Monthly Archives: December 2008

ON RELATIONSHIPS: I STILL BELIEVE

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Someone asked me recently if I still believed in the possibility of a truly wonderful and loving romantic relationship. They seemed somewhat surprised when, without hesitation, I said I did. But look at what you’ve been through, they exclaimed, pointing to parts of my history that can understandably be seen as potential impediments to my ability to believe a loving romantic relationship is a possibility in life.


Well, I said, If I were to give my history that kind of control, then it would still be damaging me, now wouldn’t it? I don’t think it deserves that kind of power, do you?


No, they said. But do you really think being swept off your feet, you know, all that heart pounding stuff, the butterflies and all, you really think that’s possible?


Of course, I said. It’s part of nature. Nature is life and life happens to us whether we like it or not. If you are walking in the rain, the rain hits you doesn’t it? It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your history, how old you are, how tall or short or thin or fat. No bigotry in nature. The thing is to be brave enough to accept life, and sometimes I think accepting the beautiful miraculous things in life, like falling in love with someone and their falling in love with you, is scarier than the frightening things.


Why?


Because if it is going to work, to flourish, you have to be willing to be you fully in the relationship. So if the all of you is present, it can feel like the all of you is at risk. Equally important, you have to be willing to allow the other person to be who they are. People are always going around trying to abbreviate each other without even realizing it. Like you fall in love with the entire person and then when they feel the same way you get terrified and then, usually without realizing it, you try and pare them down into a Reader’s Digest version of themselves, no offense to Reader’s Digest, by the way.


You baffle me.


Get in line. Look, my closest friend in the world is deeply in love with a wonderful woman and she is deeply in love with him. And he is older than I am. People spend so much time worrying about life, what will or won’t be ,that they forget to live it. These two live their lives together, and therein lays the wonder of it all.


Meaning?


I see relationships all over the place where the two people might be together, but they aren’t sharing life together. People in marriages or live-in relationships where the only thing they really share in life is the bills, if that. It’s heartbreaking.


And what about Gay marriages, the opposition to Gay marriages?


Oh, please. The opposition to Gay marriages is rooted in ignorance, which far too often is fueled by hatred. Hatred is a major fuel for ignorance and vice versa, you ask me. I was friends for quite a few years with two women that were a couple. Man, let me tell. you They really loved each other. I mean adored each other. They worked together, owned a business together, cared deeply about each other. If people were able to see a relationship like that for what it really is, two people that really love each other, and maybe stop giving their histories or antiquated belief systems so much control over them, maybe they would grow a little. I mean is there too much love going on between people these days?


And what do you mean when you talk about sharing life as opposed to – ?


I mean what is the point of simply being tenants in each other’s life?


No point.


I think the joy of a relationship, the pay off if you will, is to be able to share life together. Obviously, individuality is important; you don’t give up who you are for another person. But I can think of things that I dream of, like seeing the Grand Canyon or going to Germany and standing in a room where Beethoven lived and other things that I’d love to share. That’s the wonder of it. And share too what she loves. It’s heartbreaking when you see two people together who are so over yet they are afraid to declare their independence. Sad shit for sure.


So you still believe.


Of course… why shouldn’t I?

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MY MOTHER: ALWAYS IN MY HEART

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I made the decision to search for my birth-mother on October 2, 1986, my thirty-third birthday. I was reunited with her on January 8, 1987. Her name was Leona. I would learn that our hearts were very much alike.


I am now writing the final draft of this experience for the memoir and it doesn’t get more emotional for me than this. The decision to search for her with all my might (the desire to find her had been there for years) was one of the reasons I came out of seclusion back then.


Some background. I was held up and shot in August 1984, returned to work as a New York City cabby some months later, and was again held-up at gunpoint in May 1985. My ability to feel safe in the world around me collapsed and I retreated into seclusion for nearly a year. When pondering the possibility of rejoining the world, I decided that if I was going to return to daily life, I would try and find my birth-mother.


It makes sense that I am working through the final version of this for the memoir now as I am again in seclusion a great deal of the time. While for somewhat different reasons, there is both comfort and heartbreak in writing about the search for a woman I would grow deeply close to in her last years. I would discover she had always deeply close to me. I would also learn that our emotional life and our emotional experience of the world were, in many ways, mirror images of each other.




My penchant for recognizing a moment when I can touch a human heart with love is something I inherited from her. Here is an example. The day I married my second wife was the one day both my mothers, adoptive and birth, were together. My wife and I asked the minister to ask those in attendance to hold hands with the person next to them when he reached the final moment of our vows.


A day or two later my wife was watching the video of our wedding when she called out, “Peter, come quick, look a this!” She rewound the tape and said, “Watch what Leona does…”



My mothers were on opposite sides of the group of 30 or so people who were in attendance. When the pastor asked them to hold hands, Leona walked over to where my other mother was and took her hand so that both mothers would be connected while they watched their son marry.


“See,” my wife said. “Now we know where you get that instinct from.”


When I found my mother she was living in Stamford, Connecticut. Some years later she moved out to San Jose to live with my sister, Sunday, her husband and children. In 2000 I received a phone call from Sunday telling me our mother had cancer, liver cancer, which is, to my understanding, terminal. It was for my mother.


I flew out to see her a number of times and she came to this coast to make her goodbye rounds and stayed with me in my home for a few days. There were two events that again displayed how alike we were.



Here is the first event:


I picked her up in New Jersey where she had been visiting family to drive her back to my home which, at the time, was in Monroe, New York. On the ride back I told her there was a place I thought we should both visit. We drove into Manhattan and I pulled up in front of the building that in 1953 had been the French Hospital, the place where I was born.


I looked at my mother and smile, “We’re back.” She took my hand and gazed up at the building. She then said, “They made us use the back entrance.” I said, “No problem.” We drove around to the buildings back entrance on 29th Street. We sat there and held hands. I said, “I love you, Mom.” She said, “I love you too, Peter.”


Here is the second event:


My mother died at her home in San Jose on December 19, 2001. My sister called to tell me of her passing. And hour earlier my sister called me and held the phone to mother’s ear so I could tell her I loved her and that she could let go and I would always love her and do my best in life.


On December 21, 2001, a priority mail package arrived. It was a Christmas present from my mother. I opened it. It was a Saint Christopher’s medal. Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, of safe travel through life. On the medal you can see Saint Christopher carrying a small boy across a raging river.


I went to my knees in tears. I turned the medal over and on the back read the following inscription.


Peter,

I will always be in your heart.

Love,

Mom


And you will always be in mine, Mom.

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GET THAT NIGGER!

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This is an excerpt from the memoir. In a day when too many are still addicted to violence, it seems real violence, like that in this chapter, ought to make your gut churn.

It is 1981 and I am walking down Court Street in Brooklyn with a friend of mine named Charlie. We hear angry voices behind us yelling and screaming. We turn and see a young black man running his heart out down the center of Court Street. He is coming towards us and maybe 20 angry young white male teenagers are chasing him. The young black man who looks to be in his twenties runs past us, his face lit wild with terror.

Voices scream, “Get that fucking nigger! Get that nigger!”

I tell Charlie get to the other side of the street, lets stay with this.

We are running on either side of the angry crowd of young whites now, watching what happens. Some are carrying sticks, pieces of two-by-four. One carries a piece of rebar about the length of a baseball bat. I am hoping the young black man gets away.

He doesn’t.

They catch him and the angry young white boy with the rebar slams it across the back of the young black man. He crumbles to the ground. He tries to get up but another angry young white breaks a piece of wood across his back. The young black man now wobbles upwards, but he is downed again when a bottle smashes across his head. There is blood everywhere now. He is on the ground screaming.

“Please God don’t kill me! Please God! Please God! I have a wife and children! Please God! Please God don’t let them kill me!”

I lock eyes with Charlie and motion for him to call the police. I move fast into the crowd, reaching the young black man through a barrage of kicks and punches. There is a pause in the violence, a sudden quiet, the angry mob not knowing what to make of me. I pull the young black man up into my arms and hold him against a parked car so it shields him on one side. I shield him on the other.

We are surrounded by anger and hatred, the white teens reach past me to punch him and I push him down out of their reach. They are the clean cut Italian boys from the neighborhood, I am the long haired one with an earring and beard. I know I am a look they are not used to, a look they are wary of. Ignorance is not bliss. Sometimes its an ally. One boy reaches in and I drive my hand into his throat, pushing him back into other boys and glare as viciously as I know how. I know they must think I am willing to kill one of them.

Again some surge forward and try to reach past me and punch him. When this happens, I push the young black man back into a crouch , keeping him out of reach and firing hard vicious words like bullets back into the the pack of angry white teens. A pack that is now nothing more than a single rage-filled being: seething, pulsing, breathing as one, dripping with hate.

I say, “The fuck you doing? You really want to kill him? You want to go to jail for him? You want to die tonight?”

One reaches in again and again I drive my hand into a throat. Our eyes meet. I know if this mob explodes into us I will have to damage or kill someone quickly. Suddenly a big Italian man joins me in protecting the young black man. He is older than all of us, huge and burly and powerful, no nonsense. His presence nearly stills the mob completely. Later I find out he is one of the powers in the neighborhood and deeply respected by all.

Police units arrive and take the bleeding terrified young man to the hospital. I thank the big Italian man. He says, “Hey, I hear him say he got a wife and kids. That’s all I gotta hear. The man’s got family.”

The police say they are taking the young black man to Long Island College Hospital. The police are from the 84th Precinct, the same precinct that will save my life three years later.
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AFTER TRAUMA, REMEMBER THE BASICS

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Life happens to us whether we like it or not. All of it, including trauma, and the numerous experiences that fall under the umbrella of trauma: accidents, acts of violence, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, home, friendship, the onset of disease or disability. The list goes on.


There are no magic answers to managing trauma other than to give yourself permission to go through the experience and seek the kind of support, not that you need, but that you deserve. There is something else too. Remember the basics.


When I say remember the basics, I mean exactly that. Do your best to remember to bathe or shower. Don’t forget to wash your hair, brush your teeth, wash your clothes, change your clothes. If you’re having a hard time finding your appetite, try to eat some healthy foods. If you find you can’t stop eating, again, healthy foods. Your body deserves as much respect as your heart, mind and soul. Remember to keep clean sheets on the bed. If you are prescribed medicine, remember to take it. See if you can tidy up your living area from time to time. If you find yourself struggling with these things, try and let someone know. I don’t for a second think you need help or need support, I think you damn well deserve it. We all do when life takes a hard run at us.


If you are struggling with the basics it does not mean there is something wrong with you. It does not mean you are flawed person or, for that matter, a weak person. It means that you are a human being and there are times life dishes out experiences that still our regular life patterns and knock us down. No matter how difficult and grueling the experience of being one can be from time to time, being a human being is a good thing. It may not always feel that way, but I believe it always is that way.


Allow yourself your humanity. When you remember the basics, even if you can only manage some of them, you are remember to take care of yourself in a very real way. Taking care of the basics forces us to remember ourselves, and tend to ourselves. And that, I promise you, is a healthy thing – and a healing thing. Remembering the basics is you taking care of you. And if there is anyone you deserve support from – it is you.



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INTRODUCING POLLS

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Dear Readers,

It recently dawned on me that it might be fun to include some polls in the blog. You will see the first one on the right. Have fun answering.

If you have any suggestions for poll questions, let me know.

Be safe all and remember to live.

Warmth and respect,

Peter
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