Are You My Father?

by Margo Walter

  That first summer in Switzerland was an incredible introduction to life in the Alps. We had rented a chalet close to the village and were in the process of building our new chalet a quarter of the way up a beautiful mountain, the Wispile. Gstaad is nestled between the Alps in the Bern province and looks out on the Diableret glacier. The building process was slow, but the result was majestic. Our new house had incredible views, was surrounded by pastures with Swiss cows, fields covered by wildflowers, and it was only a short walk to town. Every week we would choose a new hike, put on our backpacks, and explore the mountains and valleys at our back door. Five peaks had ski lifts, gondolas, open in the summer with a restaurant at the top of each. Learning German was a must. We were fortunate that we befriended a Swiss couple who spoke English and lived nearby. Peter and Maggie were in their late twenties and in need of work. Since Pete was a ski instructor, he was hired to cross train us and get us ready for skiing. Maggie helped with German instruction, and I really liked them both. All our long hikes ended up with a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine. Hiking boots were required, and I do remember slipping them off to put my feet in a fresh stream. I never knew my feet could feel so good. My toes were tingling and the water was crystal clear. One of our favorite walks was to Saanen to visit the Saanensee, a small pristine lake, and the local church. Who would have dreamed that I would be married in that chapel?

  Very, very good or very, very bad! That description of life continued as we spent the next year in the Sound of Music land, complete with Julie Andrews and the Alps. Liquor flowed freely, and legal age made no difference. I was introduced to marijuana and LSD. Acid was a great way to warm up on the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. An imported German beer helped with the ski run down the slope. I was in deep trouble and did not know it. I was in a fast car in the fast lane with no seat belt.

  There were long hikes with the family and long trails taken alone that were good for the soul. I was still searching but had no idea what I wanted or, more important, whom I wanted to find. There were no sand dunes, but the mountains provided the same kind of protection that I saw as a little girl in the dunes. The hay would blow and sway like the sea oats dancing in the wind. There were secret places that I could go where no one would find me. There was still that dilemma of hiding and wanting to be noticed. Several times I stole my mother’s car and ran away from home. When I ran out of money (twice in Lugano, Italy), I came home. It was not until I had children of my own that I realized the fear, powerlessness, and uncertainty that I placed on my mother’s shoulders.

  The first fall in Switzerland my mother enrolled Hunter and Lynn in the local private school named Le Rosey. The attendees to this boarding school were very noteworthy, including lots of royalty, the Kennedy children, and other famous namesakes. The academics were second to none and the students who attended went on to top-notch, ivy league universities abroad and in the United States. There was little free time for the students, and they participated in many activities, including sports, skiing, and the arts (drama, music, and painting). Since Le Rosey began in first grade and continued until the end of high school, many of the children grew up and matured in the four white buildings beyond the Palace Hotel. It was not unusual for the students to spend holidays and summer vacations at the school. We lived ten minutes away and I assumed that Hunter and Lynn would come home on weekends and all holidays. That was not the case. My mother wanted them to have the full experience of this exclusive school for the rich and discouraged visits home to our chalet. I did not understand this logic and just accepted that this was the way it was going to be. Hunter and Lynn had no voice in this matter and often complained of being homesick, depressed, and forgotten. I guess we all adapted. During weekends I might catch a glimpse of my brother and sister either in town or on the ski slopes. My older brother, Edward, never came to visit, and I was told that he moved to California to do his own thing.

  ***

  Naturally, skiing had become a big part of my life, and it was a daily activity from October until April. Not only was I surprisingly good, but I met some competitive, crazy older kids who liked to ski hard and party harder. I was still a risk-taker, and some of my new friends thought that I was dangerous. It was that “Whatever!” attitude. I knew that I was different from my friends. I still did not allow anyone to get too close. I did take risks; I always drove too fast and played other dangerous games.

  One game that I liked to play was to borrow my mother’s sports car, a Lancia Flavia. I would drive through several, seven to be exact, Alpine villages to reach the Swiss capital, Bern, in the least amount of time. I would try and set new records on each attempt. Fortunately, I never killed anyone along the way of whom I am aware. It was a treacherous game. I realized for the first time; I did not care if I lived or died.

  Experimentation is typical for a teenager, but the antics that my friends and I pulled went beyond one’s wildest imagination. One night we broke into a condominium that had an indoor pool and jumped in with all our ski clothing on. One girl among us even had a plaster cast on one leg. We escaped and headed straight for the hospital to get the leg reset. By some fluke of circumstance, I had left my underwear in the pool, and it had my sister’s name tag sewn in the waistband. When questioned by the police the next morning, I turned to my mother, who promptly lied for me, and the entire affair was forgotten. The enabler scored again.

  Skiing at night is a favorite pastime in Switzerland and usually takes place once a week, after a fondue party on top of a specific mountain. Wednesday night was the designated night, and my friends and I almost always participated. One night, we took our own alpine trail down the mountain, did not follow the ski patrol with his lighted torch, and skied close to a very steep edifice. The group made a very unhealthy decision to push a farmer’s sled, commonly used to carry hay, down the mountain. The plan was to jump on board and ride on the sled. I was almost always the creative genius behind these ideas but was careful not to take credit for their outcome. In any case, as the wooden vehicle went off course and approached the cliff, everyone jumped off and avoided falling 500 feet into a steep ravine. One of the boys did break his leg, and it wasn’t until the group had him in the van on the way to the hospital that I mad another discovery: I had stuck a ski pole into my upper thigh. The cold had numbed the pain, but once the heat of the van thawed out everyone, I noticed that I had blood dripping down my leg and realized what had happened: the pole had gone two inches into my leg. Six stitches later all was well, except for the rip in my ski pants.

  Escape is one word that you hear from alcoholics and drug addicts. It is not unusual to want to stop thinking, to stop feeling the pain, the emotional and mental illness that comes with alcoholism and drug addiction. I was experiencing a great deal of confusion during that first year in Switzerland, a hiatus from school in the US. I was trying to learn how to be independent, how to “fly” on my own, how to soar without crashing and having a great deal of difficulty. I was turning to all the wrong people for help. I got to know a Swiss ski instructor and thought that the girl could help me learn German, help improve my skiing (so I was the best), and help me meet new people so I could make new friends. However, it was Lydia who introduced me to my new Swiss friends, marijuana and the little sugar cubes laced with LSD. Money was not an issue, and she became my trusted dealer.

  It did not matter what state or what country I lived in; I had no problem finding trouble. I was on a downward spiral into the depths of alcoholism and drug addiction. At eighteen, I rationalized my behavior by still being an experimenting adolescent and not a responsible adult. Besides, everyone drank and drugged just like I did. My stepfather had been a drunk. Everyone knew that men with long trench coats who lived on the streets were alcoholics or addicts. I had the persistent delusion that I was not that bad. It was easy for me to make the argument that I was too young and still had control of my playthings and my playmates. The problem was that deep down, I knew b
etter. When I used drugs or drank booze, I could relate to people, be more fun to be around, and all the fears disappeared. Alcohol did become my best friend. If I were an alcoholic or an addict, so be it. Unfortunately, my moods were still so erratic. I would be on top of the world one minute (literally) and drop into deep depression the next. Something had to change.

  I made the decision to go back to the States and start over by going to college. I really had no direction, but it sounded like a good thing to do. If you were an American teenager, it was expected. The Pierces were my only connection left in the States, and it had been over two years since I had seen them. Where to go? What state or geographical area competes with Switzerland? Academically, I really could go almost anywhere. Spin the bottle? Pin the tail on the map? The choice was very scientific. I decided to follow an old boyfriend from high school and go where he went. My mother had little input, and there was no one else to consult. I had been making all my own big decisions since I was thirteen, and this was one more to add to the list.

  You attract a great deal of attention when you are the only freshman with Switzerland as your home address, and attention is something that I still craved. However, all the same rules applied. Don’t let anyone get too close; excel in all your classes to prove you are worth something; pretend to be happy all the time because that’s what people want; and above all, do anything to stay out of the black hole. The hole was not like the one that Alice fell in. It was dark, cold, spinning, and had no bottom. If I started to sink into that deep abyss called depression, I knew that all those feelings of loneliness, fear, guilt, and hopelessness would return.

  College was an alcoholic’s dream, and the trick was learning to pace yourself from weekend to weekend. I managed to get through my first year without incident and flew back to Switzerland in May of 1970 to visit my family. This date is important. Not only was I nineteen at that time, but we were engaged in the Vietnam War; there were armed security guards at all the airports, and there did not seem to be much talk of world peace. I started singing “Bye Bye American Pie” like everyone else. The world was not a happy or hopeful place.

  My mother picked me up at the airport in her gray Volvo sedan and immediately asked me if I would drive. Some things never change. It is about a three-hour drive to the chalet from the airport, and only four or five words were exchanged the first hour of the trip. Finally, my mother broke the silence with the proverbial question: “What’s wrong?”

  Many people describe turning points in their lives as earth-shattering events that turned their whole life around 360 degrees, some for the better and, indeed, some for the worse. When you are close to someone and they die, it can positively influence how you think, feel, and act in the future. When an individual survives a terminal illness, there is a profound effect on the survivor and those close to the diagnosed person. It is incredible that an average lifespan is eighty years and it only takes a few minutes or a few hours to alter the course of that life forever. The life-changing events list goes on and on. But what happened to me during that drive in Switzerland on a bright, beautiful day in May is not categorically listed as a lifetime experience that can change your entire outlook on life. It did!

  ***

  “What’s wrong?” my mother asked in a shakier tone. I decide to answer her honestly by telling her that I just did not want to live anymore. I had broken up with my boyfriend and planned to drop out of school. “I do not know how to live. If I only had a father to talk to; someone to hold me (my mother never touched me); a parent that I could get advice from. I need a father.” I waited for her standard reply: “You think that I am a bad parent?” There must have been desperation in my voice, and it did not take a shrink to spot my deep depression. My emotional affect was flat. I was not facing my mother. There was no eye contact. You could cut the silence with a knife.

  ***

  I had lost a lot of weight, and my clothes were hanging off me. I held the steering wheel in a vice grip like the car might just run away. My mother said that she had something to tell me that might not only change our relationship but my outlook on life forever. She had my full attention. I asked her, “Are you going to have me committed?” There was more silence.

  Finally, my mother said, “You do.” “I do what?” What was she talking about? She went on to explain: “The military man in the photo was not your father. Your father is alive and well and lives in Rhode Island. You were conceived out of love. Bruce King could not have any more children; he did not want any more children, and he took care of that himself.”

  I whipped the car off the road onto the shoulder and stared at my mother like I was seeing her for the first time. “What!” I was shocked. No, I was perplexed and shocked.

  Chapter 3: Learning to Fly

  Flying a Cessna in 1964 was not as difficult as it sounds. You strap yourself in, give the little bird plenty of gas, gently pull back the wheel until the nose comes up, and leave the runway for a specific destination. Fortunately, you have a copilot when you are learning to do this who tells you the order of things and just how much of what to do when. Here I was, soaring through my adolescence, my twenties, and early adulthood with no copilot, no instructor, and no parachute. I had to spread my wings and learn to fly solo.

  When you have been lied to all your life, you tend to believe no one. My mother had just dropped the bomb. “Your father is alive. He lives in Newport, Rhode Island. Yes, you are nineteen, and he has only seen you once when you were two, but he does know he is your father. Oh, he is also famous.”

  She was telling me this like she was describing buying milk at the local store and it was no big deal. Being suicidal at the time, I was not quite sure how to react to the news. Some of that old rage was returning, but there was also an unwillingness to accept what I was hearing. My mother had lied to me repeatedly. Why believe her now? This news was just too convenient, too easy to manufacture at a time of crisis. I was threatening to kill myself, and my mother had no idea how to stop me. I decided to crash our car, but we were not moving. We were still standing idle on the shoulder of the highway. I was at an all-time low and my mother could not help me soar through this one. But, yeah! Produce a father for me? Maybe that was the best she had. Was it working?

  I was trying to get my bearings. We were not moving and were parked on the side of the road outside of Bern on the way back from Zurich airport. I was in the driver’s seat. You could see the Alps sticking their heads up from the clouds in the distance. The view was incredible and did distract me for a few seconds, four seconds. Sitting in the car staring straight ahead, there was dead silence. Finally, I told my mother to tell the truth, the whole truth, and as they say, nothing but the truth. I was not smiling. I still had an iron grip on the steering wheel, and I was not letting go. The motor was still running, and I was still looking straight ahead over the dash. Slowly, I pulled forward, and we drove in silence back to the chalet and parked in the driveway in the perfect position, perpendicular to the garage. With a deadpan expression, I turned to my mother and told her we were going to call this new “daddy” immediately. Within five minutes he was on the line and confirmed what I had been told. I was nineteen years old. Unbelievable! Now, the next question was, “Are you sure that you are my father?” It turned out that he was a big muckety-muck in the Navy, was married, and had five other children from his current and only marriage. I had no idea where I fit into this picture. Or did I want to fit?

  ***

  In our society, and worldwide, it just is not that unusual to be a sperm-bank child or to be born out of wedlock. Many women and men can certainly relate to this situation and might be searching for their father, or as they say today, their biological father. It was all the ongoing lies that complicated my story. First, I had been told that my stepfather was my “real” father. Following that deception, I was led to believe that a dead Navy doctor was “really” my biological father. Now, I was being told that none o
f that was the truth. My biological father was someone else, not shown in any photographs, and in fact, was someone else’s father too. My mother tearfully confessed about the one-night affair that she had and how sorry she was about her big mistake. A mistake is when your pencil slips on the paper, and you use the eraser to fix it.

  Just observing her part of “the” phone call was revealing. She got him, my real father, on the line and declared that she had told me the truth. Except, it did not sound like a confession. There appeared to be no guilt, no admission to adultery, or any compassion during the revealing phone conversation. The attitude from my mother could be summed up as: “Let the relationship go where it may. It’s really no big deal.”

  After the phone call, she defended her position by stating that she really was not sure about my lineage until she found a life insurance policy that had the name Janet Hollins listed as the beneficiary. Admiral Hollins was the only explanation. So, her first husband, the man in the uniform, knew about the affair from the get-go. It was all very confusing, and I was just not sure who or what to believe.

  ***

  The question “Who am I?” is often defined by who our parents happen to be. However, not being able to choose our parents can make genetics, behaviors, relationships a big challenge. We know that stepparents, blended families, and single-parent homes are much more prevalent today than when we were children. But today, just like yesterday, children need to be told the truth at an age appropriate to the circumstance or situation. This is my opinion, and I am sticking by it.

  ***

  Several days after the initial phone call to confirm the truth, I received a letter from my new father, signed, “Love, Daddy.” It would be eleven more years before I would meet my father for the first time. I was drunk on this special occasion and have little recall of the entire event. Every day from that moment in the car in Switzerland until that fateful first dinner in Washington, D.C., over a decade later, I played a movie scene in my head. All of us have watched these scenes on Unsolved Mysteries.