Without Forgivness

Bury it deep Mike, bury it deep...

Poverty is embarrassing, there is no other way to put it. You inevitably find yourself with other children who are not poverty stricken. It’s embarrassing to have to wear clothes that no longer fit you and then be ridiculed for it. Or to have your mom take you on a bus to the store where she buys you Buddy’s (that was the derisive term we used as kids for the cheapest sneakers you could buy). I never got angry at my mom for that, I understood that was all she had to spend on me. Being the third of three boys, I had lots of hand-me-down clothes and jackets. You try to hide the fact that you are poor because of that embarrassment, in ways that hopefully no one will see.

I’m sure my mom understood poverty all too well and was searching for a way out. For her not only was it the embarrassment of poverty, and all that brings with it, but she had three little boys to feed. When my father walked out on us, my mother told me that he took the electric bill money for the month on the way out the door and never looked back. Being in the spot she was with three little boys at home, I’m sure she couldn’t be picky about who she was dating. I’m also certain it was a lot to ask of someone to take on three kids. When I was four or five years old my mom, backed into that proverbial corner, married someone who I have always referred to as a monster. The abuse began very early in their marriage, and the trauma was horrible. There would be ten long years to follow.

Soon after moving out of the projects and onto Genesee St. with my new stepfather the abuse began. He became focused on me for some reason. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest and most vulnerable of the three boys mom had. That’s not to say that my brothers didn’t feel his wrath, they did, but he seemed to have a particular focus on me. He would get angry at me for petty reasons, like not wanting my peas to touch my mashed potatoes. My mom would tell him to leave me alone and he would get angry, and before you know it the cops were there breaking up another “domestic” call. I often thought that calling an emotional powder keg like that a “domestic” call, was a disservice to how volatile an argument like that could be. How about calling it a “Family Violence” call. My brothers would get angry with me for being the cause of the fight. Why do you have to be weird?! THAT was devastating to hear, but the way I behaved was directly related to the extreme violence I was experiencing on a regular basis, and the severe stress that came with it.

One night there was an argument that happened where the cops were called again, when he got angry at me for not calling him dad. I never did, and I never would call him by that name. I never got angry with my brothers for blaming me for the adult problems my mom and stepfather had. For as long as I can remember I have had a strong sense of empathy for others, I could see why they might feel that way. They didn’t ask to be in that house either. It wasn’t their fault, they were just children too. They just wanted it to stop. But knowing they thought I was the cause of the madness hurt me and cut deep, making my anxiety even worse, and my weird behavior increasingly extreme.

After moving out of that house on Genesee St. we moved into an apartment on George Urban Blvd. After two volatile years there I am certain that our landlord Gus asked us to leave. We found ourselves on the move again landing at 2290 Harlem Rd. when I was around eight years old. Once again, the same old patterns arose where the cops were called there often. We got a Border Collie dog while living there, and I loved that dog. I don’t remember the dog’s name, but I’ll never forget their face. The landlord told us that we had to get rid of the dog or move, which I did not know at the time. My stepfather loaded us up on a bright sunny day with our dog in the old station wagon we had, without telling us why, and drove out to the country. Me and John had the rumble seat. A rumble seat was a pop-up bench seat that looked out the back window instead of facing forward, with no seat belts! When my stepfather was satisfied that he had gotten far enough away, he stopped the car on the side of the road by some cornstalks and got out and told us to stay there. He coaxed our dog out of the car and led him a short distance away. He would soon come running back gleefully laughing, with the dog trailing a short distance behind him, and jumped in the car and took off. It was hard to watch our dog hopelessly chasing our car which was getting further and further away. What kind of monster would do that to a child? I was eight or nine years old at the time and John would have been thirteen or fourteen. We never spoke of that, not on the ride home in the immediate aftermath. Not when we got home. Not ever. Not until this day. We were all terrified of him. ANYTHING to keep the peace. Bury this one deep Mike, bury it deep.

Not long after that my mom and stepfather got into a really bad fight where the cops were called. This time he was kneeling on top of my mom in the dining room and beating her with a metal vacuum cleaner hose. She was screaming for us to call the police as she had done in the past, but we were all frozen, huddled together near the kitchen doorway, and too terrified of my stepfather to move. He was screaming at us to not touch that phone or we would be next. Someone got the courage to make the call, but it wasn’t me. Not having that courage tends to haunt you through the years, even if I can forgive myself for only being eight or nine years old at the time. When my brother, whoever it was, called, he came and tore the phone off the wall, but by then the call had already been made. The police showed up, and I can remember the look on one of the officer’s faces, even now over fifty-five years later. He was pleading with my mom and stepfather, telling them to look at what you’re doing to your kids, while making eye contact with me. That job must take a high emotional toll on them. But then he said something that stunned and scared the hell out of me, saying if we have to come back here again tonight “someone” would be going to jail. Someone! So, wait, you would take “someone”, could it be my mom, to jail, and leave us with the monster who was just beating my mother with a vacuum cleaner hose. The person who just ripped the phone off the wall to prevent you from being called? Really?! That was terrifying to hear. The next day it was silent, like the day after a bomb went off. It’s hard to describe. No one ever talked about what happened the night before after any of these blowouts. It was just eerily quiet, like yea, that just happened. Bury it deep Mike, bury it deep.

Mom and my stepfather would buy a house on 14 Olcott St., on the city line in the Pine Hill neighborhood, when I was around ten years old. It is the street I think of as the one I grew up on. We lived there when I was about the age of ten to perhaps sixteen years of age. That house became a house of horror for me. The violent fights escalated and were more frequent. One night the police had come and remarkably gave my mom and stepfather the same warning they did on Harlem Road, “if we have to come back here again tonight…” I remember my mom being flabbergasted by what she was hearing from them. Her face was filled with desperation not knowing what to do.

After the cops left she had us all get dressed in our winter coats and hats and said that we were leaving. It was the dead of night on a cold wind-swept evening with flurries in the air. We made our way to the corner of the street where a payphone was. My mom began to call her family to see if anyone would come to get us, but it was clear that everyone was saying no. In a brief and simple explanation of that dynamic, the abuser isolates you from your family and alienates them. The family then urges the person being abused to leave. The abused person is financially dependent on the abuser and feels like they don’t have a choice, so they keep going back. The family then throws their hands up, exasperated, and leaves the abused person even more isolated and adrift. After several calls, mom’s pleas being rejected by her family, she gave in to her very cold and embarrassed children, who were hoping no one would see them, and pleading with her to do something. After a couple of hours, and without any options left, we made our way back. The house was dark, and my stepfather had gone to bed without a care in the world, and was sleeping soundly. She was insistent that we be VERY quiet as we entered the house and that we go straight to bed. Bury it deep Mike, bury it deep.

The holidays are generally happy times for most people, filled with celebrations and laughter. It is a gathering of family and friends, eating good food and enjoying each other’s company, counting their blessings. It was not what I experienced in our house. For good or bad, holidays are also a time of high emotions one way or the other. Christmas mornings always seemed to be miserable events for me filled with tension. We would get up early in the morning excited as children often are, only to find my stepfather angry, feeling that we were not being grateful enough. One time going as far as having a visit from the cops again, on Christmas morning.

As an adult during the holidays and especially on Christmas mornings, I have what might be referred to as PTSD. I have worked hard to overcome that feeling and to make those mornings a pleasant time for my family. There is much to learn from knowing what NOT to do. Whatever my stepfather did, do the opposite and you will be fine is what I’ve told myself. I have also had the benefit of learning by example, from watching Lisa’s family and their Christmas gatherings. Her family would fill a house with forty people or more on Christmas day, (a tradition we would continue for some time at our home when we got one) They seemed like a normal family, and I was intent on learning from that example, and I have. Christmas mornings for my family are peaceful and happy, and I am grateful for that peace and for my family.

At about the age of twelve years old I was in the middle of what was probably a undiagnosed nervous breakdown. The stress levels were very high, and I was acting weirder by the minute. I was seen by the school psychologist who evaluated me and said he is of normal intelligence and reacting to his environment. At one point I believe my family was ordered to go to a family court, where the judge required us to have family counseling. Finding ourselves in the family court chambers, in front of a judge or family court counselor, I’m not sure which, a man behind a large desk, in a fancy office, began to probe what the issues were in our family. They began to focus on me as being the issue. Not my stepfather but me. I was the problem in their view, because I was acting so weird. That was devastating to hear. I just sat there, wordless, listening to the attack on me. I was twelve years old, but it was my family’s opinion that I was the reason for all the violence and dysfunction, and that it was my fault. My mom was mostly silent throughout this. Only in reflection as an adult could I understand how wrong it was for them to do that to me, and for the judge/counselor to allow that to happen.

My mother was increasingly going deeper into her bottle of cheap whiskey. She would call ahead to the liquor store and send me to pick up the bottle, which was in a brown paper bag, in exchange for the three dollars she had given me. I would stop along the way at Neuman’s drug store and get two packs of Viceroy 100s for her. Mom was taking a lot of pills and sleeping a lot during the day by that point. She was beaten down, and it seemed to me she was giving up. I could feel her checking out of my life day by day. She wasn’t a bad person. She was very smart, had a good soul and a great laugh, but I think she just had bad luck and bad timing. She tried to do better for my younger sister and I’m glad for that. She had a very hard life. My mom would send me to a doctor to fix what was wrong with me. Their solution was to prescribe valiums to me for the peptic ulcer that I had and developed from the stress. I now had my own valiums just like mom did. At twelve. That was a bad idea. As I’ve said before, one was good, but two were better.

Mom at her table. Books and crossword books nearby. Country & Western music on the radio. Always ready for a scrabble game where she would kick my ass.

Us when I was maybe 17?

I kept changing schools often throughout my life. In the first through fourth grades, I would go to Pine Hill elementary school, then in the fifth grade go to Most Holy Redeemer. Then in the sixth grade I went back to Pine Hill. In the seventh grade I went to Cheektowaga Central High School. Looking back on that time I believe I was probably in the middle of a nervous breakdown. After speaking to the school psychologist, they took me out of the high school after a couple of months, and I went back to Most Holy Redeemer for the rest of the seventh and eighth grades. Along the way one psychologist or counselor, I’m not certain which, asked me what I liked to do. I told them music had always been a refuge for me, and that I wanted to play guitar. At the age of twelve in 1973, my mom sent me to get guitar lessons that I’m sure she could not afford, and it’s been a lifelong escape and habit for me ever since. I just bought my 65th and last guitar this week. It’s been a long road, and music is still a refuge for me all these years later.

When I was thirteen years old I was severely underweight and not eating much, numbing myself from my reality with the valiums. I was five foot tall and weighed eighty pounds. By the time I turned fifteen I was six feet tall and weighed 185 pounds. I was on the streets hanging with all the wrong people doing all the wrong things, and back home no one cared. One pill felt good, two felt even better, my valiums were only five milligrams, but my moms were ten milligrams. I wondered what fifteen of my mom’s valiums would feel like? One night I stole half of her bottle that was sitting in the medicine cabinet, taking 150 milligrams of valium, and went to a concert. Afterwards I drank and smoked pot all night with my friends.

Not caring anymore, this was gonna end like it was gonna end. My feeling was whatever. I was a very angry young man and getting larger, which helped me to be a good football player because I could legally hit people on the football field. School had essentially three factions, the Heads, the Nerds, and the Jocks. I got along with all of them. One time the jocks from my football team asked me to help them at the basketball game that night. We were playing a game against our rivals, and they thought there was gonna be a fight after the game. For maybe the first time in my life I asked my stepfather for something, a ride to the school, and he said yes. I had my friend Steve along with me in the back seat. When he dropped us off Steve said Mike, look at what I got, revealing my stepfather’s billy club from under his jacket that he had taken from the back seat. That scared the shit out of me because if my stepfather realized that it was gone, I was gonna be in deep trouble. And I didn’t need that if there was a fight that night anyway, I could do what I needed to do with my fist. I immediately hid the billy club in the bushes in front of the school and went inside. After the game let out everyone was standing around in front of the school waiting for something to start, it seemed like hundreds of them. After a while it was clear nothing was gonna happen, so I went to retrieve the billy club to return it to my stepfather’s car that night when I got home. As soon as I picked it up some cops came up from behind me and knocked it out of my hand. They took me to their squad car, put me up against it, frisked me, handcuffed me, and put me in the back seat. In front of what seemed like hundreds of people. All eyes were on me, and it was incredibly quiet. I was sixteen years old, and I had just gotten arrested in front of the whole school. My uncle Paul was a famous Buffalo cop, and I think my mom was able to lean on that connection to get me out. In the end my stepfather got into more trouble than me, for not securing his billy club properly for the security job he had at the time. Needless to say, that didn’t make things any easier for me at home.

One early morning my mom and stepfather started arguing again. This one was different in that it was during the day. Other than Christmas mornings the arguments almost always occurred in the evening. I have an image of this morning in my mind that I will never be free of and can see in great detail. The shouting was getting louder and louder, and it was getting ugly. My stepfather sat on his chair in the kitchen with his glasses on, in his white T-shirt that he always wore and khaki pants. I was bigger now, fifteen or sixteen years old and more prepared and ready to do something if he began to hit my mother. I knew this looked and felt different, so I stayed in the next room over, listening and waiting. This time I was going to have the courage to jump on him if he tried to hit her. That was not gonna happen, not this time, not again. Suddenly, he began to convulse, and shake, and fluids began emanating from every orifice of his body, and he was crying uncontrollably. He was breaking. This was bad. He was either gonna kill us or I was gonna kill him. But he continued to devolve into this puddle of a mess. Snots coming out of his nose, crying and shaking uncontrollably. At some point my mom became alarmed and saw me standing in the doorway and told me to call the police, this time I had the courage to do so and explained what was happening to the person on the other end of the line. They sent an ambulance and the police. They loaded him up on a stretcher and wrapped him up from head to toe, I believe treating him for shock and what likely was a psychotic break. They wheeled him out of there that day and he never returned. I think he may have spent a couple of weeks in the psychiatric center and then moved in with his sister around the corner, but I can’t be certain of that because we never spoke of him again. It was like he never existed. Bury it deep Mike, bury it deep.

He was mercifully gone, forever, but we went into absolute poverty. My mom didn’t get a job, she was broken and incapable really. She had worked very little outside of our home in my life. We didn’t talk about what happened that morning, not then, not later, not ever, until the day she died. It’s odd to me looking back at what happened that we never spoke of it. Not a word. Most normal people would think that is impossible, but it’s true. I think with hindsight it was just too painful to talk about, and really when you think about it, what is there to say? I went out that night and got ripped, maybe more than I ever had, but it’s hard to keep track of that sort of thing. I am certain my mother went deep into the bottle that night. I didn’t say a word to my friends about what had just happened that afternoon, but they did notice that I was quieter than usual. I was shaken, not that you could tell, and not in the mood to talk. Besides, the fact is me and my friends never spoke of our feelings or problems, that was just a sign of weakness to us. If you tried to speak about something like that you were more likely to get a slap upside the head than a pat on the back.

Filled with anger about the poverty that was getting worse, I became a resentful and angry young man. We went on food stamps and welfare, and although I really liked the government cheese blocks that we would get, it was hard at the end of the month for this growing boy when food was scarce. After one night out when I was seventeen I came home looking for something to eat, and I couldn’t find anything but dry Nestle quick mix. I did however find food that she was hiding from me, and the realization that she was hiding food from me was devastating. But I understood her motivation, she had my younger sister (by 5 years) to feed and take care of, so I ate four heaping teaspoons of that Nestles dry powder quick mix and went to bed.

Around this time and spiraling down, I asked my mom for money, which she obviously didn’t have, and we began to argue. I went upstairs to my room and on the way punched the window in the hall, cutting two main arteries in my wrist in the process. I have a scar that I wear until this day, with the nerve damage getting worse as I age. One stupid moment and a lifetime of regret. I almost bled to death that day, one artery spraying out blood all over the hall walls and ceiling, and the other artery pouring out like a river onto the hall steps. My mom called an ambulance, and they took me to the hospital. They stitched my wrist up with several stitches inside on the main arteries I had cut, and on the outside. I was wearing my favorite t-shirt at the time that read in big letters across the front in two rows, BULL SHIT. I even wore that shirt to school and no one ever told me to take it off, except for one time when the dean Mr. McCarthy saw me wearing it and made me turn it inside out. My mom called my Aunt Claudia, and after hearing how much I loved that shirt she took it home and brought it back to me clean as new.

Mom, there’s a guy on the phone that says he’s my father, to which my mother replied softly, it is. Obviously one of them had reached out to the other and set that call up. I was stunned. He had abandoned us when I was a baby and was now looking to reconnect. Perhaps it was because my stepfather was gone now? He came by our house soon after that call that day and sat down in my stepfather’s chair in the kitchen, and we spoke for a little while. He asked me to get my brother John on the phone and I called him. He was living in Georgia at the time, and John said to me I don’t have a father and refused to talk to him. John was in the Navy living in the south and was old enough to remember when he left. I was only seventeen months old and had no memory of our father, but John would have been almost seven years old when our father abandoned us, and that must have hurt him deeply. You could see my father was hurt by that response and wasn’t expecting it.

Learning that I was out of a job my father offered me and my brother Phil work with him. We both said yes, and I looked forward to getting to know him, he seemed like a good guy that day. My mom never spoke of my father, and it never occurred to me to ask about him. At the time I met him he was working as a handy man on a mansion in the Delaware park neighborhood of Buffalo. I worked for him for two weeks doing whatever work he needed me to do on any given day, roofing, painting, cleaning etc. When I showed up at the end of the second week to collect my pay for the past two weeks of labor, he was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared, again. I would not see him again until he was in his casket. He had put me to work for two weeks, and I had known him for just under three weeks, then screwed me out of my hard-earned pay and left. Again. What kind of man does that? THAT hurt. It still does until this day. I guess he wanted one more shot at screwing me over. The weird thing is that I don’t remember what he looked like, or even what he sounded like. My mom had always said that I walked like him and looked the most like him, but one thing is for certain, I am a better man than him.

Years later, at the age of sixty, I connected with my two half-sisters and half-brother that my father had abandoned me and my brothers for through ancestry DNA. I had heard rumors about them and knew they existed. They were nice people. We were able to meet a few times and get to know each other a little bit. But they stopped reaching out after a while and I respected that, I wasn’t sure I wanted that relationship either, perhaps it was just too late for us at that point in our lives. When we were getting to know each other, I naturally asked them about our father often. I asked them if he had a gravesite I could visit, and they said he didn’t have a marker, but told me where his remains were buried in a local Italian cemetery. I asked them if it was ok with them if I bought a monument for his burial spot, and two of them thought it was a good idea and wanted to help me pay for it. I didn’t expect that and would have done it myself but letting them help pay for it felt like the right thing to do. Something we could do together, for our father. I went to the monument maker place and selected a design and then paid for it and coordinated the installation with the cemetery. In a strange way that’s difficult to explain, that endeavor and process was emotionally healing for me. He was dead, my anger towards him was only hurting me. Why should I let him get the best of me that way. This just felt right. I believe that everyone deserves a marker to document that they lived on this planet at some point, if only for those left behind to contemplate their existence.

My father’s monument...

One of the places I volunteered at in my life was for Child & Family Services, with the intention of helping children who grew up like I did, and it could be rewarding work. When I retired, I reached out to a counselor I worked with years earlier there and told her I was semi-retired and asked her if she had any work available for me. Beth had become the COO in the intervening years (Since CEO), and she enthusiastically said yes and offered me a few jobs. I took one that was in a residential facility working with extremely violent, dysfunctional, heavily medicated children, between the ages of eight and fifteen, that mostly came from very dysfunctional homes like I had. I was able to connect with these exceedingly difficult to manage children in a way that most could not, and I did good work there. But it began to wear on me. This could be extremely stressful work, and I guess you would describe the feelings I felt as post-traumatic stress disorder from my youth. As I got older the more that stress began to affect me, so I had to leave that job after doing it for almost four years.

Through Child & Family Services I met the person who ran the local women’s shelter that was called Haven House. Laura was a great person. I explained to her how I grew up and asked her if there was any way that I could help her in her mission. She asked me if I was willing to speak to her college class at Niagara University about what it was like to grow up as an abused child in a dysfunctional home. I love public speaking and really enjoyed the opportunity to do that. After my presentation to the class I was peppered with questions from the students there. That experience was very rewarding for me, and I left feeling like what I had to say made a difference to those students that evening. I even got a pre-law student to promise me that when she became a lawyer, she would do pro-bono work on behalf of domestic violence victims.

I have always believed that there are good lessons to be learned in seeing something done the wrong way and knowing what not to do. I think I am a good father in part because I know how NOT to be the kind of person my father and stepfather were. In essence, whatever my stepfather and father did, don’t do that. I did however learn from my father-in law who was a great man, about how to do things the right way. He showed me by example what it meant to be a man, and I was privileged to become great friends with him.

My childhood was hard but certainly there are always others that had it worse than me. People could even say correctly that my problems are first world problems. I genuinely believe what I have repeated many times, what does not kill me makes me stronger. I have found that I have an inner strength that most people do not, and that inner strength and fortitude have served me well through the years. I believe it comes directly from all those trials and tribulations I experienced in the first quarter of my life all those years ago.

In my volunteer work at Child & Family Services I was privileged to have co-facilitated an anger management class. We taught adolescents between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, most who were sent to us from a judge who was giving them one last chance to get their anger under control. I believe me and Beth did good work there. Part of anger management is being able to let go of the anger one hold’s against others. I began to hand out business cards as something tangible to carry with them, as a reminder of one main tenet of the lesson. On the card it said:

“Without forgiveness there is no future.” - Desmond Tutu

Amen…

I am not sure I can ever forgive them, but I am trying, and I certainly have forgiven myself.

A quick note if you have extra time to read it…

Without telling my complete story there is no context. How did he go to Florida at fifteen years old, and no one noticed or cared that he was gone? I would imagine it could be hard to believe my stories. For people with a more normal childhood (what is normal?) there could be a sense of disbelief. A how could that be, kind of sentiment. But to tell that complete story I had to tell a very difficult one here today, one that was hard for me to write, and maybe even for those who care about me difficult to read. However, without this chapter my story would never be finished nor fully explained. This story was supposed to be posted where my “Authors Note” post was. To put my life more into context. But I hesitated because I didn’t want to hurt anyone that I loved by upsetting them. But I’ve decided that this story needs to be told to be true to myself and more importantly to be true to my story.

From about twenty-four years of age or so my life has been less traumatic and filled with many good stories of perseverance and triumphs, and I will get to them. No one would have predicted by looking at my early stories that I would have arrived where I am today. You may even think that I was a loser for revealing all of my foibles and faux pas’ here and not sharing my successes yet, which were many. This outcome would have been very unlikely looking at the first twenty-four years of my life. I take pride in that resilience, endurance, perseverance and fortitude. By learning from the lessons that I was shown and experienced, the hard way, they made me who I am today, which I think is a good husband, a good father, and a good man. By falling down and getting back up. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Which was not always easy, I have proven a lot of people wrong. If you stay with these stories of mine here, even throughout the difficult ones, I hope you will find in the end that it was a journey worth your time.

My goal here as a writer is to post about twenty-five or thirty of these stories that tell much of my life story. In the end I hope to have enough of them to put in a book to hand to my children to reference someday many years from now when they are reflecting on their own lives. The book would be remiss without telling this chapter of my life.

I including these pictures because I think they are illustrative of this period of my life. To see how I changed in 5 years’ time from twelve to seventeen is amazing to me. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say.

Age 12

Age 13

Age 14

Age 15

Age 16

Age 17