Finally, a hard-cover printing of ‘Country Flowers’ by Lee Bailey will hopefully provide some inspiration for the spring that is to come. We’ll fill it out with some flowers and knick-knacks from Faddegon’s.
My Mom has been the one to keep the family together over these last five decades, and I learned that difficult hat-trick directly from her. These days she takes good care of my Dad, a momentous act of love and devotion, something only a professor of nursing could handle with such grace and competence. I know and I see how much work that takes, so whenever I can I’ll drop off food and offer whatever I can safely offer within our current circumstances. She doesn’t need much from my end, because she’s that effective as nurse and wife and mother.
For today, though, I hope she gets to enjoy the happiness and relaxation and indulgence she doesn’t always find. I love you, Mom – Happy Birthday!
It was my Dad who unwittingly taught me how to make a good soup base. Growing up, we didn’t get any official formal training from him – he never sat us down and instructed us on the method or the amount of ingredients, but over the years I gleaned the main components – a base of chicken – bones and skin intact – a long slow cooking time, and three or four bay leaves. It was the latter that stuck with me, and is the secret to many a good soup.
Now at the age of 90, my Dad is a little more frail, so I’ve been making the soup for him. I employ his same methods, and the requisite bay leaves, though I modify it to make it ulcer and stomach friendly (turmeric is one key ingredient, while a reduced salt and acid component form another healthy dimension). Sugar snap peas and spinach add greenery and iron, while celery and carrots round out a rather basic, but tasty, soup. Salt and pepper can be used sparingly, and to taste – and even if you add a bunch there’s still less sodium you’d have if you used a store-bought stock. This easy soup constitutes a decent lunch or early dinner for winter.
Amendments to bulk it up include cooked rice or noodles, which should be added right before serving (unless you’re cooking them in the soup, which I’ve never done), or simply serve with a side of hearty bread. A good soup warms the heart, and kindles warm memories.
My Mom is on FaceBook, but she keeps it private and wouldn’t accept your friend request even if she knew how. Last night, she posted this amazing piece, which puts into words what so many people are thinking and feeling right now. I had no hand in this, remarkably, and the first time I knew of it was when it appeared on my feed. Anyway, I’m long accustomed to feeling pride in my parents and what amazing people they are, but this still moved me immensely. Thanks for speaking out, Mom.
“I am not a regular on Facebook. In fact, when my son set up my account, I thought I would never use it. For the most part that has been correct. I am a private person to a fault.
The situation in America right now is an exception. Since Trump was elected, I have been unable to call America “my country”. By that I mean that it was no longer the country that my blue-collar parents raised me to believe in. They never achieved my level of education but they had a perfect sense of the right thing to do in life. I am grateful that they taught me what that meant.
I could go on for hours about why I could NEVER support Trump but, now, that is irrelevant. I will summarize briefly. If a person is deemed, rightfully, to be a menace on Twitter, how in the universe can he be deemed safe to be left in office for a moment longer, where he has control of the nuclear codes AND has top secret clearance to access the most sensitive security matters of the United States of America? Does anyone question for a moment whether or not he would sell these secrets to the highest bidder?
Please, anyone who can contact legislators, anyone with power to put forth any and all means to support the removal of this person immediately, move forward. The security of what is left of this country is at stake in a way that has not been present in my lifetime.†– Laurel Ilagan
There are certain years when Christmas seems to mean a little more, when the previous months have been so difficult and trying that we hold a little tighter to those we love, and that has certainly been the case this year. What a tumultuous and frightening time for so many, and how much we have turned to the loved ones who mean the most to us in the hopes that we see each other through it all. Christmas and its story of love and light – birth and charity – kindness and hope – lasts but a short season, and I wish we were able to carry its goodwill and bonhomie through all of the seasons. Maybe that should be our goal for the next year.
As for this Christmas, it’s been thrown for the loop that is 2020, and we are dealing with it accordingly. We will still reach out to those we love, we just need to be safe and do it a bit differently. For my extended family that means waiting until it’s safe to reconvene outside in the spring – when we will have our big family gathering for Christmas dinner (and another go-round of gifts since we have more than earned it) out on the patio. We’ll have an early spring at the sign of the first thaw.
There is something cathartic and reassuring about having something to look forward to. As much as we try to live in the moment, my default is to have something planned just beyond the horizon, something to keep in the distance that propels us forward.
Until then, we will find our way in this new world together, celebrating from a distance, and honoring the spirit of Christmas with kindness and compassion. My heart is filled with a multitude of Christmas memories, and I hope you have a similar set of recollections to keep you warm on this day.
Merry Christmas to friends and family, near and far.
“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.” ~ Agnes M. Pahro
On its surface, the main image of this year’s holiday card is a rather plain, if slightly strange, pose featuring my family. It’s also not my typical garb (I’m more Reebok than Adidas any day.) Taken with its inspiration photo, however, it gains a greater resonance, and recreating an old family photo is always a fun affair.
My Mom had sent me the original photo a few months ago, and I cracked up for days when I saw the histrionic pose I had apparently been perfecting even as a child. Ladies with an attitude, indeed. I vaguely recall this vacation – a southern trek that found us in Florida – and I remember giving this fierceness in all the photos from that trip. (You should have seen the dramatics in which I engaged at Epcot Center. There was a particularly fanciful photo taken on a fountain somewhere around Norway if I recall correctly.)
Striking a pose since 1975 hasn’t always been easy, and yet somehow I’m still managing to pull it off, thanks largely to the two people behind me here. Literally and figuratively. I realize and appreciate their support more and more the older we get. And so, in this year perhaps more than any other, with all that has happened to us as a family and as a world, this image is the one that means the most to me. I share it with you and your family, and wish you the very best for the holiday season, and for the new year.
{Find links to previous holiday cards here.}
“Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.” ~ Phyllis Diller
These are the two people in the world for whom I am most thankful, not just for today, but for all the days I will be here. Mom and Dad. Two little words that universally mean love and adoration, and I am no exception to such sentiments. This year, I’m a little more thankful than I usually convey, maybe because we have all seen the way the world can turn. In the darkest times, when everything feels a little uncertain and unsure, I turn to my family for comfort and safety. In the topsy-turvy way this year has gone, we’ve had to be there for each other.
Back in September, Dad turned 90 years old, and a couple weeks after took a nasty spill on the back patio, breaking a couple of ribs and landing himself in the hospital. A tough healing process for anyone, it’s made especially so for someone in their 90’s, with all sorts of other concerns heaped upon the pain. I made daily trips to Amsterdam to spend time with him and Mom, at a safe distance in the garage, or in a mask and even further apart in the living room. In those first few days, it was frightening to see how a fall could so badly ravage a 90-year-old man. Dad didn’t have a taste for anything and wasn’t eating much. His nights were restless and disorienting, making sleep and recuperation doubly difficult, which is probably what he needed more than anything. To stimulate his appetite, I made all sorts of his favorite Filipino dishes, starting with lumpia and pancit, which he gamely tried and began to eat.
Gradually, he ate more and more. I brought over pans of babinka, and pots of adobo, along with a steady supply of more lumpia while our deep fryer was fully operational. The weather outside turned colder and crueler, but within the garage a safe cocoon of warmth and sustenance came into existence. The scent of freshly cut wood and piles of sawdust lent the space a cozy atmosphere, while candles burned and gave off little flickers of heat and light. Even, and perhaps especially, in a pandemic, family finds a way.
The Ilagans will celebrate Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays a different way to be as safe as possible this year, and that’s ok. I think we all realize what’s really important, and for these two people I remain most thankful. Thank you, Mom and Dad.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families as well – enjoy them in whatever capacity you can!
Our somewhat-annual treasure hunt for the twins managed to take place in this time of COVID thanks to some clever garage and back patio staging, along with some cooperative weather. Before they arrived, I broke out the smoke machine and filled the garage with some atmospheric spookiness, accompanied by the eerie soundtrack to ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ – so that when they arrived the garage door opened in a puff of theatrical fog, portending the spooky Halloween aspect of the day.
Unphased by the Halloween trappings, the twins eagerly listened as I laid out the intricately-plotted outline for the day. We began with a trail of tree identification for seven different trees around the yard, coupled with a list of five objects that would cast a magic spell. We found all seven trees, as well as the list of five items – an acorn, an oak leaf, a pinecone, a green tomato and a sprig of lemon verbena – and by the time our journey rounded us back to the garage, two Halloween baskets filled with candy and treats had miraculously appeared. The spell had worked!
From there we moved to the back patio, where curtains hung from the circular canopy, closing us off from the wind. A group of candles flickered on the table lending some warmth and light. I brought out some hot cocoa, marshmallows and fresh cinnamon rolls to keep us toasty. The twins also started in on their candy, which Uncle Al allows because he’s the funnest uncle ever.
They wanted to decorate pumpkins, so we stopped at Troy’s Landscaping before our lunch at Smashburger. We found a koi pond and some cacti, then made our way to lunch.
They showed me the Smashburger pose, we ordered our meals, and made a quick stop at Starbucks for dessert.
Back in the garage, we finished up the day with some pumpkin-decorating and more marshmallows. Apparently the hottest contest right now is figuring out how many marshmallows you can fit in your mouth while still being able to recite a sentence.
It was a very good day – the longest of our treasure hunts by far. They are more talkative now, and there are more things to say, and they also have their independent streaks so I don’t need to lead absolutely everything. That said, it wiped me out. After four and a half hours, their Dad arrived to take them home, and I laid down for a two-hour nap. Next stop will be Thanksgiving, and we worked on some special name cards for that…
Pulling his yellow raincoat on and rushing out with the rest of his classmates, the boy looks up into the gray sky and feels the sting of rain. Looking further up the hill, he searches for his mother’s station wagon, always there on the days when it rains. He pulls his hood over his head and hurries the pace. The rain comes down steadily and as he reaches the top of the little hill outside school, he still cannot locate her station wagon.
Tentatively pushing forward through the rain, he is unsure whether to wait, or keep moving. Time travels differently for children. He doubles back, suddenly doubting himself, and passes the same cars he did before. She is not there. He returns to the way home, passing each car and looking down in shame and embarrassment. He’s done nothing wrong, but he doesn’t feel that way. Surely there is shame in being forgotten?
The initial flash of abandonment is replaced with a sudden prickle of anger, which is quickly subsumed by a feeling of guilt and worry – what could have happened to his mother? The worry and the stress stays with him as he walks to the end of the block and turns up the long hill that brings him closer to home. His eyes wet with rain and strain, and the nagging fear of guilt gnawing on his heart, he walks into the rain, letting the hood fall from his head, letting the rain sting his face, giving in to the dimming of the day. Halfway up the hill, his Mom’s station wagon speed into view. He gets in, wet and a bit of a mess, relieved and hurt and mad and silly. By dinner, he pretends he’s moved on to something else.
It’s strange the way hurt seeps into the soul, and it’s different for everyone. One person’s sensitivity barely registers a forgotten ride in the rain while someone else feels it so acutely it stays with them for life. First world problems, some would snarkily suggest, but if it’s your very first first world problem, and you’re only a child, who can say what scars will be wrought in the end? Who can say how deep they will run?
The most frightening moment of my life thus far was not when I let a stranger bring me back to Brandeis from Boston in a big white van, which he pulled off the road on some dark, desolate stretch of Waltham only to park and negotiate questions on when he might see me again, but when I was five or six and holding my mother’s hand in the Amsterdam Mall. I let go for a second to look at some storefront, not letting her silhouette out of my peripheral vision, and when I reached up again to the hand beside me it wasn’t my mother’s. Immediately I panicked. I didn’t see her right away, and the terror was intense. It lasted a few mere seconds – my mother didn’t even know I was gone – but the fear was instantly crushing, crippling and debilitating. When I saw her just a few feet up ahead, unaware and unconcerned with our separation, the world returned to normal, but my heart had been stricken forever. It’s something I recall vividly to this day – one of my first memories, seared indelibly on whomever I was about to become.
The Fall Song of 2020 has been selected and it’s called ‘Dynasty’ by the amazing Rina Sawayama. With its familial themes and defiant streaks of rage and independence, as well as its dramatic musical bombast, this is a perfectly powerful statement in an age when families are being rendered apart thanks to things as light as politics and as deep as four-decades of mistakes and angst.
Those relationships with family members are what run the deepest, my therapist confirms after I recount a childhood memory that has haunted me for years. Almost inextricable, they have hooks that are intertwined and entangled with the entire history of a human being, conveyed from the moment of birth and running through the formative stretches of a person’s existence. They are the most difficult patterns to change, and their chasms run deeper and darker than we usually realize. Our families mark us from birth – they know our most vulnerable weaknesses, they know our most formidable powers, and if we’re lucky they only want what’s best for us. Yet it’s never quite that easy, at least not for me and mine.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
In the midst of my teenage years of turmoil, when social anxiety was heaped on the impossible fact of being gay, I was the oldest child in a family where I did everything I was supposed to do, was the perfect son in every way I knew how to be, and still felt the chill of being different and never quite belonging, sensing even then that love was contingent upon how proud I made my parents, and one wrong misstep would result in punishment or desolation. Whether or not it was all in my head is a question that creeps into my mind to this day, a lasting effect when stability is rocked, such as when you come out as gay and it’s not greeted with a hug or instant love and assurance, but rather concern and worry and the desire to keep it secret and silent.
Every dynasty has its outcasts. Every dynasty has its rebels. And every dynasty has its stars who rise above the binding shame of history and biological bonds to ascend to something they deserve. Call it survival, call it independence, call it the righteous rage that results from a person finally refusing to be anything less than beloved – the human spirit will forge a way and we will craft our own families when the ones we’re given cannot or will not play fair.
I remember a morning in high school, trying to rush my way out and feeling utterly defeated by something someone did or said – I don’t even remember what it was, but I remember throwing open a desk drawer, ripping out a sheet of paper, and violently scribbling in bold, black, smelly marker: ONE DAY I WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER COME BACK.
Every dynasty has its drama queen. I taped it to the mirror of my bathroom, hoping someone would find it, hoping someone would try to help. No one did. I took it down when I got back from school. It was still hanging there from the mirror, the same dejected face peering behind it, only the tears had dried and the rage had dissipated. I had to let go of the anger, and the notion of fairness and equity. The world was not fair or equitable. Families weren’t either.
Families beg for forgiveness, over and over, and if you happen to be the one who continually gets hurt, who continually must forgive and forget, it does start to feel a bit personal. You feel a bit paranoid. You wonder if it’s you, and what might set you apart from everyone else. When you’re gay, you wonder if that’s the difference, because what else could it possibly be? You’ve done everything else right, you’ve done everything else perfectly, you’ve never messed up, and still somehow you stumble enough to be the one who gets hurt.
When parents try to correct things in the past by doing better in the present, it’s rarely with the original cast, even if we’re still around, only older. Back then I didn’t see that, so I fought harder, even as I understood less.
Every dynasty has its trials and tests, those moments when you decide whether to stay or go, whether to keep working at it or to give up and find an easier path. Every person has their own journey to take, in whatever dynasty they find themselves, and even if their family isn’t the one they would have chosen, there is no denying the bonds and the love that almost every family has at its heart. We don’t always do it well, we don’t always do it right, but we are still there, repeating some mistakes, making new ones, hoping that this time it will be better, that this time it will all work. Humans have that basic primal need – the need to belong, to be part of a tribe, to be a valued member of a family. And luckily for us, we can make our own families, because that’s what you sometimes have to do to survive.
