Chapter One

Chapter One of my memoir

Chapter One

When I was growing up, we had never heard the word “dysfunctional” and we certainly didn’t have a clue about dysfunctional families. I can safely say, though, that we had a head start on defining them. We never had the typical family nucleus of a mom, a dad, and two children, but what we did have was far more interesting.


I was the designated mom—a job I handled with a fair amount of aplomb, if I do say so myself. I will even go out on a limb and say that I was the best ten-year-old mom around. My brother Mike, 30 months my junior, was the only one who came close to playing a traditional role. His was the role of a little boy—but he was also the family firebug. He was good at it, too. He could start a fire in a flash—pun intended. Almost burned down our apartment building once. He and my cousin set all the trashcans on fire that were lined up along the side of the building. What a fire that was!


My dad had a dual role in the family. During the daytime from the crack of dawn until about six o’clock every evening, he was a workaholic extraordinaire. He came home every night at about six o’clock and he always brought two six-packs of beer home with him, which he proceeded to drink non-stop until he passed out. Hence, the second part of his assigned role in the family—alcoholic. Somehow he always managed to get up bright and early the next morning and go about his workaholic way. Never missed a day.


Then there was my mother. Her role in the family changed frequently with her changing moods. One role that remained constant was that of designated sleeper. To my knowledge, most families do not have a designated sleeper and if they do, I would imagine that the mother would not be the one to fill that role. Too many “mom responsibilities” can’t be performed well when sleeping all day. However, as I said earlier, my family had a head start on defining the term “dysfunctional.” Actually, Mom didn’t sleep all the time—just during the day when any of the rest of us were awake. Once we all went to bed, she arose from her hibernation and made her way to the kitchen where she performed her post-hibernation ritual. We were all quite familiar with her ritual. Why, if I listen closely I can even hear it now. It goes like this: I am just slipping into slumber when I hear my mother’s bedroom door squeak open and the shuffle of her slippers in the hall tells me she is up for the night. I hear the faucet in the kitchen screech to life as she turns it on to fill her tea glass three-quarters of the way full. I hear my brother make his nightly trek to the bathroom, so I know he has been awakened as well. Then there is the raspy sound of the metal lid being screwed off the glass jar of instant tea. Two teaspoons of instant tea slip like silt into the water; the teaspoon hits against the sides of the glass exactly six times as she stirs.


C-R-A-C-K! No, not the glass, that’s the sound of the ice tray surrendering three pieces of ice that she plop, plop, plops into her glass. Two more turns of the teaspoon in the glass for good measure and then she’s off to the brown pleather (was pleather around then or would you call it Naugahyde?) recliner in the living room where she pushes back, raising the footrest where she places her pointy-toe gold house shoe-shod feet, and sinks back in comfort. Then I hear the snick of her lighter as she lights the first of God-only-knows how many cigarettes to keep her company in her pre-dawn vigil. My brother and I drift off to sleep again about the time she is reaching for the remote to find some ancient movie that she has seen at least ten times before. She whiles the night away, smoking and drinking glass after glass of instant tea with just three ice cubes, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the clock lest she stay out of hibernation too long and the sun’s rays catch her unaware. I wonder what might have happened to her had the sun shone on her even once after one of those all-night vigils. Might it have transformed her fairytale-like into Donna Reed or the mom from Father Knows Best? We’ll never know for sure. She told me once, years later, that she was allergic to the sun. She said it with a straight face. Oh, right. That would explain it all. I always stayed awake as long as I could, worried that she might fall asleep and drop her lighted cigarette onto the pleather (Naugahyde?) chair, burning us all to a crisp. I was the mom, remember? It was my job to worry about those things.