Settle for More
Page 3
They rarely stayed angry long, because they prioritized their relationship and always made time to check in with each other. After he greeted the kids, every night Dad would go in the living room with Mom and talk. They’d sit and catch up. We were not allowed to interrupt. This was their time. Then my mom would make dinner. Dad came from a quiet family, so our big loud family dinners every night and the big loud parties and Mom’s big voice were all very attractive to him. For my mom, the half Italian, food was important, and she was always quick to feed our emotions.
“You hungry?” she’d ask.
“No, Mom, I’m good.”
“Okay, I’ll just make you a sandwich then.”
When I was growing up, Mom liked to say we were “upper middle class,” but that was a bit of a stretch. In the summer, typically my family would drive to Lake Ontario and rent a small log cabin in the Selkirk Shores State Park along with our cousins. We hiked, painted sticks, sang songs around the campfire, and ate hot dogs. I loved it, especially when there weren’t enough beds and I got to sleep in a lawn chair in the living room. My dad would play guitar and sing us Neil Diamond and John Denver songs, along with personalized versions of the era’s greatest hits. When he sang our names, we had to get up and dance, which we did with glee.
Extravagant trips were rare in our house. We took a big family vacation exactly once when I was growing up (Disney World). The one time in my mother’s life that she’s been to Europe was for her fifteenth wedding anniversary. At their anniversary party, my father got dressed up in a tuxedo. One of the party guests told me, “Hey, your dad’s wearing a tux!”
“What’s a tux?” I asked. I was seven.
“Something that makes you look like a penguin!”
“Why would anyone want to do that?” I said.
Then I saw him, and wondered why anyone would ever wear anything else.
At that moment he presented my mother with a card that turned out to be a clue. He had created a scavenger hunt through the house. At each location there was a balloon, and inside each balloon was a twenty-dollar bill. We didn’t have a lot of money, so this was a huge thrill.
We kids had helped him set it up, and it was exciting to be in on the ground floor of the big surprise. The five of us plus the guests ran from location to location as my mother solved each clue. At the end, it became clear that this was not just about giving her cash. The very last spot had two tickets to Paris. The money was for them to spend there, on their very first—and what would be their only—trip to Europe.
My parents encouraged gratuitous acts of kindness—whenever someone in town was hurting, my mom and dad would bring over a pot roast or lasagna, or go sit with them for a while. In this spirit, when Nana reached her eighties, I sent a letter to her Park Ridge, New Jersey, high school. I told the principal and superintendent how she had been forced to drop out of school during the Great Depression to help her family by taking purchase orders at the Comfort Coal Company, where her father worked shoveling coal. She’d dreamed of being a nurse, but because of her lack of education she ended up at the phone company. She always regretted not graduating. I asked them to consider granting her an honorary diploma. Almost a year later, I received a letter saying it had taken them six months to track down the records. Not only did they want to give her a degree, but they also wanted to have her walk through the graduation ceremony with the class of 1997.
Every member of our family went to the ceremony. Nana declined to wear the gown; she preferred a flowered dress and her favorite sneakers, along with a corsage we got her. But she was ecstatic. “I was da belle o’ da bawl,” she said. Her local paper ran a story about it, noting: “Frances DeMaio’s priest this morning asked if she’s going to Harvard or Yale. But a high school diploma is good enough for her.”
I was happy to pay back a little of the joy she’s given me over the years. As kids, Nana always let us do whatever we wanted. Sleep on the dining room table? Go for it. Play with balloons filled with food coloring? Have fun. Want to sleep in the jeep outside overnight? Sweet dreams. I particularly remember the monster stories she used to tell me on her porch in a rocking chair while I sat, riveted, in her lap. I ate them up.
Her husband, my Pop-Pop, was a volunteer firefighter and paper mill worker, and he ran a boatyard on the Hudson River. He’s passed, but as of this writing, Nana is still with us and continues to be a huge influence in my life. When we go to diners, she steals the bread and the napkins and reminds the waitress that she should get a senior citizen’s discount: “Would ya like ta see my license o’ my wrinkles?” She walks into the pharmacy and asks, “Whey-ah’s Steve? I like ta aggravate him!”
While my mother insists we play her terrible singing at her funeral or else, my Nana has a different deal-breaker: she hates carnations, and says if there is a single carnation at her funeral, she’ll come back to haunt us. My brother and sister and I worry about how many mourners we’ll offend, running around the church with clippers. Apparently, we’re in store for either some very awkward funeral proceedings or a lifetime of apparitions and noises in the night—the choices are not ideal.
As good as she is to me, Nana drives my mother crazy. When Nana started getting a bit older, if a lightbulb went out at her place, she’d guilt my mom for not driving two hours to change it. When Nana turned ninety-nine, Mom brought her to the doctor.
“How’s she doing, Doc?” she asked.
“Great, Mrs. Kelly. I just had a patient leave here at a hundred and four. She’s going to outlive him.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Mom. “Please tell me you’re not that good a doctor.”
Nana loves that story.
Nana and I are still close. Every night at 9:00 p.m. she turns on Fox News. “I can’t undah-stand a day-mn word ya saying,” she says, “but I like ta make shu-ah yer okay.” If she thinks I’m looking too skinny or tired, I’ll hear about it. As she got closer to a hundred, we all volunteered to take her in or pay for an aide or get her some assistance. But Nana always refused—“I got my aches an’ pains, but I get around okay,” she’d say. “’Specially fer an old buzz-ahd.”
Given this cast of adult characters in my young life, it should come as little surprise that my siblings and I were raised to take care of ourselves. Back in those pre-helicopter-parenting days, we were often our own primary caregivers.
Once when I was five, I woke up and asked for food. Mom said, “You’re old enough to make your own breakfast.”
I went into the kitchen thinking, I’m sure I can figure this out. I spotted a box of cereal. Bingo.
My brother said, “All you need to know is this: Put the milk in first.”
I wound up with a bowl of milk and about nine Lucky Charms floating in it. (I’m a slightly better cook now.)
Another day I overslept and got to the breakfast table late. Pete had eaten all of the marshmallow charms out of the Lucky Charms box. I was left with only the cereal.
“Mom! MOM!” I yelled to her. “All the charms are gone!”
In response to which she opened the kitchen cupboard and pointed to her favorite sign: “Lack of Planning on Your Part Does Not Justify an Emergency on My Part.”
We ate all sorts of junk: soda, Twinkies, Ho-Hos, McDonald’s, Wild Berry Hi-C. We watched a lot of bad TV, like The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island, and some good stuff too, like Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory—Wonka, about five hundred times. (My mom’s favorite movie was actually Animal House. My brother begged her to take him to see it, and she laughed so hard that he eventually changed his seat out of embarrassment.)
In any case, things were up to us. There was no regulation. We rode around in my dad’s black VW Bug with both parents smoking, the windows rolled up, and the three kids bouncing around like monkeys in the back with no seat belts. No one thought it was a problem. They didn’t even put sunscreen on me. For the love of God, have you seen how pale I am?
We did a feature at Fox News about how spanking makes children more aggressive. I cued up a bunch of clips of me challenging people on the air, and then I had my mom call in.
“See?” I said to Mom. “You spanking me is why I’m like this.”
“No,” she said, without missing a beat. “It was that sort of behavior that made me have to spank you.”
I don’t spank my own children today, but I don’t think my mom did any damage to me and my siblings with corporal punishment. She never really hurt more than my feelings.
Those punishments aside, she didn’t keep us on a tight leash. For the most part, I was able to roam free. I used to leave in the morning on the weekends on my bike and play around the neighborhood all day. My parents had no idea where I was. The only rule was that we had to be home by dinner. When I was about eight, I used to ride to a nearby thick patch of woods with a stream and go exploring. I’d be outside all day in the winter too, except on those mornings when the snow was over my head. One time I decided I wanted to run away. I came downstairs with a suitcase packed. My mom said, “Did you pack socks?” I cried. She hugged me. I stayed.
Perhaps then it’s not shocking that my mother was not one for beautifying her children. Most days I dressed like a cowgirl, which was what I wanted to be when I grew up. My mom still has the Olan Mills shot of my family in front of the fake woodsy background on the wall in which I’m sporting my favorite outfit: a black-and-red cowgirl jumper. (My parents did make me remove the accompanying holster and two silver toy guns for the shot.)
Mom used to cut my hair to save money, and she once cast a disapproving eye on her own work, remarking that it looked like the bangs had been chewed. I remember leaving for the bus stop one morning. I was about seven. My mom was fixing her own hair and looked at me. “I know a little girl who didn’t brush her hair this morning.” I shrugged and walked out. She didn’t stop me.
Apart from making us obey laws and common courtesy, my parents never much tried to rein me in, the way people so often do with their girls. They taught me manners, but didn’t put much stock in me acting “ladylike.” My parents always encouraged my self-expression, even if we were in a restaurant and I decided to dance near our table. They never told me to sit down. My parents let my whole self shine.
One time, my Pop-Pop, Nana’s husband, was very ill after a series of devastating strokes. He could no longer go to church, so Nana had a priest come to their house on Sundays to give him communion. Pop-Pop sometimes couldn’t take the communion without putting it in pudding or something soft. The priest objected, and Pop-Pop got teary—his dignity was being stolen from him, little by little. I watched the whole thing from the kitchen. I knew there was no better way to cheer him up than to dance, as ridiculously as possible, right in front of him. Pop-Pop loved it when I did this. The priest saw me edging in out of the corner of his eye and shot me a disapproving look: Keep out. But Mom and Nana smiled, and off I went, spinning and moving my arms like a madwoman, and singing my own made-up tune. Within moments Pop-Pop was laughing, his eyes again sparkling. He relaxed a bit, and got the communion down.
So much of how we think we’re supposed to act comes from the signals we get from our parents. I’m grateful that my parents never tried to box me in, and that they encouraged me to break the rules here and there. I’m also thankful they helped make me self-sufficient. I worry about the young children today who seem like perfect little ladies and gentlemen, ready for brunch at Buckingham Palace. Isn’t this the time to let your spirit soar? Nor do I think it’s good to do everything for your kids. Why not let them spill, make a mess, accidentally break a thing or two? Being left to figure things out for myself—to pour my own sugar cereal and to run around with unbrushed hair—was a great gift in retrospect. And so were the moments they permitted—even encouraged—me to challenge authority.
My mom raised us not only to take care of ourselves but also to stand up for one another. When she was in middle school, my mother once punched out a boy named Rennis who had been bullying Mom’s kid brother Donald. She took ol’ Rennis down by the railroad tracks and let him have it. He never bothered Donald again. And she encouraged us kids to look out for our siblings and our friends.
My sister, Suzanne, nearly seven years my elder, clearly got the message. She has always taken particularly good care of me. My second-grade teacher, Ms. Clancy (isn’t it funny how we remember our grade-school teachers’ names our whole lives?), had a stuffed bear named—wait for it—Clancy. Ms. Clancy let each student take Clancy home for the weekend—she went through the class alphabetically. I was thrilled to have my turn one Friday, but that afternoon I felt sick.
“Ms. Clancy,” I said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“You’re fine,” she said. “Sit down.”
I obediently went back to my desk. A few minutes later, I was proven right.
Ms. Clancy scolded me in front of the whole class for the mess, and angrily sent me to the nurse. Worse: she refused to let me take home Clancy the bear. I was so disappointed.
Upon hearing this story, Suzanne went directly to the mall and bought me my own Clancy, an exact replica.
God, how I loved that bear. And I loved Suzanne for giving it to me.
Pete, on the other hand, teased me, sprayed me with water from the sink, and gave me noogies. In retaliation, I constantly got into his things, threw my sneakers at him, and did whatever I could to annoy him. We argued a fair amount, and my mom would sit us down and encourage us to talk it out. She was big on conflict resolution. I used to storm out of the room, go up to my bedroom, and slam the door. My mom would give me some time to calm down (“Let her have her upset,” she’d say) and then would always come up with a soft knock on the door.
“Can we talk?” she’d ask.
“I’m still mad.”
“Forgiveness is something you do for yourself, honey.”
And my brother and I would always talk it out. My mom, too, if she and I were arguing, would be the first to come to my door. She never let pride prevent a healing moment.
When Pete turned ten, we were camping, and my dad said we should all make his gifts that year. My dad wrote him a song. He also helped me use sticks to make a stand on which I presented Pete with a perfectly oval stone I had found. On it I painted, “Pete Kelly is grate!” (I was only five—spelling would come later.) Pete kept it through his high school graduation on the shelves in his room. It always meant so much to me to see it there.
Today, Pete and I are great friends, but, growing up, we tested each other. I like to think he helped toughen me up, and that I learned to give as good as I got.
Case in point: one year on my birthday, my mom presented me with a key lime pie.
“Key lime pie?” I said. “I hate key lime pie.”
“No, you don’t,” my mother said. “You love it.”
“No, Mom,” I said. “Peter is the one who loves key lime pie.”
“Oh,” she said, as the truth dawned on her.
At this point, my brother had a great idea. He was very enthusiastic. What if we all put our names in a hat, and whoever had their name picked by me would get the key lime pie in the face?
We all agreed. There were about ten of us there.
I picked a name out of the hat and then walked around the dining room table as my would-be targets blinked their eyes in fear. I had decided from the start that no matter which name I picked, my brother would be getting the pie in the face, since he had been so excited about his idea.
Sure enough, when I got to him, I planted that pie square in his kisser, making sure to massage his hair with the whipped cream on top. It was spectacul
ar, among the best birthday presents I’ve ever received.
Growing up in such a family will keep you full of humor and humility. It’s hard to feel like the king of the world when on special occasions you stand a very real chance of getting a pie in the face. But it also raised my standards for human kindness. My parents always valued honesty, but they softened the sometimes harsh realities of life with warmth, jokes, and cheerfulness.
I knew there would be no shortcuts for me in life—we didn’t have money or access to people of power. I knew, if I was going to have any success, it would be a result of getting educated and working hard—as hard or harder than my parents did. If I was going to enjoy life to its fullest, it would be because I inherited my mom’s sense of fun and my dad’s intellectual curiosity. Most of all, as a Kelly, for the rest of my life I would have no choice but to tell the truth, and to get up and dance when someone called my name.
2
Mean Girls
As tight-knit and loving as my family was, nothing could have prepared me for the gauntlet that was seventh grade. It was a horrible year for me. It was also a year that helped make me who I am.
For much of my school life until then, I’d been subject to the usual whims of social groups, with things going up and down year to year. At a birthday party in third grade, I overheard the adults talking.
“Well,” a parent said, motioning to me, “it’s very clear who the leader in that group is.”
Wow! Me? I felt flattered. I had never thought of myself as a leader before. And the adult attention felt good. Of course, at that age it’s the most and least popular kids who are the most vulnerable to changes in fortune. That’s why so many kids try to keep their heads down and blend into the wide middle. But I was Linda’s daughter, incapable of not putting myself out there.
Usually I was rewarded for my courage. But not always. In fourth grade, I was the subject of very different attention. For some unknown reason—in retrospect, I think the most powerful girl in the group was trying to neutralize a perceived threat—I was targeted at a birthday party. The girls at the party turned on me and started flicking me, hard, with their fingers. They were yelling “Flick!” as they did it. I clearly didn’t like it and was trying to get away from them. I started crying, but still they wouldn’t stop. There was of course no adult present, because this was 1979. Somehow I got away, went inside, and called home. My dad came and picked me up early from the party. When we walked through the door back home, my mom looked at us.