Standing In The Doorway

We are experiencing a sea change in public opinion regarding gay marriage. It’s happening so rapidly the dwindling ranks of those digging in their heels against it must feel overwhelmed. Watching and listening to these naysayers has become a curiosity of mine.

They remind me a little of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, symbolically refusing to let black students enter the white school during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It’s similar not just because he was trying to deprive a class of people of their civil rights, but also because it was a bold taking of the wrong moral side of an issue at the precise moment that side began sliding down the slippery hill toward defeat.

Those who oppose gay marriage continue to pull the debate toward broad critiques of homosexuality. Does God approve or disapprove? Is it natural or unnatural? Will it destroy marriage as we know it?

The American public believes those are completely reasonable questions for an individual to ask himself, but they increasingly believe that has little to do with the public debate in a free society. They believe those are issues for personal reflection and personal choices.

I posted a pro-gay marriage comment on Facebook in the past year. An old friend commented, “Nope. The Bible says it’s wrong.”

There’s not much “live and let live,” in that reply. Instead it’s all, “My Bible says X, Y or Z, so I’m just gonna have to insist you obey my beliefs.”

I don’t get that.

We don’t try to regulate what church our neighbors attend, if any, or whether they and their lover are married or not, all of which have social implications. We consider those issues private business. Why treat marriage differently?

When I taught school, it was clear that some of my former students were taught by their parents to hate or at least disrespect Jews, or Catholics, or African Americans. And I shudder to think of some of the dangerous, fringe religious beliefs some people hold dear in this country. But none of that can be made illegal. There’s no way to force other people to accept my view of the world.

The simple truth is, what someone else believes, deep in his heart is none of our business to regulate. Even if we think the practice of those beliefs, like bigotry, are damaging to our culture, at some point you have to step back and accept that as long as the belief does no physical harm nor infringes on another’s rights, it can’t and shouldn’t be regulated.

A question I always want to ask the gay marriage naysayers: If you think gay marriage is bad, why not go ahead and teach your children it’s bad and for goodness sakes don’t enter into a gay relationship, but other than that, why can’t you just mind your own business? Why do you think you have the right to make such personal decisions for other people?

What two consenting adults do with their lives is none of our business, no matter how wrong one’s individual faith might say it is. Christianity teaches that adultery is wrong. Yet it’s not illegal. To control that, you’d have to start meddling in people’s bedrooms. That anyone would want to do that to heterosexuals or homosexuals is at best, bizarre.

This is a fundamental civil rights issue. Which means it’s not as simple as being called to look the other way when you disagree with the exercise of someone’s rights. You sometimes have to openly accept it. That’s the price of living in a free society. We have to tolerate interacting with things we disapprove of. That’s the cornerstone of the Golden Rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.

When civil rights legislation was passed in the 1950s and ‘60s, many organizations tolerated the laws, but wanted to retain the right to prohibit African Americans from membership or service. Gays and lesbians face the same sort of discrimination today. There are those who want to be able to exclude them from association or refuse them retail or business service. In a free society, how can we allow this?

In your personal choices, discriminate all you want. But in the public realm, everyone must be treated like a full-fledged citizen.

Those who oppose not only gay marriage but also broad civil rights for gays remind me of severe male cultures in the Middle East; societies controlled by men who insist a woman cover her face or wear a burka, or forbid they attend school. They actions say, “My moral view is so superior that I will not tolerate you living your life as you see fit. It’s an insult to me. So if you won’t willingly do what I say, I’ll pass laws that force you.”

Which brings us to another puzzling thing about the naysayers. Those trying to insure that government forbid gays and lesbians the right to marry are generally conservative ­– part of a political movement that claims to want to, “get government off our backs.”

        

Mind-boggling.

They don’t want the EPA telling them that they can’t fill in the wetlands on their farm, but they want the government to tell certain kinds of people whom they’re allowed to marry? They apparently want less government involvement unless it’s something they personally want to control. And then, they really, really want control over others.

But it seems apparent that this thinking is dying. And the speed of its approaching death is accelerating. The idea that people went to the polls just a few years ago in California to make sure another adult of legal age couldn’t live in a loving, legal relationship with another adult of legal age seems downright primitive. That’s how much things have changed in just a few years.

So much has changed so fast. And for the sake of good Americans who for so long have felt they had to live their lives in the shadows, it’s about time.

Beyond my personal satisfaction that the electorate is moving toward an opinion I’ve held for a long time, I was especially proud of the recent debate before the Supreme Court. Listening to court recordings of the proceedings on the Defense of Marriage Act, I felt a renewed pride in my country.

We’re so quick to label those in power as uncaring and conniving, but from both sides of the argument, I heard intelligent people making intelligent and emotion arguments for and against gay marriage. I heard Supreme Court justices whittle and needle at those arguments with thoughtful debate; the very way you’d hope they’d challenge any argument. None of these sounded like bad people trying to abuse power or trick anyone. A decade ago, I think the debate would have been less admirable. Even the public face of the opposition is softening. We’ve definitely covered some ground as a nation since the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, an act that was passed with clear malice toward a class of Americans, with the primary intent of depriving them of their civil rights.

However the Court rules on this particular law, the trends of public opinion over the past decade are moving in one direction and picking up speed. So much so, it makes my heart hurt just a little for the naysayers, the ones today, “standing in the doorway.” The world is moving past them with empathy and acceptance for gay Americans. One day people will look back and wonder at this time when instead of opening their hearts with love and understanding, the naysayers dug in their heels and clung to doorframe.

Spring Broke: The Perks of Kurt

At right; my gal Sal. The photographer, Emily is reflected.

Everybody said I was crazy to agree to take 5 teenage girls (my daughter and 4 of her friends) on spring break to Panama City Beach last year. I assumed there’d be some headaches, but I was trying to be a good dad.

We left Indiana at 1:30 a.m. Friday morning and arrived in Panama City Beach mid-afternoon. The condo high-rise was nice; security guards at the entrance, clean elevators and hallways, lots of tile floors and granite countertops. The five 17-year-olds and I settled into a pretty amiable routine; they ran off to the beach and I cleaned up after them.

My Saturday, 3/31/12 Facebook Post: "Lesson #1 – When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: Your main job is closing open bags of chips and throwing away abandoned cans of half-consumed soda.”

My friend Shannon Plumer comments on FB, “If that’s your only problem, count yourself lucky.”

It would not be my only problem.

My Sunday, 4/1/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #2 - When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: You discover awesome junk food. Abigail Fisher introduced me to Jalapeño Cheet-os. I now have a new guilty pleasure. You'll know me by my orange fingertips and the pollen-like orange flakes in my mustache.”

My Monday, 4/2/13 Facebook Post: “Lesson #3 - When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: I go for an early morning walk on the beach. The sites and sounds are beautiful . . . mostly. But I quickly discover that college kids have shitty taste in beer and are serial-litterers. Here and there, along the beach, time and again I see three things suspiciously clustered in the sand together: empty beer cans + discarded underwear + empty packs of cigarettes = I don't' wanna know the details - and I HOPE it's the college kids!”

At 11:40 my cell phone chirped: “Are you in Panama City Beach?” It was my old college buddy, Scott Brown.

I reply, “Yes Sir. Trapped with 5 teenage girls and 2 boys just showed up! Could use some adult conversation. You around?”

We arrange to get together the next day.

Our beach strip was crawling with Noblesville kids. I let the girls throw a party and sequestered myself in my room, watched TV and worked on my computer. After a couple hours the music got a little loud. I waded into the mass of kids and turned the music down, discovered a bottle of vodka on the counter and promptly told the girls, "It’s time for everyone to leave." As kids were gathering their stuff there was a knock on the door. It was condo security asking that we turn down the music. "Thanks. Sorry. It’s already turned off."

Tending these girls was like walking 5 oversized dogs all at once. Useless
leash in hand, I got drug down to the sidewalk time and again. I'll not
name them in full, for the sake of their futures . . . and to protect
myself from neglect charges. From left: KT, Sally, Josie, Emily, Abi.

My Tuesday, 4/3/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #4 - Teens and college-age folks like to scream. They will stand at the edge of their balcony and scream to the great beyond, at any time day or night for almost any reason - or more precisely, for no reason whatsoever. Those on the beach below, moved by this expression will scream back. Reminds me of when I lived in southern Indiana. I could hear the coyotes howling to one another in the night. I feared the coyotes less.”

The girls had a fight of some sort and one of them wanted to go home. Her mother sent a plane ticket. I drove Emily to the airport.

We’re now down to 4 girls.

This screaming was taking its toll, along with going into the bathroom and finding the floor covered with water because someone took a shower without the shower curtain in place. And there’s dirty underwear and trash in the water.

In case you don’t know, high school girls live in absolute squalor.

My Wednesday, 4/4/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #5 - Sadly, many teens struggle to understand the simple operation of the zip lock bag. The package of hot dogs? That fresh $8 bundle of shaved ham? While it may look enticing, the complicated function of zip lock technology puts it just beyond the reach of many teens. That's why you'll find the hot dogs and deli meats drying out in the refrigerator because the teen had no choice but to crudely rip the package open in the middle, and then, having done so, had no means of re-closing the bag. We teach them chemistry and advanced calculus. Why can't we teach them to open (and then perchance, re-close) a zip lock bag?”

The unhappiness born of the argument the girls had the previous day lingers, claiming another victim. A mom called to say a family friend was nearby and will drive her girl back to Indiana.

And then there were three.

My shopping and clean-up skills earned me a reputation. Josie tagged it, "The perks of Kurt."

That evening I left the girls to God-only-knows-what. I went out to dinner with my college buddy’s family. Ahh, adult conversation, how I’d missed you.

My Thursday, 4/5/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #6 - Shhhh! Enjoy your coffee and walk on the beach whilst they slumber. The primitive local inhabitants were up late last night in their jungle of condo high-rises. The females painted their faces. The males beat their chests and howled. They all ingested trance-inducing concoctions and took part in crude mating rituals. For now, let these uncivilized beasts doze upon their futons and hide-a-beds, around their boom-box campfires, for they will soon wake and mass to worship the sun god. All ye over the age of 25, beware! The hip-hop & alt-rock drum circles will soon resume. Should you be deemed old and useless to the tribe, you may be thrown upon the funeral pyre. Tonight is the full moon. Heaven help us all!”

That afternoon while I was carrying in groceries and cleaning up messes, there was a knock on the door. It was security. “Sir, there’s someone on your balcony throwing things in the pool below.” I promised to take care of it. I walked quickly to the balcony and found two of the girls and a couple of boys sitting in lawn chairs, eating sandwiches and potato chips. They smiled at me innocently.

I began spending more and more time alone in my room or hanging at a different beach with my college buddy’s family.

My Friday, 4/6/13 Facebook Post: “Lesson #7 - Friends make all the difference. Just when I thought I couldn’t fall asleep one more night to the sound of police sirens, couldn’t take one more ride in an elevator that reeked of urine and stale beer, couldn’t take another walk on a beach strewn with beer cans, Jager bottles, and discarded underwear, and just when I couldn’t take one more air-brushed tee-shirt, the Brown-Richardson-Vendrely families found me. This near-normal family, who have only rarely needed redirection from law enforcement, nursed me back to health with charbroiled oysters, alligator meat, and the restorative powers of the Chicken Trio. My soul was repeatedly anointed with gin & tonic (Tanqueray and lemon, please!). Thanks to my old college buddy, Scott Brown for hearing my distress signal and inviting me down to the civilized end of the beach.”

Our plan was to pack the car at 8:00 that night and drive straight through to Indiana. At 3:30 in the afternoon there was a knock on the door: condo security. “Sir we have a complaint that there’s a couple having sex on your balcony.” I bolt down the hall in a rage expecting to strangle two naked teenagers. At the balcony I find one of the girls and her boyfriend standing, fully clothed at the railing kissing gently. I sigh, smile, and head back to the door to explain the misunderstanding.

“Sir, I don’t care what the truth is,” the security guard says. “A family having lunch on an adjoining balcony was offended. This is our third visit here to speak with you.” He holds up a contract with my apparent signature on it. “If you’ll read right here,” he goes on, pointing at the contract with an ink pen, “you agreed that if we had to visit your unit three times, upon that third visit you would be evicted. You now have 45 minutes to pack your bags and vacate!”

I thanked the kind man, closed the door, and let out a loud, “Whoooo-hooo! We’re going home!” And four hours ahead of schedule!

I drove the entire way, fueled by Monster and Redbull drinks, arriving, mercifully in my driveway at sun-up.

My Saturday, 4/7/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #8 - The final lesson: Happiness is really all about perspective. Cruising north through southern Alabama on the way home last night, I was thinking, "I'm so glad this shitty week is over." At the exact same moment my 17 year old daughter looked to her two girlfriends in the back seat and said, ‘This was the funnest week of my entire life!’ The other girls all agreed.”

Buy Kurt's novel The Salvage Man

“A broken man, an abandoned house, and a lonely woman—all the makings for a beautiful, haunting tale of loss, forgiveness, and redemption. The Salvage Man is a lovely, bitter sweet story you won’t soon forget. I loved it!”

Sherri Wood Emmons, author of The Seventh Mother

Buy Kurt's novel Noblesville

“Meyer turns the pages of history with gentle care and a warm heart, creating a story I’ll remember forever. Thank you Kurt Meyer for opening a door to my beloved town’s past and allowing me to travel the streets and meet the people of Noblesville 1893.”

Susan Crandall, Author of Whistling Past the Graveyard

In Search of Child Support

This is a piece I wrote for NUVO Newsweekly a decade ago. Came across it and thought it was worth another read. I changed the names to respect the privacy of the subject's family.

Jenny sits in a chair against the wall in blue jeans and casual leather shoes, clutching a file folder against her chest. She is slender and in her late thirties. She's nervous. Her brown eyes are red at the edges, perhaps near tears. They dart from the door to the receptionist's window. 

This basement waiting room is half filled. It's a joyless, windowless place, lit by stark fluorescent lights. A name is called out. Someone gets up and disappears into the courtroom, also half filled with people. There is a somber, tense atmosphere, kinda like a funeral. Some people, like Jenny, are here to force collection of child support; others are behind in their payments.

Jenny watches the door uneasily, wondering if this is the day she'll come face to face with her ex-husband, the father of her daughters, a man she and her children haven't seen in nearly ten years. She hopes that today is the end, the resolution of all those years of searching and doing without. Either he begins paying support again or he goes to jail. She'd be satisfied with either outcome.

Jenny is in the waiting room of the 19th Circuit, IVD Court in the City County Building in Indianapolis, drawn back into the events of an earlier life. She sits against the wall with her legs crossed tightly, her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand.

What led to the end of her first marriage is at once unremarkable and startling. Husbands who stay out all night drinking are nothing new. But on one of those late nights Jenny got a devastating call revealing that her husband, Jim, had fathered a child with another woman. That was the end.

Jenny looks about the waiting room at the other hapless women, "It's humiliating to sit here and think of all the stupid mistakes you made that led to this moment."

Jenny and Jim divorced at the opening of 1991 after four years of marriage. They had two children; one daughter, two and a half and another, just fifteen months old. As it turns out the end of the marriage was just the beginning of a downward spiral of struggle for Jenny.

"After we divorced, he came to see the girls a couple times," she says matter of fact, "but he hasn't seen them or willingly paid a dime since. That was '91. I guess I never really believed from the start I'd ever see any support."

Jim didn't pay child support nor buy the health insurance the divorce settlement required he keep for his daughters. Jenny hadn't worked in four years, but got a job in a doctor's office at $9.00 an hour. Jim disappeared.

The folder Jenny holds in her lap is filled with ten years of desperate letters to prosecutors, legalistic letters of response from them and newspaper clippings about child support cheaters. The folder tells a heartbreaking, maddening tale of an irresponsible father, an overwhelmed child support system and disorganized prosecutor's offices grown callous and careless from the routine of dealing with desperate women.

In the early days after the divorce, the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office was little or no help in tracking down Jim or the child support Jenny needed. She shakes her head in exasperation, "At that time the person in charge of child support was rude and useless. They wanted me to do all the legwork - find out where Jim lived, where he worked. I tried, but couldn't find him. And while I looked I was working full time and coming home to two little girls, laundry, housework and bills. Wasn't looking for him also their job?"

Her back against the wall, Jenny sold her house to make ends meet. Soon afterwards, this woman who had once lived in a comfortable, middle class home in a Noblesville subdivision was signing her children up for Medicaid. She moved to Indianapolis and transferred her child support case to Marion County.

Seemingly, Jim Phillips had fallen off the face of the earth. He didn't file tax returns or communicate with his ex-wife. In 1992 the Marion County prosecutor's office issued a warrant for his arrest, but nothing came of it. There's no evidence that Phillips was particularly good at hiding from authorities or that any serious effort was made to find and arrest him.

Back in the court's waiting room Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michael McGuire II hurriedly comes through a side door and motions Jenny into a conference room. He looks harried and overworked. Jenny disappears into the small room with him to find out what will happen today.

Jenny's personal transformation from victim to fighter came in the spring and summer of 1993 when the downward spiral hit bottom. On May 20 of that year, her then four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with diabetes. Without child support or health insurance she now had a daughter who would need repeated blood sugar tests, regulated food intake and two insulin shots a day.  A month later, Jenny came down with pneumonia but continued to work and care for her children, knowing she had no other option. There wasn't time to hunt for Jim Phillips or the money he withheld, she was just trying to stay alive. Jenny emerged from this dark period to discover that the Marion County prosecutor's office had made no progress in tracking down Jim Phillips, or the child support she needed now more than ever.

           

Later that year she wrote to then Marion County Prosecutor, Jeffery Modisett. "We've spent the last three years trying to rebuild our lives. Always listening to what you people are doing to help us single mothers who receive no support."

Jenny herself had been raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet. Her father apparently only occasionally paid support. In another letter from 1993 Jenny wrote, "Growing up in a single parent home, I swore I would never end up that way. Is it hereditary?"

No longer willing to be swept along by events, she began fighting back. She gained control of her life, but lived the often frantic existence of a single mother; at times, up all night tending to a sick child, who then went to work with her the next day because day care wouldn't accept ill children and Jenny couldn't afford a day long hole in her paycheck. She lived and breathed work and childcare, getting up in the morning with her daughters and falling exhausted into bed after she put them to sleep at night. It was a time of more Medicaid and free school lunches for the kids.

In those days the prosecutor's office would arrange a telephone conference only to put Jenny on the phone with an employee who couldn't find her file. During other calls employees were rude or treated her like a nuisance. As Modisett readied for reelection in late 1994, she wrote again, "I have received not one ounce of help, let along support. I wouldn't even try again except your office is launching such a large campaign for reelection. Every day is another article in the paper or another commercial as to what you are doing to help parents collect back support." At that point, Jim Phillips owed Jenny Williams nearly $40,000 in child support.

In late '94, the Marion County prosecutor's office notified Jenny that they'd asked federal authorities to help them track down Jim Phillips.  A year later, Phillips surfaced in interstate computers when he renewed his driver's license in Tennessee. Nothing ever came of it.

In August of 1996, Jenny remarried, and the long lonely struggle of single parenting ended.

Jenny emerges from the conference room. "They're sick of me," she says. "Why? Because when they don't return my repeated calls, I call their bosses. In nearly 10 years of trying to get the support he owes my girls, this is only the second time I've gotten far enough to get to court." The first time was a month ago. "And still we're getting nowhere."

In her folder is a clipping from the Indianapolis Star dated March 30th, 1998, highlighting Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman's "Most Wanted Child Support Offenders." The worst of the ten offenders owed $51,700 in back support. But Jim Phillips was not on the list. This, even though the prosecutor's office had tallied his unpaid child support by then at nearly $86,000. Jenny says, "You see something like that and in some ways it stops being, 'He owes my daughters money,' and it starts being about justice."

A month later, as Jenny and her new husband, Bob Williams, neared completion of an adoption process that would legally name Bob the father of her daughters, Jenny made a final attempt to find Jim Phillips. She wrote a letter to Marion County Prosecutor, Scott Newman. Finally, after eight years, there was progress.

Soon thereafter, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Michael McGuire II, found Jim Phillips in the little town of Locust, North Carolina, working in a manufacturing facility. Ironically, just as Jim Phillips's daughters were legally no longer his and he was no longer financially responsible for them, his wages began to be garnished, forcing him to start paying the $85,897.58 in support arrears he owed. After eight years of waiting, the $230.00 a week Jim Phillips was supposed to pay began arriving. With it, Jenny started a college savings account for her daughters. It felt like a small measure of vindication after years of struggle.

But Jim Phillips did not pay willingly. First his employer protested the garnishing. Then Phillips threatened to sue his employer if it didn't stop. In March of this year the payments ended. Jim Phillips had apparently been fired from his job.

A voice calls through the door of the courtroom, "Jenny Williams." Once inside she moves toward a long, high, wood grained counter with Deputy Prosecutor Michael McGuire. The ceiling is low in this claustrophobic courtroom. Rows of seats are half filled with those waiting their turn before the judge. Jenny and McGuire stand to the right of presiding Master Commissioner, Carol Terzo. An attorney approaches the counter and stands to the left.

Jenny scans the room for Jim Phillips, but he's not there. Turns out, Phillips had hired an attorney via the Internet. This even though at a hearing a month earlier the court insisted that he, personally must come to Indiana today to answer for the unpaid support or face arrest. No matter, Commissioner Terzo proceeds, ignoring her own order from a month earlier.           

Deputy Prosecutor McGuire wants to establish a new benchmark of arrears to submit to North Carolina. When he reads off the figure, in excess of $66,000, the gallery of spectators gasps. A few women laugh nervously, perhaps comparing their own unpaid support with Jenny's ridiculously huge amount. McGuire and Commissioner Terzo rapidly argue the incomprehensible legal details of Jenny's case as if she isn't there. Phillips's attorney interrupts from time to time, explaining that he knows nothing about the case. At one point he waves a cashier's check in the air, prepayment he received from Phillips for his legal services.

Jenny is asked no questions and isn't allowed to speak. Quickly, it's over. They've established a set amount that Phillips owes and his attorney, without even really trying, gets him another month's reprieve. Commissioner Terzo showed no surprise, anger or exasperation at Phillips's ten years of hiding, stalling or avoidance of court orders. On this assembly line of court cases they rapidly move on to the next case.

When she passed through the metal detectors in the hall outside before the hearing, Jenny had seemed anxious about seeing Jim Phillips again. Was she afraid of her ex-husband? "No," she insists. "I was afraid that he'd ask me something like, 'How are the girls?' and that would have sent me right over the edge." The tension of anticipation is gone now, and the gentle edge to Jenny's personality returns. She's relaxed.

Driving home, Jenny thinks of her own father. "After he died, my brother and I went to his apartment and cleaned out all his stuff. When I was going through his papers, I found an old receipt for a child support payment he made for me and my brother when we were small." She stares ahead, over the steering wheel and shakes her head at the heartache of it all.

Jenny's second marriage has answered her earlier, painful question. No, single motherhood need not be hereditary. But some qualities are passed down. Even though she's always tried to shelter them from her personal struggles with single parenthood, Jenny's daughters display the same will and drive that got her through the hard times. The oldest got a paper route because she dreamed of buying her own computer. After nearly a year of work, she'd saved enough. And Jenny’s younger daughter aggressively participates in countless sports and other activities with an insulin pump attached to her waist. But both girls know little about their mother's pursuit of the child support their biological father has avoided all these years.

Jenny Williams harbors remarkably little personal bitterness about the money she did without during the difficult years when her girls were younger. "It's not my money," she insists, "it's theirs. He owes it to them. And it's not right that the system should just let him get away without paying it."

But for most of an entire decade the system has carelessly done exactly that. Yet, that may change. Finally, on November 22nd, the court made good on it's threat of two months earlier, issuing a warrant for Jim Phillips's arrest. It's now up to North Carolina authorities to act on the warrant and decide if the father of Jenny Williams' children will get away without paying.

A footnote: I have had sporadic contact with Jenny Williams over the years, but I have no idea whether she ever got another penny from her ex-husband. Yet, I do see her daughters on Facebook. They have both graduated from college and are healthy and happy young women.

           

           

                       

Childhood Cruelty;-)

It all looks innocent enough: Me & my siblings back in the day. From left: Cindy, Tom, Jama, The Contrarian

It’s a legendary story in the Meyer family folklore of childhood cruelty.  And though I’m a grown-up and ought to know better, I’m still not sorry for what I did. 

Not one bit.

My big sister Jama would wrestle me to the ground on a regular basis. Me — 5, 6, 7 or 8 years old, and Jama — 4 years older. She liked to sit on my chest and drive her knees into my shoulders until I’d agree to make some bullshit declaration like, “Yes, you’re the smartest person ever,” or “I’m a big doodoo-head.”

But one day when I was a little older I got the upper hand and actually found myself sitting on her stomach and driving my knees into her shoulders. I was really kind of amazed. Couldn’t believe I’d done it. She was in shock, too, and lay their screaming, her mouth wide open.

And it was in that moment that the idea seized me. You know, one of those ideas that once you think it, you can’t not do it.

So I did it. I spit in her mouth.

She immediately fell silent and glared at me in stupefied shock. A spasm of horror washed across her face, which triggered my awareness that I was in suddenly in very deep shit. I jumped up and ran for my life. Spent the rest of the day as far away from her as possible.

Some 40-odd years later I’m not sorry because she truly deserved it. It’s amazing she’s grown up to be such a kind, loving and reasonable adult with no criminal record, because she was borderline sadistic in our childhood. Her specialty was cruelty with a twist. Sure, she could haul off and just slug me, but no, that would be too easy. So instead she would innocently pass me as I was going about some mundane activity, minding my own business, and then sucker-punch me really hard, then in that fleeting moment when I clutched my arm and looked to her in disbelief, she’s scream, “Mom! Kurt just hit me! Kurt! Stop it!” wailing as if I was abusing her.

That’s not your typical garden-variety cruelty, that’s Nazi-in-training cruelty.

When my other sister Cindy was in her early teens, she started getting bizarre, disturbing notes in the mail. The notes were spelled out with letters cut from magazines and newspapers — a big red “K” would be followed by a small black “i” that was followed by blue, medium-sized “ll.”

The messages were sometimes threats and other times just something sinister like, “I saw you brushing your hair this morning in your bedroom. You better watch out because I’m going to get you!” The messages often contained information you could only know if you were peeking through a window or were already in the house.

Upsetting to say the least. Cindy had a stalker!

Then one day as I sat in our living room, through the front window sheers I saw the shadow of a figure climb the porch steps to the mailbox then disappear around the front lawn. I watched the shadow pass by the side window along the driveway, then heard our backdoor open. I went to the kitchen to find Jama closing the backdoor. When we checked the mailbox we found another threatening note for Cindy. You guessed it. It had been our sister Jama, all along, composing these messages and taking silent pleasure as Cindy came unglued.

Children like that grow up to be adults who end up in one of two places: prison or corporate America. Jama is now a highly successful business manager in southern California.

And she is the one I blame for the Christmas incident, though Cindy took part. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I came down on Christmas morning, thinking I was the first awake. I looked for my stocking and saw it was filled with sticks. My other 3 siblings’ stockings were filled with candy and gifts. As I sat down and began to cry, trying to imagine what I’d done to deserve this, I heard my sisters giggling in the adjoining bedroom they shared. Turns out they had dumped out my goodies and filled the stocking with sticks.

I'm leaving out a lot here. There's just not enough room to detail all the horrible things we did to one another. I won't even go into the details of the infamous "Kool-Aid" affair which resulted in my sisters and me chasing our brother Tom around with kitchen knives. He was way bigger than us, but three little kids with knives are a surprising power-balance to one kid of superior size and strength. I was probably only armed with a steak knife, but a little kid doing the windmill with a steak knife in one hand is good reason for caution, regardless.

This kinda shit could keep a psychologist busy.

A few years ago, as Jama’s 50^th birthday party came along, all of this childhood cruelty was a distant memory. But as her friends gathered around the pool and across the lawn of her Pasadena home, an idea seized me that, yet again, once I’d thought it, I couldn’t unthink it.

I stepped up and introduced myself to an unfamiliar couple and added, “I’m so glad Jama has friends like you here in LA. This is going to be a really tough time for her and she’ll need people like you to lean on as this experience unfolds.”

They both looked at me quizzically, asking, “What do you mean?”

“What? She hasn’t told you? Well,” I explained, “Jama is adopted. She’s decided at this milestone of her 50^th birthday to begin searching for her birth parents. And you just can’t know how such a thing will play out. They might not want to know her, or they might throw open their arms. So she’s really gonna need support from good friends like you.”

They both looked at me wide eyed. “She’s so brave,” one of them said. After they waked away, one of my own kids asked, “Dad, is that true about aunt Jama?”

“Of course not,” I smiled. I told that story another half a dozen times to the next half a dozen couples I met. 

Before long I heard Jama scream my name from across the yard. She was gripping someone’s arm in disbelief. Our eyes locked from 50 feet away, across a sea of people, most of whom were whispering about how my “adopted” sister was going to begin looking for her birth parents, (who incidentally, were already there at the party – our parents).

Oh revenge! Thy taste is so sweet, even when delayed by 3 or 4 decades. 

First World Luxuries

Chef, food critic and television personality Anthony Bourdain is a devilishly intelligent guy.

Last year on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Maher asked Bourdain, “If you had to choose between average sex and a great meal, which would you choose?” With precision comedic timing, Bourdain winked, “Depends on who’s doin’ the cookin’ and who’s doin’ the fuckin’.”

For all it’s locker room charm, that quote wasn’t as thought provoking as another Bourdain quote that my son, Cal recently shared with me. On Bourdain’s Travel Channel show, “No Reservations,” he was in a third-world country eating meat from an exotic local animal, and when asked about vegetarians back in America, he quipped, “Vegetarianism is a first-world luxury.”

I love a confrontational quote that begs soulful self-examination. And it was delivered with a layer of indictment that’s hard to ignore, as if luxuries are to be apologized for.

I shared the quote (about vegetarians) with a friend who is not only a chef and a vegetarian, but also a fan of Bourdain. Unfortunately, this friend doesn’t really like to be provoked with self-examination. Her momentary silence and tightened body language revealed she was taken aback (and from my experience, vegetarians are prone to being taken aback – that’s how they became vegetarians!), so I took pity and offered a sympathetic comeback: “Quality education is a first world luxury. Sanitary drinking water, sewer systems, a criminal justice system, air traffic control systems and national elections, to randomly name just a few, are all first-world luxuries.” She was soothed and echoed my comments with a sorta, “Yeah, to what you just said.”

But to focus on that alone ignores the complexity of Bourdain’s observation. Those living in the relative ease of the first world have the safety, comfort, and plenty to choose beyond today’s dire necessities. We can say, “Oh, I won’t eat that, because I’ve decided it’s not ethical treatment of animals,” or “it’s not healthy.” But people in the 3^rd world often have to eat what they have to eat. They may never get a chance at self-actualizing such decisions because they have more pressing worries: hunger, safety, and weather extremes.

But does that mean we have to apologize or feel guilty because we can choose to eat what we want to eat? I don’t dress or house my family like people in the 3^rd world (if you ignore my son, Jack, who chooses to dress that way). As much as I wish the world’s poor had more, I’m not sorry for my circumstances. I’m grateful.

I think Bourdain’s quote was a bit of a cheap shot. And Bourdain does it a lot. He often compares vegetarians to picky eaters who drag everybody else down when traveling and dining with their fussy sensibilities. But when I think of first-world luxuries, I do think of people who have the luxury to fear and disdain that which others less fortunate would kill for.

For instance I know a number of people who refuse to vaccinate their children, convinced that it’s dangerous. The staggering swath of medical history and worldwide child mortality data you have to ignore to become a vaccination-phobe speaks to the isolation of the first-world experience.

Like President Franklin Roosevelt, my aunt Beverly suffered from polio. She spent part of her childhood in an iron lung. You know how modern-day people who refuse to vaccinate their children get away without vaccinating them against polio? Because the rest of us do! Providing a safe cultural pool for their kids to swim in.

Look at countries without widespread vaccinations and you find countries with high infant mortality and a level of childhood misery that is Biblical in its gushing heartache. But in the first world, you can live like all that never happens . . . or isn’t even true. Instead, you take your relative safety from disease for granted and obsess over side issues.

The vaccination-phobes remind me of people I’ve met who are afraid to fly. They talk forever about how airplanes can fall from the sky, but can’t seem to focus when you share travel data that proves hands-down that it’s more dangerous to drive than to fly. They instead tell you stories about airline mechanics who let dangerous planes fly or pilots who drink before they go to work. Share yet more unmistakable data again and they find another obscure objection. They’re focused on the emotional, a place where the rational has no power.

Only in the first world, where there is no longer any polio (thanks to vaccinations) can you get hyper-focused on the minute percentage of kids proven to have a negative reaction to vaccinations. In the 3^rd world, people have to spend their time worrying about the far, far, far higher percentage of children who get polio.

In the comfort of the first world: emotions, minus scientific observations can equal reality. Call me a science nerd, but I like to do it the other way around, adding up scientific observation and subtracting emotion.

And I have friends here in central Indiana who insist on commuting in large 4-wheel drive SUVs, “because they’re safer.” We live in just about the flattest place in the world, in a county with not a single gravel road, with some of the safest, best designed highways in the world, but they feel unsafe without all that metal and those gear ratios on their side. They need an urban assault vehicle or they just won’t feel right.

First world luxury indeed! Think India or Cambodia and a scooter with an entire family perched atop it.

Several years ago I went to a vegetarian grilling class with a group of friends. The instructor began by explaining that humans were never meant to be vegetarians, describing in detail the shape of our teeth and what they were made to do – the front teeth made to tear meat apart and the back teeth made to grind it up so we can swallow it. He went on to explain our high protein needs, from the vital part it plays in childhood brain development to ongoing adult needs for protein – something harder get if you don’t live in a first world country. The one vegetarian in our group was, well, taken aback. She didn’t like having her belief’s challenged.

But truth is, I had some sympathy for her. If we’re to look only at science and human history, it’s hard to argue that being peaceful rather than warlike is what we were “meant to be.” And anthropologists tell us time and again that it is not in human nature to be monogamous. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to be peaceful and faithful, nor is human history a reason to dismiss or condescend to people who strive for those ideals.

Don’t we all strive against our natural tendencies to greater or lesser degrees?

What Bourdain was really nibbling at was Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, which we all remember from any psychology class we ever took. People at the bottom of the hierarchy are striving for food, shelter, and safety. Once you have that, you move up the hierarchy and start expecting more, and better. Once you get that you start searching for self-actualization – seeking purpose and meaning in what you do. There is a natural tendency, when we’re at the top of the hierarchy and embarrassed at all the time we spend gazing into our belly-buttons, to think the people scrapping at the bottom are more worthy than us, “more real,” because their needs are more immediate and less petty.

I actually believe that’s true. But I also bet those at the bottom, those in the 3^rd world would trade with us in a heartbeat if given the option. It’s good to be reminded that our lives of comfort can make our concerns a little petty. But it’s also good to have the comforts.

So go on vegetarians - disdain meat. Eat your veggies and your grains. I’ll eat those too, and your share of the meat, and won’t feel bad about you or myself no matter what Anthony Bourdain says.

It’s a little like sex vs. the well-cooked meal Bill Maher asked about. You really shouldn’t have to choose between the two. Take them both, recognize that you’re lucky, but don’t apologize.

Marguerite

This is an excerpt from a much longer piece I wrote about my grandparents for the 2012 edition of the Polk Street Review. To read the full version, stop by The Wild bookstore on the courthouse square in Noblesville and purchase a copy. The book is filled with short stories, poetry, photography and essays from Noblesville folks.

                                              Alvie and Marguerite in the 1960s, as I knew them in my childhood

I never understood Marguerite.

I never satisfied her stern, disapproving stare and pursed lips, rarely broke through her long frozen silences and rarely grasped her perplexing view of the world. 

On the first day of school after Christmas friends gushed about special gifts from their grandparents - new bikes, TVs or a trip to Disneyland. What did my grandmother buy me? Socks and underwear.

After my grandfather, Alvie died, on rare occasions Marguerite stayed at our house in Tipton for a few days at a time. No sooner did she set down her suitcase she’d tie an apron around her waist and go about cleaning our house, emptying trashcans and dusting. If you could see it only as an expressive of the German work ethic she was raised with, it was generous and helpful. But to us it said, “You’re house is dirty.” I don’t think she meant it that way. But that’s how it felt.

I recall at age eight or nine, Marguerite standing over me in a JC Penny’s, disapproving as I tried to buy the Monkeys second album with my birthday money. She knew I had their first album and so read the song titles off the back cover, asking after each, “Are you sure you don’t already have that song on the other record?” It wasn’t enough to simply say, “You’re wasting your money on childish music,” it had to be a protracted standoff, and for the thin-skinned child I was, a needless humiliation in front of other store patrons. 

During our summer visit, my sister Cindy remembers a forced haircut (without our mother’s permission) and a forced diet. No snacks allowed between meals and you got only what you were served at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, whether you liked it or not. We were dumbfounded. The kitchen in our own home was open anytime for a handful of saltines or a cup of Kool-Aid.

As best I can figure, Marguerite had a bleak childhood in the unforgiving flat landscape of northern Indiana during the first World War. She grew up in a tiny town southwest of Bluffton called Poneto. It was barely eight city blocks nestled against a rail line to its west, connecting Ft. Wayne to Hartford City, and to the east was just a small farm field away from an electric Interurban line to Bluffton. Her maiden name was Myers and she would marry a Meyer. She had one sister and three brothers. One of the brothers was mentally ill and committed suicide. Her parents divorced and her father, Guy Myers, moved to Lansing, Michigan.

My father recalls a childhood visit to his grandfather, Guy in Lansing in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s. Guy was working in an auto factory and “shacking-up” with a woman.

There are many, many stories about my grandfather’s upbringing and family yet almost none about my grandmother’s. She just didn’t talk about it.

Guy Myers was an adopted child. His birth parents are unknown. A rumor of shadowy origin suggests that Marguerite had some Mexican or at least “south-of-the-border” blood. She never spoke of this except to deny it once to my mother and on another occasion late in life, when someone admired a beautiful Mexican waitress in a restaurant, Marguerite offered proudly, “Some people think I might have Mexican blood.”

At a Bluffton social gathering 20 years ago I sat next to a distance cousin named Julie. She was the granddaughter of Marguerite’s sister. I asked, “Have you ever heard anything about an ethnic secret in our grandmothers’ family?”

“YES!” she replied emphatically, grabbing my wrist. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Hoped you’d know.”

But she didn’t.

While on vacation in Acapulco, my oldest sister, Jama sat in an ocean-side restaurant watching a group of elderly local women as they talked and ate. They had the look of mixed-race women from Central and South America - that mix of Spanish and native ancestry. Jama told her partner, “That’s my grandmother. Every women at that table could be Marguerite.”

When Marguerite finished school, she took a job as a maid, or “hired girl,” as was said in the 1920s, for a well-to-do family in Bluffton. It was apparently during that time she met a young Apostolic man who worked at a gas station and rode a motorcycle, my grandfather, Alvie.

But in my childhood, I knew nothing about any of this.

In Marguerite’s stern exterior and rigid insistence on what was proper, I read an urge to be not only accepted, but also to protect some community notion of what was acceptable. There seemed so little room to maneuver within those rigid expectations, why even try? And so when I was with her I felt I didn’t measure up and eventually didn’t really want to.

When I was 13 her Christmas gift of socks and underwear gave way to checks for $50. I figured she was softening. But once, later in high school, after I’d been dating a girl for a couple months she gave me puzzling advice. “Don’t let yourself get too serious about this girl,” she warned. “When you get to know a person too well you discover their faults and it’s disappointing.”

Later when I dated a girl who was diabetic, she again warned me not to get serious. “If you marry this girl and have babies, they might not be normal.”                                        (at right, Marguerite in the 1920s)

Did she have any idea what it meant to be young and in love? I thought not. Where was the tenderness and warmth? Instead, just warnings and advice that would leave you all alone if you dared take it.           

When I was in college the $50 checks at Christmas turned into $500 checks. By the time I graduated they went up to $1,000. Her generosity only increased her mystery.

In college I wanted to study a semester in London, but my parents refused to pay for it. On a whim I called Marguerite and asked to borrow the money from her. She quickly and easily said yes. When my father found out, he put an end to her loan and loaned me the money himself.

That Christmas money helped fund three more trips to Europe in the ‘80s. But though she approved of the first trip, she didn’t approve of the others. She told me it was a frivolous use of the money. Was she bothered that I was traveling with the money she and Alvie had saved for their failed dream of travel during retirement - though I hadn’t really earned it? It made me wonder why she didn’t travel and live out their dream on her own. Why did she just sit day after day in that apartment on Wayne Street, play cards with her cronies, go to church and eat dinner once a week at the Dutch Mill?

The travel I bought with that money change my life – expanded my view of the world. But there came a time when Marguerite’s influence changed my life even more profoundly.

When I was in college at Ball State, Marguerite once told me to keep an eye out for a young girl she knew, who was also studying there. “She’s such a nice girl. I play canasta with her grandmother.”

I shuddered to imagine the kind of girl Marguerite would find a good fit for me. If Marguerite liked this girl, there must be something wrong with her.

Six months later on the first day of a distance running class the instructor called out that girl’s name. I craned my neck to see what homely Bluffton girl would raise her hand.

But the arm raised high was attached to a slender, blonde, blue-eyed knockout. We ran together a few times, but nothing came of those first few meetings. Two years later Marguerite mentioned the girl again - said she’d bumped into her at the grocery store in Bluffton and that she had asked about me. I was going to Ft. Wayne the next weekend to visit college friends, so I called her and asked her out. On the date I discovered the girl had neither bumped into Marguerite at the store nor asked about me.

We married a year later in Bluffton.

Marguerite had done the most significant thing anyone ever did for me in my life, and she did it with a strategic lie.

In 2001 I published a novel and traveled the state promoting it. One night I gave a book talk for the historical society in Hartford City. There I met an elderly woman who knew my grandmother. She was a schoolgirl when Marguerite was a young newlywed. Living close to my grandparent’s first house, the woman and her girlfriends played near their back porch and looked up to Marguerite. She said they often sat in the kitchen while Marguerite cooked. She described my 20-something grandmother as lighthearted and fun, singing while she cooked and prone to easy laughter. Marguerite would bake them the cut-off trimmings of piecrusts, smeared with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and serve it with lemonade.

My sister, Jama doesn’t remember a fun person prone to easy laugher, but she does remember a woman she learned to make peace with.

“I don’t recall her ever saying, ‘I love you,’ or giving me hugs but she encouraged me and showed tenderness in the advice she gave me as an adult. She was stern and firm, but also generous.”

Jama was painfully shy as a child, and was afraid of Marguerite. As she grew, Jama became a standout student and exceptional athlete. Marguerite regularly encouraged and complemented her. In college in Arizona and later living in California, Jama wrote Marguerite a letter every two weeks and made the drive up to Bluffton to visit whenever she was back in Indiana.

During Jama’s marriage, Marguerite read between the lines of the letters that arrived in her Bluffton mailbox, sensing something wasn’t quite right. She responded with letters asking Jama about her marriage: “Does he come home right after work? Does he treat you well?” It was concern and sympathy, sent from a woman who often had a hard time showing it.

Marguerite spent her last several years in a nursing home, and much of the time didn’t really know who anyone was, but often pretended to. When she died my parents were in China. There was no easy way to reach them and no way for them to get home in time for the funeral. My siblings all gathered in Indiana and we went to Bluffton where I stood in for my dad, greeting old family friends alongside my uncle Gene. When the time came, Gene, my brother Tom, my two young sons, and I acted as poll bearers.

Later, my uncle Gene shared with me a photo album found among Marguerite’s things. In old black and white pictures taken in the 1920s, Alvie was young, handsome and looked Great Gatsby-ish with thick, long hair on top, razor-smooth on the sides above his ears. A far cry from the feeble Parkinson’s patient I’d known. And Marguerite was a lovely, happy flapper of sorts. In some photos they sat together on the running board of a Model-T and in others hugged each other lovingly and suggestively, up to their necks in a lake on a long-gone sunny summer day.

The look in their eyes was unmistakable. If you’ve seen someone in the early bloom of love you know that look. There was a giddy, electric expectation in their smiles, a candle-like glow behind their eyes, like every breath was taken with a bird flapping its wings wildly in their throats.

That’s how I would like to remember them.

In my childhood Marguerite so often made me feel like an outsider, unwelcome and unwanted. After looking into those hopeful, loving faces in black and white, I wanted to understand her, wanted to know how that happy, eager young woman became so cold. That young woman never would have let the kind of child I once was feel so isolated, like I didn’t measure up, like I wasn’t good enough.

The photos made it clear that she had known all along what it meant to be young and in love. And in her own manipulative way she found the woman who would be the mother of my children.

What happened in the intervening years to harden her? Some of it I know now and the rest I can guess from my own journey through adulthood and marriage to parenting and into mid-life.

After Marguerites death, what at the time seemed like a staggering sum of money arrived in the mail. It was especially meaningful because my wife and I were living on one teacher’s salary. It was my cut of Alvie and Marguerite’s life savings. Money earned during the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, money that was supposed to fund their retirement travels we used instead to restore the front of our Victorian-era home on Cherry Street and rebuild its missing porch. From the first warm day of spring to the last useful day of autumn that year, I climbed scaffolding, swung a hammer and flung a paintbrush, turning Alvie and Marguerite’s money into a restored 1890s home. A fitting tribute.

Marguerite and Alvie in the 1920s