7891. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 184)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 184)

When my mother was young, she had

rheumatic fever. Without even knowing

what it was (still don't, actually), I heard

that all the time. The story went that, in

danger of developing rickets (another

total unknown to me) she was sent to a

sort of 'fresh-air camp' for rheumatics,

in Hibernia, NJ. She talked of all this in

such high and happy terms that I always

figured the camp must have been a real

boon to her : outdoors, open air, fresh,

trees.  Hibernia, NJ is a real place. I've

visited there a few times myself, and

in fact have searched diligently for any

trace of what and where this 'camp' may

have been. To no real results. My Aunt

Mae, now dead, told me how she and my

mother drove up there once or twice, so

that my aunt (driving) could bring her to

the very location of the camp  -  which

she knew of from living in that area some.

That's all I know; but my mother would

come out with all these hokey sayings and

nursery-rhyme sorts of songs and ditties,

always saying she learned them for her

camp days in Hibernia, NJ. As it turned

out, her two later heart operations were

from a root-cause bad heart caused by

some sort of inflammation and damage

of the valves and ventricle due to the

rheumatic fever.  As a kid, funny as it

is, it's also difficult to get to the bottom

of stories like this  - I heard it all a

hundred times, but never had anything

really clarified, or questions answered,

while the people in question were alive.

I guess it goes like that. Remember that

'children should be seen and not heard'

stuff? That was one of those things that

sometimes kept me from popping out

with a big, 'Hey! What's going on?'

-

I guess these were Depression era issues.

In the same vein, a corresponding issue

having to do with my father became  -

rather than physical  -  a 'mental' wound

that never healed. My father had  -  his

entire life  -  a real violent sensitivity to

any issue having to do with his

manliness and/or sexuality. The supposed

very 'macho' stance of his sense of self

and bearing, muscles and brawn, had a lot

to do with proving himself tough. Not much

in the way of height, perhaps 5'7" at best,

he'd often make accommodating remarks

about how his stature did not in any way

reflect his 'Manhood.' In fact, I distinctly

recall, verbatim, his once telling me that

"I have a small Peter, Gar, but I made

five kids with it." You have to imagine,

please, what saying this to an eleven-year

old kid meant. By one's father. I was

bizarrely unaffected, I guess, but only

because I really could never fathom the

depths of whatever in which he dwelt

that would have brought this factor to

the front like that. I was silent, and

stunned. The root cause of all this  -

I did only much later find out  -  had

to do (and I recite all these here as

a sort of personal revelation, the sort of

thing only befitting a memoir-accounting

of this very personal sort as I've been

doing here in these 'Avenel' posts. My

father is long dead, and this material

lives on in my personal narrative), with

the fact that, as a foster child, my father

had somehow been accounted for as a

girl, listed by error or fraud, allowing his

foster family the privilege then of having

a 'boy'. However, on the days of the visits

of the foster-care inspectors, or whatever,

to meet the qualifications for remaining

in that household, he'd be dressed for the

day, when a young child, as a girl. I realize

it sounds bizarre, seems bizarre to read it.

but I am told it was so. It left a brand on my

father's psyche that, somehow, apparently

never left him. Each of us, as we mature,

are given various factors we must deal with,

things within that  - once we recognize them

 -  begin demanding their own attentions

and accommodations. It's never easy and  -

to make things worse for my father, I can

only imagine the cringes he went through

when having to answer for being in the

Navy and thus at sea, for those South Pacific

years, on shiploads of guys. Let the

poor man rest in peace.

-

We are all wounded along the way, I guess,

and it's hard to say or admit. I know that it

caused some really peculiar moments for

me  -  the self-doubts and all the anxieties

that such family and personal revelations

cause. Nothing I could have ever done

about it, of course, but the wounds grew

into me anyway; not out of me. How freaky

was it, later on, realizing the seminary as a

part-time crib-fest of (what I still call)

'perverts' here and there. Man-to-Man love

is one thing  - and you can have it, as it

doesn't concern me at all  -  but inflicting

that within the midst and the centers of

the power-relationships of mentoring and

the boarder-school environment, along

with the repressions of a perverse, iron-age

religion, is both criminal and asking for

trouble. And asking for revenge too. It

takes a troubled man to sing a troubled

tune, as the old folk-song goes.

-

Yeah, me. That's just how it went. I'd

always wished I was 6' 2", just to have

that under my belt (pun intended?). But

then what does anyone really know about

that? And who cares, except the bearer?

I'm told it's all about heart and feeling

anyway. But, the point being made is

the damage inflicted : This is a case of

'school' finally NOT being culpable; it

had nothing to do with this one. On fact,

school did good. I learned words, language,

numbers, good sense, ideas and 'history',

and at least the rudiments of all of that,

well enough to plod on the rest of the

way by my own powers. That's really

all that can be asked. The rest of it was

psychological. Whether 'drama' or not, 

it too is part of my make-up, and whatever

part that may be, I find it missing in a lot

of other people I meet. I wish I had their

(apparent) internal peace. When I look

at School 4 today (and School 5 too, I 

guess) as bare and tree-barren as they 

now are, ringed by guards and a cop 

car and all those clingy parents always

mauling around their kids at morning 

entry and afternoon pick-up, I see only

the rock-ribbed and solid old-time 

matter by which I was schooled there.

The rest is all beside-board, having to

do with nothing. It was, however, from

there that I took all my  basics, and that's

all that matters now. My mother kept

that school elevated, in her eyes, to a

pinnacle of learning and being. I never

did, but she would speak of with 

reverence, right down the end of our 

block. I remember once, when we first 

moved there, and even before I entered 

school (meaning, I guess, it had to be 

Summer/Fall '55), she and I were walking 

across the school parking lot, perhaps

going towards one of the stores on 

Avenel Street, over the lot where 

teachers used to park their cars (gone 

now, it's a new addition of elementary 

classrooms at the base of Inman Avenue).

Instead of being paved, back then, the lot

was covered with the coal-fire ashes and

cinders from the school's furnace-burning.

I asked her, as we walked over it, the

loose and cindery gravel-stones, what they

'do' inside. She  -  using the cinders as the

example  -  said 'oh, they teach you how to

make things, use things, like these cinders.'

I'll always remember that, in whatever clarity

it had, as being, to me, a telling beacon of her

idea of learning : 'Utility.' Education, leaning,

and knowledge had to do with learning how

to use things, make things from the matter 

around you. Perhaps, in her unschooled way,

she didn't even really mean that, or didn't 

understand or realize that she did, but I see

it all now  -  and remember it vividly  -  as

a quite fine piece of utilitarian thinking on

her part. In many ways now a complete 

opposite to the kind of thinking I live by,

yet  -  then again as I think of it  -  what am

I doing here anyway, except making something,

from the sad, stupid, sorrowful cinders of my

own dead life? Or trying to anyway.
-
'....Writing this is a 'nest of memories, a tangle
of anecdotes told to me and misheard, or
misremembered; regrets and revisions forced
by time; of days and words lying dormant,
 sometimes for decades, until something - 
some dream maybe, or some secret cue  -  
cracked their husk to a small, provisional
understanding. In short, like something 
vague and circumstantial, yet real and perfect 
too, it's a complex, non-linear, sometimes 
contradictory and often inclusive bit of a mess.
A lot like life, if gotten right.' I thought of that, 
and went and dug it out, as I thought some more 
about what I was doing. This chapter, here, about 
my mother and my father, I admit, it rattled me a 
bit, maybe shouldn't have been told, came out of 
nowhere, when I was not expecting it. It smells of 
myself, and of my town, here related. But, what  
makes one a writer, perhaps, is that needed 
willingness to follow your thoughts anywhere,  
especially if they lead out of the present,
in search of what they will say to you about
the past. So, then, here it all took me, and 
here then I am. All surprises yet.