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I finally watched 51 Birch Street last night.  I had been waiting for the DVD since I missed it in the theater.  I knew I was going to love the film because I’m a psychotherapist and I knew it was going to be interesting from a psychological perspective.  I’ve enjoyed just about every documentary I’ve seen about families (Capturing the Friedmans and Tarnation come to mind) but this one I could actually relate to on a very personal level. 

I come from a Jewish family about the same vintage as the Blocks (my parents married in ‘42--my brother was born in 1947 and I was born in 1950).  My parents were both born and raised in the Bronx and our family moved to Westchester in 1957.  Like the Blocks, we were a very typical suburban family on the outside but troubled on the inside.  My dad was probably a little more communicative than Mike Block but he was still pretty emotionally distant.  My mom was warmer and more maternal than Mina Block but she was probably just as unhappy.  I grew up feeling loved in what seemed like a happy household, but I was a fairly anxious and insecure kid, even though there was no apparent reason for me to feel that way.  My parents were very warm and easy-going and my brother and I could tell them pretty much anything.  Unlike many kids our age we had very few restrictions placed on us and our parents were very tolerant of the changes that the Sixties brought.  Growing up I had a lot of friends and seemed to get on fairly well in the world of social interactions.  But there was an underlying tension in our household that was unidentifiable but very palpable. 

I was struck by how Doug (or maybe it was one of his sisters) described their father as never actually getting angry but there was fear that he could.  That was my dad, too.  I was pretty intimidated by him well into adulthood, although I never actually saw him lose his temper in a scary way.  HIs weapon was his intelligence and his articulateness--you couldn’t win an argument with him and he had a subtle way of putting you down even as he invited you to express your opinion about something.  anyhow, when I turned 20 I had an epiphany where I realized that our Father Knows Best family was not what it seemed.  I went into therapy and began the long process of learning how the effect of my intimidating and rejecting father and my loving but passive mother had on my own psyche.  It was tough going because it was hard to identify where the wounding actually occurred...it was more about what my parents *didn’t* do rather than what they did do.

And then, when I was 28, my parents suddenly announced they were getting divorced after 36 years of marriage.  I had moved from the East Coast to the West Coast after college, and only saw them once or twice a year at that point. I was completely surprised to hear the news, although I think I was secretly kind of glad because it seemed like whenever I visited my parents they were always bickering.  Through conversations on the phone with each of them as the divorce progressed, I learned that my dad had been unfaithful to my mom throughout a good portion of their marriage, especially the earlier years.  my mom would always find out, there was a tearful scene, and then it was over.  She would always take him back, but they never addressed the problems in their marriage.  According to my mom, my dad would always be apologetic but would refuse to discuss the affair or his motivations for it because he felt it would be more hurtful to my mom.  and in fact, when our family moved to Florida when I was 12, my dad almost left my mom for his secretary but ultimately decided against it.  My mom started working again so she could pay for her own psychotherapy to deal with this insult.

Finding this all out made many of the pieces of my own psychological puzzle fall into place.  no wonder I grew up feeling insecure and anxious!  There was a big problem in our house that no one was talking about, and in fact it was so well hidden that the only manifestation of it from my perspective was my anxiety.  My mom must’ve been depressed but I never saw it.  She was usually cheerful and had a good sense of humor.  My parents were affectionate with each other and with us.  Whatever fights they had were behind closed doors, or when I was out of the house or asleep.  I never heard or saw anything that made me think my parents were unhappy, until I was an adult and noticed their bickering.  maybe they felt the didn’t have to hide so much anymore.

AFter the divorce, my mom never remarried or even dated.  Of course all their friends “sided” with her, seeing my dad as the “Bad Guy.” I knew better, though, and knew that my mom had played a role in their relational dynamic too.  She was passive and didn’t stand up for herself in the face of my dad’s intimidation.  She died when I was 38.  My dad dated a few women and eventually married someone 20 years his junior, who ultimately left him when he was in his late 70’s.  He was broke and in debt, and moved in with my brother.  My dad died two years later, at 80, from cancer.  My brother took good care of him during his illness, and for that I am forever grateful.

I had opportunities to talk with my parents directly about their dysfunctional relationship during their lifetimes, but ultimately it was through my own therapy that I was able to really resolve my ambivalence, anger, and disappointment with them.  I had problems with relationships all my life, and didn’t get married myself until I was 46.  I don’t blame my parents for my problems but I understand how they contributed to them.  I sometimes wonder what our lives would have been like had they gotten divorced when I was young.  But, I think they loved each other and maybe that’s why they waited so long.  They just didn’t know how to deal with their problems.  Couples therapy as we know it today just didn’t exist in the 50s and maybe even in the 60s.  There was certainly a major stigma attached to getting help for emotional problems during that time.

when the film was over I wished that my parents were alive so we could have watched the film together and talked about it.  That might be a grandiose fantasy--I don’t know if either of them could have tolerated it emotionally.  But it’s an interesting thing to ponder.

I wrote to your website several months ago, with my story.  At that time, I had only read about your family’s history.  Last week, I finally had the chance to watch your DVD, and am amazed at the similarities...even more than I realized when I wrote earlier.
Doug, I hope that you and your family don’t have regrets about publicizing your story.  It has helped me to know that, as sad as parts of it may be, there were several of us going through things like this.  And from your website, there are more of us than we ever knew. 
I’ve come to terms with it all, I think.  My 80 year old father apologized to me several months ago.  I’m sure it has to do with recent losses in his life, and the stark realization that his days are numbered.  I wish he had voiced his apologies years ago, but better late than never.  I can’t call them regrets; the second wife and family he chose has worked out wonderfully for him, and I’m glad he found happiness.  It’s never without hurt, though, for many others.
Thanks, again, for sharing your story.

My mom and dad were divorced when I was 2.  My dad would come around every so often for dinner and to take my sister and me shopping.  It always seemed very sudden when he was in town.  I can’t remember ever knowing he was going to be in town until that day.  These quick trips, usually no more than a day, left me feeling that my dad never wanted a part in my life.  When I was a junior in college, we lost touch completely.  I held a lot of resentment in my heart for him.

I invited my dad to my wedding in 2001 mainly because I knew I would regret it if I didn’t.  It was very uncomfortable mainly because I hadn’t had much contact with him for the 7 years prior.  My wedding came and went and I lost touch with him again.  Until recently.  In April, 2007, my dad’s brother-in-law, my uncle Clayton, died.  I found out from my sister that a lot of the family on dad’s side was going to be there.  I realized that I didn’t know much of dad’s family.  I knew i had to be there.

I drove 10 hours and all the while, the anxiety of seeing my dad after 6 years was building.  I got to the hotel and called my dad.  We met in the lobby.  Although it was a bit uncomfortable, things were different this time.  It was as if we both came to the realization that we were starting over.

The next day was the funeral.  As any good Southern church does, the ladies of the church had provided lunch for the family after the funeral.  After everyone had filed in, there were probably close to 40 people there.  I was shocked to find that there is a huge part of my family I didn’t know.  After the initial shock, extreme sorrow set in.  I started wondering why I didn’t know these people.  Aunts and uncles; first, second and third cousins.

I found myself retreating to the bathroom many times to hide my sorrow at this realization.  One of these times, my sister followed me.  I was informed that my mom willfully kept me from my dad when I was growing up.  I was filled with rage at the thought that my mom would have done this.  Currently, I’m trying to work through this rage and anger.  I haven’t confronted my mom about this as I am afraid of what it will do to our already fragile relationship. 

The best thing to come out of this is that I am speaking regularly with my dad and I’m planning on taking a trip to see him soon.  But every conversation we have is a little bittersweet because I know that I have little time left with him.  He turned 75 this year.  All I can hope for is that we will make the most of our time we have left together.

I just finished watching your film and I was captivated. I was moved many times, and it brought up many feelings. I have always been a huge fan of Ross McElwee and Michael Apted’s Up series--I could watch that forever, and I felt that way with this film as well. When I was about 15, my mother sat me down and told me that when she was an infant, in 1920, her mother, presumably in self-defense, shot and killed her father. She also told me that I had an uncle I never knew about because he was in an insane asylum since he was 27, and that my grandmother did in fact live until my mother was in her twenties, and did not “die when she was a baby” like my mother had always told me. I was told that after the unspeakable event, my grandmother was put in the same mental hospital for the rest of her life, where my mother only got to see her a few times. In fact, even though she was in the same hospital as her son, they almost never were permitted to see one another...that is pitiful beyond imagining.  My mother, who is Jewish, was in fact given to an Italian neighbor for three years to be wet-nursed, and when the authorities came to take my mother from her Italian foster mother, the woman fled--kidnapped my mother--and took her with her to Florida, where she was apprehended and my mother was taken to the Orthodox Jewish Children’s Home where she was raised. My mother is now 87 and still lives in the garden apartment in Queens where I grew up, with my dad who is also 87, and they have, for better or worse, been married for 63 years! Many many MANY years after I heard this story (I used to tease my mother by watching The Bad Seed with her on The Late Show), a geneologist presented me with the front-page newspaper story I had always wanted to see about my mother’s parents, as well as coroner’s reports and so on--as a kind of a gift. What a shocking thing that was to see in print! I am a cartoonist and always wanted to do a graphic novel about this story. But in some ways, like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the really interesting story is not only about my finding out more about what really happened--or what the newspaper and other documents say happened--but how telling my mother about this when she was 83 affected us. Of course it turned out that my grandmother, who had had to come to Ellis Island twice from the Ukraine, and married a man she was warned not to marry by his first wife, and had tried to get a divorce but was unable to, and had attempted suicide--was brutally beaten nightly by her husband. She just finally decided to shoot him--and shot him point-blank while he was sleeping, in the head and neck and back, five shots, with her five children in the house! I had always thought of my mother as overly childish and emotional and weak, and it was learning more about this story that made me realize in fact that my mother was in some ways a hero--married for 63 years to my father who has (or so I think) been totally devoted to her. Not to mention having worked her whole life, been active in community politics, raised two daughters etc. There are so many related stories--and two of my mother’s sisters are still alive, and coherent, like my mother, at 89 and 93! (The 93-year-old even has a boyfriend!) Anyway, I want to get a grant or an agent or something to help me write this story, but my father, who thinks sleeping dogs should just lie, asked me to promise not to write this story, and because of that so has my mother, even though my sense is she really would like this story known. My mother also asked that I don’t try to interview her sisters about it--but how much longer do I have? Years ago she was thrilled at the prospect, when I thought of doing this (the little that I knew) as a fictionalized work for a young adult comics anthology. I am a good writer and have notoriety in the field of comics; I have also thought of just doing it as a screenplay or a documentary. All I know is I want to do it. I cannot describe the feeling that went through the pit of my stomach when I read that story about Bessie M. on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Passover morning April 3rd 1920! I literally doubled over in pain, like a thread connected my womb to that of my mother and my mother’s mother; I felt her pain and so want her life to mean something, it was so very miserable. So I guess your film brought all of this up for me: what do I live on while I am trying to get this written/produced? What are the chances of Hollywood being interested in this if I do it as a graphic novel? Will I ever get interviewed by Terry Gross? I am a divorced, self-employed writer/illustrator/designer on the West Coast with a 14-year-old son. If you have any advice for me please share it. I loved your film, and would very much like my work to bring out many of the same feelings: inspiration, that it’s never too late to be who you are, that in each person’s small life a whole world exists, that ordinary people in their own way are often big heroes...anyway, it’s late, but I’d love to hear from you to know what you think. Thank you for a beautiful, meaningful work of art.

For the last couple years since Doug’s film was released, I have been contemplating whether I should write a screenplay about my parents and the life I lived at 12 Overlook Drive in Port Washington.  I was a classmate of Doug’s at Schreiber High School and graduated in the same class. But for a few close friends and my immediate family, no one knew of the sheer hell that my sisters, brother and I lived through with an alcoholic mother.  In the 60’s and early 70’s, alcoholism was not something that anyone of prominence would ever admit to.  Drunks were only those poor souls you might see in skid row, not in an upper middle class neighborhood on Long Island.  And so, as the oldest of five children, I became the surrogate father while my Dad traveled across the country for 3-4 days nearly every week on business.  As I grew up with this predicament, I learned quickly that I had to scurry home after school because my Mom would almost always be smashed drunk already with my younger siblings fending for themselves. By the time I was in 8th or 9th grade, I was strong enough to physically overpower my mother and drag her to her bed where I hoped she would just pass out.  Sometimes I would have to stand guard over her throughout the entire night so that she wouldn’t get up to drink more or get into her car.  When she was passed out, my sisters and I would ransack the house searching for the liquor bottles so that we throw them away.  I remember finding a full glass of vodka in a clear glass in the cabinet. You would never had noticed the liquid had it not been for the fact that we must have moved it slightly. When my father returned home on a Thursday or Friday, he would ask how the week had gone.  I remember my sisters and I would cry and beg him to stop traveling.  He explained that it was not possible to stop his business travel but he would try to cut it down.  That never really happened.  And the drinking binges just got worse over time.

By the time I was in high school, my mother treated me horribly.  In fact, I actually preferred her drunk rather than sober because she was easier to control.  When she was sober, she was mean and angry about not being able to have a drink.  She also would faintly remember how I forced her to sleep the night before.

On a hot spring night after dinner, while I was studying for finals in my junior year, my Dad came to my room and asked if I knew where my mother was.  I didn’t know, so we started looking for her.  She was no where to be found.  Three weeks later we learned that she had been having an affair with a wiater at Louie’s restaurant in Port Washington and that they had taken off together. My younger sisters and brother never saw their mother again until many years later. 

For the sake of brevity, I have shared a mere thimble full of the story from 12 Overlook Drive, but the parallel to Doug’s story is obvious to me.  While Doug’s parents succeeded somewhat in supressing their secrets from the children, it was me and my siblings who struggled to keep our Mom’s drinking a secret from everyone on the outside. Secrets can be like an acid that burns from the inside.

Both of my parents have passed and the bonds that I share with my sisters and brother have only grown stronger over the years I am happy to report. On a sad note, one sister is widowed, another is seperated with two young children and my brother is twice divorced. I’m soon to celebrate my 21st anniversary and we have three great kids-thank God. I was determined not to pass on the baton of secrets.

Robert G.

I just finished watching the movie.  So profound and thought provoking.  The film was so personal to Doug and his family, but so appropriate for us all to experience through him.
I am a journal keeper myself.  One of the first questions I wanted to ask Doug is if he was glad he read the journals or does he wish he would have left them alone?  I think the answer would be that he is satisfied that he read them and has found the balance of love and forgiveness and empathy for his Mother.  If you read this Doug, will you please answer this for me.  Im sure you can agree, if you have ever journaled yourself, that since this is mostly a tool to vent when one is unhappy and stressed and going through a crises,isn’t the perception of your mothers chronic unhappiness skewed? and overly dramatized? 
I am in the process of debating weather to burn my journals (Ive kept them since I was 13) or not.  I am afraid to let my daughter read them and think my life was so miserable.  It was/is not, it’s just the unhappy times are the times I mostly write.  I am too busy to write when I am in my joy.  Any thoughts? Nini

I believe in diaries and journals – as they helped me keep my sanity! When I was 12 years old, my stepfather said I had to “make it up” to him for the fact that my mother didn’t love him, so it was my responsibility to replace her in his affections. I learned to never be alone with him and how to manipulate situations, but I didn’t tell my mother. I instinctively knew the pain it would cause her, and I wanted to protect her from it. My father had died when I was two years old, and she was left on a farm with my two older brothers, her mother and her father-in-law to support. She had so many worries and burdens for the rest of her life, so I learned how to survive without adding to her burden. (Well, there were the teen-age years when I argued with her about everything!) I didn’t blame her for remarrying when I was six years old. In those days, women were expected to have a husband. My stepfather was a widower neighbor 13 years older than she, and he told her my father had asked him to take care of his family if anything happened to him. My mother didn’t realize for a while that she was taking on another burden, and, when she did realize he was a vain, self-absorbed man with no capacity to care about anyone but himself, it was too late, and she didn’t believe in divorce. When he divorced her about 36 years of marriage because he didn’t want her to inherit anything when he died, I told her the truth about my early years. By then, I was married to a vain, self-absorbed man myself, and I had not taken the time to really get to know my mother. I had avoided visiting home often for the years after I was old enough to leave home because of my dislike of my stepfather, so my mother and I weren’t close. However, when my own marriage seemed doomed for failure, a psychologist told me to journal, so I filled several journals with my pent-up bitterness. I decided to help my mother through her pain, and we became very close before she died, and I told her as often as possible that I loved her. I told her that my brothers and I (my stepfather verbally abused them, but they never knew about his treatment of me until I told my mother) never blamed her for her choices, as it only made us stronger, and we learned to take life without excuses to make the best of whatever came our way. We accepted that life is never perfect and all of us established our own businesses, raised our families with love, and tried to learn from the past. I still journal, and I believe it is still saving my sanity.

Dear people,

It’s after midnight, April 5th, Amsterdam. I just saw your film on the
Belgian TV and I realized these days I can contact the maker by internet. So
that’s what I’m doing now before I go to bed.
I’d like to express my gratitude for the film and I believe it is of great
value for those who are willing to change the way they see their parents,
whether they’re alive or dead.
Me myself I lost my mother 11 years ago, didn’t have much contact with my
father since then and if he would die today than that also would be the loss of an
important source. I do have questions to ask to learn where I come from and
to get to know my parents more realistically. Your very personal documentary
is about a universal subject: are we willing to get know ourselves, even
when we have to deal with things we actually prefer to avoid? Can we learn
to live with those things we want to avoid? Make peace with them. Are we
willing to look where we come from genuinely to face live more
realistically, open-minded, and admit our kinship with each other as human
beings?
It was very interesting to see the way all the persons in the film were
respected: no winners, no losers. Just people who try to make the best out
of their situation.

Kindly regards, Rob de Jongh.

Even though I’ve never seen the film, I have read many of the stories on this site.
I suppose the one thing that stands out about my parents and when I became the ‘parent’ is when my father died.  He was only 52 when he died.  He and my mother had been married for twenty nine years; I was twenty seven at the time.  As an only child, all responsibilities feel on me.  At first I just didn’t understand and only ‘reacted’ to actions that took place: my mother had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide, we lost our home, and I had three children( ages 4,5, and 6) of my own to take care of as a single parent from my own divorce three years earlier.

My mother’s inability to cope with life had never really mattered to me before because my father had always been around to make sure she was taken care of.  I didn’t know how immature she was or what an effect it would have on my own life.

Since we lived with my mother following my father’s death, life went on.  I worked, she eventually went back to work, and the kids went to school.  I THOUGHT things were going o.k.  But as time went by she relied more and more on me - for everything.  I now was not only the parent to three small children - but also became my mother’s parent! 

During the next twelve years I kept up the routine, but one day I met up with a past ‘love’ and we got married.  Even though I had a new husband, step-daughter and my own three - we had baby...and five years later had another daughter.  When all was said and done - I now have FIVE children (2 boys and three girls) and a MOTHER! 

Mom is in a nursing home today from an auto accident she was in five years ago, but I go to see her three times a week and still take care of her...she’s my sixth child.

Over the past years she’s relayed to me her personal relationship with my father...the good times...and the bad.  Sometimes I feel like she’s trying to change my mind about my Dad and how I feel about him.  I’m a grown woman now...I hope so, I’m 60 and am a grandmother myself!  But I don’t want to change how I feel about my father.  I loved him and I knew that a day didn’t go by that he didn’t love me.  I know that my mother loves me...but why does she want me to dislike my father so much?? 

I really don’t want to hear about such personal things that went on between my parents.  I know from my own experiences that life, marriage, relationships, etc. are a matter of choices we all have make and have to deal with the consequences of making bad choices.

I keep journals all the time.  My computers are full of notes about how I feel but they don’t contain intimate details that I wouldn’t want my children to read when I’m gone. 

When my mother used talk about my father after he died, she always said, “We had only one arguement in our marriage - it started the day we got married and ended the day he died!” I used to laugh at that because she would knock anyone’s head off that ever said a bad word about my Dad.  And when you were around my father, God help your soul if you said anything against my mother!  They had a very stange relationship - but it was theirs.  No one was allowed to interfere - not even me!  So now why is she totally turning things around???

Today she’s a very different person and I just wish my Dad had lived to help her in these years.

I makes me think about my own children and what they will think and feel about me and my three husbands!  Oh yeah - I divorced a second time and remarried five years ago!  You’d think I would have learned my now…

Anyway, take care about what you leave for your children; notes or spoken words.  Children have a way of ‘fanticising’ about their parents.  Leave it alone and let us be happy...please!

Hi there!  I seem to have stepped into this site a little late, however I just saw that this movie was coming to Boise this Friday, so I’m not even sure if anyone will see this since it’s so late =P

Anyway my story is not quite the same as most and it’s not exactly finished as you all see i’m only 19.  It appears that most who have shared their stories are much older and have their own families.  Like I said mine is not over whatsoever but so far seems to be quite a trip.

I was born on March 9 1987 to Kali.  My mother was only 15 and my father John was 22.  They were very much into drugs sex and rock n roll sort of lifestyle, at least my father was until the day i was born.  He quit his drugs and his rock n roll band and tried to be a father.  He always tells me his life began the day mine did.  My mother on the other hand did not stop her wild lifestyle.  She was big into crack and heroine even while she was prego with me.

Her immaturity has stayed with her even til this day.  Now she is 34 with 8 children including myself with 8 different fathers.  She was imprisoned for a year in 2001 for the death of my 8 month old brother Liam.  which to this day i believe she murdered. 

My father now 42 is living with my stepmother Sherry, the most amazing and loving woman I have ever known to walk this earth.  They met a year after i was born in my moms driveway (when i say mom i mean sherry) she was in the middle of divorce of 16 years with a 12, 9, and 7 year old to take care of, he was a pallet builder with a 1 year old barely scrapping by.  She hated him at first and actually found him rather geeky and was very turned off by him.  He was completely smitten.

Two days after they met he called her on his lunch break and they have been inseperable since.  Sherry raised me from the time i was four until i left for the service.  She proved everyday to be amazing.  She is my best friend and even though she’s not my biological mother i am more her daughter than her own.  I am exactly the same as she, except our looks!  =P

Throughout my short 19 years i’ve been through hell and back.  The first four were unbareable.  At least to any adult.  I was too little to realize what happend, however i have vivid memories i wish i didn’t.  Kali tried to raise me but could you imagine a 15 year old raising a baby with another on the way.  I hate to be crude but she just couldn’t keep her legs closed.  She then gave me to my father at the age of 2.  But one day she kidnapped me with my Uncle Michael (my fathers brother) who turned out to be her lover.  My father found them “together” one night after she had me in the bathroom.  He was heartbroken and felt so betrayed by his own brother.

They hitchhiked all the way from detroit to little rock.  When they returned they gave me back to my father because Kali said she couldnt’ handle my constant crying and whining so she didn’t “want it” is what she said to my dad.  It’s good to know i’m an “it” ha.  However, she eventually came back to wanting to take care of me and by then i was 3 and she had another little girl and anotehr on the way.  At this time my father took her to court for custody.  In the process i lived in many crack houses and was actually almost traded for drugs.  She was a fiend. 

I have many memories of my mother having sex with my uncle and feeding me sour milk.  She never changed my diaper and didn’t teach me how to potty train.  My sister Heather was born with metal disabilities due to the heroine she was taking.  She is now 16 but has the mental capacity of a 12 year old.  She will always remain a few steps behind everyone else. 

By the time I was 4 i had seen someone been shot, seen people snort cocaine, smoke pot, shoot up, have sex, be sexually molested and finally seen some of the worst fights between people over drugs then i could have ever imagined.  Once my father recieved custody of me he made sure that i never had to see that lifestyle again.  He protected me from everything which turned out to be not the greatest thing for me.  I’m finding out on my own that life is not easy and people are hard to trust. 

I’m sure there is so much to my story that i’m missing.  There is so much that my father has never told me and so much emotion he’s never shown me.  I have to admit that growing up hasn’t been easy for him to watch.  I used to be so close and be daddy’s little girl, but now i’m becoming my own woman and things are changing.  We hardly speak anymore and when we do we just argue about the stupid crazy things i’ve done or how i dont’ call enough.  Lately i’ve just said hi how are ya?  and talked to my mom. 

I think i’m going to love this movie, mainly because of how real it is.  I always used to think i was the only one with a dysfunctional family and the only one out there whose real mother just doesn’t care, but i dont think i am.  I’m so excited to see this film.  I love movies i feel i can understand or relate to in some way shape or form.  I think i’ll relate because i have a feeling this is about growth in oneself and with ones parents.  My mom Sherry always says when i talk to her that family is unconditional and no matter what she will always love me.  to be loved so much by someone who by her own free will took me in, is an amazing feeling.  I hope this movie will help me to fully realize how important your parents really are and how that relationship alone is so beautiful and affects us in so many different ways.

Sorry so long, i dont’ blame anyone for not reading it all =P take care!

I attended my first ever independent film screening Saturday night at the Flicks in Boise, Idaho.  Mostly out of curiosity, partially because of my involvement as a board member of the PIX Theater Foundation, in Nampa, Idaho and the Foundation’s desire to include independent films as part of it’s future venue. And partially out of response to a write up about this particular independent film in the Idaho Statesman.

The film is called “51 Birch Street”, filmed, documented and narrated by Doug Block.

Never having previously attended an independent film screening, or the Flicks, I truly had no expectations.  Except that being a “Documentary”, I expected to be snoozing before the end.

My first surprise was that the film was sold out when I got there.  Fortunately they put me on the waiting list and I was able to get a seat.  The theater setting was actually quite intimate holding roughly 200 people.  Seating, lighting, visual, and audio was all very comfortable.

My next surprise was that before the film started, representatives from True West Cinema Festival, Priddy Brothers Entertainment, and Doug Block, the writer and director himself, introduced the film.  They shared short stories about the history of how the film is doing internationally and how it arrived in Boise.  Doug Block spoke about what inspired him to compile years of videotaping family interviews and put them into a documentary.  John and Ed Priddy spoke on how they traveled from New York to Jerusalem, and back again before the pieces came together to produce the film.  As I sat and listened, I felt like I was with friends and family cheering the successes of a loved one.

And then the film began.  It immediately drew me in.  Doug Block did an amazing job narrating and progressing through the film, documenting his parents and his parents relationship, documenting himself and his two sisters relationship to his parents, documenting himself and his relationship to his wife, and to a small degree his relationship to his children.  The film caused me to reflect upon my own memories of my parents, and those issues in my life that were never resolved before their passing.  Fortunately the theater was dark and those around me could not see me wiping my eyes.

Without going into detail, what we may learn from the film is that what may seem like the perfect marriage, the perfect parents, the perfect family, may not always be as it appears.  But can anyone really define “perfect”?  In the end, I took away the message of unconditional love.  That though we may not understand why our parents did (do) the things they did (do) but we love them anyway.  Life is way too short to harbor bitterness.  Mr. Block is very fortunate to have been able to come to resolve with his parents by putting it all into a film and sharing it with the rest of us.  Many of us may not be that lucky.

When the film was over, Doug Block came out and answered questions from the audience regarding what we had just witnessed.

Following the film was an open house fundraiser at the location of True West Media Art Center, with proceeds going to True West Inc., an Idaho 501(c)3 non-profit organization (similar to the PIX Foundation) where folks could discuss the film further with each other, the producers, and the writer.  I was truly impressed.  I can envision this venue at the restored PIX Theater.  I believe Nampa is ready to get behind this growing sense of culture.

So what did I learn from Doug Block’s film?  Marriage and relationships are a “Leap of Faith” and very difficult to maintain.  The ups and downs are just part of the adventure!

Mom lead me on. She did this for the first 18 years of my life. Then one day she admitted that the man who I thought was my father, wasn’t. I felt so betrayed after her confession. I wish that I could say that the situation brought us closer, but it didn’t; there was always a bit of unspoken tension between us. Shortly before her death, Mom started confessing things nonstop; I can honestly say that I guess that I never really knew her. Then there was the matter of her personal effects that told of a life that was far different than I could have imagined. I still remember the night that I was going through her things and found out that she had a child who died in infancy. I guess I never knew her.

As children, my sibblings and I all heard the stories of how my parents met and my oldest sister’s early arrival, 7 months after their marriage. Of course she was premature, an early delivery. My parents were as different as night and day. My father had recently joinned the Navy in 1944 and was a poor farmer’s son from Illinois. My mother’s father was a doctor and she had been brought up with maids and private schools and most of the better things in life. Needless to say their marriage was a rocky one and as children we often witnessed the fighting and heard all the things we never should have heard. For years we heard about my mother’s true love, Jessie, the one that got away, and how she met and fell in love with my father on the rebound. My fater died in 1977 and it wasn’t until my mother’s death in 1986 that we accidently discovered just what the truths were about their marriage. Upon my mother’s death, I took her phone/address book and began making the calls to let her out of town friends know that she had passed on. When I came to Jessie’s number I dialed it and a woman answered. I explained who I was and why I was calling and when I mentioned my mother’s name, this woman began screaming at me and told me her husband was dead and told me all about the affair he had had with my mother and about the pregnancy that resulted from it. From what she was saying it appeared that my oldest sister was not my dad’s child. It also explained a lot of what we had heard over the years and the anger that my mother always seemed to show towards my father. While putting up my mother’s things from her home that she left, we found Jessie’s pictures behind our baby pictures and school pictures that were placed on her dresser and around the house. My mother had lived in the past and never got over her lost love. My sister did go on to find out information about her biological father and last year was able to speak with Jessie’s wife and learn a lot of information about health history and family. She didn’t pursue it any futher though, out of respect to Jessie’s wife who told her that their children never knew anything of their father’s affair. 
Last year, after the death of my father’s sister, her daughter sent us a box full of letter’s that my father had written to his mother from the day he went in the Navy. It brought her through my father’s meeting my mother and their marriage and the birth’s of my oldest sister and I. And just one letter at the end about the birth of my youngest sister and then the letters stopped. During this 5 year period the decline of my father’s confidence in himself and his beginning battle with alcohol was clearly evident. He was never able to live up to the standards that my mother’s parents expected of him. Her parents moved them into a home he couldn’t afford. He was a nursemate while in the Navy and being 17 when he joined, had no real skills to take out into the working world after his discharge and this made it difficult for him to findng a good job. Being brought up hearing about what a loser our father was, and being able to share in his life during those early years, put a totally differnet spin on who our father really was. If only we had been able to view these letter’s earlier while he was alive, perhaps out relationship with him could have been so much different. He never did seem to know that he was not my sister’s father. At least not during those first 5 years. Our childhood was not the best but we all grew into responsible adults and hard working individuals. In sharing about the history of my dad and my sister’s biological father, we hve been able to forgive and let go of a lot of pain that we suffered growing up. As adults we can understand better the turmoil of their relationship, now that we can understand the history of it. May they rest in peace, knowing that the truth is out and we love them even more, knowing that in the end they were the same as we were, in making mistakes, hiding some truths from their children, and learning and growing from the pain that comes with every generation. As sibblings, we have grown closer as adults, as a result of sharing in the knowledge of who our parents really were. Today we focus on the good times we had as a family and let go of the memories that were not so good. As a parent I have become more honest in my relationship with my own children as I don’t want to leave any secrets left untold, when it is my turn to go.

My mom passed away nine years ago.  We grew up in a small, Catholic town.  My parents were married 25 years, and during that time, my dad carried on an affair for about 21 of those years-a relationship that produced a child.  My mom had one for the last few years of the marriage that continued until her death 21 years after the divorce.
I was aware of Mom’s affair early on, but had no idea that it lasted the rest of her life.  Another family member new, and thought I was aware of it.  I didn’t learn the details until I cleaned out her belongings after she passed away, and found photos and correspondence from the two of them.  Her lover showed up at the funeral home before her funeral.  To say it was soap opera-ish is quite an understatement.
When she passed away, I also found the letters from my father that she had kept for 30 years.  I still have them.  They show a relationship that merited their marriage, but obviously it was not strong enough to last.  Their marriage produced good children, but not children without hangups and issues.  Some of us have dealt with it better than others. 
Three months after my parents divorced, and we children were young adults, my father married his lover.  They have been together for 30 years, and have a warm, loving marriage.  Obviously my father married the wrong person the first time around.  It happens.
The best thing about growing up:  You can choose what you want to take with you into adulthood.  You can choose to forgive, or not.  You can choose to get help for those things you can’t work out on your own, or not.  I’ve found forgiveness is the way to go.  life is way too short.

i am also a journal keeper, have kept track of my life from a young bride of 19 until the present. a menopausal woman still married to her prince charming whom has developed a paunch and jowls to match.  32 years of trials and tribulation.  my journals are my intimate friends.  within these pages are thoughts, feelings, my life in progress.  recently, my coworker expressed an opinion that she would not want her children to know ‘the bad things’ about her life, especially her marriage. is she correct?  am i leaving a shattered glass for my children?? should they know all the changes of my life, my anger, tears and fears all there in black and white for them to read??  occasionally, i read some old entries and i can see so clearly the changes life has made in me.  how i have changed not only physically but even the view i have of the world in general.  my marriage is there, on these pages.  do i start shredding these pages now? or do i allow my ‘friends’ to continue on after i am gone.  i am so unsure if my journey will leave instead too many unanswered questions for my children.  i will go and write about this new dilemma in my journal.  and perhaps, my paper and pen will give me the answer i desperately seek.  haven’t seen the movie yet, but maybe it will also give me the answer i need.  where is father knows best when you need him????

This is not a dramatic story as some here have been. Rather, a subtle evolution in the relationship with my mother. We’re still parent and child, of course, and I’ve found out that moms never stop worrying about their offspring, even as the kids start to get membership invitations from AARP.

The relationship has deepened into friendship, in which she feels free to confide her concerns and seems to respect, take to heart and even act upon my advice. If this were a film, it would need a plot twist, an “ah-ha” moment that sends things off in a new direction. Nope. It took me a lot of years for me to become a relatively well-adjusted adult, and as I became comfortable in my own skin, it freed her and others to become more comfortable with me.

I suppose the moment I knew we were equals (or as equal as we would get) was when she showed me details of her investments in response to my badgering her about tracking that information on the computer. Mom is a very private person, which surprised me (I thought I got it entirely from my dad). It took trust and a high comfort level for her to show me that information.

Wish I could say my father and I enjoyed that kind of relationship. We didn’t have much of a relationship at all. He never should have had kids. I realize he was a man of the 1950’s, when fathers kept their emotions in check and left childrearing to the mothers. But there was more to it than that. He had demons. Depression. It sounds as if there’s a streak of that on his side of the family. He kept to himself in the den and rarely emerged. When he did, the room tensed up. We didn’t want to upset or startle him.

I was so wrapped up in my own petty adolescent issues that I didn’t see beyond my nose and attempt to meet him halfway. It would have been tough, though. He had, as one of his brothers said, a dark and secret side. So do I. I am my father’s son. With modern medication, a greater range of accepted options about how a man can live his life – and the example of my father’s cautionary tale – I have dissipated most of my demons. It is a shame, though, that in so many of my decisions, I look at what dad would have done, then do the opposite.

Nor did I have a male role model in a grandfather. My mom’s father died just after I was born; my dad’s dad passed away decades before that (from what I’ve heard, he did everyone a favor). Thank goodness for Uncle Whis, my mother’s brother who stepped in to do the fatherly things, like spur-of-the-moment road trips to no place in particular and listening to St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball games with me on the back porch (to this day, baseball on the radio is something primal to me – I led off a film with a series of snippets from broadcasts. Perhaps that was due to Whis).

Dad loved my brother and me. I am convinced of that. He took great pride in telling me how he was providing for his family. I heard that speech often when I reluctantly ventured out to the den to ask or get something. I knew it by heart. The income, the investments – he detailed everything he was doing. I wanted to cut him off and say, “I don’t care about any of that. I’d love you without the stock in El Paso Natural Gas.”

But I let him go on. His demons, and a car accident that made mere walking a challenge, left him unable to go out in the yard and play catch, nor was he inclined toward such bonding. He must have known he wasn’t there for us emotionally or physically. Who was I to rob him of his pride in the one thing he could give us?

Dad passed away in 1985. I feel the loss more deeply now. There is a hole, one that can only be filled by a father. Had he lived longer, we might have had the kind of friendship I cherish with my mom. Perhaps medication and maturity would have helped him tame his demons. As I became a happier, more well-adjusted adult, I could have reached out to him and met him halfway.

Maybe. Perhaps. Who knows? I rarely think about it except when writing for some filmmaker’s website.

Whis, the surrogate father, died in 1993. It was sudden, unlike my dad’s demise from cancer, and I still grieve for him, moreso than for my father. A few years later, my mom started keeping company with as decent, honorable and caring a man as you’ll ever find. I’ve glommed onto him as a father and grandfather figure. If he knows this, he doesn’t seem to mind. It is as if I am trying to make up for 40 years of being without the emotional presence of a father. We watch ball games on TV at my mom’s house. He, a Cardinals’ fan, tells the manager what to do, even though it’s a one-way conversation. My mom and I tease him about that. I went down there to watch the Cardinals’ win the World Series this year with him. We have dinner and share conversation, just as I’ve heard families do. It feels like family. It is family.

Anyone want to go outside and play catch?

Please?

ar

Doug I’ve missed your film so far and I’m looking forward to seeing it from all I’ve heard about it. These are universal issues, the different ways we understand (or misunderstand) our parents over time, so it is not surprising it is touching many people.

I also have to thank you for asking me to write something which made me sit down last night and try to write it and I guess I got on a roll.  I might even develop this first draft further somehow. But it became a bigger story than I thought I should put here. So I cut it down at least somewhat - - but just as I was about to send it, my computer crashed so that I doubt it got submitted. I was glad I had written it in a different program. The trouble is I lost the cut down version and I don’t have time to do the editing over again right now so I’m going to have to paste the terribly long one in here.  Apologies in advance for length. if it is really excessively long or sickeningly “poetic” leave it out. or just put the first sentence.
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The summer two years after my mom died of lymphoma, my father became ill and I went home to help him with a small herd of cattle; spending more time back home than I had since I’d escaped at age seventeen, fairly chomping at the bit to get thousands of miles away as fast as I could.

My father resided in a small town, but still owned the farm on which he had been born, and he had been raising some beef cattle. Daddy is about the hardest-working man I know, and at age 73 he had been doing a lot of physical work every day of that hot summer. He’d sometimes mentioned over the last few months not feeling well, blaming it on something he ate, or having worked too long in the heat, or a virus going around...but I was getting kinda concerned.  Having just ended a long job and received two nice grants for a film, I went to see him. He’d lost a lot of weight in a short time and these recurring gastrointestinal problems were not getting any better, but I just could not convince him to go for a check-up. Although his formidable temper had mellowed with age, he was still not only the hardest-working but also the stubbornest man I knew. To get him to the doctor, I would have had to knock him out and carry him there. But there was no question in my mind that I would stay to try to look after him and help with chores.

Each late afternoon of those long summer days we would pack a cooler with cold pop and frozen water bottles. We’d climb into an old vibrating, loose-steering Ford pick-up containing the usual jumble of rural accoutrements, several garbage cans and a big water tank; and we would drive to the farm, about a 40 min. trip. After you turn off the highway you wind around on unpaved roads through all sorts of twists and turns and ups and downs and forks and corners-- it is hard to give a stranger directions, though I could drive there in my sleep. It is the place I love most in the world.

This was not a high tech operation --aside from having a truck (1980s), a tractor (1950s) and a motorized corn grinder (even older), we were doing everything by hand --pumping water, and filling lots of buckets of ground corn from an old wooden wagon in the dark barn and carrying them to toss in the feeders as the cattle jostled each other for position. Then loading a bunch more grain into the garbage cans and onto the truck. After finishing any other chores around “the Home Place” we would drive over to a separate parcel of land (known in family parlance as “the other Place") to feed and water another group of steers. They would sometimes come gallumping alongside the truck as it bounced across the bumpy ground to their feeders. We’d talk and joke laughed about their different personalities and quirks.  One of them always tossed his head up when he ate with great gusto and sent grain flying all over his companions. But one big rangy Charolais was always standing off by himself in a corner of the pasture when we would arrive and I felt sorry for him. I thought he looked so forlorn so I called him Forlorny.

By the time we finished choring and, covered with dust-coated sweat, retraced our route over the roads, the sun would be sending out a last ray over the darkening fields where a million locusts and crickets sang in what seems a constant crescendo; sometimes through the cacophany a mourning dove or bobwhite call could be heard, or frogs in a pond. The smell of earth and animals and growing things. Reflected in the sky an evolving masterpiece of color, orange and pink and purple going up, up into a cool deepening blue. 

Sometimes we would just sit in the silent knowledge that we both loved this world. Sometimes we would talk. About cattle, crops, wildlife, baseball. Daddy has never been one to bare his soul in long self-analyzing paragraphs. But I heard sentences. About poverty and shame. About his bitterness that no matter how much Mom suffered through all those different treatments, no matter what mighty shrines of medicine he took her to, nothing helped. About how he missed her. [In between the words, his own dread of hearing that diagnosis.] Things long misunderstood. It wasn’t until then I realised how much he loved my mother, despite all their fighting. Maybe it wasn’t til then that he realised how much I loved him. Despite everything.

When we got back to town, sometimes we would stop at the Double R Dairy Bar before the stoplight and get milkshakes.

But the sweetness was pierced by his worsening illness. As the weeks went on, my dad began doing less and less of the work--and for him to let anyone else work harder than he did, I knew he had to be feeling bad. Then he would just maybe pick some vegetables while I shoveled grain. After a while he was just riding along and staying sitting in the truck, gaunt-looking and pale under his tan skin. He would have to get out and vomit. Finally he was not even riding along.

Even though he still did not want doctors, he was not kidding himself that this was something minor. It was more like he felt they could not do any good. He had in his own mind made the diagnosis, the word we did not want to speak. One night I heard him up and opening drawers and things in the middle of the night. I asked, “Daddy, what are you doing? Are you OK?” He came in to my bedroom with a notepad showed me a list he had written of names of men from First Baptist. “I’ve made out a list of pallbearers.” Other times he would suddenly come in in the night and tell me about his insurance policy, or when taxes on the farm are due, or when the conservation program on some of the acres would expire.

Then I had to leave for only a day or two. My dad sat there in the recliner, in pain, and said he’d hire his neighbor Ron to do the chores those days. If I’da had a lick of sense I’da called Ron myself, because--typically--Daddy decided to do the work himself and he had a heart attack. After lying on the ground in a cold sweat for he didn’t know how long, he crawled to the truck, pulled himself up into the cab, somehow drove to Ron’s. They rushed him to town to the hospital. So he finally ended up being knocked out and carried to the doctor after all. Just as he had feared, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He was taken that night by ambulance to a hospital in the nearest city, and of course I rushed back there when Ron called me. Within a week he had open heart surgery, colon surgery and then a stroke. He was not paralyzed but it affected his mind. Every day they asked him his name. One morning he answered, “Holocaust” which really gave the nurses a shock. (I told them I supposed my documentary was somewhere in his mind. It was still in mine too and in the hospital waiting room I was trying to stop crying and concentrate to write an ITVS 3rd round funding application-- fortunately with a wonderful coproducer.).

I sold off the cattle. Ron and four or five other neighbors donated their work and wouldn’t take a dime, they rounded them up and trucked them to the sale barn, and one guy handled the sale and collected the money. They brought a pretty fair price. I felt kind of bad not to have been able to even say goodbye to them. 

The whole time in the hospital I don’t think anyone expected Daddy to live.  I put a photo on the wall in his room of how he looked before months of sickness and wasting, so the doctors and nurses could realize his great vitality. I could not really seem to pray since my mom’s death. But I desperately hoped.  I hoped the genes of his mother, who lived to age 99, and her father who lived to 92, would help him fight to survive. 
I was not at all reconciled to him dying, I was devastated. I wanted to scream, He can’t die NOW when I’ve just realized how I love him. But when is it ever enough time? And what a treasure were the memories of the time we spent those months, that has become symbolized in my mind like some bottled essence by drives at dusk through rolling hills in warm summer nights. The conversations and the companionable silences.
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The update is, that winter he went through rehab and therapy, had the planned colostomy reversal surgery. Then in the spring the cancer started up again, now spread to the liver. Very scary. I read about the survival rate which was just insanely low, like 5% survive for a year--or was it even for 6 months? I didn’t tell Daddy. He agreed to have chemo, which he had refused to have after his surgery. Then, miraculously he responded to it so well that he did not have to take the whole course. I know that at any time the cancer can start up again, but now he is going on three years since then. He recovered almost entirely from the thought and language effects of the stroke, gradually regained strength and now at age 77 he is out building fences and chopping down brush. Like my cousin said, “He’s a tough ol’ bird.”

Here I sit at my computer on Soundview Road (not Port near the movie theatre as everyone thinks, but Great Neck, NY) same as that day in August, 2005 six months after my mother passed away and BAM!! “Your were adopted at birth, Sandy and you’ll never find your biological mother because she just went into the hospital saying she was Marilyn”!!! Marilyn is the mother that raised me. I can’t even bring myself to call her my “adoptive” mother as I now see is the correct lingo as I register on all of these adoption search sites. 

Yes, we all could have lived at 51 Birch St. (I happen to know the street well - I work for Daniel Gale Sothebys Realty here on the North Shore of Long Island. So there I was 51 yrs. old, 3 kids (28, 25 & 15 yrs old) and life is pretty good. Fairly nice childhood.  We didn’t really have much money but we always had “budget” vacations, family dinners, unconditonal love and stability. My brother (he’s not adopted) & I were a good team and managed to get through very difficult health issues with both of our parents, now deceased, and even managed to escape with a minimal amount of “guilt”. Then the “BAM”!!

What I find especially interesting is the way our brain protects us from pain.  Kind of like the way our immune system works to attack illness through out our lives.  There were so many “light bulb” moments, clues, etc. during my life that kind of made ya say HMMMM!  We actually used to joke about that I’m probably adopted at almost every family gathering but I didn’t REALLY believe that I was. During the last 3 months of my mothers life she was bedridden and I spent many hours listening to her olden day stories. Her long term memory was vivid.  I thought, when she passes I’ll probably hike into Brooklyn to talk to her cousin, Dorothy and ask her if I was adopted.  Why didn’t I just ask my mother?

So she passed in April, 2005.  Didn’t think it was particularly appropriate or necessary to ask any of the relatives that attended the funeral.  My brother & I did our usual introduction to our co-workers who attended. “I’d like to introduce you to my twin brother” (very funny because we are completely opposite in our physical appearance).  August, 2005 I’m working at my computer.  The telephone rings and it’s Joanie, my mothers childhood friend from Brooklyn.  She’s quite upset with me for not telling her that my mother passed.  I apologize, her passing was expected, I didn’t have her phone number and knew she wouldn’t come to NY from Florida because she’s quite ill.  We started chatting and she started her “olden day stories”. As my eyes began to glaze over, I had a light bulb moment!  I hadn’t yet made an effort to speak to any cousins, nor was it tops on my list of things to do.  But, I thought, a friend from childhood is likely to know a lot more about your secrets than a relative....So, I threw out the ridiculous question “So Joanie, I said, I know I was adopted wasn’t I?” Her response (without missing a beat) “Yes you were, and I planned the whole thing and don’t even try to look for your mother because she just used Marilyns name when she delivered you”!!!  She had no idea I was going to ask her this and I tried to compose myself enough to ask the necessary questions and get off of the phone without her hearing my heart pounding out of my chest.  Just then, my 15 yr old (Alexis) walks into the room and I blurt out this information.  So much for being a good parent!  See, we all make mistakes.  Not that I shouldn’t have told my kids, but it shouldn’t have been done like that. Alexis is my “most jewish” kid.  She observes the jewish holidays and has made her Bat Mitzvah.  She was quite upset that she might not actually be jewish.

Of course, I had many more questions for Joanie and called her a few days later.  The story is: My parents were married about 4 yrs and unable to conceive.  Joanie was married to Rocky (she calls him “the cheater").  They all lived in Brooklyn and at one time the two couples even shared an apartment because they wer so poor.  Rocky at some point had a girlfiend named “Kitty” (hey, ya never know..it’s a small world).  Kitty happened to know of a girl by the name of “Bobbi” who was pregnant by someone in the service.  Bobbi was from Upstate, NY and her father was some kind of prominant figure in their upstate community (Chief of Police?/Pastor of a Church?) so she couldn’t let him know about her pregnancy.  Her mother did know, however, and was at the hospital (Beth El Hospital, Brooklyn, NY) and quite upset at the loss of me, her first grandchild.  It seems that, my parents made a deal with Bobbi and she came to Brooklyn during her pregnancy, delivered me and handed me over.  There was no attorney or legal record of the adoption.

Of course, I did find my way into Brooklyn. Cousin Dorothy & I sat across from one another at the diner and I said I know I’m adopted. She stuttered “Are you crazy?  Why do you think that?” But her eyes welled with tears and her face said something else.  She finally admitted that I was as did other relatives that I approached.  If all that’s not strange enough, nobody really know where I came from.  My mother actually pretended to be pregnant! “Bubby” my mothers grandmother was not one for holding anything back and she told everyone that my mother wasn’t pregnant and she’s full of shit!! When Bubby came to the house to see the newborn, her response was “Beautiful baby but it’s a “Schickser”!! (spellcheck?). 

I think my story is long enough for now.  I can go on & on about my feelings about all this. I want to be careful not to let this information consume my life.  Under the circumstances, with so little informaton it’s highly unlikely I will ever connect with any of my biological family.  I am so curious though, about so many things. So far I’ve only hit dead ends in my search.  I’m planning a trip to Florida in the next few weeks to visit with Joanie & give her a few pieces of my mothers jewelry as a thank you for her role in all of this. I also wanted to to see if I can find the aid who took care of my mother in the end.  They got quite close and I know she told her many, many “olden day stories”. The agency that she works for has given her my phone number a few times but she hasn’t called me.  Sandy

I haven’t seen Doug’s film yet (because it hasn’t yet come to Washington - which we all hope it will!)

But here’s my thought.  I actually know way more about my parents than I ever wanted to.  There is an aspect of divorce, and my parents divorced when I was 12 - or at least that’s when the process started - where I ended up finding out a lot about them and their relationship, lots of things that I never wanted to know anything about nor really had any business knowing about.

My parents got divorced in the 70’s - before people accepted divorce and anyone “knew how to do it.” Now, there are all kind of books, self-help groups, “putting the kids first” mechanisms that try to shield children, but at that time no one had come up with those paliatives. 

No matter what, when a family is torn apart - lots of pieces of information - self-help books aside - end up emerging that kids would just as soon not know. It’s like all the snakes just crawl out of the box. 

So my attitude about my own kids - I have three, 20, 18 and 16 -is that there are things that are just none of their damn business - both about my relationship with their father and about me as an individual.  I figure as long as I treat them fairly and honestly on that things that do involve them, then that should be sufficient.

But maybe this is the attitude of someone who had too much information - too much, too soon.

When I saw the documentary, 51 Birch Street, for the first time at SXSW 2006 in Austin, Texas, I sat, utterly mesmerized through the entire film.  Although I was at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater, and had a hot pizza and glass of wine on the ledge in front of me, I did not reach for either, and did not miss them.  I watched. Studied?  Wondered. Found myself ensnared in the threads of a story that could be mine.  Or might be yours.  Is probably all of ours if we are honest with ourselves.

In late January of 2004, only 10 days after her 84th birthday, my grandmother unexpectedly passed away in her sleep.  Always, vibrant and very social, she had enjoyed a night out with friends, including a man she had known since 4th grade, but never dated until after my grandfather passed away in 2001.  “Dated” is probably a stretch.  They “kept company”.  Elmer had had a stroke and was wheelchair bound, but that did not keep them from going out with friends, or even from taking an overnight trip with a group (they stayed in separate bedrooms… that was made clear to us upon their return).  I never knew about my grandmother’s friendship with Elmer until after my grandfather left us… and then it was proven with a Valentine from 4th grade, love letters from junior high, more photos from parties long ago, and more recent cards, letters and gifts.  They had had separate, happy lives with families they loved, and re-discovered each other many years later when it was possible for them to be together.  Some might say that was good timing.  My grandparents were together for more than 50 years.  Elmer and my grandmother had a happy 18 months together.

I was devastated by my grandmother’s death.  The last time I spoke to her, was to let her know I’d see her in 3 days to have lunch with her and my father.  She seemed to be okay… maybe a little tired, and said she might have plans, so I didn’t need to worry about including her.  She told me she loved me.  Two days later… the day before I was to go have lunch with her, my father called to tell me she’d “left us”.  He found her in her bed at noon, curled up, as though still sleeping.  None of us got to say good-bye.  And she probably would have preferred it that way.  But there were so many questions I had wanted to ask her.

I had wanted to ask her.  I meant to ask her.  I should have asked her.  I didn’t ask her.  Why she and my grandfather (who was really my step-grandfather) never had children even though my father was only 5 when they married.  How my grandfather courted her.  What it was like during the war.  Was she really happy in their later years when they no longer played bridge, or went out with the “Wild Bunch” (the group they had traveled with for years) because my grandfather had had a stroke which made it difficult for them to go out.  Was she ever lonely?  I wish she had kept journals so I would know some of those things.... but she didn’t.

Mr. Block’s movie reminded me of so many things I had wanted to ask her.... and made me curious about my own parents… who divorced when I was 19.  I can remember much of what their marriage was like, and how it affected my childhood, some of it was fine, but a lot of it, I’d just as soon forget.  My mother has kept a journal for more than 30 years.  I would never dare to look at it.  I know there is stuff in there that I do not want to know.  She keeps her personal writing in large binders, carefully dated, and filled to bursting with scraps of things from her life, and mine, and my brother’s… and now, my stepfather’s, too.  I wonder how those writings will be handled one day when she “leaves us”.  Will we read it?  Who will take possession?  How will memories, renewed from her perspective, affect my brother and me, and my children?  I am a curious person, an obsessive researcher, interested in most things new, and unusual, with a voracious appetite for the tantalizing, but I have no desire whatsoever to know what’s in my mother’s journals.  I think there’s a part of me that thinks, perhaps mistakenly, that while my grandmother left me with no answers, my mother will leave me with all the answers.... and I am more afraid of those answers than I am afraid not to know.

51 Birch Street was a reminder that the time to ask questions is now… if you are brave enough to do so.  Doug Block’s family isn’t mine… and it isn’t even remotely like mine in most ways.  But in some fundamental ways, it is exactly like mine.  There are the things you “just don’t talk about”.  The things one assumes everyone else in the family knows, but no one really knows at all…. There are memories skewed by time, and fictionalized by the various characters involved, because each experienced the same thing in a different way.  With the help of priceless home movies, his mother’s writings, and interviews with family members, Mr. Block, has managed to capture aspects of a Universal Family… and his family became mine… and maybe yours… maybe all of ours… if we are honest with ourselves.

51 Birch Street is now screening in a limited release in a number of cities around the country.  October 11th it will be in Austin, Texas again for the first time since SXSW 2006.  I’ll be there to see it again. If you missed it during the festival, try to catch it when it comes back. You may discover pieces of your family in the broken pieces of Block’s.

I had waited an adult lifetime to resolve “issues” with my dad. One of my great fears was him passing on before we had the time to talk. I was thousands of miles away when I received the call that he was dying. I rushed back home and spent his last night on earth sitting at his bedside holding his hand. We didn’t talk. We had no need to. What was obvious to both of us in those moments was that he had always loved me and me him. Never a moment of my life was that in doubt. There was nothing else to add.

The breakthroughs I’ve had with my parents have really been the results from my experiencing other people’s relationships with their children or parents, then being able to view my parents in a new light by comparison.

Growing up, it’s tough to tell what’s going on relative to anyone else’s life, because you only have one set of parents.  It’s not like you get to change parents every few years and compare. :D By getting to know other people and their parents, or even by seeing people relating to their children in the streets or in stores, I began to see things that I took for granted.

I remember standing outside a pizza shop, and a woman was pushing a small child in a stroller.  She was yelling and screaming at the baby, trying to get him to comply with her wishes.  It was as if she thought the baby was a peer of hers, and she had exhausted all rational means of communication.  She looked like a complete idiot, and as I attempted to empathize with the baby, I realized that I couldn’t.  I realized that never in my entire life had my parents screamed at me.  It was something that I took for granted as ‘regular parental behavior’, but I understood, by example, that things could have been quite different during my upbringing, and that my personality would be totally different if I had been raised by lunatics like this woman in front of me.

Having two parents was another thing that I took for granted.  Eventually, I met a lot of people whose parents were separated, or even worse… that had no idea who their father was at all.  I met people whose parents threw punches at them out of anger or a misguided attempt at discipline.  I met people whose parents weren’t taking care of themselves financially… much less their kids.  I met kids that had jobs after school, while I was ‘living’ off of allowance.  I met kids that didn’t have their own room.  I met students whose parents didn’t put them through college.  I met kids whose parents were consistently on welfare, as opposed to my mother, who retired after 30 years of dedicated service as a teacher and assistant principal.

My understanding of my parents evolved during my learning about the lifestyles of other people.  I’ve never been rich, but I’ve always had more money than I was going to spend.  I’ve never ever worried about having food or a roof over my head or education or protection.  My parents created the environment for me that has allowed me to become the person I am today.  I respect that completely, and I’m grateful. :D

This is a very short version of a long story...perhaps someday I’ll put it in book form.

I only truly understood my mom, Evelyn, and felt a deep empathy with her after she was gone. She died in August, 2000. Before this, she was in a nursing home for ten years having suffered a stroke, and was more like a dependent child than my mother. Since then I have ached with the desire to talk with her, comfort her, and be her female friend the way we were never able to be while she lived.

She and my father had a difficult relationship when I was growing up. They finally divorced after I graduated from high school, after 24 years of marriage. 

As a young girl I worshipped my mostly-absent father and craved his love and attention more than anything in the world. He was a handsome, soft-spoken, gentle man. And very distant.

My mother had wonderful qualities as well but I couldn’t relate to her, nor she with me. She was different than my girlfriends’ moms in ways that made me resent her for years. She raised me and my older brothers practically as a single parent. I remember her trying to pay the bills every month with the remainder of my dad’s paycheck - sent home after he deducted his own expenses, including his bar bill. (The cost of his beer consumption over the years would have been enough to put all his kids through college I have since calculated.) Mom also worked part time as an Registered Nurse. She was tired, stressed out and extremely depressed during my high school years. 

As a young adult my relationship with mom was okay but as we were never emotionally close, I shared very little with her of who I really was. Actually, I didn’t really even know myself. And I was too self-absorbed to ask her about hers. (A common characteristic in young adult children.)

Over the years - I suffered the loss of my first husband (also an alcoholic, surprise, surprise)and thus widowed at 30, was left to raise my three children. I went on to remarry twice more and these relationships ended in disaster. Meantime, I sought therapy and dealt with my father/daughter issues and my grief over his voluntary absence in our lives. By this time he had remarried and had quit drinking, but still chose to be very uninvolved in our lives. He all but forgot about my mother (who remained single until she died).

The long story short is this: With every year that has passed, I’ve felt the things my mother must have felt when so abandoned by my dad, raising us kids and then trying to make a life of her own. I long since forgave all the ways she wasn’t able to be the mom I needed and wanted when growing up. After her stroke, I helped care for her and loved her affectionately. But I’ll always grieve the years that were lost and the sad aloneness of her life. I’ve longed to have chats with her as two women who share in common much more than they ever knew.  I send my heart to her in heaven and tell her all the things I never could. Mostly, that I understand.

My relationship with my parents is always changing.  More towards the better since I don’t live with them anymore!  I am not sure if I had a single moment where things changed between us and stayed that way, I feel like I am constantly looking at them with new perspectives as I mature and grow.  There was a moment though when I really felt what a strange and powerful sensation in must be to have a child and to love them so deeply.  My grandfather turned 80 a few years ago.  He has six kids, and 10 of us grandkids.  At one point during his 80th birthday party he turned around and looked at all of us eating, laughing, and ignoring each other, and he looked so shocked.  He stopped like a deer in headlights, it was as if he had never seen us before.  Then he smiled and sat on the edge of the couch, I swear it looked like the weight of his pride brought him down.  I don’t have any children, but imagine tending them, raising them, giving up so much for them!  Its no wonder parents are a little afraid to be themselves around us kids.  I’m sure it is scary to imagine exposing yourself to your children and discovering you aren’t enough for them, or aren’t who they would want their parents to be.  Parenthood is love at its most devout and most misunderstood.  That is the only moment I can think of that weighed heavily on me, watching my grandfather sink under the weight of his unrequitable love.

Inspired by Doug Block and his journey in 51 Birch Street, I was trying to think back on when I realized that my mother was not some mythical creature but an individual with experiences, thoughts, failures, pain. It was difficult because I can’t remember ever having my mother on a pedestal, and the reason is the story of a childhood that you rarely hear about anymore.

My mother was 19 when she had me. I’m told that I was a wanted pregnancy and I know that my mother and father moved to Maine to pursue a bohemian life of log cabins and farming together. The rest of the details are fuzzy, at best. But as quickly as their relationship started, it ended with my mother driving me, some cats and a broken-down truckload of stuff from Maine back to her parent’s home in New Jersey. I was 2 years old.

Though there is much in between, my next clear memories are of my mother going to college and working to support us in West Virginia. I was about 6 or 7-years-old. We had a two-bedroom house with a large back yard where she grew potatoes. She worked at the university hospital, frequently nights from 11 PM to 7 AM while I stayed at home alone. At some point, she couldn’t afford that house and we moved to a trailer park. She once told me that before we moved in, the place was infested with roaches and she spent a lot of time while I was on vacation with my grandparents fixing the place up. Her work schedule continued and I stayed home alone a lot.

It was while she worked and went to school to support us that I smoked my first cigarette, learned about sex, saw a dog frozen to death outside its home. One time, the older brother of a friend came over and started playing with knives; I had a bad feeling about the situation and had to use my best diplomatic skills to get him out of the place as soon as possible. And to deal with my life, on Sundays, I used to put myself on a bus that came around to the trailer park to take folks to church. I didn’t have any religious upbringing; I remember being baptized and having no idea what that meant, but I was searching for solace even then.

When she was around, my sense of independence was a source of continual conflict that continued until I was in my 20’s. My mother’s temper would flare and she would wind up hitting me; not knock-down-drag-outs, but sheer frustration at my stubborn will. I could never abide by her telling me what to do when most of the time I was taking care of myself.

We had no money. She struggled with her relationships with men and her own parents. She put herself through school. She made choices I agreed with and choices that I knew were wrong. I started working when I was 14 and have worked ever since. I put myself through school. I made choices she agreed with and many others that she didn’t.

We grew up together really, and so I always knew that while I was dependent upon her in some ways, we were equal in the larger scheme of things.

I don’t envy Doug’s journey. It was the shattering of his mythology of family, and he made hard choices to uncover deeply private matters. But his journey revealed a message that I needed to hear: to err is human and to forgive is divine. While I truly understand that my mother did the best she could, I still need to forgive her for not giving me the idyllic childhood I longed for. I’m working on it.

Thank you to the Block family for sharing your story.

Not too long ago my mother confided in me that she is afraid of being alone, the reason for her 11 year relationship to a man she isn’t very fond of.  Her feelings towards her boyfriend were not the revealing part of the conversation, her way of being around him had already betrayed her, it was the fact that my mother was allowing herself to be open and vulnerable in the conversation.  I made up my mind at a young age that my mother could do anything and was afraid of nothing, as far as I was concerned the woman was a Bulletproof Super-Hero, this conversation did not jive with that notion.

Nothing was resolved that day (my mother is still in that relationship) but, something new was created in the space of that conversation.  We now have a friendship in which being open and vulnerable is acceptable, coming from both directions.  As a son my mother was, and often is, the person I turn to vent and seek comfort, in her openness she exposed herself as a person with worries and concerns (something I had never considered).  Now in conversation I can provide the space for her to be heard without judgment and provide a listening filled with love and generosity.  I have traded in a Bulletproof, Super-Hero for a best friend; I would have it no other way.

As Doug’s sister I’ve watched with awe and envy as he flits from festival to festival with 51 Birch Street.  Who would have believed that the story of a middle-class, suburban, 50’s family would touch so many people?  I’ve shown the film to some of my friends and colleagues, most of whom are therapists or psychologists of one kind or another.  Their responses have astounded me; they are so moved by the story, and so drawn in by the events described.  One friend whose opinion I greatly value told me that she envied me my parents because they were so articulate and insightful.  I tried to explain that the parents she saw in the film are not the parents I grew up with.  My parents were not articulate, and they definitely kept their insights, and their emotions, to themselves.  I know they deliberately chose to keep so much of their inner selves hidden, because in my family it was just too dangerous to risk talking about feelings.  But I don’t believe I really knew before I saw this film just how much lay below the surface.  It has been a somewhat painful experience to watch this film and to know that so many people who are strangers to me are now privy to some of my family members most intimate thoughts and private behavior.  There are two big compensations though; I know my parents better than I did before, especially my mother who I can now see in a much more compassionate light, and the fact that so many people seem to truly be moved by the film to look at their own family relationships and to perhaps change them for the better, knowing that it is never too late.