Meeting Mom and Dad

I did not know my parents until we moved to New York. It’s not that they didn’t make sure I was taken care of and happy. I just didn’t get much time with either of them, even though my bedroom was only a few feet down the hall from theirs. They were just busy people, and I was a busy kid. 

My father worked in New York City. He was (and still is) a lawyer, specializing in helping companies from other countries raise funds to become publicly traded in America. He commuted for over two hours a day each way from the little town in Connecticut where we lived. He had to leave before I was awake and often returned after I was asleep. He was like the prickle on the back of your neck when you think someone is standing behind you–there for just an instant, then constantly in the back of your mind. 

My mother owned her own children's gyms. Parents would come there and drop off their children who would spend an hour learning basic gymnastics, playing fun games, and singing silly songs. The gyms were part of a nationwide franchise, The Little Gym, and they took her time, her creative energy, and often her happiness. She would return home drained. Once a week or so she would make dinner with a forced smile and a glass of wine. She started off with just one gym in South Norwalk, which she eventually closed. She reopened in Westport, then opened another gym in Darien, and another in Ridgefield. 

Something was always going wrong with the gyms. Staffing issues were the most common. I always heard stories of employees claiming to be out for a funeral and then posting pictures to Facebook from Disneyland. Or sometimes they would make a last-minute excuse and leave a Saturday morning party with thirty screaming five year olds to one frazzled, part-time employee, which would force my mother to step into the role of her staff when she was supposed to be managing. She did so with grace, and she kept her dislike of the role to herself, but the problem did keep her away from home more than she (and I) wanted. 

Even so, I saw my mother much more than my father. She was no mystery to me. I knew how she acted—she needed a cappuccino in the morning, and it had to be at least half empty before I could talk to her. I knew what set her on a warpath—a sink full of dishes, a messy room, and toys strewn about the house. I knew her parents, her brother, and her brother’s children. She was a familiar face in the morning and at night. She connected me to my faith by bringing me to high holiday services, and then teaching me to pay attention to make the two-hour service go by a little faster. But she couldn't run a business and take care of my sister and me, a young competitive ice skater. So we had an au pair (a live-in babysitter who comes from another country and stays with their host family for a year). Year after year our au pairs were the familiar faces that I think of when I remember who drove me to practice or made dinner most weeknights.

My father became something of the boogeyman in my young mind. At a time when he had some minor anger management problems, mixed with the stress of being the main provider for our home, the few moments that I did see him often resulted in outbursts between him and me, or him and my mother. 

There was a night when I was old enough to have my own room, but young enough that I was still afraid of the dark, when I woke up to hear shouting coming up through the staircase from the kitchen. I crept to my younger sister Nicole’s room, which was down the hall and to the right of my parents’ room. Nicole was behind the sliding doors of her closet underneath the hanging clothes, crying. She was crying silently so that our parents wouldn’t hear although they were most certainly too wrapped up in their argument to have noticed anyway. Her beautiful blue eyes—which I was always jealous of—were tinged red and overflowing. I think the noise scared her as much as it scared me. Even her curly hair seemed to be frightened; instead of framing her face, her shiny ringlets were frizzed like a halo around her head. She had clearly been running her fingers through it. I crawled in with her and together we listened as our reality shook. 

It wasn’t so much that we really understood what it meant. Only years later would I reason what the arguments were probably about, and even now I can’t say for sure that my assumptions are right. But to the two little girls crouched together in the closet, their dream of the little perfect family with the driven and entrepreneurial mother, the stern yet loving father, the live-in babysitter, and two mischievous daughters was falling apart. 

I didn’t know what divorce was, but I knew that my father could leave. He did so once or twice, and stayed in a hotel room in the city for the night. But if I noticed somehow that he was gone (perhaps I woke up in the middle of the night for my four Oreos and milk and saw that a car was missing in the driveway) I would be told that he was too exhausted that day to have taken the train home. Was that the truth? Who knows. 

With the stress of work and home life and two growing (and rather stubborn) daughters, my father was prone to lash out. One time my sister and I were in the living room on the weekend—we couldn't have been older than six and eight respectively—and we were playing with a pink hula hoop. One of us would spin it around her waist and try futilely to keep it there by shaking her hips spastically only to have it clatter to the floor, and then the one who was watching would yell that it was her turn, and no you don't get another chance to try to hold it longer because gosh darn it, it’s my turn!

I think my father was trying to watch the news. He was sitting on our black leather couch while we were playing in the same room off to the right. He was focusing on something, and whatever it was required some kind of concentration, or at the very least… some quiet. 

Crash!

“My turn! My turn!”

Crash!

“Give it to me! I want to try!”

Crash!

“Give it back!” 

“I want to try again!”

“It’s my turn!”

“It’s my hula hoop!”

“No… its MY hula hoop!”

And suddenly we had gone too far….

“Enough! Give me that!” and then we watched as the hula hoop was stolen out of our hands. We watched his eyes widen, his normally pale face turn red, his eyebrows arch in what could almost resemble surprise, as if to say: “You dare to defy MY instructions?”  

We watched as he exerted pressure onto the plastic loop until we could see in slow motion the circle form an oval and the oval form a figure eight until suddenly… CRASH. 

The hula hoop had made its last irritating sound of its life as it lay split into two pieces at our feet. My father, though, would not get the silence he was seeking. Instead, the wails of two scared, upset children followed him as he stalked out of the room. Those wails haunted him for years, whether in his mind or through recalls of, “Remember that time you broke the hula hoop….” Every time I bring it up he smiles apologetically and winces, following with a sincere, “I still feel so badly about that, really girls.” 

We would fight about any insignificant thing. My posture, for example. I didn’t exactly walk with a hunchback or anything, but I sat with rounded shoulders in a slumped teen stature, not because I wanted to be cool but just because that was how I sat. My father hated it. He loved to shove his chest out in a proud stance and announce in public that this should be my position. It was terribly embarrassing for me, and even more embarrassing for him when I would tell him off, publicly, until our shared embarrassment piled up from him to me and eventually we were brawling. This would happen often about various topics, and usually my mother would have to step in. 

Nothing set off my father like my pre-teen attitude. I loved to disagree with him and press his buttons. From the age of ten my mother dubbed me The Instigator, and of course I had seventeen reasons why that name was not appropriate because I mean it’s not really instigating if I’m just pointing out that there is a better way for him to be doing… well, everything really, right?  

There were times when my mother didn't intervene. One incident in particular I remember quite vividly. We were home, and I’d given my father some attitude about something, washing dishes, math, doing my homework—whatever it was has long since been forgotten. But I remember getting him so worked up that he was yelling, and then he was screaming. 

My arguments with my father used to begin because I wanted attention. I enjoyed joking around with him, and sometimes he enjoyed it, too. What became problematic, however, was when he wasn't in the mood for joking or took the joke personally. Being the young kid that I was, I didn’t understand that adults have feelings, too. My father being the defensive man he is, didn’t understand why children often act in such provocative ways. The Instigator would take pleasure in instigating. My alter ego likes playing her game and she plays to win. But when Dad starts screaming, The Instigator instantly loses. She changes from powerful to powerless, from smiling and laughing to scared—terrified, really. When Dad starts yelling he changes from my father to a man whose eyes have too much white, whose mouth produces sounds at new decibels, too loud for my little ears. He transforms and I get scared. 

This mixture of misunderstanding was particularly bad one afternoon. We were standing in the formal entryway to our house, the walls a calming navy blue in stark contrast to the quickly dark red color of my father’s face and neck. At first it was joking, then everything escalated until I wasn’t in my usual Instigator mood. 

Whenever my father got like that, I would run into my room and hide. If I was really frightened, I would go into my closet. It was too big for just my own things, so my mother put her off-season clothes on one side. I would hide under those and take comfort in the smell of her flowery perfume wafting around me. I hid from my father, and I hid from the fact that I caused him to react so volatilely. But that afternoon something was different. I remember thinking that I couldn't take it anymore. I was leaving. 

I stole a loaf of bread out of the breadbox and walked outside. It was a cold autumn day and the wind soaked through my jacket in no time. Our house rested on the top of a very steep, very long driveway, which attached to a very long side street, which led out to a 40-mph road in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to walk to my best friend’s house, which was about fifteen miles away. 

Leaving the house was a mission of its own. Creeping around my family so that they didn’t notice, I made my way to the back entrance, the exact same place only minutes earlier I had fought with my father. Since the back door wasn’t used often, it was overgrown with vines of ivy. When I finally made it to my driveway, I made a run for it. I passed my father’s 2003 Honda Civic which didn't fit in the garage. I passed the massive rock my friend’s mom ran over when dropping me off from skating. I passed my favorite tree, an evergreen that had branches perfect for climbing on. And I passed my father's favorite tree, which was at the bottom of the driveway and boasted large pink flowers that I used to put in my hair. 

I made it to that tree before I realized my escape attempt was futile. 

I made it about halfway up the driveway before I heard my father’s panicked voice calling out to me. He yelled my name and called out, asking me to come home.  

By the time I made it back home, I could tell my father had been very shaken by my short leave of absence. He was sweating, his eyes darting back and forth, with a guilty look in his eyes. I imagine I looked the same. He didn’t need to apologize, and neither did I. We both understood that we both were wrong. No words were said. 

From these descriptions it would be easy to place my father into the awful, never- around, anger-issues category, and by extension put me into the daddy-issues girl gang. But that's not how it is at all. I will never forget the days that I spent—just my sister, my father, and I—called our daddy-daughter days. We had one every two or three months and I longed for them. Those days, the stress sitting on my father’s shoulders would melt away to reveal the quick-witted, jovial man with kind eyes, sparse hair (which would eventually give way to a shaved head), and a cheery round face. We would go to Chuck E. Cheese, and he would buy us way too many coins, and we would win way too many tickets, and take home too many prizes. We would eat the plastic- tasting Chuck E. Cheese pizza and then drive over to Mother Earth, my favorite place on the planet. 

Mother Earth was a crystal store. They sold huge chunks of amethyst, shiny quartz, geodes. Upon entering, I used to get lost amid the rows of shelves loaded with stones. Windows across the storefront allowed for ample natural light, which would bounce off of the sharp edges of the massive amethyst, topaz, and quartz. Because I was so small I felt completely submerged in a crystal world; my field of vision became akin to a kaleidoscope. Every twist and turn was a change in pattern, light, and color. The world felt more alive inside Mother Earth. 

At the back of the store was a small room with cave-like walls and no lights. There were small pockets filled with sand in the walls, and the store would fill them up with small precious stones, geodes, and arrowheads. They would give you a headlamp to compensate for minimal visibility, and you could go inside and try to fill your bucket with the hidden treasure. 

Inside Mother Earth I was an explorer. My father led our expedition. Together we would spend our $60, fifteen-minute session inside the cave in Mother Earth spelunking for amethyst, arrowheads, quartz, and other stones hidden in the pockets of sand in the walls. We would come home with white buckets teeming with precious stones, excited to show our treasure to our mother. She always acted excited for us, but looking back, I know she was just thinking, “Oh great! More stuff to put away.”

A lot changed when my mother sold her gyms. She came home, and our long line of au pairs finally ended. My sister and I transferred schools to New York, and we had plans to move there, but in the meantime my father had to drive us there every day on his way to the city and pick us up on his way back. Suddenly I was seeing both my parents more than ever. 

At first, this resulted in way more fighting. Eruptions between both my mother and me, father and me, and even my sister and me were common. But eventually these microfights started to decline. I began to meet my parents. 

I found out that my mother is wonderful at organization. She has a mind for it in a way I’ve never seen in anyone else. She doesn’t have to have a spotless desk to know exactly where everything is. She can tell you where the milk is in the fridge without even looking. She also knows exactly how to organize her feelings, which makes her the best to seek out advice from. 

My father, I came to find out, actually has a sense of humor. Sure, he made highly inappropriate jokes at completely inappropriate times, locations, and audiences, but that’s just part of the charm. Or at least I think so. Across dinner tables we made ridiculous faces to see who would be the first one to laugh, and when we got our drinks we would cheers across the table with squinted eyes and a pirate’s accent saying the word “Skull!” and clutching our pretend daggers in our other hand behind our chairs. 

Often some insignificant thing would set us laughing until our insides hurt as badly as we used to make each other feel. We would laugh until we cried as my mother and sister looked on with incredulous faces; they couldn’t believe we were being so ridiculous. 

He and I both would lose our heads if they weren’t attached. We share a car now, and on both of our keys we have a Tile that uses GPS location on our phones to make sure we can find them. Whenever we leave the house, we can be seen pacing, muttering, “Keys, wallet, phone, jacket…” trying to make sure that we aren't going to forget anything. Sometimes I wonder if it was how similar we are that caused our fights. 

For a few years, we moved from house to house for various reasons that made sense to my parents at the time. Somewhere in the middle of those moves, my mother started working for my grandmother managing her properties, and my father started working from home. Suddenly, I had both my parents around all the time. 

Until I could drive, my parents were the ones picking me up from practice or school, not a babysitter. They were the ones that made me dinner and cleaned up, not an au pair. They helped with my homework to the extent they could and sent me to the internet when none of us could figure out what factoring was, or why a decomposition reaction was different from a combustion reaction. It was a whole new world, yet even though it became my normal, I never cease to appreciate how far we have come as a family.

We eat dinner together at least once a week, and once a month we usually sit down to a Shabbat meal. With our table covered with a red tablecloth, four black and white plates, Shabbat candles, and a challah, we sing the blessings together (each of us equally off key and off time) before sitting down to my mother's cooking. She can make anything, but never the exact same thing twice. 

You would never expect the man from my past to be the father he is today, nor would you expect the woman from my past to be the mother she is today. I realize now that neither of them wanted au pairs around, but that they made the sacrifice of not watching my sister and me grow up so that we had the means to do what we wanted and live the lifestyle that we live. Growing up with them meant becoming a person who could see that not all sacrifices are like the movies, and that sometimes you have to do what hurts the people you love in order to provide for them.