Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (61 page)

“
I personally thought that I began to understand Mom and Dad’s relationship when I was in high school studying chemistry,” he grinned. “I remember the teacher describing the atom with a positively-charged nucleus of protons surrounded by circling negatively-charged electrons. Bingo!” he chuckled. “Opposites attract! Here you have a husband whose middle name is Methodical, who plans and maps out all tasks and who solves all problems through logical deductive reasoning. Here you have a wife who accomplishes tasks and solves upcoming problems with the greatest of ease by simply tackling them with full body force. And heaven forbid if anyone gets in the way!”

Stan portrayed his parents as a chemical reaction but acknowledged the existence of a covalent bond. “Mom and Dad, you really do have a lot in common. Your faith. Your church. Your love of family as the top priority. Your want and need is to do that which is right—and right being defined as the guidelines set forth by the laws of God.”

Stan’s understanding of righteousness and godliness had come under fire throughout the previous decade. He and Cathie lived for only a year in the hillside home with the pool, hot tub, waterfall, koi pond, orchid garden, and fruit orchard. He then decided that he needed to make more money. No matter how many gifts and loans he showered upon us needy siblings so that we’d never feel financially vulnerable, Stan continued to feel financially vulnerable himself.

So he compared the dental markets throughout California, looking for the ones with the highest proportions of insured patients. He concluded that he could make the most money in a dusty oil-drilling town called Taft, located in central California about 40 miles southwest of Bakersfield. In 1987, he sold his share of a friend’s dental practice near San Francisco, bought a practice in Taft, and moved his family to the oil wells.

It nearly ruined his life. Despite the money he made, he started to lose everything else. Running the practice by day, speeding to the labs by night, and chasing after insurance companies around the clock left Stan with three hours of sleep on a good night. He grew fat on a diet of Del Taco and Jack-in-the-Box. His cholesterol level rose into the mid-300s. His eyes, hands, fingers, and back began to hurt. His doctors warned him that he wouldn’t live long at the rate he was going. Worst of all, he found almost zero time to spend with his son, Max, who was born in Bakersfield in 1989.

In 1997, Stan surrendered his private practice and went to work for a state prison. One of the most highly skilled dentists in the country gave up his professional dream for the honor of performing impeccable handiwork on the mouths of murderers, rapists, and thieves. He auctioned off his professional building for a loss. He took a cut in pay. He moved his family from a ranch home in Taft to a modest one in Bakersfield.

He did it for Max. For the first time ever, Stan could spend weekends, holidays, late afternoons, and early evenings with his son. Stan could watch Max grow and give him the most valuable thing of all. Companionship. Time. And not just “quality” time whenever Stan scheduled it. But involuntary time whenever Max wanted it. Just being available with a door always open from childhood through adolescence and beyond. Stan had only one child. Only one chance to do it right. He had to give it his best shot. So he gave up just about everything else, for which he had toiled for much of his life, for the sake of something more meaningful.

From the lectern on the altar, Stan saluted his parents for helping him to put the first priority first. “Thank you for teaching me that it is not the million-dollar professional practice, that it is not the Mercedes-Benz or the mansion on the hill but rather being able to pick up my son from school. Thank you for helping me change my life in the last few years and for helping me realize what is ultimately important.”

Genie was no longer quite the nonconformist she once was.

As she strode toward the pulpit, it was evident that the queen of the high school prom had become the archetypal soccer mom: lean, fit, trim, cool, calm, and collected. Her hippie-length hair had been cropped to frame the contours of her slender face. The sides of her mouth showed smile lines, but they signified age less than the tautness of the 45-year-old marathon runner that she had become.

Her two boys, 13-year-old Jonathan and 11-year-old Daniel, sat behind her on the altar. They were the altar boys.

Once the excommunicated heretic, Genie had settled into a conventional lifestyle. She worked only half time, and she split even that time between the office and home so she could take her boys and their buddies to soccer games, basketball games, drum lessons, and school. She had once despised the nuns at her Catholic grade school, but she was now sending her boys to a Catholic grade school. She had once ridiculed the Baltimore Catechism, but she was now teaching catechism at the school. Even her agnostic husband gave religious education seminars for adults at the school, lecturing about the religious symbolism in literature.

At home, Genie tutored her boys. She was doing exactly what Dad had envisioned that she would do when he dropped her off at the college dorm in 1972: She was educating a family.

“
When I was five years old,” Genie declared upon the altar, “I wanted to grow up to be a mommy just like my own mommy. Mom was that big momma in her muumuu who wrapped all her chilluns up in her arms, who made lasagna and cookies and hot buttered bread—not just for us, but for the entire neighborhood!

“
Mom, you’ve always said that those years, when we kids were little, were the happiest years of your life. Well, Mom, if you were happy, just think how happy we were, too, because of how happy you made all of us.”

In the 1990s, the feminist Genie envied the community of stay-at-home moms who’d presided over that block on Calle de Ricardo back in the 1950s. Maybe the moms weren’t economically liberated women, but they didn’t wallow away their time at home in despair. They reached out to one another and looked after one another. Each kid had not just one mom but a dozen moms. Each mom had not just six kids but sixty kids.

Genie believed in the power of families, friends, and villages to harness human goodness. She believed that the battle between good and evil played itself out whenever communities rallied to overcome the bad choices made by individuals who inflicted pain on others. She believed in people and in God, but she placed her greatest faith neither in humanity nor in divinity but in community.

Her greatest hope for her boys was that they would always reach out to people, both to give and to receive. She taught them that their core was their family—but that they could always create other families, other villages, other communities, other Calle de Ricardos, other Saint Lawrence Martyrs, other soccer teams, other English departments.

“
Dad,” Genie shifted her gaze, peering over her reading glasses, “you’ve always taught us about the existence of evil. Well, you know what? You’re right! I often warn my boys, ‘You’ve gotta watch out for that evil, or else it’ll getcha.’ But you and Mom taught us even more about goodness, especially about how much goodness can come from holding fast to one another. And if I can be half as good a parent as you two were to me, I know that Jonathan and Daniel will be very blessed indeed.”

Geri was no longer quite the lightning rod she once was.

She marched directly toward the lectern without making any 90-degree turns. By the age of 44, she had begun to act resolutely in ways that we had never seen before.

In Seal Beach, she methodically staked her claim to a growing number of chores at the home of Mom and Dad. It started with vacuuming. Geri had known how to vacuum as a kid, but she became so distracted by random thoughts and voices as a teenager that she couldn’t finish vacuuming. Not until her early forties did the distractions begin to dissipate and the voices begin to retreat.

So she tried vacuuming Mom and Dad’s apartment one day, all on her own. She did it well. She liked it. She got mad if other people tried to vacuum. That was
her
job.

Then she started making beds. Then dusting. Then doing laundry. Then setting the table, washing the dishes (with both hands), and taking out the trash. She cussed under her breath if anybody usurped her role by taking out the trash. She couldn’t operate an oven; but, by God, she could do plenty of other things. She took the initiative and made herself indispensable.

Once at the lectern, she smiled broadly and suppressed her giggles. She placed her carefully prepared speech squarely in front of her. She adjusted the thick eyeglasses that rested beneath her crown of naturally curly hair.

She spoke forcefully into the microphone in a loud and clear monotone. She made sure that every word could be heard and that each syllable received equal weight. She recounted the fun times growing up, thanking Mom and Dad for all of them.

Geri was sometimes still tormented by the memories of her frightful first days at Camarillo when she was 13. She still referred to the place only obliquely as C. Her lingering aversion toward C had contributed to a lingering tension between Mom and Dad, who occasionally still argued with each other over things that had happened to Geri 30 years before.

But upon the altar, Geri surprised everyone with one of the most independent statements of her life. “Mom and Dad, I want to thank you for putting me in the hospital for two months at age 13.” Her powerful voice boomed off the stone walls and stained-glass windows of the church. “I really needed it. I want to thank you for knowing I needed to be there. You got me in there in time so I could have a chance of getting well again. And when I got out, I was a lot better.”

Dad furrowed his brow. Mom stiffened her neck.

Geri continued, undeterred. “Thank you for taking me to Iowa to live for one year and five months. And thank you for extricating me from the board-and-care home when I was ready to go. God bless you. God love you. Thank you.”

She marched deliberately away from the lectern.

Joe was no longer quite the minimalist he once was.

He made a noisy entrance. His hard-soled shoes hammered the marble floor for the length of the center aisle as he carried his crying two-year-old son, Mark, from the back of the church. Arlette was too pregnant to make a public appearance that day. So Joe handled Mark on his own, shifting the weight of the boy from shoulder to shoulder. Joe was now juggling a family after all, a game for which he had neither practiced, planned, nor particularly prepared.

In college, Joe had taken an ascetic pride in living out of his van. In his early years as a physical therapist, he had worked less so that he could enjoy life more. Accumulating minimal possessions had allowed him to adhere to his priorities. He never envisioned the day when he, a wife, a toddler, and a baby on the way would accumulate so many toys, books, strollers, and other belongings that they’d exceed the storage capacity of three vehicles, a garage, an attic, and every room of a four-bedroom house.

At 42, Joe still had a solid frame, but he was balding as much as his 80-year-old Uncle Ralph sitting in one of the front pews. When Joe spoke into the microphone, he tallied the lessons that he had learned from Dad and Mom. Each set of lessons was distinct but essential, like offense and defense.

“
Dad, I appreciate the hours that you shared with me playing chess, teaching me to develop strategic plans to allow me to achieve my goals. I appreciate the hours you played Ping-Pong with me, teaching me the hand-eye coordination that allowed me to participate in sports during high school and college. I appreciate your taking my friends and me to Dodger games and teaching me to keep score and analyze every move that was happening on the field, thus giving me the tools to examine a situation and solve a problem, the tools that I use every day in my career as a physical therapist. I appreciate the way you used my weekly allowance for the household chores that I completed and the effort you went through to set up my own bank account, teaching me the principles of work, saving for the future, accounting, and internal auditing, thus allowing me to achieve a comfortable level of financial independence at a time like now when I really am going to need those financial resources.

“
Mom, I appreciate the untold diaper changes, warm milk bottles, and hugs and cuddles, teaching me that the world can be a wonderful place. I appreciate your tireless energy, teaching me that work is not really work if you love what you are doing. I appreciate the way that you made our home a home for all my friends, teaching me that we are our relationships, teaching me that family and friends and the relationships and sharing that develop around them are the elements of a fulfilling life. Thanks for being a role model of an individual who loves life, teaching me to make every precious day count.

“
Dad and Mom, I want to thank you for being a team—a team that provided a great life for me.”

Mary Jo was no longer quite as invisible as she once was.

Once behind the microphone, she gleamed. Her blond highlights and bleached teeth caught the rays of the late afternoon sun filtering through the stained glass.

“
Here we are 50 years later proving that opposites do attract,” she began. “The yin and the yang. He counts and calculates. She shouts and radiates. He always feels cold. She always feels hot. He must have mild, bland foods. She buries everything she eats with hot sauces and peppers. But when they both laugh, they laugh so hard they cry. And where one begins, the other ends.”

For five years and counting, Mary Jo had remained together with Renee, who sat with her own mom in one of the pews. Mary Jo and Renee had not formally announced their life partnership, but Renee had become woven into the family fabric regardless. Mom crocheted Renee a Christmas stocking—a sort of Baptism into the family. A couple years afterward, Mom stitched Renee an image of Saint Francis and his peace prayer—a sort of Confirmation of full family membership. When Mom and Renee’s mom started calling each other cross-country and griping to each other about their husbands, Mary Jo and Renee knew they could never part.