Camping

Bibi and Mani were friends of my parents.  They looked like they just stepped off the kibbutz in Israel- they were true hippies and I have no idea how this friendship originated.  We used to go over to their house for dinner and I was supposed to play with their daughter who didn't speak and eat their weird food.  I hated it.

One evening Bibi and Mani were extolling the wonders of camping.  I don't know how it happened but somehow my parents felt it would be a good idea to borrow Bibi and Mani's tent and go camping, too.  We were living in Milwaukee at the time so at some point that summer we piled into the Oldsmobile with the black vinyl seats and no air conditioner and headed north to the Wisconsin Dells.

When we arrived at the campsite my father immediately set out to put up Bibi and Mani's tent.  It was paper bag brown and it smelled.  It smelled so bad we had to open all the flaps and air the thing out before we could sleep in it that night.  It took my father hours to put the tent up.  I remember a lot of swearing.  Finally, he got the thing up and my mother began to make dinner on a hibatchi stove.  I was bored out of my mind.  I had with me some Nancy Drew mystery novels my aunt had sent me but there was way too much noise and distraction going on to read.  Instead of the sounds of nature I had my Dad screaming, "Mother-fucker god damn shit fuck" as he set up camp.  I'm sure the people around us were scared to death and wondering what the hell was going on at our site.   I was a bit nervous myself.

At some point, the tent's stench was reduced and it was time for bed.  The tent was not very big to begin with.  We slept on top of army cots in sleeping bags my father had rented that smelled, too.  Inside the tent was a "porto-potty" which was a plastic white toliet seat with a plastic bag attached to the bottom for midnight pees.  I thought it was weird we had the toliet inside the tent and I'm sure my mother insisted on it so she wouldn't have to be inconvenienced in any way.  There was also a space heater inside the tent because it would cool off at night and it would be unacceptable to be chilly.  My parents wanted the low cost of camping to include all the comforts of the Holiday Inn or another AAA approved motel.   So in our smelly brown tent with a toliet and a space heater we all drifted off to sleep.

At some point we were all awakened by another smell.  Something was burning.  It was the tent.  It was on fire.  Somehow my father managed to put the fire out but it was terrifying and I already wasn't having a  good time.  Honestly, I don't remember if we went home or if we stayed.  I didn't realize at the time how close we all came to something really tragic happening.  The truth is we had no business camping.  My father was much too concerned about my mother's comfort and convenience to consider basic safety.  Bibi and Mani were compensated for the destruction of their tent and we continued to camp for the next few years in our own tent and rented pop-up trailer. Thankfully, there was never another fire but there still always a lot of yelling and swearing and nobody ever really had a good time.  After a few years the tent was put up in the attic and we didn't camp anymore.  By that time we never really went on vacation  anyways.  I think the tent got thrown away during one of my parents many moves.  I don't think the friendship with Bibi and Mani lasted much longer either.  They were probably afraid of my parents and fearful of further destruction and ruin to their property or selves.  To this day I hate camping.  My husband loves it.  We've been together 17 years and we still haven't gone.  I consider this a success.

Hallway

It even started out badly.  It's not like it started out great and got worse because at least that would mean that at some point in the history of my life things were normal.  That if time randomly stopped, there would be a possibility that out of every second ever to pass it might stop on the one second in which my life was normal.  No, that wasn't the case.  It was always weird.  There wasn't even a "honeymoon" period.  My childhood was an immediate 7 year itch.

 I was born in Houston in June.  It was hot.  I know this because My parents brought me home from the hospital and already they were incompetent.  They lived in a one bedroom apartment and my crib was placed next to my mom's side of the bed where I was to be nursed, loved and nurtured.  The first night my parents decided I was to be wheeled out into the hallway outside of their closed door due to my mother and father not getting enough sleep.  I had the audacity to require feedings in the middle of the night.  I also may have needed to be burped and had my diaper changed, too.  So the obvious solution was to wheel me out into the hallway.  Soon it became evident that even though I was in the hallway I still required their attention so they hired Bertha.

Bertha was a hired baby nurse paid for by my grandmother to assist my parents in caring for their one perfect healthy newborn.  Bertha was paid to sleep on the couch, snore loudly and every few hours attend to me.  My parents then complained that Bertha's snoring was keeping them awake.  They were truly screwed.  Perhaps my mother had postpartum depression but I highly doubt it.  I think she was overwhelmed by the fact there was someone else in the world who might need something from her and  might require other people (my father) to pay attention to someone else.  I'm sure they were both thinking they made a terrible mistake and they should of just stuck with the cat.

There are no photos of Bertha, no evidence she really existed other than the fact that I'm still not sleeping in a hallway in an apartment in Houston.  Wherever you are, Bertha, thank you.  You were my first angel.  I wish you had stuck around for the next 18 years because things didn't improve all that much. Well, to be fair, I did eventually get upgraded to my own bedroom but that was about it.

No Miracles on W. 102nd Street

copyright 20th Century Fox

My mother lived for the first 12 years of her life on the Upper West Side.  She and her fraternal twin sister  had piano and cello lessons, they saw shows at Radio City Music Hall and they shopped at FAO Schwarz.  To me, it always sounded quite glamorous like something out of the movie, Miracle on 34th Street .  The reality of it was very different, however.

My grandfather was born in Brooklyn in 1914.  He was an only child and, according to my mother, adored by my great-grandmother  and resented by my great-grandfather.  He didn't go to college but he was a hard-worker.  His problem was he couldn't hold down a job and got fired from everything.  He loved football, the Republican Party, his pipe and women.  Lots and lots of women.  My mom always talked about him like he was some Jewish "Don Juankowsky" mixed with a little Jewish "Al Caponowitz."

My grandmother was born in Brooklyn to a very wealthy family.  She had a brother and a sister and two insane parents.  My great-grandmother was institutionalized many times throughout the course of her life, suffering from depression.  I have a lot more information about my grandmother because I was lucky enough to of spent time with her older brother (my great-uncle) before he passed away.  The family originated in Spain, migrating to Russia after the Great " Kick-Out -the -Jew Festival of 1492."  The family owned land which was unusual for a Jewish family but life in Czarist Russia became brutal with the onset of the progroms and everyone moved to the U.S where fortunes were made.

My grandmother didn't go to college.  She was a "party girl."  She met my grandfather at a resort in the Catskills.  So here was another maternal figure in my family not going to college, marrying "beneath her" and spending the rest of her life angry, resentful, depressed and ill-equipped to raise her own children.  My grandmother died when I was 7 after a short yet difficult bout with cancer.  I have very few memories of her.

I look back on these family histories and I am amazed.  It wasn't until I met my husband that I gained a true appreciation for it's dysfunctionality.  As I've gotten older and had a family of my own I feel more and more distanced from all that came before me.  Really, it's hard to imagine 2 people less equipped to have had a child than my parents.  They had to give their cat away before I was born because it was too much for them and they couldn't handle it.   I have no idea why they thought they could raise a human being.  As for my parents cat, it went to live with my grandparents in Yonkers and spent the rest of it's life under the kitchen table hissing at everyone.  It's no wonder why.