CHAPTER SIX: "Fun? It Has Taken Me a Lifetime to Learn How to Have Fun!"

I don’t think it was any coincidence that at the same time I began expressing myself in Italian back in 2020, I was also beginning to deal in earnest with some difficult issues related to my upbringing.

There were two themes running through the many conversations I was having with my therapist, Mary M.

One was my dad’s tendency to flare up in anger. His outbursts could be terrible; they were very scary to me as I grew up. Indeed, his blowups were a reality up until the very end of his life.

Just months before he passed in August of 2019, I remember a particular outburst one day when my sister and I were meeting with several staff members from the independent living apartment where he was. I don’t remember why he screamed at me. Honestly, I think I’ve put it out of my mind because it was so upsetting and puzzling.

All I recall is him turning to me in the presence of several non-family members and pointing at me and screaming that he didn’t want me involved in whatever decision it was regarding his care.

I was astonished. And hurt. And uncertain. Why he was screaming at me? What exactly had I done to deserve this humiliating tirade? I tried to think back, but to no avail.

But this is how Dad was. He was a genuinely loving man and he could be very pleasant. And things could be sailing along just fine. But if something set him off – be it a discussion about politics or some other situation that irked him, or which he believed he had been wronged, well, then, it was as if a lighted match descended on an open container of gasoline.

The other theme in my therapy had to do with my mom, and her illness and her tendency toward fear and depression.

As a very young child I had watched her struggle for breath. I was terrified that she was going to die and so was she! Mom couldn't help being sick, of course, and it certainly wasn't her fault that she had no one to help her out. But the consequences of her having asthma, at a time when the disease was not treated like it is today, were very serious: along with my brother and sister, I carried a deep-seated fear through most of my adulthood.

But it would be wrong to suggest that my parents weren't good parents. I could feel my parents' deep love and concern for me growing up. Ironically, I was rather sickly as a young child. I had serious bouts of pneumonia at ages three, five and seven. During one of those bouts, I also had German measles and an ear infection.

Despite her own illness, my mother was always there to care for me! I remember her rubbing alcohol on my bare arms and legs when I had really bad fevers. I remember her sitting by my bed and then, coming to the hospital to see me, as I lay in a crib.

What I don't remember, at all, growing up was this: I have no memories of having any fun!

We were very short on money, so naturally vacations were out of the question. But we didn't do other, less expensive things. In part because of her illness, but also because Mom wasn't oriented toward the outdoors, my family never went camping, or hiking, or canoeing. We never went ice skating, or snowshoeing, or bowling, or playing tennis. I remember sledding in the winter, and I remember very occasionally going swimming at the ocean in southern Connecticut -- but it was rare! And I don't remember ever seeing my mother step into the water!

In both houses we lived in, we were in rural areas, but we never took even short walks through the woods!

I remember going to the drive-in when it was just my parents, me and my older brother, Rich. But by the time my sisters arrived, the car was too small to go to the drive-in anymore!

As a family of six, I remember going to the movies...once! It was Memorial Day, and we went to see "The Swiss Family Robinson." I was giddy with joy that day. But it was not something that we repeated.

We spent most of our weekends traveling from our house in Pleasant Valley back to see the "family" -- my mother's parents in Canton, CT and my dad's family, about another half hour away, in Bristol. What did we do? Mostly, we would sit around and eat. The adults enjoyed wine, and conversation. We kids played with our cousins outdoors in the backyards.

On the way to Connecticut (a drive of about an hour and a half), we passed through Amenia, New York on Route 44. There was a diner in Amenia, and every time we drove through the town, my brother and I would send up a cheer: "Brookside Diner just ahead, Brookside Diner just ahead." My parents never stopped -- not even for a coke or a cup of cocoa!

As we left the town, we would send up a different, much sadder, cheer: "Brookside Diner just behind. Brookside Diner, just behind!"

I have mixed feelings bringing these stories up. I can fault my parents, but when I think about it, I have to ask: was it THEIR fault?

Not really! They were the children of very hard-working Italian American parents, my grandparents, who scrimped and saved through the Great Depression and the Second World War. They spent all of their time and money paying for housing, and putting food on the table! They didn't think about having FUN! To them, fun or enjoyment was what they got when they enjoyed their children and siblings, sharing plenty of good food!

But it's also important that I talk about this situation for this reason: one of the root causes of my lifelong depression growing up was the fact that I didn't emerge from a family that knew what it meant to have fun, or to enjoy the moment. It's ironic, because today we think of Italy, and Italians, as the people who know so well how to enjoy life. Besides first-class food, they supply the world with extraordinary art and music.

By and large though my ancestors came to the United States because they were so poor; they weren't the lucky Italians who had the leisure and disposable income to appreciate the arts. (I say that but then I recall that my mother's mom, Grandma Mish, went to the opera in Hartford for years.)

What my ancestors knew how to do was work! My dad, who was not fortunate enough to go to college, worked hard at IBM and enjoyed a good career there. On weekends, he spent much of his time in the basement, on woodworking projects (which he truly enjoyed), or taking care of the house. In the summer he had a large vegetable garden. Mom was a devoted mother and an extraordinary cook and housewife. She did embroidery and excelled as a baker. Once we kids were grown, she took up stained glassmaking and produced dozens of wonderful pieces of art, many of which I own and treasure.

But still, growing up, we did not manage to learn from Mom or Dad how to enjoy ourselves.

When I think back to what we did as a family of six, I am faced with one memory: blueberry picking. Unfortunately I don't remember it being any fun at all.

My dad fashioned berry-picking containers from old coffee cans. He punched holes on both sides of the cans and laced them up with strings, which went around our necks. Then we drove to the blueberry fields in Wingdale, New York. And we stood for what felt like hours, picking blueberries.

I remember one year when my older brother rebelled. I remember him saying he just didn't feel like picking blueberries that day. My father was furious; he warned Rich that if he didn't pick berries, he would get none of my mom's extraordinary blueberry pie. And in fact, Rich didn't get any pie.

When I hit puberty at about age 13, my father tried every which way to restrict me. He told me repeatedly he feared that I would "get embroiled." Eventually I came to realize that what he meant was, he feared I would get pregnant.

One summer about that time, my first cousins (who had a beach house on the Connecticut shore) invited me to stay for a couple of weeks. I was dying to do it. My dad, however, said that his sister was much too lenient with her daughters (the oldest of which was quite boy-crazy). Dad refused to let me stay with my cousins at the beach. I came home to our house in Pleasant Valley and I barricaded myself in my bedroom and read books.

I did enjoy riding my bike, however. I loved the feeling of gliding along on the country roads, cool air streaming my face and body. I could ride "no hands" and I loved doing it.

During the summers, my brother and I would ride our bikes several miles in order to get to a state park that had a large swimming pool. It was huge and very overcrowded and by the time we rode home, we were sunburned and sweaty, and hotter than when we started.

What did I do in the summers? I always envied my friend Leslie who went to YWCA camp, but we could not afford it. Instead, I spent hot summer days as a youngster, sitting on blankets in the garage, where it was cooler than inside the house; there on the garage floor, my sister and our girlfriends played with our Barbie dolls. As I got older, I learned how to sew and that hobby occupied more and more of my time.

In high school, I joined an interdenominational youth group, a large singing group with many talented guitarists and other musicians. My social life came to revolve more and more around performances, some of which involved travel. I absolutely loved the rehearsals, the performances, and all the socializing in between. My dad, meanwhile, objected, complaining that the youth group took up too much of my time. It wasn't as though the singing was affecting my grades, though: I was an A student all the way through high school.

A memory stands out: I hadn't been in the group very long when an older performer came up to me and said something along these lines: "You know, you are pretty when you smile. You ought to do it more often."

I didn't learn to smile more, though. What I did learn to do, from my parents' and teachers' examples, was how to work hard. Along with that, I learned that it felt rewarding to achieve goals and earn other people's respect. Is it any wonder that I stepped onto the achievement treadmill in a great big way? Thus began my incessant desire to rack up one achievement after another; not only did I earn the highest grades possible, I also made it a point to join as many clubs and activities as I possibly could in high school, no matter whether I really cared about what they were doing.

Interestingly, my brother emerged from the same household as a first-class athelete. His chosen sport was rowing; he adored the sport and he excelled. He rowed for the first time in high school on the Hudson River. Later, he rowed at college and was in a two-man shell rowing in the Olympic finals in 1972. Ultimately, Rich became a very successful college crew coach; he enjoyed a 50-year career in the sport.

I never played sports; at age nine, I started ballet lessons and kept them up through high school (I am very grateful to my parents for buying me those lessons.) Sadly, though, the teacher -- Mildred Ruenes -- was strict, demanding and a bit snooty. I remember the French names of the dance positions were carefully written in cursive on all the walls of the dance studio. We were supposed to commit the French names -- like pas de bourree -- to memory; I never did. And I never felt much satisfaction trying to dance ballet.

When I left for college, I immediately started meeting all kinds of people, some of whom were wealthy and had spent their lives skiing and boating and travelling and playing tennis. Even among students who were, like me, on scholarship, so many of them seemed to know how to enjoy themselves, doing whatever it was they were doing!

I didn't realize it then, but it would take me decades to understand what it means to have fun. And it would take me almost as long to see that my lifelong depression was intimately linked with my inability to have fun.

As I finish writing this chapter, I realize how depressing it is.

And so, readers, my deepest apologies. All I can say is that I needed to write it, to lay out in a line of words how I felt growing up.

But now that this chapter is behind me, I can look forward to the far more hopeful chapters that follow! Because all of this writing is leading up to an answer to one question:

How does a person who has been thoroughly rehearsed in fear, shame and negative thinking growing up become a person who can live joyfully in the NOW?