Safe In My Heart

Today has always had special significance for me because it was the day my first husband, Rich, died.  The song that I think of most today is a song called “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie Titanic.  The lyrics are:

Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

Love can touch us one time
And last for a lifetime
And never let go 'til we're gone

Love was when I loved you
One true time I'd hold to
In my life, we'll always go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on (why does the heart go on?)
Once more, you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

You're here, there's nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
We'll stay forever this way
You are safe in my heart and
My heart will go on and on

 We both loved that song as well as another called “I Hope You Dance”.   We both had a fascination with John Edward, the psychic, and promised that whoever "went first" would come back and try to communicate with the other.

Until I began dating Ted, I had a lot of communications from Rich.  Some people would just say this is coincidence but for months I would wake up around 4 a.m. and either “My Heart Will Go On” or “I Hope You Dance” was playing.  Sometimes my printer would turn on and print out a little heart symbol.  Other times, my scanner would go on and Rich’s picture would appear on my computer screen.  These things would happen when I was in another part of the room.  I’d lift the lid of the scanner and nothing was there.  Sometimes I’d catch a flash or an impression that he was there in the room or car with me.

I started looking for widowers to talk to after months of grief and loneliness, and I signed up with Match.com.  Ted’s profile came to me one day and I was struck by his physical resemblance to Rich.  Oh no, I thought, and deleted the profile.  Interestingly, I didn’t try to locate widows on LI or even in NY, which is where I was living.  I was looking for out-of-state friendships because my loss was so new.  I didn't want to date yet.

My membership in Match.com was about to expire after the trial period, and I decided not to keep going with it.  I was discovering that most widowers were looking for relationships and wanted to hook up with women much younger.  Then Ted’s profile showed up again and I heard Rich whisper, “Give him a chance.”  I felt like I’d had an electric shock.  I read the profile and decided I would contact him.  The rest, as they say, is history.

The last time I saw Rich was in one of those dreams that feels like it’s really happening.  I was falling asleep and he sat beside me, picked me up and pulled me onto his lap.  He started rocking me, holding me close.  He said softly, “I have to go now.”  When I woke up, I felt rested.

What I have now are warm and loving memories of Rich, and that’s how it should be.  My heart went on with Ted and I love him.  Rich lives on in a piece of my heart and always will.

Marching to a different beat

I am by nature an introvert.  I tend to be an observer and can relate to the feeling of being on the periphery of a group of friends or family.   Before I started school, I was surrounded by loving family and believed that all mommies and daddies were deaf inside the house and hearing outside.  The reason for that is sign language was still stigmatized when I was a child in the ‘50s-60s-70s.  My parents didn’t sign in public, only using their voices with my brother, family members and me.

When I was in first grade, we moved to a neighborhood about 10 miles from most other family members.  Our neighbors on either side had children and I wanted to be friends with them.  One morning, I woke to chanting out my bedroom window.  I went outside to see what was going on and found these “friends” dancing atop a mound of peat moss my parents had delivered to our back yard.  They were chanting, “Cassie’s mother is deaf and dumb.”  I wasn’t sure why they were calling my mom dumb because she wasn’t.  I was hurt and angry, charging up the mound to push them all off.

I ran inside and found Mom in the kitchen.  I mouthed and acted out what happened, and her eyes began flashing with anger.  I wanted to know what “deaf and dumb” was.  Mom said it was an insult because she couldn’t hear.  That was news to me.

“Can you hear me now?” I asked, loudly, and she shook her head no.  Now I was really upset.  I shouted, “Can’t you hear me NOW?” She shook her head no over and over.  I was thunderstruck.  My parents weren’t like the neighbor kids’ parents at all.  Just as suddenly, I realized we were different.

I did eventually make friends with other kids in the neighborhood but I was more reserved than I ever had been.  I’d been burned and never played with those first friends again.  Sometimes the newer friends would invite me to their houses to play; I was reluctant to ask them to come to mine.  I didn’t want a repeat of those first new “friends”.

At 10, we moved to Baltimore.  People thought I was shy because I was very quiet.  My brother and I did play with kids in the neighborhood but we were always on tenterhooks because we were different.  Sometimes those kids would taunt us and say our parents were foreign spies because they “talked funny.”  It was a lonely feeling, not being a part of the group.

It wasn’t just my parents’ deafness that made me feel different.  It was as if being far from family removed my parents’ inhibitions.  They discovered a social club for the Deaf and that became their center.  The drinking and domestic violence began.  My brother and I didn’t want to have friends over.  I didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about what was happening in my family.  I already had co-dependent characteristics and they were aggravated and increased by the drinking and fighting.

As I maneuvered my way through school, I had a handful of friends.  We socialized by phone only after school.  I never fit in with a clique.  Fortunately, after a disastrous year in junior high, I managed to move up from the bullied loser caste level to a level where the mean kids just tolerated and left me alone.  I was just so relieved to be away from the cliques. 

I preferred to hang out in my bedroom with the door closed, reading or writing, and listening to Neil Diamond.  I enjoyed my privacy and definitely enjoyed being away from my battling parents.

As I got older, I learned about transcendentalism and was introduced, by a favorite English teacher, to writers like Emerson and Thoreau.  I found a quote that hit me where I lived and it became “mine”:

If a man does not
keep pace with
his companions,
perhaps it is
because he hears a
different drummer.
Let him step to
the music which
he hears, however
measured or
far away.  –Henry David Thoreau

This is me, I thought.  It was an early act of self-care that I took this quote and decided to wear it proudly as a shield against hurtful words and being left out. 

It wasn’t always easy to wear that shield, especially when it came to dealing with my parents and their issues.  All of my own were triggered often as I tried to be a “good girl” to control their drinking and stop them hitting each other.  Stress brought on panic attacks/depression and I would lose that shield I was wearing.  Sometimes I couldn’t find it again for long periods of time.  I told my parents I needed to see a psychiatrist, and they were horrified.  How embarrassing.

I got help once I got a full-time job with benefits.  Therapy was a little helpful in that I got medication to reduced my panic attacks and depression. It was 1974 and there wasn’t a lot of information about children growing up in dysfunctional homes.   It was in the early 1990s before I learned about 12 step meetings specifically about my experiences.  Later on, in the ‘90s, I found a therapist who had alcoholic parents.  I learned so much about why and how I felt such intense anger and anxiety.  Understanding why I felt as I did help me learn how to reshape my own responses to difficult situations.  It’s taken years but now I’m in a very comfortable place.

I know how to act like an extrovert and I can take that role if it’s necessary.  Most of the time, though, I am who I am and don’t feel a need to explain myself or feel left out of things or hurt.  I have a few good friends, my books, my music, my writing.  Most of all, I have a supportive and loving husband, and an awesome blended family, 3 of my own adult children, 2 of his, 8 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.  Life is good.  I am grateful.

I still march to that different beat.  I always will.

Grandparent Estrangement

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about parental estrangement https://irishcoda54.blogspot.com/2022/05/estrangement-from-parents.html.  I explained why I was estranged from my parents several times over the years.  When I was estranged from them, I didn’t visit or contact them.  That meant there were times my parents didn’t see my children.  They never asked to see them, and I believed they were so dysfunctional it wouldn’t be in the kids’ best interest to spend time with them. 

I read an article in Katie Couric’s Wake-Up call newsletter. https://katiecouric.com/lifestyle/parenting/do-grandparents-have-legal-rights-to-see-their-grandchildren/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WUC_Weekend&utm_term=all_users I read the whole thing through, wondering if anything has changed so that grandparents have a right to visitation with their grandchildren.  The answer, for my husband and me, is no.

We have one grandchild in New Jersey and we have been a constant part of his life since he was an infant.  There were times when family disagreements with his mom led to periods of time when we couldn’t see him.  It was heart-breaking.  The story is long and complicated, just suffice to say that when he was about 3, the situation changed and we began to see him regularly.

His parents didn’t marry.  For a specific reason, his father had full custody.  His father wasn’t related to us but he was generous with allowing us to see our grandson.  Over the years, we built a strong relationship with the boy.  We went on hikes on the woods; swimming in the lake; saw movies together; ate meals together; played games together; celebrated holidays together.  We’d go to his school for concerts and special events. We visited museums, zoos, aquariums, and the battleship New Jersey.

Although the father was accepting toward us, the other grandmother was not.  She never forgave the mother for the breakup in the relationship.  She was bitter toward us as well, as if we were to blame for what happened too.  She had this paranoid fear that somehow our grandchild’s mother would take him and leave the state forever.  The mother did move out of state but that didn’t ease Mom-Mom’s worry.

In September 2020, our grandson’s father died.  His health had been failing over the years.  We don’t know if it was kidney disease or covid that killed him because his family wasn’t forthcoming with any details.  Our grandson wasn’t even sure why his dad had died.  Mom-Mom was in a near state of hysteria. There was no will; there was no directive for custody.  She was afraid the mother would return and take grandson away since he was still a minor, just 16.

Mom-Mom dictated that none of our other family members could have anything to do with our grandson. We were not going to rock the boat.  There was no way we wanted to endanger our relationship with him.  Our grandson wanted to continue living with Mom-Mom, and so he did.  His paternal uncle stepped up.  The boy was surrounded by love from them and from us.

He turned 18 in February.  In March, his maternal aunt and her fiancé came to NJ to look for a wedding gown.  They wanted to be married in NJ.  The mother was to be a matron of honor; she and her family also came to NJ.  The mother hadn’t seen, spoken or contacted our grandson in 13 years.  Like I said, a long complicated sad story.  They all wanted to see our grandson.  The mother and a half-sister wrote to our grandson, using our mailing address.

We took our grandson out for a meal and gave him the cards.  He was very moved.  He’d only gotten a very negative picture of his mother from Mom-Mom.  He wanted to see his mother again and meet his half-siblings.  He knew Mom-Mom would be furious so he didn’t want us to say anything to her about it.

So, we brought our grandson to our house; he’d told Mom-Mom he was coming over for movie and dinner.  We had a totally awesome time!  Our grandson was thrilled to be a big brother.  I don’t think he stopped smiling once. 

Around 8, the reunion began to break up.  There’s always a lot of noise with everyone chit-chatting at the door and, unfortunately, that’s when our grandson’s phone rang.  He answered it without thinking.  It was Mom-Mom and she could hear all the background noise.  She went totally ballistic.

We were all like popped balloons.

Since then, none of us have been able to contact him.  We’ve all left messages and texts on his phone, instant messaged him on Facebook, and left messages on his page.  Nothing.  We believe that Mom-Mom and his uncle have forbidden any contact with any of us.

You might wonder: but he’s 18 now and an adult, what’s up with that?  When he was 8 years old, his dad got him into quarter-midget racing.  We used to go to the Atco Racetrack to support him in his heats.  Racing became a passion with him, and his father encouraged it.  After his father died, his uncle took up the lead and our grandson races slingshot race cars in PA as well as NJ.

Maintaining a race car is very expensive.  They are in constant need of maintenance, and frequently have blown engines or other needed expensive repairs.  Our grandson belongs to a family team of racers and most of the expense is covered by sponsors.  I did have one phone call the day after the disastrous end to the reunion from him, and he told me Mom-Mom and his uncle threatened to throw him off the racing team if he dared contact any of us.  He couldn’t deal with it.

We couldn’t ask him to give up racing.  We can’t afford to support the sport he loves so much.

We’re in a quandary right now.  We don’t want to make things worse for our grandson, especially since the Supreme Court deemed that grandparents don’t have rights.  Thing is, that had to do with a parent’s right to decide who the child sees.  But our grandson lives with Mom Mom, his grandmother. 

There’s another issue at play too.  Although he is 18, our grandson has pervasive developmental disorder not other specified (PDD-NOS).  He is so bright in many ways but in other areas, he’s delayed.  He’s been trying to get a job to help support himself but it hasn’t been easy for him.  If he had a vocational counselor, I’m sure it would help but that family resists reaching out for any kind of assistance.

I wish we could just grab him and take him home with us, get him into trade school and get him involved with a vocational counselor.

And we’re heart-broken.

There are some cases in which grandparents do have access.  Read Katie Couric’s article (URL above) if you are in a situation and want to learn more.

A Portnoy's Complaint Sex Education

Some days current events become just too much for me.  The feds can’t charge that killer white supremacist kid in Buffalo with domestic terrorism even though he admitted to it.  Why?  Domestic terrorism isn’t against the law!  A bill just passed the House but only Kinzinger of the red party voted in favor of it.  The rest of the Rethugs are against it.  I bet it fails in the Senate.  Naturally.  Even better:  killer kid learned all about making his weapon from YouTube videos that are still available.  Are you effin kidding me?

In Oklahoma, unless a woman has been raped (and reported it) or whose life is in danger (medically documented) abortions will be illegal “from the moment of conception.”  Just when you think Rethuglicans can’t go any lower than soullessly voting against helping parents get formula or getting fast aid to Ukraine and on and on and on, they do this.

Civil war, here we come.  I’ve seen it speculated it might be a battle-free civil war.  States will stay together for things like budgets and so on but will otherwise ignore each other.  That's just a little less screwy than taking up arms against each other.

See?  My mind is blown.

So, what shall I write about instead?

How about an amusing little memory from my junior high years?

Some mothers have “the talk” with their daughters.  Mine didn’t.  First there was a language barrier.  I’ve written before that my mother went to an oral school for the Deaf, Lexington, in NYC in the 30s-40s.  The school was strictly using the oral method.  My mother and my aunt, Mom’s sister, learned that sign language was nasty and wrong.  They were forever warped by that lesson drummed into their heads.

Mom refused to sign to my brother and me, and she made my father go along with her.  Dad reluctantly agreed.  He wasn’t profoundly deaf like Mom was and his speech was understandable.  Further, his family and school totally supported use of sign language and "home signs".  We communicated with lip reading, a tedious and frustrating process for the four of us.  My brother and I often resorted to pantomime and fingerspelling, much to Mom's embarrassment.

On top of that, Mom was embarrassed by “that stuff” although she and my Dad had a healthy sex life.  Fortunately, she did warn me as I entered puberty that I was going to have a “monthly” and when it happened, I should let her know.  My younger cousin wasn’t so lucky.  My aunt was too mortified to discuss it and so one day the poor kid shrieked from the bathroom that she was dying.  She wasn’t.  She’d just gotten her period.

At that time, there wasn’t much sex education in school.  When I started junior high, Mom figured it was time I get the facts but not from her.  One day I found a book called Portnoy’s Complaint on my pillow.  I was an avid reader and guessed this must be a good book Mom wanted to share with me.  She was an avid reader too.

What an eye opener.  I was absolutely thrilled by everything I learned from that book.  I decided I would share all I learned with my best friends and brought the book to school.  It was an eye opener for them too.  Our stifled giggles got the attention of our neighbors who asked to have a peek.  Class was going on so this was accomplished with notes and gestures.  Soon Portnoy’s Complaint was making the rounds of boys and girls alike.  Everyone tried to be discreet, holding the book in their laps while acting like they were doing the assignment.

One of the boys began snorting, though,  and the teacher, who’d been getting suspicious we weren’t writing essays, confiscated the book and about dropped dead.  He wanted to know whose book it was.  I raised my hand and became the most popular kid in the class for the rest of the year.  I was sent to the office, along with the book.

The principal was properly impressed.  He was going to call my parents and I broke the news they couldn’t hear.  He dictated a letter instead.  That made me very nervous.  My mom was rather emotionally unstable and I figured she was going to blow a gasket.  To my surprise, she read the letter, turned tomato red, grabbed the book and went to her bedroom.  I never saw that copy of it again.  However, as soon as I could get to a bookstore, I bought one for myself and hid it in my room.

A few weeks later, I found another book on my pillow: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.  I learned a lot more from that book but felt it was too dry to pass around to my friends.  Everything was presented so clinically, textbook fashion.  BOR-ing.