Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

ORPHANED AT 15

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I was orphaned at 15. It has taken me nearly 45 years to write that sentence. It was only this year I realized it could finally be written. I don’t fully understand why, other than I have been sober for awhile now and sobriety is a wonderful and mind clearing thing.

In brief, my father, the greatest gift life has ever given me, died when I was 15. Five months later my mother placed me in reform school and disowned me. While we would reconcile 10 years later, I was never part of that family, or any family, again. I came close, or so I thought, in 1999 through 2001 when I grew deep-close to my birth-mother Leona. I am adopted and we were reunited in 1987. She lived in California with my sister during those years and was battling liver cancer. It ended her life on December 19, 2001.

It was Christmas 2000 when I thought I had family for real again. I mean throughout my years I’ve had families, especially when I was homeless as a boy, who would take me in for a couple of days, promising me I had a home at last, only to send me on my way a short time later with a sawbuck and their apology for not being able to let me to stay. I knew back then that they had brought me into their homes with their hearts and the best of intentions; yet they’d not thought their decision through and fully realized I was an entire human being that needed food and clothing and healthcare. In short, I was real, far more than a momentary source of ego-boost. I’ve had girlfriends too who’ve told me their family was my family; always well intended – but never true.

In 2000 I flew out to California for Christmas with my mother and sister, my sister’s children and my brother-in-law. When I woke up Christmas morning there was a Christmas tree with ornaments and lights and there were presents under the tree. Some of them were even for me, and I’d brought presents for everyone. There we all were, me and my mother sitting side by side on the couch, opening our presents, my nieces tearing their presents free from their colorful gift-wrapping, my sister and brother-in-law sitting cross legged on the floor opening their presents, all of this accompanied by the comforting smell of coffee. There was music and laughter and I was sitting next to my mother and I thought, Oh my God, I have family again. I have a sister and nieces and a brother-in-law and a mother! I mean we all knew the liver cancer was terminal, but my sister and I were together and we were family and looking at her and my nieces and my brother-in-law I felt a deep joy, deeper than I’d felt in longer than I could remember. I would have family from now on and I would come out every Christmas and bring presents and watch my nieces grow and be with my sister and my brother-in-law; or so I thought.

Months before my mother died at age 68 my sister, who’d always been a rather controlling person, turned it up a notch to a level of viciousness I’ve rarely seen in life; and like most folks my age, 54 as I write these words, I’ve seen my fair share. My sister began to block all my phone calls from New York to my mother, who was then on hospice and very weak. She also stopped my mother from calling me.

But perhaps the height of cruelty occurred one day in December 2001. My telephone rang. I answered and it was my sister. In an angry voice she said, “Mommy wants to talk to you, make it quick. I’ll hold the phone to her ear.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Hi, Peter,” she said.

“I love you, Mom, don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay.” We tried to keep talking but I could hear my sister in the background saying, in a loud tone of voice that can only be described as hideous, cruel and evil, “Hurry up, you’re gonna die any day now old lady. Hurry up. This is the last time you’re gonna talk to sonny boy, unless you get the strength to pick up the phone and dial yourself but we know that’s not gonna happen. Hurry up. Say goodbye to your only son, you’ll never hear his voice again. Common – I have to go. You’re gonna die soon anyway, make it quick.”

Throughout my sister’s ranting I kept saying, “It’s okay, Mom. I love you. Nothing can ever separate us again. I’ll be with you in the next world…don’t listen to her, Mom. We’ll work it out. I love you and we’re together and we always will be. I love you, Mom.” She told me she loved me too and then my sister hung up the phone. My mother died less than two weeks later. Needless to say, my connection to the family died with her.

Writing all this was prompted by reading an article about a scavenger hunt the New York Rangers hockey team held for some kids from Children’s Village, a group that “focuses on providing safety for children who have come from foster care, abuse situations, unstable households and neglect.” Reading about the joy these kids experienced, and identifying from the center of my heart with their journey in life, wet my eyes and led to this admittedly self-indulgent essay.

I am in my fifth decade as a Rangers fan. When they won the Stanley Cup in 1994 a New York fan held up a sign that read, “Now I Can Die in Peace.” I know what he meant. Also, while I still have no family, I have been friends with Michael Sulsona for more than 30 years now. He and his two sons, Philip and Vincent, are family to me, and I am family to them. They are the only three people on the planet I know will never leave my life as long as they are alive and they know too that I will never leave them. Recently, Michael and I realized that over the years we have in fact become brothers.

Perhaps, when it comes down to it, family is in the eyes of the beholder.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NO MORE

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The messianic minds of Bush and Cheney, two men (even writing those two words insults all that is good about manhood) who are seeking and in many tragic ways succeeding in establishing the first American Dictatorship. This week the American Dictator Bush along with his cadre of sycophants are using the firestorms tragedy in California to vilify Louisiana’s state and local leadership’s response to Katrina; never mind that anyone whose mind has been walking erect for 10 seconds knows damned well that had the Louisiana population been wealthier and, well, whiter, the response would’ve been far swifter and far more effective.

I don’t suppose the American Dictator Duo will spend much time on California, they are too busy starting (or continuing) World War III by gearing up to attack Iran; never mind that the American military is already stretched dangerously thin, never mind that the whole American story is taking on a trajectory eerily reminiscent of the failed Roman Empire.

It is up to the people of this country to do something and it is up to congress, both sides of the aisle, to stand up and stop the dictators. The problem is, congress is infested with people who are willing to save lives and save America as long as it doesn’t mean putting their jobs at risk. How many of us would say, I’d be willing to save the lives of our young men and woman being killed and maimed overseas but not if it means losing my job?

Let’s get some term limits in place. The American people are tired and scared…and if things don’t change soon…the American people will soon be no more.

A WONDERFUL HEUMANN BEING

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The only thing small about Judith E. Heumann is her physical stature. Listening to her speak at the Westchester Independent Living Center’s 1st Interdisciplinary Conference entitled “Uniting Systems – Empowering Lives” Friday was to experience a powerful, patient and thoughtful lesson on my country’s disability rights movement.

According to Independence Today, a publication of the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley, “Heumann served eight years in the Clinton administration as assistant secretary for the Department of Education, was a leader of the well-known 27-day sit-in in 1977 that led to the enforcement of access to federally funded buildings and transportation” and the list of her accomplishments goes on and on.

There is so much to this person, this woman’s message. In her speech she talked about a phenomenon all to common to those of us who live with a disability, work with people with disabilities or have a loved one with a disability; the way the world talks to you the day before your disability arrives and the way the world talks to you the day after is deeply disturbing. As a man who lives with a disability and who works with people who have sustained a disability through brain injuries, one of the most insidious realities I face daily is witnessing adults with disabilities being treated as if they are children, as if they are stupid or absent opinion or, worst of all, as if they are void of any value and rights. Some times I think those who inflict this treatment on others ought to be educated without judgment first. Then, if knowledge doesn’t do the trick and their demeaning behavior continues, which to my mind translates into knowing willful bigotry, they should be sentenced to spending a few days of their life in a wheelchair.

I cannot praise the Westchester Independent Living Center headed up by Joe Bravo and all who work there enough. What an extraordinary conference. And at the conference was Mel Tanzman, another extraordinary leader in the disability right’s movement, and Ralph W. Shields, and Nadine Bravo and on and on and on.

The fact that the names you’ve just “heard” are not household names is solid testimony to the distance we as a people need to travel when it comes to equal rights for people with disabilities. Actually, the real disability rests in the hearts and minds of those who dehumanize those labeled as disabled. For the latter, it is only a label, for the former, it is a definition.

MEMOIR EXCERPT: SECLUSION

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NOTE: This excerpt was written about a period of time in my life in 1985.
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At my kitchen table, drinking coffee, smoking a joint, get me out of here. I am done with the world outside my window. My switch is turned off. One second there is light, the next, all is dark. I am better in the dark now. I’d been the protector of friends, girlfriends, strangers too.

Once in Brooklyn me and a friend of mine see a young black man running down Court Street pursued by angry whites. Catching him they hit him with a pipe and beat him. He is on the ground screaming for his life. My friend and I race in, grab the battered young man, shielding him with our bodies against a car, raging back at the crowd pressing in, promising to damage someone bad if we have to go down too, the crowd pressing in, looking to get at him, terrified and bloodied. A man, older than me and my friend, a big Italian man, comes out of his store and joins us in our protection. Police arrive and take the bleeding terrified man to the hospital.

I am at my kitchen table drinking coffee, my switch is off. I can’t protect a man running down any street now. I can’t protect me anymore. I can’t leave my apartment. I can think of no reason to want to.

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen. I listen to nothing but Springsteen. There is something there, something safe, grounding, deeply familial. His songs bring me to memories of safe places and safe times; summers in Ocean Grove with my father’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa. I gobble up the ineffable magic and mystery of boardwalks and Asbury Park, beaches, and the forever ocean; they bring me to Rumson with Mommom and Poppop, my mother’s parents; they bring me to a time when the world was safe, when my father was still in it. Springsteen’s words are strong and real and emotionally courageous and, best of all, honest. Over and over again I listen to Independence Day and No Surrender, although I know I have surrendered I know my independence is gone, his songs remind me of what was, and help till the soil of what could be.

It is raining hard and there is thunder and I am, for the moment, happy. I cannot hear thunder without thinking of Beethoven. He has been in my heart since forever – a glorious presence of thunder and beauty, of sweetness and heart. The rain strikes the kitchen’s Plexiglas window and rivulets run down. The entire world I know is in this rain and, for the moment, I rejoice because I am part of this world again, for the moment.

There are times I catch myself believing the day might come when I will actually be happy, free of this apartment cell. A day when there will be a yard and flowers, roses even; and there will be wildflowers. I will make sure of that. There is something explosively free about wildflowers: Queen Anne’s lace, Chicory, Bull Thistles, Golden Rod, black-eyed Susan’s, Daisies, Asters, so glorious a tapestry. I will be able to sit and look and smile and swell with happiness. Still, I believe things like this are possible – maybe.

I remember when I was homeless wondering what business a boy like me had having dreams and hopes like this. I remember when my biggest dream was to be able to sleep in clean sheets with a real pillow and a clean pillowcase. And, if I was really lucky, there would be a refrigerator filled with food, eggs and orange juice and real butter and fancy stuff like mayonnaise and mustard and, of course, ketchup; and ice cream! I remember these dreams and hopes and I remember believing too that dreams like these don’t come true for homeless boys. They don’t come true for boys who failed their mothers by quitting dance. They don’t come true for a boy whose father’s died because the boy was such a terrible bastard. A day or two after my Dad died I asked my mother if the doctors did every thing they could to save him. She said, “Maybe if you hadn’t been such a bastard he would’ve had enough strength to live.” Her eyes were stones.

Maybe the wildflowers will come.

At my kitchen table, I remember hard cold nights. I am 17 walking down MacDonald Avenue in Brooklyn near Church Avenue. It is mid-winter and cold sears through my clothes and bites into my bones. It is past midnight and nowhere to go. I am tired. My feet hurt. I’ve been walking for hours. I am tired of trying to find a place to stay warm every night and, if I’m lucky, sleep. I stop walking and decide to give up. I stand there, the cold, free of my movement, bites down harder. I wonder what I give up means. It means kill myself or keep walking.

I keep walking.

SLOWING DOWN TO DISCOVER YOU

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I recently put away my coffee maker and microwave. I want to slow down, create some space for, well, me. I had noticed I was missing things, moving from one task to the other, head down. Technology speeds things up and that is not always a healthy thing. The Internet gives me access to information and communication with a speed I could have not have imagined a few years ago. Coffee makers allow me to push a button (unless I use the timer) for my morning coffee and the microwave, well, with my microwave I can heat things and cook things in a fraction of the time it took me when I used oven and stove.

But to what end?

Why is it so important to do these things at high speed? Do I benefit? Am I getting more done? And can someone please define what more actually is?

If I want my life to be about work, household tasks, making or returning phone calls, reading or sending e-mails, then yes, speeding things up with technology allows me to complete more of these tasks in a given day. But that is not what life is about, at least not my life. I cannot tell you what to decide about yours. I look around me and I see most people caught up and frenzied with so much work and so many chores there is little room left for anything else. So many of us, me included, rush past the very moment we are in without so much as a pause. After all, we have things to do!

I have decided to disengage from as much speeding up of my life as possible. I do this for several reasons. First, I am missing things I do not want to miss. The other day, stirring a warming pot of food, I heard birds singing outside. As the scent of food drifts up to me, their notes fill the air like jewels. I would have missed this had I pushed a button on my microwave and hurried back to my writing task.

Recently I adopted a puppy I named Charley after Charley in John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley.” McKenzie, my seven-year-old female German Shepherd has taken on the role of Charley’s mother. They love to wrestle and roughhouse in the kitchen. Heating my food in a pot affords me the opportunity to watch this miracle of life; the older dog teaching the younger dog. Charley, who has yet to be in the same room with coordination, by the way. Charley leaps at the nape of ‘Kenzie’s neck only to miss and land on the floor, a jumble of perpetually moving legs and elbows (are they elbows?). In another moment Charley is spread eagled on his back and ‘Kenzie checks him head to toe, finishing off her inspection with a lick to his nose. I would have missed this if I was using my microwave.

Slowing down, learning to pause and be in the moment, allows us stillness, allows us to be with ourselves, something so many of us avoid for so many of us have, one way or the other, been given the message we are bad people. More often than not, that message is pure myth with no relationship to our internal reality. Yet when we get this message long enough we learn to believe it. So, while slowing down may at first bring about some unsettling experiences, if you hang in there long enough, you will likely get past them and begin to discover that all along you have been a truly good person. And who wouldn’t like to spend time with a good person?

And then there is this. Slowing down has brought me closer to my family again. My father and mother and my grandparents all cooked on stoves and used ovens. Engaging in these tasks today makes me feel close to them. I am doing things they did and perhaps, in some small way, this affords me the chance to feel what they felt, live moments they lived, and in doing so, they are with me again.

It seems to me that slowing things down opens doors to some precious experiences in life. And hey, I can wait for my coffee or my food to warm. My father did. And if it was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.