Behind the Curtain

​When I was a kid they actually took the time to teach civics. I doubt they do that anymore and if they do it is probably unrecognizable to the civics lessons I was taught. We were taught the fundamentals of government and the citizen’s role in the functioning of that government. Free elections and a person’s right to vote were emphasized as being everyone’s responsibility. 

As in most places in the USA, schools are used as polling places so just before Election Day the lobbies and hallways would fill with the machines used in the voting. Back then in my little corner of the Eastern United States, they were standalone booths. You stepped in and pulled a giant lever to one side causing the curtain behind you to swoop shut and the small flip switches that actually record your vote to all flip upright like a giant circuit breaker panel in front of you. These switches were how you voted. You went along the switches flipping the one next to your selection down. At the end when you moved the giant lever back to its original positon, the curtain would open, the small switches would all flip down and your vote would be recorded. The switches all flipped down so that when the curtain opened, people couldn’t tell how you voted. Genius!

You learned at a very early age that voting was for adults only, voting was secret and sacred, and hence you could not go into the voting booth with your Mom/Dad or whomever. You were a kid and wanted to know what was going on behind that bloody curtain, but rules actually meant something and were enforced. So because they still taught civics and voting was held in high esteem and not thought a bother, there was a certain point in Elementary school that you were brought to the lobby where the machines were and actually got to see what went on behind the curtain! FUN! Levers and switches and curtains! What’s not to love?

The voting booths always reminded me of those photo booths at arcades; the ones that printed four pictures of you on a strip of photo paper. In fact the only thing missing from that voting experience was a huge flash of light at the end and a picture of you having voted to record the event like a game show.

When I was an adult and had moved to Hawaii I was surprised at the whole laid back air of a Hawaiian polling station. Really I shouldn’t have been. One of the things I loved about the place was that “hang loose” vibe. But here there were booths with no levers, just a small shelf for you and your ballot and hole punch. There was a curtain that you had to pull closed yourself and barely went halfway down from the top and often had a festive printed pattern. The curtains on the voting booths of my youth were uniformly heavy, dark green/grey and most definitely opaque. Most interesting of all to me was you could bring anyone into the booth with you. I said it was laid back.

Every Election Day I am reminded of my libertarian minded father. He hated having to register to vote and be assigned a polling station and then showing ID once you got there. He always felt it was a little too “show me your papers”. And, he reasoned, that if his ballot was secret why did they need to actually record that he voted and in what booth he did so? As an American he felt it was his right to vote plain and simple which meant he should be able to go to any polling station at any time and vote, registered or not.

My father loved this country. LOVED IT. And to him this country was the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and he didn’t need a bureaucrat reigning in his God given right to vote. So when he voted it was tense! Would he start arguing or just go with the flow? It really was like a game show! If only there were cameras.

The Deal

​The kindred soul

Protected and protector

Roles manifested only with instinct

Two minds as one with lifetimes shared

Ambitions entwined and futures unbounded

Romance unleashed

But the heart’s desires are not sustained

That hope of ages melts

Time tells that tale of fanciful wishes

Realities burned by reality

No karma no kismet

No one or other

It’s time to know

That dreams are just dreams.

Chapter One: IT BEGINS

When I was born, I was very young.

When I was born, I cried like a baby.

When I was born, I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.

If only my birth story were anything like the Henny Youngman midnight shows at the Sands, circa 1960 something. I’m not being coy about my age it is just that I don’t think a Henny Youngman show varied much over the years and one show from the 60’s is as good as another.

No, my birth story was much more “General Hospital” than shtick. Mom was fairly worn out by the time she had me. I being the youngest of four or “last born” as my sister ominously puts it. Mom and Dad were never known for over sharing abut family histories or life events even when directly begged, so I’ve pieced things together as best I could.

Mom would often be very sick when she was pregnant. In fact pregnancy really threw a monkey wrench in the shenanigans when the first child, my sister, came along soon after marriage. The sickness was so bad both Ma and Pa had to quit smoking! Talk about cold turkey. They never seemed to hold that against us but it was brought up often enough.

By the time I showed up (SURPRISE!) it was 12 years and three kids later. The bloom was off the rose and motherhood was old hat. It was also, I see in retrospect, a time for a 32 year old mother of two girls and a boy to “get it right”.  No laissez-faire mothering here. I would be molded into mom’s vision of what a son should be: God fearing, mother fearing, humble to the point of subservience, a Priest if she could swing it, and most assuredly straight as an arrow.

This, she thought, would be achieved through a combination of sly teaching, astute mothering, and making me terrified most every day of my life. Terrified that if I didn’t suppress every natural and God given urge and feeling I had that I could be handed over to the State, go to Hell, punished in some horrible way left to my fertile imagination, or even put in a box and shipped to Outer Mongolia. Did I mention my siblings may have contributed some of their own ideas along the way?  Their combined success with some of that and failure with other aspects haunt us both to this day.

And speaking of fear, I have come to the realization at this point in my life the driving force of my entire life has been fear. I was a happy little chappy up until the age of five. That is when life got real, fear got real, and it has been with me ever since. Like most things there are good and bad things that come with that fear, and in the coming pages I hope to cathartically be delving into those psychiatric riches. Here’s a hint though; fear has driven me to get an education, have a career and keep a roof over my head.  So see, not all bad.

Anyway, whether or not Mom was applying that same mother love to my older brother (number one son) I honestly can’t say. I was far too young and he was eleven years older so his existence always seemed peripheral. Our lives didn’t exactly cross even though we shared a bedroom so I would say our upbringing was very much compartmentalized. It was probably best that way as nearest I can determine, he hated my little guts. No brotherly love, no role model. Just some guy who was there with an occasional smack for me usually when I least expected it. Not fun.

So while there was no love there, one thing I do know, we were loved by our parents. Deeply. Our parents, short falls and all, did one hell of a job for us four and that is to say, they did their best. Whatever they did, did not do, said or didn’t say, really did come from a place of love and caring. Then, as they do, the chips fall and you are left how things have played out.

Oh but I am getting far ahead of myself. My birth story is the subject so let’s get back to that. I always enjoyed the fact that I was born at the time school got out. I got out too! But then the calendar told me it was a Saturday so bit doesn’t quite pan out. Let’s keep that a secret.

All of the kids were born in a Catholic hospital and all the nurses were nuns. That could be where that Priest thing came from. Even though we were spread out over twelve years we all had the same pediatrician deliver us. Mom was loyal!

The story goes that having gone into labor Mom is rushed to the hospital so this little light can come into the world but, about halfway through, I seemed to have second thoughts. Mom was no fool. No natural child birth for her! She insisted on full sensory deprivation and backup drugs. I applaud her choice but it did muck things up just a little. Halfway down the birth canal, lulled into a cozy haze with a little tranquilizer still known as “twilight sleep”, all contractions stopped. This, I am told, is not good.

That’s when the big guns were called in: Sister Mary Whocansay from the order Our Lady of Perpetual Motion was asked to assist. She of the magic fingers. Her comforting presence, her honed massage techniques and soft prayers all helped my petrified mother and her little butterball get to the desired outcome. That Sister pushed and smushed and kneaded my mother’s belly until the nerves started sending the muscles all of the required signals. Whew!

We weren’t even Roman Catholic but it was through experiences like this that humor at the expense of Catholics or their clergy never sat well around our dining room table. And this from the family that can find humor in pretty much anything.

I can’t resist the little joke about her name and her profession and no harm is meant in it, that’s just me having to be silly. Believe me; I am forever grateful that this woman was there to save both our lives.  I’ll never know her and I don’t think my mother even knows her name. Over the years it has become canonical that she somehow miraculously appeared when needed then vanished when the job was done.  There may have been wispy smoke. I think there was wispy smoke. And of course back lighting and angel song.

 

 

To be continued…maybe…