BETWEEN THE AGES of seven and eleven, Mom wandered throughout Europe. As her traumatized, fractured family awaited an invitation from some country to come and live permanently, she felt alone in the world. One generation later, I, on the other hand, spent my seventh to eleventh years nestled in the cocoon of the only home in which I had ever lived, amid a loving family. An all-American girl in the most powerful country in the world, I was still watchful as a sentry, on guard against the demons of Mom’s past.
Saturday nights were my parent’s “date nights.” Before they left the house, I would sprawl across their twin-beds-pushed-together-to-forma-king-size-bed, gazing over at Mom as she got ready.
“Do you have to go out tonight?” I would ask, dreading the inevitable response.
“We’re just going to dinner, and we won’t be home late,” she promised in a compassionate tone. Then, looking at my plaintive countenance, she would add, “When we get back, I’ll come in your bedroom and kiss you good night.”
“Please can I come with you?”
Seated at her vanity, shapely bare legs crossed, Mom methodically applied makeup with her elegant, pale, smooth fingers tipped with long, brightly polished fingernails. “Daddy and I need a little time alone with each other,” she would explain. I couldn’t understand how this “need” trumped my desperation to remain in their orbit.
Mom probably spent forty-five minutes, although it seemed longer, calmly applying foundation, the perfect blush, lipstick, and eye color to her lovely face. Each week I watched from my bedside seat, mesmerized, with butterflies in my stomach. And I hoped against all hope that she would abruptly abort her plans and stay home. Nothing else would dispel the impending sensation of falling off a cliff that was rising within me.
“Rita, hurry up, we’re late,” Dad inevitably called from some other room.
“Coming,” she would shout back, continuing to adorn herself.
Dad was forever waiting for Mom, who hated to be rushed. She was finally free to move at her own pace, and she did. Sometimes she tried to push me, however, to move beyond my comfort level.
MOM DID NOT want me to be an outsider. When the other nine-year-olds were joining Girl Scouts, Mom thought I should, too. From day one, I had my doubts. Besides delaying that blessed moment when I got home, scouting stifled my individuality. That “one for all and all for one” spirit was a better fit for those lucky enough to have been born with more trust in rules and groups. I was warier. For three or four weeks I dejectedly sat at the meetings, biding my time. Then one afternoon, everything changed.
“Now that you are Junior Scouts,” our troop leader said, “you’ll have the opportunity to delve into a wide variety of girl-friendly hobbies. These activities teach leadership and responsibility.” We were sitting in a small rec room at a local park. I was staring at the thumb on our leader’s right hand, wondering what had caused it to permanently dangle like an overcooked noodle, when she said something that sparked my interest. “Along the way, you will be able to earn badges.” As she mentioned a few of them, and what earning them entailed, I began listening closely. She finished with something like, “We certainly don’t expect you to earn every one.”
When I got home, I jumped onto my bed, flung open the Girl Scout handbook, and skimmed through the requirements for each badge. Over the following weeks, I checked off one task after the next. Even when a hobby particularly interested me, like photography, I never let the temptation to delve more deeply interfere with the overriding goal of earning a badge as expeditiously as possible. I found that my zeal to earn as many badges as I could distracted me from worrying about the upcoming Scout campout (which I had no intention of attending), as well as the time away from home that Scout meetings demanded. The world felt much safer when I was on a mission.
The first badge ceremony, a few months later, was exciting. In the park auditorium parents sat on risers behind their daughters. The leader began calling the Scouts up, one by one, to receive the badges they had earned. One girl received badges in cooking and science. The audience politely applauded as she went up to receive them. Another girl earned the first aid badge. One of my troopmates collected four badges, for which she received louder applause. Before the leader announced my name, she chuckled. “Our next Junior Scout has been very busy,” she said. I had earned badges in art, first aid, careers, and something related to being a model citizen. I earned a badge in pet care without owning a pet, and a travel badge while disdaining being farther away from home than Disneyland. I had collected twelve badges in all. To my utter surprise, this was far more than any of the other girls had earned.
As I returned to my seat, my parents beamed. I particularly loved Dad’s reaction, because I sensed that he better understood this type of all-American achievement. Mom always seemed proud of me, often unduly so. But Dad’s enormous smile that evening, and the pleasure he took in my actual accomplishments, was probably my sweetest reward.
By the next meeting, I no longer wanted to be a Scout. The magical distraction of the challenge of earning badges, talismans against all disaster, had worn off. Mom tried to dissuade me from quitting. She refused to pick me up from the nurse’s office the first couple of times I called to come home with the sorts of vague maladies she knew I never suffered. But by the third week, she relented. Mom had more immediate worries.
Dad had been standing on a ladder, painting the trim of our pale yellow house, when the paintbrush slipped from his hands. He climbed down, picked up the brush, and returned to the task. Then he dropped it again. He was very handy, always building and fixing things around the house, and his clumsiness was uncharacteristic. Dad’s muscles continued to weaken over the next few months as doctors struggled to identify the ailment. One day, Dad came home from work limping.
“What happened?” Mom asked as soon as she saw him. She looked scared.
“Nothing. I fell.” Dad never wanted to alarm Mom.
But her radar was highly tuned. “Fell where?”
“On an escalator. My legs just gave out.”
“Frankie, we’re calling the doctor. Now I’m really worried” Mom said.
The following week, Dad looked thin and frail, in a white turtleneck and loose slacks, as he and Mom left home to go to the hospital. By that point, an ophthalmologist had diagnosed the illness as myasthenia gravis, a potentially fatal neuromuscular disease. Dad was about to undergo surgery that would either save his life or end it. In her never-ending effort to protect me, Mom neglected to mention the risk that Dad could die.
Still, I knew that Dad was very ill. I was worried, but not panicked. It was Mom whom I could not live without. Fathers, I was convinced, could not replicate the emotional security and nurturing that mothers provided. Unbeknownst to me, I had become the third generation to suffer from maternal separation anxiety. Not only had Mom never recovered from losing her mother, Leah, but Leah had never finished grieving the childhood loss of her own mother. In any event, the fathers in our family survived. I knew that Dad would recover. And if, God forbid, he didn’t, I was braced. I had prepared for the loss of a parent my entire life.
Three weeks later, I was deeply relieved to come home from school and find Dad in the master bedroom, back from the hospital. I gently gave him a hug and lay beside him. Although it would take many more years for him to regain his full strength, I never heard him complain. And I never heard Mom do so, either. Here she was, thrown once again into extreme uncertainty, and yet I never heard her ask, “Why me?” or take any of her anger out on her children. In the long run, this event would prove to be one more enormous stress on Mom’s already vulnerable system. But at the time, she rose to the occasion. I had the sense that more than ever, we were a family of survivors.