My parents, both professionals in their late 20s, met and settled on New York's Long Island in the late 1950s.
My mom was the daughter of European immigrants -- both Latvian, I was told (but would find out more decades later) -- had a twin brother and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, children of an engineer/inventor father and a mother who, I'd been told, had grown up wealthy in Riga, Latvia with carriages and servants. (She stayed at home and had a cook.) My mother was a beauty contest participant who "always came in second". She went on to become an accomplished artist/textile/fashion designer in management for most of my growing-up life, then had a second career in residential real estate and design. She was an Aries, a force of nature, a social, vivacious, creative "locomotive" (the word I used at her funeral in 1998, attended by many long-time friends).
My dad grew up a handsome Irish Catholic guy on the tough streets of North Bergen, New Jersey, with two siblings. His own father, a violinist, had passed away when he was three and his mother worked for a living. He entered WWII at 17 and served as a radio operator on board a destroyer in the Pacific. On the GI Bill he was an in-out-back in university football quarterback before first going into insurance, then switching at 40 to accounting/auditing in utilities, publishing and law enforcement fields. He loved team sports, enjoyed reading and, as a Taurus, the refined tastes my mother provided as the "glue" of their local/tennis/bridge/political life.
My mother became pregnant with my brother on their honeymoon, something for which my dad was entirely unprepared and a fact that would cloud their marriage (from his viewpoint, I learned recently) for having no time "alone". We moved to my family home community, a white collar/black briefcase commuting suburb, when I was three and my older brother was six/seven.
In the 1960s one exhibited best table manners for company, dressed for occasions, spoke to adults with respect and said "ma'am" and "sir". It was the "cocktail generation" in all its glory (I bow in deference to "Mad Men"). My brother, a handsome child, was treated with noblesse oblige even at that time, had a nursemaid and my mother told everyone how to treat him and that he was going to be President (though he was held back a grade which resulted in him being among the youngest and smallest later among his peers).
In the 1960s one exhibited best table manners for company, dressed for occasions, spoke to adults with respect and said "ma'am" and "sir". It was the "cocktail generation" in all its glory (I bow in deference to "Mad Men"). My brother, a handsome child, was treated with noblesse oblige even at that time, had a nursemaid and my mother told everyone how to treat him and that he was going to be President (though he was held back a grade which resulted in him being among the youngest and smallest later among his peers).
I was, essentially, an early "latch-key kid" as my parents both worked full-time, and we had a series of live-in (documented) South American housekeepers who had no authority to direct or discipline my brother or me. Issues started early when my brother and I ate TV tray dinners and he commandeered the remote when one finally existed (after rabbit ears and 4-channel B&W shows). He was abusive toward me by chasing me around the house hitting me with his broken leg crutch, or giving me 100 "noogies" at a time on my arms.
Other than kids' usually activities back then: Running through friends' backyards on the block, playing with Slinkies, Creepy Crawlers and kickball until after the street lights when on, our life was pretty mainstream in the early years, though my brother and I lived entirely parallel lives, and dinner table conversation was too formal to encourage greater closeness. My brother was becoming more of a smooth talker (a survival skill dealing with the bigger/taller kids) than a student, who had a way of charming people (or did they think he was conning them?). This would devolve over time ....
By the time we hit the '70s, my father went back to night school three nights a week for a CPA, so was effectively unavailable a lot of the time except for my sports events and my parents' social activities. As a two-income household, they were an anomaly in my neighborhood; my mother commuted while her women friends stayed home, played tennis, lunched and opened boutique businesses for fun. She became cornered, tired, unable to quit and was relied upon as a breadwinner as my father repeatedly lost jobs and was unemployed for long periods. He dropped out of his CPA coursework, as a protest and just a semester from finishing. This became a lifelong bone of contention between them.
I'd always been a good student and kept on that route with a tribe of girl/guy friends and was socially active in school sports and drama/musical groups. Generally mainstream, pretty happy (or actually, I can say now, oblivious).
This was part of the problem. My brother effectively competed against me for my parents' approval, affection and support. They couldn't/wouldn't accept him for who he was in that era: Someone with my grandfather's natural engineer/inventor brain who put a motor on a banana seat bike when he was ten, filled our driveway and garage with car parts and put things together/took them apart like a typical grease monkey -- a socially unacceptable career path. So when occasions required, they dressed him up for holidays and photographed him with a scowl on his face, or made excuses for him to their friends, whose sons were captain of this or that, were academically accomplished and who had plans and prospects.
My brother, conversely, was slipping, became extremely defiant and got into using/dealing drugs. He moved his bedroom to our basement with locked doors and he came and went as he pleased, ignoring my father's rules of behavior governing his stay in their house. His closer friends were troublemaker types, they OD'd or went to Vietnam; others of his friends were daughters and sons of the wealthiest, best and brightest of our town who just dabbled in '70s experimentations but eventually grew up, put on ties and became responsible, functioning citizens.
Our "family" interaction (meaning all four of us) gradually became nigh non-existent; as my parents fought (sometimes physically, and the police were called), and my father fought with my brother on our front lawn (and the police were called) over his lack of respect, bad grades, drug/alcohol use. Don't get me wrong: This was infrequent and situational, in between my parents' Normal social life, black tie functions, inaugural balls, parties for bridge, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl and anything else that popped up during the year to celebrate. To their credit they had a group of solid, long-term friends.
Our "family" interaction (meaning all four of us) gradually became nigh non-existent; as my parents fought (sometimes physically, and the police were called), and my father fought with my brother on our front lawn (and the police were called) over his lack of respect, bad grades, drug/alcohol use. Don't get me wrong: This was infrequent and situational, in between my parents' Normal social life, black tie functions, inaugural balls, parties for bridge, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl and anything else that popped up during the year to celebrate. To their credit they had a group of solid, long-term friends.
Generally my Family of Origin ("FOO") was in serious "magical thinking" denial regarding my brother. They enabled him, saying for years, "poor little [NewWings' brother]; he just needs more love and understanding." (My father had a godawful temper, but in this he demurred to my mother's wishes.) Mr. Love and Understanding, by the time he was 16-17, wore army jackets and boots, had long hair, had stolen my dad's coin collection and sold it, had moved out of their home to my grandparents in the next town -- where he emptied their refrigerator and bar, eventually "pushed" both of them, and jimmied their windows to get into and out of their house without a key. Through all this time, no psychiatric help, no meds, no therapy, no intervention, no boundaries enforced with tough love.
My brother was well known in his high school as a BS artist and trouble-maker. By the time I was in AP biology, my teacher had been his homeroom teacher, and on the first day of class when I said my name he told me he'd watched my brother out his window smoking with the other "hoods" behind the school -- and his opinion of my brother clouded his entire view, and treatment, of me.
When he was 16 my folks bought a ski boat which he crashed the first week. They got him a sports car which he and friends took for a joy ride and got into a bad accident; all the families sued my parents. They were reinforcing his entitlement without him having earned any of it, and he responded by abusing them.
My brother graduated second to last in his class of 500. (Somewhere along the line I heard the line, "He became very good at failing," which was, in and of itself, a huge cry for attention, if not help.) I graduated in the top 1%. He hated, and envied, me. Occasionally, subversively, he'd demeaned, dehumanized and rejected me (and that has lasted a lifetime). We had zero relationship or interaction, and my parents were so focused on their own war (how to deal with my brother, financial competitions, social spats and avoiding each other) that they never did anything to encourage it. By the time he graduated (I heard), my brother had been arrested at least once (I think), had told my parents he didn't know why he was ever born and that he wished he could change his name.
I was so ignorant and naive, staying away/living in my own world, that I was never angry at my brother, never despised him -- but rather for years tried to reach out and connect with him so I could say I had a sibling and wouldn't feel that abandonment, rejection and aloneness.
Things got worse. At 20 my brother hit parked cars on his motorcycle and caused a bad accident which left him hospitalized, maimed (but whole) and drug-dependent for years. His descent into a lifestyle in and out of jail for various crimes and sassy behaviors, brilliant but some kind of psychopath (and alcoholic), normal conversation/compassion/empathy-free for all in court and hospitals to see, had begun -- in between stints living with virtually nothing as an ex-con, but in the wealthiest southern Connecticut towns (vestiges of tastes borne from growing up our home town). By then his childhood friends had disassociated themselves from him and my parents, who showed up repeatedly at his court hearings through the years, lived with him as a ghost of sorts in their lives ... an ongoing reminder of whatever mistakes they'd made that they seemed incapable of fixing, which riddled them with guilt.
To be continued .... Can you identify the flags in this "picture-perfect gone awry" history?
