Oblivion revisited
House # 8 Picatinny Arsenal
We plan. God laughs.
Yiddish proverb
It has been a while since I posted anything on here and the reasons are manifold. I came back from the US leg of my trip on such a high, ready to grab life—and this project—with both hands. Then came the unmistakable laughter from upon high, an audible cackle as work projects and out-of-town visitors and tax deadlines rained down, all of which only seemed to amplify my inner imposter. To top it all off, the bureaucracy involved in Lilly applying to college in Germany with an Irish leaving certificate sent me down a rabbit hole that I have yet to emerge from. I found myself preparing for the next leg of my 35 Houses trip without having scratched the surface of the last one. The German portion of the trip had meanwhile shape-shifted from a solo journey of self-discovery into a mother-daughter college search from the Baltic coast to the Bavarian backcountry. Hardee-har-fuckn-har. There’s a part of me that’s clearly disappointed, while another part can’t believe this amazing human wants to take a road trip with me.
I’m not sure how much of this Lilly understands (or would acknowledge), not unlike me back in Houses #7 and #8. Now that I’m a parent, I can see how completely oblivious I was to my parent’s challenges, struggles and lives during my youth. Maybe that is just what parenting is. Inviting small humans into your world and giving them all of the love, the care, the worry and the money you can with no expectation of anything in return. Do children really ever, apart from occasional glimpses, see their parents as real people? It’s not that they do not love their parents—and love them a lot!—it’s just that the struggles and challenges parents face rarely seem to make a child’s top ten list of concerns.
This was especially true for me when I lived in New Jersey. The move from Germany to Sparta, NJ in the summer of 1982 was essentially a gift to my older sister. My dad had orders to lead the Army’s small caliber weapons laboratory at Picatinny Arsenal. Unfortunately, violent crime was at a record high in the tri-state area that year, and the local school near Picatinny was known for metal detectors and “light” gang activity. That’s why the few teens living on base were bussed to a school about an hour away. My parents didn’t have the heart to rob Amy of her senior year social life, particularly after moving her halfway across the world. So, we ended up renting a house on idyllic Lake Mohawk (at considerable expense compared to free on-base housing) and gave Amy the sendoff she deserved at Sparta High.
And then, the inevitable happened. Practically before Amy caught her mortarboard on the football field, my parents had moved us on base and enrolled me in far-off Morris Knolls High School. The logic of this plan was crystal clear, at least it would be for any rational adult. I may have been a lot of things in the summer of 1982—obsessed with becoming a model, for example, and hopelessly infatuated with the artist still known as Prince—but rational was not one of them. Had my parents made us aware of how expensive it was to send Amy to Duke? Did my father’s impending retirement from the Army and his plans to start a business ever come up at the dinner table? If it did, my mind was clearly elsewhere. I was smart enough to never verbalize my jealousy and anger and spite, but I was also dumb enough to channel my rage against the injustice of it all by eating as little as humanly possible.
Apart from our mandatory family dinner, I survived on a single granola bar most days. Tylenol took the edge off the hunger headache but made me queasy. When I inevitably passed out in class, the nurse would call my mom to come get me. The fact that this never rang any alarm bells, at school or at home, probably had something to do with my otherwise high-functioning behavior. My hunger-induced fantasy world, e.g., winning the Young Miss modeling contest and becoming Mrs. Prince, did not keep me from making straight As. My superiority complex was conspicuous and excruciating, a fact that didn’t exactly endear me to my classmates. As one of the tallest freshmen, the basketball coach begged me to play center. I agreed, but only on the condition that I didn’t have to run drills. One day, after a teacher told the class to “be more like Jennifer” (holding a recent test of mine up for all to see), the girl behind me scrawled bitch on my white winter coat. Then there was that slightly greasy guy in a leather jacket who used to pass me love poems in English class. I curled up my nose and threw them straight in the trash (perhaps unwisely*). Charming.
My inner turmoil went unseen that year, and I don’t blame anyone for that. Being skinny and making straight As meant you were winning in our world! Anyway, I’m not sure I would have even accepted help. Over the past 7 moves, it had become clear that the praise I got for my “model child” shtick was definitely better than anything “problem kids” got; I wasn’t about to give that up. And somewhere deep down inside, despite largely tuning my parents out, I must have known they had a lot on their plate. Mom was working full time to help pay for Amy’s college and cushion the impending loss of our regular Army paycheck (doubly devastating that she had to rescue me from my fainting couch!). Dad was busy cultivating contacts for his new consulting firm when he wasn’t managing the military’s premier large caliber weapons laboratory. Who had the time?
I knew what I had to do. The women in my family have always been good at not rocking the boat; it’s literally in my genes. My mom knew better than to make trouble for her mother, a divorcée and business owner way ahead of her time. Same goes for my grandmother during the Great Depression. And my great grandmother before her, who lost her father at the age of 12. You can bet she never dramatically fainted when her mother traveled up north as a fashion buyer. A long line of strong women providing for their families, all with daughters who intuitively knew how to stiff-upper-lip their way through their unavoidable teenage angst.
I have been thinking about this a lot as I travel through Germany with Lilly. Any chance we can break the cycle? I like to think I’ve been sensitive to her struggles and offered support where I can, but I know I’ve often fallen short. I worry about the burdens she silently bears, even though she’s much more outspoken than I ever was. On more than one occasion she has come out with a particularly insightful (often too insightful, IYKWIM!) comment on the state of my life, so I know she isn’t completely oblivious to my struggles. It’s a blessing that we are as close as we are, though there are still things we both are clearly holding back. Thank God she has great girlfriends; there’s nothing better in the world. I should know. That is what saved me back in 1983. After my dad retired from the Army, we moved back to House #5 in Oakton, Virginia, just three doors down from Amy Jennifer Jones, my best friend since the second grade. Female friendship, not for the first and definitely not for the last time, literally saved my life.
*Quandary: Was the poet in question a classmate called Neal Casal? The guy who ended up playing guitar with such greats as Willie Nelson and Chris Robinson? He passed away tragically in 2019, so that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. And since John Hughes is also no longer able to confirm or deny it, let’s just say there is a distinct possibility that Morris Knolls me was the inspiration for Claire Standish.