A Broken Life Chapter 2

Observations and Reflections on a Christmas Letter

This letter was written by my mother in 1970 and I have an original copy of it. Why I ended up with it I don’t really know, but I’ve had a knack of collecting items and artifacts over the years without any idea of how and why I might use them someday.  Today, one year after the death of my mother, I find myself telling the story of her life, our family’s story and my life.  This letter provides not only some insight into what life was like for us in 1970 but also how my mother viewed the family.

Mom was a writer by training and occupation. I’ve not changed a word or punctuation mark of the original-you are reading it as if it was sent to you back in 1970.

Dear

We can’t quite believe it, but two weeks before Christmas we have our shopping done, packages wrapped and tree decorated. We so enjoy our surprising organization, we decided to make sure our cards, too, were mailed before Christmas. Therefore—a mass-produced letter.

1970 has been an interesting year. Don has been president of Des Moines Typographical Union since May of 1969. The union has a full-time sec.-treas., and the president, he was once told, signs checks and presides at meetings. It was apparent from the first month of his term of office that this was a bit understated. Finally, last summer, with three contracts to negotiate, assorted arbitrations and problems to deal with, the union voted that Don take a leave of absence from the Register and Tribune and work full-time for the union for 6 months. Contract negotiations with the Meredith Publishing and the Register and Tribune are going on, and both are a departure from former years. The R&T seemingly has regressed to a level of labor-management relations popular 50 years ago. At this point it is difficult to be optimistic that an honorable contract is possible, but even our horoscopes can’t tell us for sure. Although he has problem upon problem, Don does enjoy the work. Right On!

For two years now I have been with Dial Financial Corp. as a writer-editor, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of the job. Along with two company publications, I have a wide range of writing assignments, most of which include lay-out and typographic design. The major product now is a re-design of a series of training booklets on the company’s new computer system, which I am re-writing and jazzing up for marketing purposes. Most people aren’t turned on by computer systems, but I enjoy trying to make Dial’s understandable.

Shelley is 19, spent a year at college away from home, now works and lives in an apartment, trying to decide what she wants to do. She is a lovely girl and enjoys her independence.

Dan is 18, has registered for the draft unenthusiastically, and will go to Drake University here next fall to study music (draft willing). This vocation has persisted since grade school—we feel he is lucky to be able to make a career of something he enjoys so much. He works at McDonalds as top hamburger chef.

Tony, is 16, is the only person who can fix anything, so he’s very busy. Between his repair jobs he sandwiches in a high school schedule of English, Soc. Studies, 3^rd year French, math physics and band. And he works at a neighborhood drug store.

Joe, 15 plays basketball, bowls and watches TV. He probably has perfect pitch, plays the baritone very well. Everyone likes Joe and he is fortunate to have a personality and disposition that are hard to equal. Katie will be 14 Christmas eve. She is at the age we used to deplore (13-14), but we hardly notice any more. She is, like Joe, very adaptable---and very determined.  Because of Katie, we have cats—currently tow mammoth yellow cats. They just wander in, Katie hides them in her room and we have them forever.

Tom is 12, a fine student, carries a paper route which he threatens to quit once a week.  When we insisted he continue, he reminded us of the child labor laws. Tom can quote them just as well as he can reel off the number and dates of tidal waves in Japan and the latest figures on hog production in Iowa. Jane is 10, a delightful age, but then Janie has always been a very pleasant child. She plays the piano, accomplishes her schoolwork quietly and efficiently and when Tony doesn’t get around to fixing something, she does it. 

Jerry is 8 and as the youngest, he tries harder. We get reports from school he always tries to be “first in line.” He is an expert at needling Tom, and with his loud voice can always be heard above the family commotion. (We didn’t ever think we’d hear the SST.) He loves math and does special problems, because he says, “I always finish mine first.”

We celebrated our 20^th wedding anniversary in June. I called Don to say I thought we deserved a medal. He replied, “My God, at least a drink!” we have been fortunate in that the children seem to walk down the middle of the road (a position that normally doesn’t appeal to us, but in this context is a relief), and we really don’t experience the generation gap.

From all of us, to all of you

A very happy Christmas and New Year

And Peace!

My thoughts as I read this today  (43 years later):

It is probably no accident that my Dad gets the most air time, or that he is the first to be talked about. Today, it seems, most of these holiday letters are all about the children with the parents mentioned at the end, and then briefly, if at all. Dad’s work with the union was evolving and becoming more important. Mom’s work was also important to her but  it was taking a back seat to his work and I think she came to resent the stress and focus his work took.  The use of the term “right on!” gives some clues to her activist mentality.

Mom’s description of my older sister, Shelley, stands out for the bland and non-descript way that she describes her. Shelley, who I am quite fond of and am very close to, was anything but non-descript. Mom always held Shelley to a different standard than she did her other children. She was overly critical of her and in spite of her feminist inclinations, seemed to have difficulty embracing who Shelley was. In the summer of 1970, Shelley had moved back to Des Moines after a year away at college and moved into an apartment with a friend, choosing to work for a while. You would have thought the world was going to come to an end. And to top it off, she and some of her friends went to a rock festival in NE Iowa known as “Wadena”,  Iowa's version of Woodstock, and when Mom and Dad heard about this they threatened to disown her. Now, does that sound liberal or open-minded to you? I suppose what she wrote was the best she could do, but it speaks volumes. To me, it reeks of disappointment and that, even today, makes me sad. Sad because Shelley, more than any other sibling, sacrificed to make Mom a part of a family. And it was Shelley, who in the last month of Mom's life, cared for her and paid a high price to do so. 

Then come the boys, me included, and if you don’t detect a tone of favoritism and “can do no wrong” then you need to read it again. Where there are few details written about Shelley, there are all kinds of detail with the boys, at least for Tony and I.  I was very aware that there was different set of rules for the boys than there were for my older sister.  Pretty much everything I did was OK. No curfew, no interest in my girlfriend- “Why can’t you be like Danny?"is what Shelley said she heard or felt.

Not lost on me is the fact the oldest 3 children get their own paragraph, while the next 4 have to share a paragraph.  Seems like the farther down in the birth order you were, the more you were lumped together and not given the same quality or quantity of attention.  Although my experiences and opinions are my own, I wonder if my younger siblings feel the same way.  I will give it up her though, she was a good writer. The humorous and nuanced way she describes each of them gives some insight into her sense of humor. She seemed to enjoy our idiosyncrasies.

And Jerry, the baby of the family, also nick-named “The Little Nipper”, brings up the rear. He gets his own paragraph and rightfully so.  I’m quite sure his experience growing up in this family and mine were nowhere close.

The closing paragraph is probably most revealing when I think about what was to transpire. The reference to “at least a drink”, referring to us as “the children” and not being fond of walking down the middle of the road are all a foreshadowing of things to come. 

And that it ended with the word Peace is nothing less than ironic.

Simple Gifts

It is a beautiful fall day here-sunny, cool with light winds. A beautiful day to make music. A beautiful day for a band concert.

While running on the trail early today, it dawned on me that I've been playing the saxophone for 50 years. A milestone. 50 years. Wow.

For 50 years, I've been going off to band rehearsals , a gig, a concert, some gathering of musicians who shared love of music and performing. Concert bands, jazz bands, duets and quartets, all kinds of ensembles. 

In junior high school,  I formed a combo we called "The Burnished Brass" and we modeled ourselves after Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

In college, I recorded a 45 with a local soul band in a recording studio up in Minneapolis. 

I led my college marching band onto the field at Lambeau Stadium in Green Bay for a Packers game in front of a national TV audience back when they used to show bands on TV.

I played in and conducted school bands and adult bands and performed under the baton of some of the finest band conductors of the day.

For 10 years, I taught young people the art of making music and playing an instrument.

And I've sat side by side with fellow musicians and band nerds in countless hours of rehearsals and performances as we made music together.

Music has been my identity,  my salvation,  my creative outlet and my occupation at times during these 50 years. Playing the saxophone is central to the story of my life.

Today, I celebrate 50 years of playing the saxophone and I can't think of a better way to do that than to play in our community band, performing concert band literature.

Simple gifts that last a lifetime. Music is a gift. And the blessings of that gift are not lost on me today.

My first lesson book dated 7/10/63

A Broken Life

When she died, she was alone in the ICU,  in a city she didn't live in. There was no funeral. She was cremated and her ashes were disposed of by the crematorium. No obituary was written. Friends were not contacted because there were none remaining other than the virtual faceless people on the chat rooms she frequented. There was no will, no house or apartment to sort through, just a few boxes of things-a laptop and an electric 3 wheeled tricycle that was still in a shipping crate, left at my sister's house in New Jersey.

Who was this woman and how did she end up in this situation? After all, she bore 8 children, 7 who were still alive at the time of her passing.

She was my mother. I was reminded of her just past week why my older sister sent me an e-mail in which she said, " I finally figured out a plan for Mom's bike. I'm donating it to the Trenton Rescue Mission, an organization that helps homeless people. I think Mom would be pleased especially since she was an advocate of programs for homeless people. If you recall, she spent a night in a D.C. jail in the late 80's or early 90's after laying down in the rotunda of our nation's capital to support services for homeless people. Just seems like the right thing to do."

I do recall that she spent a night in a D.C. jail. And I recall when she used to read to me as a little boy. I recall when she used to make us oatmeal on cold winter mornings and when she'd talk with me about politics, civil rights and the women's movement. And I recall when it all began to change.

My parents were typical of the post WWII generation of young couples, full of hope and optimism. It wasn't long after they married that they had their first child in August of 1950. I followed my sister, Shelley 15 months later.  Then came another, and another, and another and by April 1962, there 5 boys and 3 girls. Our house was crowded and noisy, but  full of adventure and wonderment at the same time. Mom worked part-time off and on in the 50's and shortly after we moved from a county seat town in Iowa to Des Moines in 1960, she began working full-time. By the mid-60's my father and mother were both working the evening shift at the newspaper- Dad as a Linotype operator, Mom as a proofreader. There was a steady stream of babysitters who attempted to care for us on the nights they both worked. We ran most of them off. There was Mrs. Hotchkiss, who made us watch Lawrence Welk and tried to read the bible to us. And Mrs. Robinson, a kind black woman who rode the bus to our street only to have Chang, the next door neighbor's pug, bark and growl at her as she walked by. Mom was horrified that this "racist pug , who never got off it's ass for anything", would embarrass her like that. It wasn't old Chang  that ran Mrs. Robinson off, it was all of us incorrigible Kingkade kids.

 The  older children took care of the younger children and we all did our share of household chores. Mom tried to organize by coming up with elaborate written plans and schedules. That never lasted very long.  We would barter and bargain away all our assignments to a point where nobody knew what anybody else was supposed to be doing . Frustrated, she would eventually tire of the effort and give in. The house was always a mess and there were heaps of undone laundry in the basement and the linoleum floors where sticky and caked with dropped food. There were days when Mom would check out and sleep half the day or retreat to her bedroom to read, leaving the rest of the us to run amok. And run amok we did. Who could blame her, I remember thinking, at the time.

1956

There were also the times when she would read to us...the Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, the Christmas Carol. Saturdays meant a trip to Bookmobile or even better, the downtown library. When Mom wasn't chasing and tending to children, she had her nose in a book. The oldest of us took piano lessons, had our pictures taken and got to do many of the things that first born males and females got to do. Our birthdays were celebrated and holidays were always a big deal.  Education was encouraged and supported. Looking back, I know now that what I experienced as a young child and what my younger siblings experienced in the years to come were not the same. Things were slowly changing and not always for the better.

A  Sunday in 1965, after Mass

Dad was a Catholic and insisted on us attending Mass every Sunday. Because he worked the late shift at the newspaper, he slept in Sunday morning which meant we attended the 12 noon high mass. A typical Sunday had the kids getting up early and watching whatever was on TV while our parents slept. We made our own breakfast, went outside to play, got dirty and started commotion that woke them up and made them really cranky. Dad would try to round everybody up to get to church at noon, Mom would grumble and stay home. We'd arrive late and all 8 or 9 of us would pile into the last available pew, usually at the front of the church. Some Sundays, Dad's parents, who lived in Ames, would drop in unannounced about the time we were returning from church. This irritated Mom and she would let dad know how she felt in no uncertain terms after his parents headed home. 

Things really started to change when she and Dad both started working days and would stop off at the T & T Lounge downtown to have cocktails and dinner before heading home. There were nights when everyone at home had to fend for themselves. Times were changing, there was social unrest in the air. Mom started back to school to finish her degree. She declared that she was a "women's libber" (her words). She and my Dad fought more and the house became more chaotic. We were all growing up and pushing the limits, me included. My Dad and I banged heads. Mom and Shelley, my older sister, did the same. Mom and Dad would have pretty intense battles and we would hide in the basement or escape out into the neighborhood. When the battles wound down, everyone just simply resumed their role in the drama, as if it had never occurred. The rules around the house that I was raised on as a young boy were no longer the same.

1970

And yet, I admired and respected her for her intellect, her passion and her activist energy. She openly wept when Martin Luther King was shot, woke me up to talk when the news of Bobby Kennedy's assassination broke. She encouraged me to get involved in youth politics and I ended up working in several political campaigns as a teenager. When I was drafted in the fall of 1971 just as I was heading off to music school, mom was my biggest advocate in helping me find a way around that dilemma. We rarely got into skirmishes and more often than not, I felt she was my advocate.

In 1970, mom wrote a Christmas letter, the kind you put in your Christmas cards. It describes what she, my dad and all of the 8 children are doing. She closes it by saying, "Don and I had our 20 year anniversary this year. I told him we ought to go out and celebrate it. He responded that we at least ought to have a drink."  

The next several years are a little murky as I was immersed in college life and living off-campus. Every now and then I would stop by the house on a week night to check my mail or do a load of laundry. What I would discover unsettled me-a house left unattended, my younger siblings running wild in the neighborhood, no signs of adult supervision. Sometimes, mom and dad were still downtown at the tavern and other times they were secluded upstairs in their dormer bedroom, having cocktails, oblivious to the world downstairs.  

In the fall of 1973, mom was featured in the local paper in an article about 5 women who cab-pooled to work . It's a charming article and paints a picture of a big family with 3 cars and competing transportation needs resulting in her need to cab-pool.

The article closes by talking about the cab driver's thoughts on the women in his taxi:

Pat's cab is empty now of fares and he speaks of the women in an affectionate, paternal fashion. "Nice gals," he says. "Now, Rita's a women's libber, but we have a good time."

I remember being amused by his comments at the time. But underneath the story of a modern working woman with a husband and 8 children was a woman who was growing more restless and unhappy by the day.

With Mom immersed in work and her activist pursuits, and Dad, now working full-time for the printer's union and knee deep in labor issues, the house on 35th was a different place than I had left it. It was becoming  more unpredictable and chaotic. Trouble was brewing- I could sense it every time I walked in the front door. It became easier to stay away and my casual drop-ins became less frequent. 

In 1974, during my junior year in college, I ran into Mom in an aisle at the local grocery store one night.   "Oh by the way, your father and I are getting are separating. He's moving into the Commodore Hotel. I just can't deal with it anymore".  I didn't know what to think but I'm sure somewhere deep inside, I was afraid. 

Things would never be the same again.  This family, born out of the optimism that defined the early 1950's, was about to implode.

Dan's-Life Savings Time

Did you set your clocks back an hour on Saturday night? Or did you start to make the rounds through the house only to get thrown into a funk when you came to the coffee maker and couldn't remember how the damned thing worked?  "Screw it",  I said. I'll just do the math in my head every time I see a clock that isn't set right. Nah, that gets old, better get the manual out. Damn, where's the manual?

It didn't really go that way at our house. I don't remember changing any clocks, but somebody did, including the coffee maker. I just had to change the clock in my car. Yeah, I know, I got off easy.

This whole Daylight Savings Time ritual we go through twice a year is kind of a joke if you think about it. Time is time- you can't really save it. You can only spend it. And you only get so much time  in your life, so even if you somehow manage to save it, you can only spend it as it occurs--minute by minute.

But what if there was such a thing as personal time-savings accounts where you could save time now then use it later when you want to. Mine would be called Dan's-life Savings Time.  Kind of like a  401k for time.You get to save time by avoiding activities or behaviors that are a waste of your time early in your life (when you think you have all the time in the world) and use it later in your life (when time is running out). Here's how it would work:

Let's say I got invited to a party in college that I didn't think would be much fun so I decide not to go. Instead, I just sat home and did nothing. Later,  I heard from people who attended that the party was a bust. The party lasted 4 hours so I got to put 4 hours in my savings bank. After earning  interest, I now have 344 hours that I can use at the age 61, to do something I really want to do.

Here's another scenario: Instead of spending hours worrying if I would pass an important test, or if my sick friend would pull through their surgery (" it's just an open-heart, they're a dime a dozen these days"), I'd spend my time doing nothing else like staring at the ceiling  or cracking my knuckles. Again, time saved equals time to be spent later.

I think I'm on to something.

Too bad I didn't think about this sooner though. After all, it's 2013, not 1974. I'm 61, not 21. My work career is winding down not ramping up. My body is like a high-mileage car..it runs good, but could be expensive to repair.

And come to think of it, I've never been one to sit around and do nothing. Even when I wasn't sure what to do, I did something. And I'd like to think that while I can't go back and re-allocate time, I can certainly make better use of the time I have left.

Like setting the clocks back an hour in the fall and forward in the spring.

"Honey, where's the manual for that damn coffee maker?"

Boo Humbug

Is there such a thing as a Halloween Scrooge? If there is, then I'm it. 

You see, I'm not a big fan of Halloween. It's a holiday I think we could do without. And it isn't really a season like the Christmas season, it's just a day. So it would be easy to dispose of.

As a child, Halloween was sort of a mixed bag. I could never quite get the right costume and usually ended up going as a hobo, wearing old worn out clothes and putting charcoal on my face. None of us 8 Kingkade kids ever got those cool, trendy masks or costumes. 

I also heard that some kids got  "jumped by some hoods" and had their candy stolen or that someone found a needle or a razor blade in their candy. Maybe this was just urban legend but it made me leery of a holiday where those kinds of things occurred. You never heard of people putting something in someone's fruit cake, did you?

And then there was Halloween in small-town Iowa. As a first year teacher, I was warned by the locals that if I left my car outside in the driveway on Halloween, it would get vandalized. It seems that in small towns, Halloween was a license for destroying or stealing anything that wasn't locked up or tied down.  "Har, had, har, why back a few years ago, them kids took a goat and put it up on top of the elementary school, har, har, har." Main Street was blocked with a pile of park benches, signs, trash cans, and anything else you could get your hands on the next morning. A parent of a student offered up their spare garage for my car, but other teachers weren't as fortunate.

Not raising children may have also contributed to my Hallo-Scrooge-ism. There was a pretty big gap in the time when I last trick-or-treated to when I started to participate again. Like about 45 years. Last Saturday, we tagged along with our grandkids and their parents to a Halloween event at a wonderful children's farm in Kansas City. The girls are 4 and 19 months old and boy were they cute all dressed up in their costumes. My hardened pumpkin heart started to soften a bit.

Then today at work, some of the children from our new residential treatment center came around dressed in their costumes to trick-or-treat in my part of the building. These are children who have not had a great life yet. They are here because life has dealt them a heavy hand, but there is hope they will get better because our people here do great work.

As I was reaching into my stash of Kit-Kats, Mounds Bars and other goodies, I met a princess, Green Lantern, a Goth Witch, Batman, a soldier and a Geisha. They all told me who they were, thanked me for the treats and then down the hall they went. I was smiling.

What's the lesson here, Dan, I ask myself. Maybe Halloween isn't so bad after all. Maybe you could change your mind about it. Maybe, just maybe, you could come to embrace it.  

Let's not get carried away. I need a little time to think about this. Although I have to admit, I've had a couple of really good Hallo-moments this year so maybe there is hope for me yet.

Word of the Day--Change

Change-the summer of 1967 and I was involved in trying to change my community for the better. My parents were both activists of sorts and encouraged getting involved. And while it was somewhat idealistic and youthful in it's expression, I still have the desire to create positive change where I can. The other picture is a young man I mentor at a local high school near me where I'm involved in a youth mentoring program. It was taken last June at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) museum outside of Omaha before we said so long for the summer. I see him every Friday morning for an hour. The goal: be an encourager and create positive change. I'm supposed to change him-I think it's been the other way around.

My Teammate, Brady and I in June

Old Timer

October is a weird month for me as months go. 23 years ago I had just run my second marathon in 6 months up in the Twin Cities. I ran my first marathon in April. I was reaching the end of my drinking life and the marathons, when I look back on them, were an attempt to prove that I could control things such as how much and when I drank. I had this notion that some kind of mystical transformation would come over me as I crossed the finish line and the urge to drink would be lifted, if not rendered more manageable. Neither happened. My first thought in St. Paul that October afternoon was "where's the beer tent?" I recognized that uncomfortable feeling of apprehension and anxiety that only a drink could level. 

It was over.  I knew what I had to do. A few phone calls and a meeting with the EAP at work led to my enrollment in a evening treatment program. On October 27, 1990, after nurturing a relationship with alcohol that began in high school, a love affair that had left me battered and bruised both emotionally and spiritually, I took my last drink. October 28th, 1990 was my first sober day. 

At my Saturday morning meeting this week, the topic was "what do you old timers do to maintain your sobriety differently than when you were first getting started?" Immediately I started to formulate my thoughts on that question hoping I would get called on to share, because  I had good stuff to share.  But it's a large meeting and several members talked more than they should  (sorry, I'm taking their inventory, I know). So I'm going to share now and when you are done reading, could you please say out loud in a monotone voice,  "thanks, Dan". That's what we do at those meetings.

"My name is Dan and I'm an alcoholic". You can say "Hi Dan" as you read this, but feel free to say it silently in case there others around you. It's kind of fun once you get used to it, but it's sounds pretty weird at first, like you've just joined a cult or are at a Toastmaster's meeting.

Old Timer. Am I an Old Timer? I don't think of myself as an old timer even though I've been doing this deal for some time. I'm not sure what qualifies a person as an old timer...20 years? As far as I'm concerned, anyone with more sobriety than me is an old timer.  But if you want to call me an Old Timer,  I guess that's OK.

A woman at our meeting was celebrating 90 days of sobriety. (round of applause here if you playing along). 

She told of having 5 years of sobriety at one time but started drinking again and was out there for several years before she found her way back.  She said she thought that with 5 years of sobriety and all the tools she had acquired along the way,  she could drink responsibly again. That was not the case. I needed to hear that. 23 years of sobriety and all the tools and experience I've gained has not taught me to drink responsibly. That's a lie. She spoke the truth. What I have learned is how to live responsibly without alcohol in my life, plain and simple.

Then she shared about how hard it was for her to come back to the meetings . She knew where we were but she just couldn't bring herself to walk back in. Driving by the meeting houses and seeing people gathering, she talked about being on the outside looking in...again and again and again. Yeah, I know that feeling. That was my life 23 years ago. On the outside looking in. I needed to hear that too.

My life is really different today than it was 23 years ago. I need my program of recovery as much now as I did back then but for different reasons. So I try to keep it simple and follow a few basic routines-show up on a regular basis and offer encouragement to those who need it, remain teachable and humble and with a little bit of luck, get another day. And before I knew it, 23 years had passed.

So am I an old timer?  I suppose, but I'll leave that up to you. You can call me whatever you wish, just don't call me late for dinner (rimshot-cymbal crash here).  Speaking of dinner, I hear Georgette in the kitchen putting the final touches on yet another wonderful  Sunday evening meal so it's time for my boot heels to be wandering. That's all I've got. I'm glad to be sober.

(This is where you can say " thanks, Dan" if you are still playing along)