Category Archives: My Memoirs

THE BEST AND WORST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE

I have arrived at that time in my life when I reflect on the most important and life-changing events I have experienced. One of the biggest challenges I have faced in recent years is acknowledging that I am no longer young and have arrived at the final years.

home in Pitman, New Jersey, 1994- 2016

Over the course of my life, I have had ups and downs. I have suffered losses, and I have experienced successes. At the end of May, I will be celebrating my seventy-second birthday. I often find myself wondering how time passed so quickly. I can say that I have few regrets about my decisions and choices.

When I graduated from high school, I found a job as a dental assistant through my school counselor. Back in the day, in the ‘70S, dentists hired inexperienced young women and then trained them to be chairside assistants who ran the office, answered the phone, made appointments, and confirmed appointments. In addition, I developed the xrays and was responsible for sending out the bills and cleaning the office. Occasionally I even babysat the dentist’s children.

I was given a great deal of responsibility for an eighteen-year-old girl. But as it turned out, I proved myself to be highly efficient at running the office. And I enjoyed working there for a number of years. I worked for Dr. E. G. Wozniak in Haddon Township, NJ.

I was able to purchase a brand new 1970 yellow Volkswagen, rent my own apartment, and live on my own. That job taught me so much more than the skills it took to be a dental assistant. It confirmed to me that I was able to meet any challenges that came my way. I was a confident young woman from that point forward.

When I was twenty-two, I started dating my best friend’s cousin, Bob. And I decided I wanted to move to Florida, where Bob lived. We got married when I was twenty-three, and he was twenty-five. I was laid off from the insurance company the week after we came back from our honeymoon. I wasn’t able to find a job. And made the decision to go to a hairdressing school, the West Palm Beach Beauty Academy. After completing the eighteen-month program, I was hired to work at the Collonades Hotel, located on Singer Island. I did hair and facials.

Bob decided that he wanted to attend Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, two years later. Brooks was a school for Photography. We lived in California until he graduated from school three years later. My first job in California was at Robinson’s Department Store selling hats and wigs. I can not tell you how boring that job was. However, I made a friend named Terry Ropfogel, and she told me there was a residential school, St. Vincent’s School, where she volunteered. She told me that they were looking for full-time childcare workers. I loved little kids, so I applied for a job. I kept calling them once a week until they agreed to interview me for a job. I was hired shortly thereafter.

Working at St. Vincent’s turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. The kids were mildly retarded, and some of them had behavior problems. I must admit that I came to love them like they were my children when Bob graduated from Brooks three years l after we decided to move back to the Philadelphia, New Jersey, area. I wanted to move to the New York City area because I believed Bob would be able to get a job as a photographer there. Bob decided he wanted to buy a house, and he got a job as an electronics technician. And at that point, we purchased a house with the assistance of the Veteran’s benefits that Bob earned while he was in the Navy.

Picture of me and one of my co-workers Stacy Smitter at St. Vincent’s School in California

A year later, Bob and I had our first child, Jeanette. by then, we had been married for seven years. Three years later, I had a second daughter, Bridget. I had always loved kids and wanted to be a mother. And it turned out to be one of my most challenging life experiences. We lived in that small, three-bedroom house in Pennsauken, New Jersey, for thirteen years when our children were young.

My parents passed away eight months apart in 1986 when my children were five and two years old. My dad had lung cancer, and my mother passed away from a complete respiratory and coronary arrest. My mother told me before she passed away that she didn’t regret any of the decisions she had made during her life but only regretted all the things she hadn’t done. Her words had a profound effect on me. The year after she passed away, I decided that I would go to college, which I didn’t have the opportunity to do when I was of college age since I had to get a full-time job when I graduated from high school.

And so, I prepared a portfolio of my artwork and applied to the Hussian School of Art and the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. I was accepted at both schools. But, I made the decision to attend the Temple Tyler School of Art because they offered me a full scholarship for the first year and financial aid for the second, third, and fourth years.

Tyler School of Art

And so, at the age of thirty-six, I began college as a Freshman, the only adult student. The rest of the Freshman students was seventeen or eighteen years old. Some of them hadn’t even gotten their driver’s licenses yet. I could write an entire book about my art college experience, and perhaps I will someday. Needless to say, it was a challenging and sometimes difficult four years. I graduated Summa Cum Laude at the age of forty with teaching credentials. My class stood up at graduation and clapped when my name was called out as a graduating senior. I have to say going to college was probably the best choice I ever made. And although it was challenging, to say the least, I never regretted it for a single moment. My children were ten and seven when I graduated.

After graduation, I applied to every elementary, middle, and high school for an art teacher position. Unfortunately, it turned out that the New Jersey public schools were eliminating the art programs in their schools, and I wasn’t able to find a public school teaching position.

After about a year, I realized I could create my own private art school. And my husband and I started looking for a house that could accommodate our family and several rooms to be used for my art classes. And after several months of looking at residences, I found a house in Pitman, NJ, that had been owned by a neuropsychologist that had been empty for several years since his passing. After several months we were able to purchase it. It had been empty for several years, and we spent the first several; years repairing it and had to put a new roof on it. We lived there for twenty-four years. And I taught art there for many years to kids from four through high school and adults in the evening. Overall it was a wonderful experience, and I met and befriended many of the people who lived in Pitman while teaching there.

When we were ready to retire, we spent the last year we lived there preparing the house for sale. We loved that house so much, and it was difficult to leave it, but it was necessary to sell it since we couldn’t afford to keep it after we both retired from working.

We chose to retire to North Carolina and bought a house about forty-five minutes from Raleigh, NC, in Willow Spring. We have been living here for seven years. During those seven years, I have been doing volunteer work in the Guardian ad Litem in the NC Court. The Guardian Litem are citizens that volunteer to investigate at-risk children and make decisions about their care and where they should live if there is a problem within their homes. And in addition, for the last seven years, I have been volunteering at an animal sanctuary caring for Parrots, Macaws, and Pheasants. The sanctuary is called Animal Edventure, and it is located in Coats, NC. I have always loved animals, and it seemed a perfect match for me at this time of my life.

In addition, five and a half years ago, I started this blog and write short stories and memoirs for WRITE ON. I write one new story a week. I also continue to create my artwork in my free time. Who knows what the future holds for me? I am a person with a high energy level, and I hope that in the future, I will continue to contribute in some way for the rest of my life. I can not imagine not doing so. I have always had the desire to do good in my life and be kind to the people I met along the way. I can not imagine wanting to do else wise.

So, here we are, living out our lives in North Carolina. Our youngest daughter lives with us. And although the last several years have been challenging because of the pandemic and inflation, we keep moving forward from one day to the next.

I can not say what lies in my future and that of my family, but I hope my good health will continue, life will give us challenges to meet, and we will succeed in all our endeavors.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

BROKEN HEART, A MEMOIR

2 Replies

It was June of 2007, and I was fifty-six years old. I hadn’t been feeling myself. I began feeling short of breath when I went up the steps or had to carry anything heavy. And then I began having pains that ran up and down my arm and under my chin. I tried to ignore it for as long as I could.

Set Lines heartbeat normal, arrhythmia and ischemia. Line cardiogram heart on white background. Vector illustration. electro-cardiogram

The symptoms got worse, and I decided that I needed to go to the doctor and find out what was going on. I went to my primary doctor for a check-up, and she recommended I go to a Cardiac specialist. She gave me a referral to a cardiologist Dr. Fox. He checked my blood pressure and weight and asked for my family history. I told him that my mother had congestive heart failure and she had died at the age of seventy-six from complete respiratory and cardiac arrest.

He arranged for me to have a cardiogram and echo, an electrocardiogram, and a cardiac catheterization at the Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, NJ. When I returned to the heart doctor’s office to hear the results of the tests, he informed me that I had heart failure and that the left side of my heart was enlarged. He put me on a low dose of blood pressure medication and cholesterol medication. He advised me to come back in six months. He believed my heart failure was due to long-term untreated high blood pressure. I assured him that I had never had high blood pressure, but he insisted that I did. He told me to schedule a visit in one year to repeat the tests.

A year later, I was feeling worse, and he stated that he was going to repeat all the tests and see what changes had taken place in my heart. I told him that I wasn’t coming back since I didn’t believe he had done anything to improve my heart issues, And I wanted to take copies of my test results when I left the office that day. I was extremely upset over his lack of concern for my well-being.

Doctors diagnose human heart

I spent the next several weeks looking for a new cardiologist and was finally referred to Dr. Drachman in Cherry Hill, NJ. After my visit with Dr. Drachman and his cardiac nurse, Sandy Soloman, I was told that my former doctor hadn’t even put me on a dosage of medication that would have affected any improvement. And so first he was going I was going first to have an echocardiogram, and then he was going to put me on a beta blocker and a higher dosage of blood pressure medication. He wanted me to return to his office every three months to see him as he slowly titrated the levels of the heart medication. As I was going out of his office, I asked him what my outcome was going to be. He looked at me and said, you have congestive heart failure. You may live another five years. But, it was possible that with proper treatment, I could live longer. I would have to follow his medical advice. He couldn’t guarantee how long I might live, to take it one day at a time.

His words hit me like a blow. I really had no idea how seriously ill I was. Dr. Drachman diagnosed me with congestive heart failure, a weakened heart valve, and cardiac insufficiency. In fact, the left side of my heart was enlarged and had been for some time. I was shocked, to tell the truth, I had just turned fifty-seven years old. I had been a vegetarian for over twenty-five years. I had worked out at a gym for years. And I walked several miles every day at the park every morning.

He told me to stop lifting weights, but I could continue walking as long as I didn’t experience any chest pains. On the ride home from the doctor’s office, I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck. I couldn’t believe that I had five or fewer years left in my life. I felt I still had so many more things to do in my life. I wasn’t ready to give up. And I didn’t.

When I came home from the doctor’s office, I told my family what the doctor had said, and I have to admit I cried when I said the doctor said, “if you are lucky, you will live another five years. I tried to maintain at least the outward appearance that I was going on with my life as before, but honestly, I became quite depressed. I had difficulty accepting that I was going to die when I had done everything I could do during my adult life to be healthy. Apparently, I had inherited heart failure.

At some point, I made the decision that I was wasting what time I had left being depressed, and I tried to enjoy each day and not dwell on my illness. And over time, I started feeling a lighter spirit come to me and lift me out of my depression.

I followed my doctor’s orders and returned to his office every three months to get a check-up, and he increased the dosage of my heart medication. I was now taking five heart medications. Over time my condition stabilized, although I still had an enlarged left side of my heart. The angina pains I had experienced for about a year and a half decreased. I tried to maintain a more optimistic view of life. And filled my days with things that I enjoyed taking long walks in the park every morning, painting, and I began writing.

one of my paintings, “THE TRINITY”

As a result of having the good luck to find a doctor that cared about my well-being, I have slowly improved over time, and now I’m able to be physically active and have little or no pain. So, my husband and I began planning for our retirement, and we made the decision to move to North Carolina, where we could live in a milder climate, as cold weather in the North East had a detrimental effect on my breathing and well-being. Shortly before my husband and I retired, I received a call from Sandy Soloman, my cardiac nurse, telling me that there was a new medication available for my particular heart condition called Entresto. She strongly suggested that I start taking it. At first, I was somewhat concerned about changing my meds since I was feeling stable for the past several years. But I trusted her advice, and I began taking the Entresto twice a day, along with three other heart meds.

So, here I am, seven years later, retired and living in a quiet neighborhood in North Carolina, about a one-half hour outside of Raleigh, NC. I have been volunteering for the past seven years, three mornings a week, at an animal sanctuary. I care for parrots, Macaws, and pheasants. In addition, I began writing a blog with my original short stories and memoirs. I continue painting.

I found a new cardiologist at Duke University, Dr. Abraham, who sees me once a year to make sure that all is well with me. And so far, I am doing well and plan to continue in the same vein for as long as I can.

Hopefully, I will have many good years ahead of me. Who knows what the future may hold for me. But I look forward to whatever surprises lie in my path with anticipation. So fear not. Do not ever give up on yourself, no matter what difficulties you might have to face. Try to keep a positive outlook on your life and your future, and never give up on yourself. You never know what strength lives within you until you are tested. Do not give up because you may have to encounter some bumps along the way. And I look forward to celebrating my 72nd year on this planet on May 24^th of this year.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

YOU GOT IT MADE IN THE SHADE

1 Reply

Maple Shade, New Jersey, is the name of the small town where I was lucky enough to spend my childhood until I moved to my own apartment in Haddonfield, New Jersey when I turned twenty-one.

Maple Shade has a long history dating back to 1672. It was originally an agricultural community. And was called Chester Township. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Carberry family moved there in what was still primarily a rural township but one that was growing and becoming more modern.

By the time I arrived, it was a thriving small town with its own downtown where there were several banks, a post office, a police station, and its own fire company. The downtown consisted of a bakery, Ben Frankling 5&10, a Rexall Drug Store, and an A & P Grocery store, and we had our own Doctor’s office consisting of Dr. Hartman and Dr. Bukley. And my favorite haunt, The Ice Cream Stand.

As I look back over my life, I realize that I was lucky to grow up in Maple Shade in the early 1950s. I doubt I could have had a more idyllic childhood anywhere else. The fact that I was a part of the baby boomer generation played a great part in it. My generation was given a tremendous amount of freedom by our parents. When we weren’t in school, we were allowed to go and come as we pleased. As long as we came home in time for lunch and dinner. My parents never asked me where I was going before I went out for the day. And when I returned, they didn’t really inquire what I had gotten up to or whose house I went to.

In addition to the downtown section of Maple Shade, there were Tar Pits. Where my friends and I would spend hours exploring and digging and looking for treasures, of course, my friends nor I would tell our parents what we were up to, which made it all the more fun for us.

And then there was the Roxy Theater on Main Street, where we kids could go to see the latest movies for twenty-five cents on Saturday morning. I can remember so clearly the Saturday that my friends and I attended a movie at the Roxy Theater called the Village of the Dammed. About these eerie blond-headed and blue-eyed children with extraordinary intelligence that were targeted by the government because they feared they were aliens who might take over the planet. It was a scary movie for that time period. And then, when my friends and I left the theater after the movie, all the kids started pointing at me and saying I was one of these creepy children, as it just so happened that I had blond hair and blue eyes.

In addition to the theater, Maple Shade provided a bus ride back and forth to a roller rink in Riverside. A town about a twenty-minute bus ride away. Where we could use roller skate all day for fifty cents, and that included the skate rental. I spent a great deal of my time falling down and getting up. And saving myself by slamming into the wall. I wasn’t a very good skater, but I loved it all the same.

The Forth of July was the best day of the year for kids. First, there was a parade that went down Main Street all the way up to the border of Lenola. We would all decorate our bikes with red, white, and blue streamers. And then, after dark, the kids in Maple Shade would go outside their houses with sparklers and run up and down their streets.

But my favorite, by far, was Halloween. As soon as it got dark out, all the kids in town would go out in their homemade costumes with empty pillowcases and go to every house in town to collect candy. And when that pillow case was full, we would stop at our homes and empty them and go out for more, and that included stopping at all the stores downtown and the police station. When we got home with all our goodies, we would go through the candy and separate the good stuff, chocolate, from the not-so-popular treats like candied apples. There was nothing that I loved more in life when I was a kid than candy. It’s hard to believe that I still have most of my teeth in my mouth.

But the absolute best holiday was Christmas, which also had its own parade in which Santa Claus was the main event. He would ride in the biggest, gaudiest float and throw candy at all the kids in town. The Main Street in Maple Shade was decorated from top to bottom with Christmas decorations and lights. Santa Claus would make an appearance at the Roxy Theater on stage and give out gifts to the kids at the Saturday Matinee, and then we would sit and watch a Christmas movie, and we would get a box of candy to take home with us.

Overall the memories that stand out the most to me of my childhood were the absolute freedom that we had as children when we were not in school on holidays, but most of all, during the long, hot summer, we could come and go wherever we wanted to. Our parents would say, be careful and make sure you get home in time for dinner. In the summer, we were allowed to go out after dinner until it was quite dark, and then we would hear our parents calling us at the top of their lungs that it was time to come in. And when we finally did arrive home, we were told not to let any mosquitoes come into the house. But, if some mosquitoes did manage to come in, we would spend the next hour trying to annihilate them. Because if one got in your room, one would get little sleep because of the constant buzzing in your ears. Not to mention all the mosquito bits that itched like crazy.

And this is hard to believe, but in the summer, there would be mosquito trucks that would travel up and down the streets, and we kids would follow behind them on our bikes, never realizing that the spray was DDT and toxic. Apparently, our parents had no clue either.

But that is one of the things about childhood. There are many bumps and bruises along the way, but if you survive them all, you grow stronger and fearless. So, when you finally outgrow your childhood, you are ready to face the bigger challenges of becoming an adult with all its slings and arrows.

So, yes, Maple Shade and all the similar little towns in America during the 1950s and ’60s were a great time to grow up and discover just what you were made of, and prepare you for a life that would be both challenging and full of both joy and sorrows. And frankly, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

My Guardian Angel

1 Reply

I grew up in Maple Shade, New Jersey. Our house was located two doors down from the Catholic Church. I attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help Elementary School. Maple Shade is a working-class town, which is located an hours drive from Philadelphia, Pa. The elementary school is right next door to the church. So, we were within shouting distance from the school and the church. Needless to say, going to Catholic School for twelve years had a profound and long-lasting effect on me as I was growing up.

The high school I attended was Saint Mary of the Angels Academy. It’s an all-girls college prep school. It was located in Haddonfield, New Jersey, which is a town that, for the most part, was inhabited by wealthy families.

St. Joseph nuns taught me all through grade school except for third grade when I had a lay teacher Miss Norris, and the fifth grade when I had Mr. Mc Elliot. He was the only male teacher I had through twelve years of school. The St. Joseph sisters had a reputation as being strict. And not adverse to using physical punishment if you got out of line or disobeyed their instructions. I had my head knocked against the blackboard more than once. And my hand whacked with a ruler that had a sharp metal edge. Most often, I was caught whispering to one of my friends.

For the most part, I was a quiet child and kept out of trouble. But, occasionally, my mischievous nature would get the best of me, and I would act out. For instance, we had to attend Mass on Sunday at nine o’clock, and all the students sat in the same seats every Sunday.

I thought it was funny to get my girlfriends to start laughing about halfway through Mass which usually lasted about an hour. One Sunday, there happened to be an older woman sitting in front of me, and she had a coat hanger sticking out of her winter coat on the back of her neck. And every time she had to sit down, the hook of the hanger would poke her in the back of her neck. It was just out of reach of her hand, and so she was tortured by the hanger poking her for well over an hour. I thought this was hilarious, and so I pointed at the lady to all my friends sitting next to me in the aisle. And we would all laugh every time the hanger mauled her. We tried to keep the laughter down to a low roar, but we weren’t always successful.

Soon Sister St. Joseph would come sweeping down the aisle to admonish me with her giant rosery that would swing back and forth from her waist to admonish me. And she would warn us that if we better quiet down. And we would someday be punished for our sins. Hell, was the place she assured us would be the place we would end up in for all eternity.

I always felt this was a somewhat extreme punishment for children. And besides, it was a well-known fact taught to us by these self-same St. Joseph nuns that we all had a guardian angel assigned to us after we were baptized. And the guardian angel would protect us for all time. He would be sitting over our right shoulders. And it was his job to protect us from the slings and arrows that life threw at us, and that included Sister Saint Joseph and the threat of eternal fires of hell.

At the time I reached the eighth grade, my class was informed that we would have to take entrance exams if we wanted to continue with our Catholic education. There were two Catholic High Schools in the area. Holy Cross High School and St. Mary of the Angels Academy, an all-girl high school.

After we took the entrance exams, I was flabbergasted to find out that I not had not only passed the entrance exam but did quite well. I was sure that I had failed them. Since almost on a daily basis, one of the dear nuns would inform me of how stupid I was. It took many years for me to overcome my self-doubt regarding my intelligence and start to believe in myself and my intelligence, and rebuild my self-confidence.

Outside of the classroom and when I was on my own or with my friends, I felt confident in myself. It didn’t really occur to me that there was anything I couldn’t do. Even though it wasn’t true, I would often take chances and do things that were unsafe. During the summer, I wanted to go swimming. But the fact was I had never been in a pool or lake where the water was over my head. No one had ever taught me to swim. And yet, when our neighbors down the street had a built-in swimming pool installed. And I was determined that I was going to go swimming in that pool.

The Pheiffers were the only family that had a pool, and I was certain that they were rich beyond my wildest dreams. Of course, that wasn’t true. They were working-class people, the same as my parents. They just had fewer kids in their families. I would often walk down the street and knock at their door. And ask if I could go swimming. I guess I made somewhat of a pest, and eventually, they gave in. And they invited my best friend and me to go swimming in their pool on one of the hottest summer days. I was wearing one of my sister’s hand-me-down swimming suits that were a size too big for me. But that didn’t stop me from going swimming. And the fact that I had no clue how to swim didn’t dissuade me in the least. Mrs. Pheiffer informed me that I should not go into the pool by myself because she didn’t want anything untoward to happen to me or any of the other neighborhood kids.

And so, on that beautiful summer day, I walked down to the deep end of the swimming pool, counted to ten, and jumped in a while, holding my nose into water that was over six feet deep. The water wasn’t heated. And it was a shock when I hit the cold water and sank like a rock to the bottom, which was well over my head. I had no clue what to do. But it was clear to me that I was going to drown. I began flailing my arms and legs, trying to propel my head and shoulders out of the water. I was swallowing the water and gasping for air at the same time.

I started praying for my guardian angel to come and rescue me. I couldn’t imagine what he was waiting for. It was clear I wasn’t going to last much longer. So, I opened up my eyes, and I saw one of the other bigger kids nearby. It looked like Denny Pheiffer. He was several years older than me. And quite a bit bigger. When he got closer to me, I propelled myself toward him with whatever remaining strength I had left. And low and behold, I got close enough to him to grab hold of him around his stomach. He tried to push me off since I was pulling him down. But he soon realized that I wasn’t going to let go of him. And he started swimming toward the side of the pool that was a few feet away.

And after what seemed like an eternity, Denny managed to get the two of us to safety with no help from me. But, I got plenty of help from my guardian angel, who I had been praying two the whole time. It seemed like a lifetime but probably was only a few minutes. I grabbed ahold of the side of the pool, and Denny swam away. I started crying, and Denny’s older brother Joey was yelling for his mother to come outside. Mrs. Pheiffer demanded to know what had happened, and Denny said, “she grabbed ahold of me at the deep end and pulled us both under the water. She almost drowned us both.”

Mrs. Pheiffer said, “are you alright, Susie?”

“Yes, I am. My guardian angel saved me.”

And then Denny just snorted at me and said,” Oh yeah, right. So, how come you were hanging on me and almost drowned us both?”

“She saved us both. And I folded my arms in front of me, which is what I did when I had no desire to discuss something further. In other words, I was done talking. You could believe me or not.”

Mrs. Pheiffer said, “alright, I think it is a good time for all of you to go home. And Susie, you need to learn how to swim before you go into the deep end again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.” And I grabbed my towel and headed home and headed for my house, which was at the other end of the street, two houses down from Our Lady of Perpetual Help church. I decided that after I got changed, I was going to go up to the church and say a few prayers to thank my guardian angel for saving my life.

And that night, before I went to sleep, I said a prayer to my guardian angel. Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom God’s love commits me here, Ever this day, be at my side, To light and guard, Rule and guide.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

THE HOME THAT MARIE AND HUGH BUILT

1 Reply

This is a painting I did of my childhood home in Maple Shade, Nj, in 1987.

It had been a long sixteen months since my parents passed away. My father died from lung cancer. I was certain my mother had died from a broken heart. Their marriage had been a difficult one at times. But nonetheless, my mother never recovered from his death. She seemed to be diminished in some way by her loss. They had married when she was nineteen years old. She didn’t know how to go on without him after he passed away.

When he was alive, his presence in the room, in the house, overshadowed her. It was as if his very presence diminished her. And yet, after he passed away, it seemed as if each day her energy, her presence, faded.

They had been married for fifty-seven years. She really didn’t have a life of her own before her marriage, and during their marriage, he orchestrated every moment of their lives. He decided where they would live and picked out the house without her ever seeing it. He chose all the furniture, the curtains, and the color each room was painted. He never asked her opinion. He was the man of the house. He used to refer to her as Mom. Rarely would he call her Marie.

Some days felt as if they would go on forever. At the same time, it felt like time had passed too quickly. It was hard to think about what the future held without my parents. I couldn’t imagine going through the rest of my life without their presence. My mother’s unquestioning love, my father’s energy, and intelligence, and his powerful presence.

But nonetheless, within eight months, they had both passed away. The house seemed so empty without them that I could hardly bare stepping inside the front door. After I cleaned out the house of all my parents’ belongings, including the well-worn furniture, it echoed when I walked in the front door and closed it behind me.

The last thing I looked at before I closed the front door for the last time was the black telephone that had hung on the kitchen wall for as long as I could remember. As I stood there, I remembered all the phone calls I had made on it when I was a teenager. And how I called my best friend, Joanie, every day as soon as I got home from school. And I would ask if she would like to go for a ride on their bikes or go ice skating at Strawbridge lake.

And after my husband Bob and I moved back to New Jersey, we bought a small house in Pennsauken, a town fifteen minutes away from Maple Shade, where my parents still lived. I would call my mom and dad every morning to see how they were doing and tell them I would stop by later in the day.

My father would answer the phone and say, “hello, Susan, here’s your mother.” For some reason, he hated talking on the phone. And then he would hand over the phone to my Mother. My mom would say, “Hello, Susie.” I would say, “Hi, Mom, I was just wondering how you and daddy are doing. Is everything alright?”

My mother always said the same thing. “your father is reading the newspaper, and we just ate breakfast. I just got back from church. Are you coming over today?”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll be over in a little while. Do you need anything?” “No, your father went to the store yesterday. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

Later that day after I would come over with my two children and spend some time with my parents. My mother loved to let my youngest daughter sit on her lap. My daughter would play with my mother’s rosary while she sat there, or sometimes she would play with the scapular that hung from my mother’s neck.

Sometimes I would bring my haircutting scissors over to my parent’s house and give my parents a haircut. After I trimmed my mother’s hair, I would set it in bobby pins, and before I left, I would comb it out for her.

My father would sit at the table and read his newspaper silently. My mother would get up several times and refill his coffee cup while he smoked one cigarette after another. He would often tell me what all the neighbors were up to. Since he spent a greater part of the day watching them from the front kitchen window. And he would observe all the activity of any of the neighbors that were out and about. He often commented on how much trash they would put out on the curb.

After my father developed lung cancer, life changed drastically. He rarely got out of bed, and he had little, if anything, to say. If I went into his room, he would say, “leave me now.” Seeing my father looking so pale, thin, and quiet was heartbreaking. It seemed like he was just waiting for the end of his life to come so he could finally have peace.

After he passed away, my mother was never the same. I realized she couldn’t be left alone. So, I hired a woman named Doris Cook to stay with her during the week. And then, my siblings and I took turns having my mother stay at our houses. It was difficult for my mother because she had glaucoma and was unfamiliar with homes other than her own. She began to seem somewhat confused. However, Doris was a godsend, and my mother seemed to be comfortable with her. She was a kind and gentle person.

One night in August, I received a call from Doris that she thought my mother had had a heart attack. I told her to call an ambulance to take my mother to the hospital, and I would be there as quickly as I could. I only lived a few minutes away. My mother never recovered from the heart attack. It is so difficult to lose one’s parents. Until it happens to you can not imagine the sense of loss and emptiness you feel when your parents pass away. It’s almost like a part of you is missing.

As I looked over the house for the last time, I thought back to all the years that I lived there and then all the years afterward. I realized that every lesson I learned in life was a result of my parents. My father taught me to keep learning and growing as a person. And my love taught me how to love and be loved in return. She surely had a heart of gold. And that I was lucky enough to have them for as long as I did.

There aren’t words enough to say how much I loved them, my gratitude for all they did for me, the love, the caring, the sacrifice. I know that I will miss them for the rest of my life. And there hasn’t been a day that has gone by when I don’t think about them.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

LIFE AS I KNOW IT

1 Reply

Did you spend most of your working life looking forward to the years that you would be able to retire and spend all your time doing things that you loved? And put behind you the humdrum, repetitious decades of working for a living? Working nine to five every week, week after week, month after month, and year after year?

I have had many different types of jobs over my lifetime. When I was in my senior year of high school, I was offered a part-time job that would transition to a full-time dental assistant when I graduated from high school.

I hadn’t given too much thought to what I would do after my high school graduation, so I said, “yes, I would like to do that. And that is how I began my working life. I worked for Dr. Edward G. Wozniak for almost five years. After that, I sold high-risk auto insurance with the Ellis Brothers in Collingswood, NJ. This was a great job because the owners of the insurance firm, Evie and Harry Ellis, didn’t like working and would take my two workmates and me out to breakfast every morning. And they looked for any opportunity to skip work.

But then I started seeing a young man who I eventually married, and I moved to Florida. I was twenty-two. I decided to go to hairdressing school at the Florida Beauty Academy in West Palm Beach because I was laid off from an insurance company that I worked for in West Palm Beach after it went bankrupt. At the time, Florida businesses would only hire people who lived in Florida for at least six months.

I had difficulty getting a job at a hair salon. So I started looking for a job that required a license to do hair and facials. And luckily, I found out about a position at the Collonaides Hotel from a friend who attended hairdressing school with me, Maggie Waisanen. She was a woman in her early fifties, but we just hit it off, despite a thirty-year age difference. She was hired at the Collonades as well. She was giving massages.

I was hired to do facials at the Collonaides Health Center at the Collonaides Hotel on Singer Island. The hotel was owned by John D MacArthur, a well-known developer, and hotel owner. Whose wealth is better known today by the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, still a major holder of Palm Beach. He was about eighty-five years old at the time I met him. I used to see him sitting out by the built-in pool with his nurse. He was one of the wealthiest men in Florida at that time. After several years my husband Bob decided that he wanted to attend Brooks Institute for Photography in Santa Barbara, California.

And so Bob and I packed up our belongings, and we were on our way across the country from Florida to Santa Barbara, California. It was a ten-day drive, but it was a beautiful and scenic trip that I will never forget. Bob attended Brooks for three years. I worked at St. Vincent’s School as a counselor and as the assistant Supervisor. I took care of twelve adolescent girls who were mildly retarded. I have to say that this was my favorite job that I have had so far. I came to love those children with my whole heart, and it was difficult to say goodbye when Bob finished school at Brooks.

We decided to move back to New Jersey. I hadn’t lived in New Jersey for seven years, and I missed my family. Bob found employment, and after a short time, Bob decided he wanted to buy a house. Bob had served in the Navy during the Viet Nam war, so he was eligible to use Veteran’s benefits to purchase a house. And we were able to buy the house with no downpayment. It was located in Pennsauken, New Jersey, a short drive from Maple Shade, NJ. Where I grew up, and my parents still lived.

I found out I was pregnant within a year after we moved to our new house. Bob was working in Pennsylvania at the time. We had two children in four years. I stayed home with my children for seven years until they were in school. I was thirty-six by then, and I decided to go to college since I never had the opportunity to do that when I graduated from St. Mary of the Angels high school.

I applied to Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa, at the Tyler School of Art. I also applied to the Hussian School of Art and Moore College of Art. Which was an art school for women only. I was accepted at all the schools. I decided to attend Temple because they offered me a full scholarship for the first year. I was the only adult student in the Freshman Class. The rest of the class were straight out of high school and were seventeen or eighteen years old. It was a unique and challenging experience for me. I graduated four years later with a 4.0-grade point average and a BA and Art teaching certification. Later I earned a degree to teach exceptional children. (handicapped)

I decided, after spending several months trying to get an art teaching job in public schools with no success, to open up my own art classes. At the time, the public schools had stopped funding Art Education in the Public Schools. We purchased a large home in Pitman, Nj. The house had formerly belonged to a neuropsychologist. He saw his patients in the home. After he passed away, the house was empty for eight years. I used his offices to teach art. The students were aged five and up to eighteen. And I taught adults in the evening. And that is what I did for many years.

The years seemed to fly by as my children grew up and attended college. My oldest daughter moved out and was married. Before I knew it, Bob and I were of retirement age, and we started planning on selling our home of twenty-four years and looking for a place to retire. We decided on North Carolina because of the temperate climate and the low real estate taxes.

And here I sit, fifty-plus years later, retired. Or my version of retired. And by that, I mean I retired and started collecting Social Security.

I hadn’t been living in North Carolina longer than a month when I decided that I wanted to start doing some type of volunteer work. I investigated all the opportunities available in the area. And I finally decided that I would volunteer for the Guardian Ad Litem. Which is a volunteer citizen to represent at-risk children in the court. I had to take a college course and be certified in order to serve as a Guardian Ad Litem in the court.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the volunteer position with the Guardian ad Litem took a great deal more of my time than I realized it would. And after a year, I decided that it wasn’t for me. Although I respected the work they did to be outstanding and to be highly beneficial to children at risk of abuse and neglect.

At the same time, I decided I would like to volunteer at an Animal Sanctuary as I have always loved animals as far back as I can remember. I found an animal sanctuary, Animal Edventure, that Is in Coats, NC, and was only a fifteen-minute drive from where I live. I have been working there for six years, three mornings a week, taking care of Parrots, Macaws, and pheasants.

In addition, I started writing a blog online that includes short stories and memoirs. I have been writing all my life, but this was the first time that I ever had anyone read my stories. It took courage to put my writing out there. But here I am, almost five years later.

I have no regrets about my life or my experiences. I never let fear stop me. I always had faith in my ability to be a success in whatever I did. I look back over my life and have good memories of the places I have lived and the people I have met and befriended. And the accomplishments that grew from hard work and perseverance, and keeping faith in myself and my abilities.

I know that I will continue to create both my artwork and my writing for as long as I have breath in my body. I can not imagine a life without expressing my creativity in some way. Who knows where life will take me next? I look forward to many more challenges. Life is short so be sure to live every day to the fullest.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

SUNSHINE, HAIRCUTS AND MANICURES

1 Reply

It was 1974, and I was living in Jupiter, Florida. I didn’t know anyone there other than my husband, Bob, and his family. In the past, I had worked as a dental assistant, and for a high-risk auto insurance company in New Jersey for several years. However, I had difficulty finding a job in Florida because companies had a policy that you had to have been a Florida resident for at least six months before they would hire you. And I had only lived there two months since moving from New Jersey.

Fortunately, Bob’s cousin, Margie, had worked at an insurance company B.D.Cole. Margie said I could use her as a reference. So after two interviews, I was hired to work as an assistant for Elaine Ayoub. Who had worked at that office for years and was nearing retirement age. Elaine was having difficulty keeping up with the workload and had made some mistakes. So, they hired me to assist her.

: Colonnades Hotel add 1970’s.. I’m under the blanket.

I was told to go through her outgoing work every day and make sure it was in order. It was a challenging job since I wasn’t up to date on all the insurance laws in Florida. And they were different from New Jersey. Elaine didn’t seem aware that I lacked the pertinent information, and she didn’t attempt to teach me what I needed to know. She had a somewhat imposing personality, and I was young and slightly intimidated by her.

After working at B.D. Cole, for about six months, Bob and I got married. We took a three-day honeymoon in Miami. Where it rained, cats and dogs the entire time. The hotel room’s roof leaked, and the water leaked non-stop over our bed for three days. It was a honeymoon that I would never forget, that’s for sure. Bob lost his wallet somehow, and he had no clue where it was. When we returned to our apartment in Lake Park, we found it on the driveway.

We had adopted a puppy we named Ullyses a couple of months before we were married. And we had put him in a kennel for three days while we were on our honeymoon in Miami. When we picked him up from the kennel, we discovered that he was infested with fleas, as was our apartment. After three days, the fleas were extremely hungry and bit us from top to bottom. It was not a great beginning. We had to use a flea bomb to kill all the fleas and treat Ulysses, our puppy, to kill all fleas on him.

The following day when I went back to work at B. D., Cole, I was called into the main office. I was informed that I was being laid off. The company was downsizing. And so, after three days of marriage, a wet honeymoon, and being attacked by fleas on our return. I was once again without a job.

I spent the next several weeks trying to find another job with no luck. And I decided that I would go to a hairdressing school. I found out there was a school in West Palm Beach. It was called The Florida Beauty Academy. Looking back on this decision, I can not imagine what made me think I would be a great hairdresser. I never had a talent for styling my hair, nor did I have any experience.

I began my training to become a hairstylist. It was a small school, and there were only about thirty students attending that year. The students were primarily young people. But there were two adult students who I believed were in their mid-fifties.

They stuck together because they were the same age. But, I became friends with one of them. Her name was Maggie Wassenen. I used to visit her in her home and became friends with her entire family. Her husband was a mailman. And he would often talk about the people he met along his route delivering mail. One of the things that I remember the most about her house was that they had a tree in their backyard where they grew both oranges and lemons. I didn’t know about grafting trees back then, and I thought it was some kind of magic.

Unfortunately, halfway through the hairdressing course, Maggie’s friend, the other adult student in the class, committed suicide because her husband left her. And Maggie became depressed for the remainder of our time there. She didn’t talk to me often after that.

As it turned out, I had a natural talent for cutting hair and giving perms. I was able to roll a perm in less than ten minutes. I found I liked coloring hair as well. Most of our customers were older women that lived in the West Palm Beach area. And occasionally, we would cut the hair of homeless people in West Palm Beach. I enjoyed talking to these people since they offered a view of life that I had been unaware of up to this point in my life.

One of my teachers Mr. Diego, taught me how to cut hair. He was such a kind and supportive person. He had moved to Florida from Cuba. He often shared his early experiences with me about what it was like moving from his country of origin to Florida.

The one experience I recalled disliking the most was nearly all the students and the teachers smoked. And they smoked in the student’s break room. And unfortunately, it was the only place where the students could sit down, eat and take a break from standing all day. The smoke was so dense that you could barely see who was in the room.

Occasionally I took a walk down the street from the school and go to Walgreens to get a soda or some snack or eat breakfast. There wasn’t any smoking allowed so I could breathe some fresh air for a little while. One morning a woman who frequented Walgreens came over and asked me if I was a nurse since I was wearing a white uniform.

I said, “no, I’m a hairdressing student at the Florida Beauty Academy down the street.” People were friendly back then and thought nothing of starting a conversation with someone they didn’t know. I realized how much I enjoyed meeting and talking to people that I wouldn’t ordinarily speak to in the past. It helped me to become a more outgoing and open-minded person.

Of course, some experiences were not so pleasant. Some people who came in to get their hair done hadn’t washed their hair or taken a bath in a long, long time. I wasn’t gifted with a great sense of smell, and my fellow students knew that. And I would often get more than my share of people with, shall we say, “stronger body odor” than others. Sometimes, these poor people also had lice. And when that happened, the whole place would have to be fumigated. And I don’t even want to describe the condition of their feet when I did pedicures.

The first customer I gave a manicure to had unbelievably long nails that they curled under, and she wanted them to get new polish. I was so astounded by the length of her nails I just stood there and stared at her nails for a couple of minutes. And I said, “Holy Mackerel.” And she just laughed and laughed. I cleaned her nails and painted her nails bright red.

While attending Cosmetology School, I volunteered three afternoons a week with a family in Palm Beach, Florida, whose two children had Cystic Fibrosis, an inherited lung disorder. They were about ten and twelve years old. They lived on Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, directly across from the ocean. Their house was immense. They had a chauffeur and a limousine, a cook, and a maid. Their mother taught me how to do clapping therapy on their backs to help them breathe better. Children with this disease did not often live to adulthood since no treatment was available at that time.

When I finished the course, I found out that it was tough to find a job as a hairdresser unless you knew someone that owned a salon. Eventually, after several months of applying to every hair salon in the area, I got a job at the Colonnades Hotel on Singer Island. It was owned by John D. MacArthur, one of the wealthiest men in the United States at that time. He was married to Helen Hayes, a famous actress at one time.

I was hired to do facials on wealthy clients who stayed at the Colonnades. I also used a machine that was called Panthermal. They would lie inside this machine with their head sticking out, and the machine would heat up a liquid, and the steam would flow over them from their toes to their necks. It was supposed to help them lose weight. But I have no idea of how it would work or if it worked. But people paid a lot of money to get the Panthermal Treatment. I was making an astounding $3.00 an hour plus tips, which was almost unheard of at that time.

And one of the most pleasant surprises was when my older friend, Maggie Wassenen, was hired to do massages at the Colonnades Health Center. It was owned by a wealthy couple, the Zimmermans.

I worked at the Colonnades for over a year, and then my husband, Bob, decided he wanted to attend Brooks Institute for Photography in Santa Barbara, California. And we were off on another exciting adventure.

I found a job at St. Vincent’s School in Santa Barbara, working with disabled and mentally disabled children as a houseparent. It was one of the best experiences of my life. And the most satisfying.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

1 Reply

It was the Fall of 1991 and we had just sold our home of fourteen years in Pennsauken, NJ, and moved to Pitman a small town in Gloucester County New Jersey. We were a family of four, husband, wife, and two children. The house we purchased was a Victorian house that was built in 1910.

It had originally been owned by a family called Sooy. One of the owners was a neuropsychologist and one wing of the house was used for his offices. We heard from our new next-door neighbors that Dr. Sooy only saw patients at night. The house was empty for eight years since its original owners had passed away. It had been neglected for many years long before the former owners passed away. It needed a great deal of work inside and out, starting with a new roof. The old roof had leaked for years and inclement weather over the years had caused damage to the interior of the house. We felt that we were up to the challenge.

My plan was to utilize part of the house which was formerly used as a doctor’s office and exam room as an art studio to teach children and adults the basics of drawing and painting. I had recently graduated from Temple Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I had earned a BFA in Fine Arts and a degree in Art Education. I was the only adult student to graduate that year and while my fellow students had attained the grand old age of twenty-one I turned forty. Going to college turned out to be one of the most valuable experiences of my life. It was hard work, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

And so our journey began. We began to do some repairs on the house before we even moved into it. The realtor who had been trying to sell the house for years helped us do some of the minor repairs that had to be completed before we went to closing. So that we could get a certificate of occupancy. We moved in the February of 1994 on my oldest daughter’s thirteenth birthday. But we had to wait until Spring to put a new roof on the house.

One of the first neighbors we met were Bob and Marie Batten who owned the house across the street from us. Bob Batten had recently retired from his dental practice and his dental offices were in his home. His wife had assisted him for many years. He was in his early seventies when we first met and we built a friendship that lasted for many, many years until his death. In fact, Dr. Batten became one of my first adult students. Marie was a dear friend as well despite the thirty-year age gap. I spent many happy hours with her learning about her life in Pitman and hearing all the township gossip from years gone by.

In fact, I made many friends in Pitman through The Art Room. Which was what I named my business. Many children who had an interest in learning how to draw and paint attended my classes for years until they graduated from high school. And many adults who lived in town did as well, even one of the town’s administrators.

The neighborhood we lived in was a mixture of all kinds of people. Many of the people who lived on our street had lived there for decades. And they became some of my closest friends. Lois Fegundus who lived three houses away from me was an avid gardener. She was a retired school teacher, who talk Home Economics and had retired years before. Her favorite hobby was gardening and she taught me everything she knew. She shared her knowledge and her plants. Most of the flowers in the garden I created in my Pitman garden came from Lois’s garden. She had a great love of antique furniture and share her love of everything antique with me. I look back at all the hours I spent with her working in her garden as well as my own garden as the best hours and days of my life. And here I am in my own later years still happily gardening having benefited from her knowledge and generous heart. She passed away shortly before we retired and moved to North Carolina.

Of course, not everything in life smells of roses and daffodils. We had some downright awful neighbors. The Victorian house next door was owned by a man, Jack Fleming whose family lived downstairs and he rented the second floor of his house out.

His wife, Nina was friendly enough. I could never understand what she saw in him since he was eternally in a bad mood. She worked in a library and he sold real estate.

Jack’s tenants came and went fairly quickly because he refused to even consider putting a small window air conditioner in their apartment. And believe me, it is humid and hot, hot, hot in New Jersey in the summertime. So, his tenants would often stay a year and then move out. So, there was a steady stream of people moving in and out. Jack didn’t have any parking available on his property for the tenants. As a result, they always parked on our side street next to our house. One of the first tenants had an unusual hobby. He sang opera late into the night after he got home from work.

The other tenant that sticks out in my memory is a family that lived on the second floor for several years. They used to eat outside on a picnic table and when they were done eating they would throw their trash over our back fence and into our yard. No matter how many times I told them to throw their trash in the trash can they threw it over into our yard.

After several years Jack and Nina sold their house to an investor. And he rented the whole house out top and bottom. I do not have the strength to think about all the people who came and went after that. As an example, one of the tenants who was living in the downstairs apartment decided to move out. They had a pet rabbit and they left it in the shed in the backyard, never to return. The new tenants saw me in my backyard and ask me what they should do about the rabbit. Their landlord said it wasn’t his problem. So, I suggested that they take it to the local animal shelter. It was late August and the shed was hot as hell, can you imagine?

The tenants in the house didn’t have enough parking space in the driveway and they would all park on the side of my house and come and go at all hours of the day and night often throwing their trash from their cars on my sidewalk. No matter how many times I ask them to take their trash with them and keep the noise down to a low roar when they came home in the middle of the night they just didn’t care. At one point one of the tenants invited a whole crowd of people to have a bar-b-Que in the backyard. I happened to be coming out my back door and saw them. I notified their landlord that he better keep his tenants in line or I was going to start calling the police and complain.

Soon after that these particular tenants moved away. Which honestly was a blessing. But, then I started worrying if even worse people could move in next door.

What happened next was the elderly neighbor, Mrs. Foot who lived behind us passed away and her house, a duplex was sold to a middle-aged couple. I went over to their house the following week and introduced myself to her and welcome her and her husband to the neighborhood. She had moved from New York City to our little town of Pitman. The first time I met her I introduced myself to her and welcomed her to the neighborhood she was originally from Brazil.

Over time we became friends and she told me she never learned to drive. I offered to teach her. I have to admit it was a scary experience since she seemed as if she didn’t know her left hand from her right hand. But eventually, she improved and got her driver’s license and her husband bought her a car so she was able to go places while he was at work. We were friends for a long time until my husband and I retired and moved to North Carolina. They came to visit us the first year that we lived there.

But the neighbor who will live forever as a bad memory lived across the street from our driveway. She was the neighbor from hell. Her elderly aunt formerly lived in the house and became ill and passed away. She inherited the house from her aunt. The house was in poor repair but it progressively went downhill after Susan Mullen and her family moved in. She had two teenagers when she moved in but within two years she had two more children a boy and a baby girl. They had different fathers. Susan Mullen was truly one of the worse mothers I ever had the misfortune to know and unfortunately live across the street from them.

Susan Mullen and her string of boyfriends had loud arguments late at night. She apparently had acquired a drug addiction and she had all kinds of scary people visiting her night and day. She left the child care of her two young children to her teenagers. Eventually, I had to report to DYFS that Susan was not only verbally abusing her children but physically. One day her son who was about five or six at the time was out in front of their house he had a child’s golf club and he was swinging it back and forth across the grass. I happened to be gardening in my backyard. She yelled at him to stop. But he didn’t right away. And she ran towards him and kicked him in the rear end with tremendous force and he flew about two feet in the air. I called the town police and reported the incident to DYFS.

I can’t say that thing ever got any better at Susan Mullen’s home. Unfortunately, I have to admit we developed a hate/ hate relationship. That only got worse over time.

The time came when my husband and myself retired and my younger daughter decided to move to North Carolina. By then our older daughter had moved to Philadelphia and married.

We lived in Pitman for twenty-two years. We met and became friends with a great many people. Overall, it was a wonderful experience with a few bumps along the road. And I will miss our house in Pitman for the remainder of my days. It was a difficult decision to sell our house we had put our hearts and years of hard work into restoring it to its former condition. The day we moved away and pulled out of our driveway was one of the hardest days of my life. I only hoped the new family who lives there now love and care for that house as much as we did. And now they are forever a part of its history as we are.

And here I sit in my home in NC in a small development of twenty families. It is a quiet place to live out our retirement and I have come to love this house as well. But, it will never be able to take the place of our Pitman, NJ home in my heart. But, life goes on.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

I MADE A WRONG TURN AND NOW I’M LOST

1 Reply

One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges of my life has been my total lack of a sense of direction. Laugh all you want but the fact is that this deficit has affected every daily aspect of my life since I was a child.

I have tried to explain to people over the years that I just don’t have a sense of direction. That even if I have been somewhere many times before I have made the wrong turn and ended up terribly lost, and then the panic steps in and takes over. I have been lost for hours countless times. I can not even guess how many times I’ve been lost over the course of my lifetime.

I can not explain to anyone just how terrifying it is just to try and go from point A to point B without making a wrong turn and ending up in the wrong place. Why one time when I was visiting a friend of mine who lived about an hour and a half away from me in North Jersey, I lived in South-Central New Jersey I made a wrong turn and ended up at New Hope in Pennsylvania. Which is about an hour in the wrong direction from her house. Yes, I knew I made a wrong a wrong turn somewhere but I had no clue where. And I couldn’t figure out how to get to her house from Pennsylvania. I ended up calling her on a payphone {this was way before cell phones} and I told her where I was and what happened. And she drove there and I followed her to her home. I had driven to her house many times. But on this particular day, I made a wrong turn.

Ah, you think well that might have been a problem for you in the past but now that we have cell phones and a GPS getting lost is no longer a problem. Wrong my friends. I live out in the country and the signal is not reliable out here and can send you off in the totally wrong direction and you will end up who the hell knows where. I don’t.

Of course, as a child, I didn’t realize that I had this deficit. And I loved taking long walks around the little town that I grew up in and I also loved riding my bike even farther away from neighboring towns. Sometimes I would be gone for hours and my parents would be left wondering and worrying about where in the world I was at any given time.

When I finally arrived home late, they would be frantic and worried thinking something terrible had happened to me. They would call my friends and ask if they had seen me. And when I finally managed to find my way home I would try to explain that I got lost. And they would ask, “how did you get lost you gone over Helen, or Anne Marie’s house many times. How could you get lost?” And I would say, ” I don’t know I just did. I guess I made a wrong turn.”

And god forbid someone makes the mistake of stopping and asking me for directions. Because even if I have been living in the area for many, many years I am incapable of giving directions to people. It seems like I can only give them the initial direction from where I’m standing and no more. The rest of the directions are a complete mystery to me. People have said, “well, how long have you lived in this town?” And I’ll say almost twenty years.” And they respond well, how is that possible?”

I have no idea, but if you wait a few moments I’ll go get my husband and he can give you directions.” And they wait for a few minutes and then he easily gives them directions. I can see them shaking their heads and looking at me and clearly not understanding why I could tell them the same information. And the answer is, I don’t know why. I guess I’m just really bad at directions.

The only time I can get from point A to B is if someone, usually my husband writes the directions down step by step from my turn out of our driveway to my ultimate destination. I can follow directions but I can’ remember them. It is a mystery to me because I actually have an excellent memory but just not for directions. It’s a brain thing. And apparently, I’m missing that one part of my brain that tells me which way to go.

When I am going to the same destination several times a week I have no trouble getting there unless for some reason I have to go a different way. One day when I was going to my volunteer job one of the roads I took every time I went there was flooded out because of several days of rain. The river that ran next to the road rose and flooded the street. I had to turn around and try to find another path to my destination.

I spent a good hour driving all over the place and ultimately I had to go back home and have my husband drive his car and I followed him to my volunteer job. By the time I arrived, I was worn out and frustrated with myself for having such a difficult time finding my way around.

And to add insult to injury I have a similar problem when I go into buildings that I’m unfamiliar with. For instance, hospitals. Any building that has a great many halls with many doorways that look the same is like a maze to me. I can never find my way around.

I have to ask many people to give me directions to the doctor’s office or the lab where I need to have a blood test or a room where I have to get an x-ray. Just the thought of having to go to a hospital for a test fills me with anxiety. Not because I’m afraid of having the test done or finding out the results of the test but finding my way to the office or lab where I have to get the testing done. I know that sounds crazy but it’s the truth.

And then there are the experiences I’ve had within a dentist’s or doctor’s office when it is a large practice and many exam rooms. If I am told to go to Dr. So and So’s office and one of the office assistants takes me to the room all is good. But, if no one is available to take me out of the exam room and back to the receptionist’s desk you can be assured that I will make a wrong turn and be lost in the maze of look-a-like rooms and hallways and I could wander around in circles for quite a long time until I find a friendly face who is kind enough to take me to the receptionist desk.

It is believed that men have a better directional sense than women. But, the truth is I know many women that have a great sense of direction. I just don’t happen to be one of them.

After a lifetime of being on the edge every I go to a new place on my own I have learned to accept my shortcomings and my strengths. I was doing some research on what could be the possible causes for such a deficit such as no sense of direction and I found this out.

Professor Giuseppe Laria studied a potentially hereditary neurological condition known as Developmental Topographical Disorientation or DTD. This is what is believed to cause people such as myself to be unable to keep maps or directions in their minds. and be perpetually lost, sometimes in their own home. (thank goodness that hasn’t happened to me yet.)

It is reassuring that I am not alone in being unable to find my way around and that many other people suffer from this unique deficit. And even though I have struggled with this issue my entire life I managed to go to college, earn two degrees, have two children and stay married and relatively happy for most of my life. I have also lived in New Jersey, Florida, California, and now North Carolina and somehow managed to find my way to and from work, and school somehow, someway without a police escort pointing the way for me.

And so I look forward to hopefully quite a few more years of wandering in circles and seeing places I had no intention of seeing. And talking to people who are kind enough to give me directions, sometimes having to repeat the directions a couple of times to me. And so I wish you and I a Bon Voyage in our future life and maybe someday we may meet along the highway of life and I hope you will be so kind as to point me in the right direction.

A LONG SUMMER’S WEEKEND

1 Reply

It was August of 1965 I just turned fourteen years old in late May. My childhood best friend, Joanie calls me up one day and asks me if I would be interested in going camping with her other best friend Dolores Brennan.

Joan originally agreed to go camping with her but decides she really doesn’t want to go camping at all. Since she hates the idea of sleeping outside in a tent, on the ground. And has an almost pathological fear of insects, especially mosquitoes. And as everyone knows New Jersey is the breeding ground in the summer for every kind of biting insect, especially mosquitoes.

On top of that Dolores’s father was going to be going with them. And they would all be sleeping in the same tent together. Joan went on to explain that she felt really weird about sleeping in the same tent with Dolores and her father for some weird reason.

My family never took summer vacations or trips when I was a kid, ever. Joan’s family took summer vacations to Florida almost every year. I had never been anywhere at all unless I could ride there on my bike. And my parents expected me to be home at five o’clock on the dot. Or there would be hell to pay. Well, not really. They just remind me, “You know we eat at 5 pm and you shouldn’t keep other people waiting.”

So, when Joan calls and asks if I would like to go camping with Dolores and her father I did not hesitate to say, “Yes, I would love to go camping with them.” And Joan responds, “great I’ll give Dolores a call and let her know that you’ll go. And I’ll give her your phone number and she’ll call you with all the details.”

I pack a bag that includes enough clothes for at least three weeks even though I would only be gone for two days. I “borrow” one of my older sister’s bathing suits. Since I didn’t have a swimming suit of my own that still fits me. As I had grown quite a bit since the last time I went swimming in Jackie’ Rice’s above-ground pool. Hopefully, my sisters wouldn’t notice it was missing before I left.

I nonchalantly tell my parents that I’m going camping with Joan’s friend Dolores and her father. They never met Dolores but have been hearing about her for years. Since I was extremely jealous of Joan’s friendship with Dolores. I insisted that Joan could only have one best friend. And Joan insists that it’s alright because I was her best neighborhood friend. And Dolores is her best friend in school. Joan is a year younger than I was and so she was in a different year of school.

The day of the trip finally arrives and I’m impatiently waiting for Dolores and her father to arrive in front of my house. They know that I live two houses away from Joan’s house. I stare out the living room window. My father says, “you’re going to stare a hole in the window if you keep that up.” My mother says, “Leave her alone she’s not hurting anything by looking out the window.”

And then, at last, I see an old car pull up in front of my house. And I can see Dolores sitting in the front seat next to her day. “Here she is, I’ll see you on Sunday night.” And I grab my bag with my stuff in it and run out the door before they can change their minds about letting me go. I run out to the car as fast as I can. Dolores has her window down and says, “get in the back.” I am a little upset because she isn’t going to sit in the back with me. Then I open the car door and throw my suitcase onto the back seat and jump in. I glance out the window and I can see both of my parents looking out the front window and waving at me. I give them a little wave, and before you know it, we are on our way.

Dolores doesn’t even introduce me to her father, she just says,” hi.” And then she turns the radio up. Her dad pulls out into Fellowship Rd. and heads toward Route 73 South towards the shore, where we will be camping. After about a half-hour of silence, I say,” so how long a drive is it to the campsite, Dolores?”

“Oh, it’s about another forty-five minutes.” And then she turns the radio up louder. I start feeling a little mad and almost feel like telling them I want to go home. But I realize if I do that my parent will decide I’m too young to go anywhere without them. So, I keep my mouth shut. Dolores and her father start having a conversation about what people they know that might be there. And how they are looking forward to cooking over a fire and swimming in the lake that is nearby.

I decided that I will start asking questions so that they will include me in the conversation. I wish that Dolores had sat in the back seat with me. I wonder why she asks if I could go with her if she wasn’t going to talk to me and just ignore me sitting in the back seat of her car.

“Dolores, do you know how to swim?”

“What? Of course, I know how to swim, silly. Only babies don’t know how to swim.”

Oh, oh I think, I don’t know how to swim. I will have to be careful not to let her know. The only place I have ever been swimming was my neighbor above the ground pool. It is shallow and I can stand up in and it was about up to my chest. I never learned how to swim.

Her father still hasn’t said anything to me. My father is kind of a grouch, so he doesn’t really talk to my friends that come over, other than to tell them to pipe down while he’s watching TV. So, I try not to take his ignoring me personally. But the fact, that Dolores is ignoring me pretty much, is really making me mad. I’m not sure what I should do though.

After a while, we get on a big highway and I see a sign that says South Bound Atlantic City. So, I know we are getting closer. I realize that my ear is starting to hurt me. I must have gotten water in my ear when I was shampooing my hair last night. I get a lot of earaches so I know in a little while my ear is really going to start hurting me. I wonder if I should say something before, we get any further.

“Dolores, I’m starting to get an earache. Maybe your dad should take me back home before we get any further otherwise, I’m going to keep you up all night with my earache.”

“What? We’re not going to turn back now, we’re almost there, don’t be a baby.”

I’m so mad at Dolores now that I feeling like giving her a big punch. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like her. I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the trip. In about an hour her father announces, “here we are, get ready for some fun.”

My ear is really throbbing now and I know I shouldn’t go swimming or my ear will get more water in it and then I will get an infection. And I will have to go to the doctor’s when I get home. “Dolores, my ear is really starting to hurt, I’m not going to be able to go swimming.”

Dolores turns her head and looks at me and makes a really mean face at me. But she doesn’t say anything at all. And her father acts like he doesn’t even know that I’m in the back seat. Since he hasn’t said a word to me. I wonder what I should do, but I really have no idea. I just sit there with my ear throbbing. I guess I will just keep quiet and hope it doesn’t get worse and hope the weekend goes by quickly. I feel miserable.

About ten or fifteen minutes later we approach a sign that says. CAMPING FOR FAMILIES. Dolores’s father pulls up to the entrance and hands something to the guy in the booth at the entrance. “OK I got our campsite, lets go park and set up the tent and the campsite. He’s looking at Dolores and is still acting like I’m not in the back seat of the car. I feel like I’m invisible. I vow never to talk to Dolores again and I am definitely and going to tell Joan that I’m mad at her as well. Why didn’t she warn me that Dolores and her father were weirdos?

Dolores’s father pulls his car into the camping site and parks the car. Then he jumps out of the car and opens the trunk. “Ok, you guys come on out and help me unload the camping gear and set up camp.”

I feel a little better because at least he acknowledges that I exist for the first time. “Come on, get out and help.”

I’m so mad at Dolores that I feel my temper is rising and soon I will smack her or something. I go over to where she is standing and say, “what do you want me to do? I’ve never been camping before?”

“Just grab some of the stuff from the trunk and bring it over to where my father is standing and once, we get out everything from the trunk, we’ll set up the tent.”

“Ok.” And I do just that, she hasn’t even smiled at me or said anything to me except that I was acting like a baby. I’m so, so angry.

We follow Dolores’ father into the woods carrying all the heavy camping equipment with us. We have to make two trips to get all the equipment to the campsite. I have no idea how to set up a campsite let alone put up a tent. The only tent I ever put up was in my backyard. My friends and I would throw a blanket over the clothesline in the backyard and then pin it to the ground by hammering clothespins into the ground on either side of the clothesline.

I watch Dolores and her father put the tent up and set up a place to cook whatever food they brought with them. It is a small tent. And I can’t help but think and now I have to share this small space inside this little tent with Dolores and her father all night.

I wish there was some way to get out of this situation aside from demanding that they take me home right now. And I truly wish I had the guts to do just that but I don’t. Dolores says come on let’s take a walk and I’ll show you where the showers and the bathroom is located in case you have to go to the bathroom during the night.

“What? Do you expect that I will be able to find the bathroom in the dark in the middle of the night by myself? Are you crazy? I’ll get lost. Then what? If I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I’m going to wake you up and you are going to have to go with me.”

Dolores looks at me like I’m crazy. “No, I’m not going to do that.”

“Yes, Dolores you are, or you and your father are going to have to take me back home right now.”

Dolores doesn’t say anything to me after that. And that was just fine with me. I didn’t care if she ever spoke another word to me for the rest of my life. Dolores says, “come on I’ll show you where the bathroom is just in case and the showers are right next to the bathroom. I hope you brought a towel with you because they don’t supply them here.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me that before we left? I had no idea, I told you I have never been camping before. We made our way through the woods to the bathroom and then we both went into a stall to pee. It was disgusting. Apparently, you are supposed to bring toilet paper with you too, but I didn’t know that. This was turning into a real nightmare. I yelled out, “Dolores, do you have any toilet paper?”

She yelled back, “you mean you didn’t bring toilet paper with you?”

“No, I didn’t Dolores. No one told me too and I never went into a public toilet that didn’t have toilet paper there for people to use. Why didn’t you tell me that either?”

I hear Dolores laugh. And then a roll of toilet paper flies over my bathroom stall and I barely catch it before it falls onto the filthy floor. What in the world is wrong with these people?” Why did my friend Joan like this girl? She was just awful.

After I finish using the bathroom, I left the stall and I can’t find Dolores. She wasn’t in the bathroom anymore. I go outside and call out, “Dolores, where are you? She calls out, “I’m over here.”

I look in the direction that her voice came from. And I find her talking to another young girl about our age. I say, “hello.”

Dolores says, “this is my friend Joan’s friend. Joan couldn’t come, so I brought her with me instead.”

“Yeah, aren’t I the lucky one”, I said. Can we go back to the camp I’m getting hungry I didn’t have any lunch. Dolores rolls her eyes at her camping friend. And said, “yeah, I guess so.”

Dolores’ Dad had set up the campfire and he put the sleeping bags in the tent. It was really going to be close quarters. But it was only going to be one night because I decided that tomorrow, I’m going to tell them my ear is killing me and I feel sick. And they’re going to have to take me home first thing in the morning.

We have hotdogs and corn on the cob for dinner. Which is good as I love both hotdogs and corn on the cob. I say, “thank you, that was good. I was really hungry.” They both look at me like I’m talking another language or something.

I wonder what we were going to do the rest of the night. I have a feeling it was going to be a really long night. I never slept outside on the ground. And I‘m sure I‘m going to have trouble sleeping. I hope I won’t have to go to the bathroom again. I decide I’ll just go to the bathroom behind a tree or something before I went wandering around in the woods.

It turns out that all the campers are going to meet in a central location and tell ghost stories and sing songs. I enjoy singing songs. But some of the stories are really scary and I know I’m really going to have a hard time falling asleep. Or I‘ll have terrible nightmares about being murdered in my sleep.

After everyone starts returning to their own campsite, we’re about to go back to ours when Dolores says, ‘I’ll be back to the camp in a few minutes I want to talk to my friend Marla, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

So, then I had to walk with Dolores’ father to the campsite by myself and he still hasn’t talked to me at all. I’m beginning to get that creepy feeling about him again. About a half-hour later Dolores came back to our campsite and whispers to her father. I can’t hear what she’s saying. But then she grabs her sleeping bag and leaves the campsite. “Where is Dolores going?” I scream at the top of my lungs.

Her father looks at me as if he just realized I was there. “Oh, she says she’s going to sleep in her friend Marla’s tent tonight. She’ll see us in the morning.”

“What? She isn’t going to be sleeping here tonight? But she asked me to go camping with her. And now she isn’t even going to stay here in this tent. And I have to sleep here in the tent with just you????”

“Yes, it’s not a problem I don’t mind.”

“You don’t mind? But I do, and I know my parents wouldn’t like it at all.”

He doesn’t say anything more after that. But I was so worn out by the whole ordeal, that I just push my sleeping bag as far away from him as possible. And pull the sleeping bag up over my head and zip it shut as far as I can. And I promise myself that I will scream bloody murder if he comes anywhere near me.

Somehow, I manage to go to sleep, about halfway through the night I had to go to the bathroom so I sneak out of the tent and pee on the nearest tree. I crawl back into the tent and into my sleeping bag and zip it all the way up again.

I can’t fall asleep again, so I lay awake and listen to the crickets and mosquitoes all night. And as soon as it gets lite out, I wake Dolores’ father up and say, “I’m sick and I have to go home. I have a terrible earache and I feel sick. You have to take me home right now. Or, I’ll have to call my father and tell him he will have to come all the way here and pick me up. And he won’t like that because he works at night and he’ll have to go to work without getting any sleep.

He groans, and says, “ok, od let me tell Dolores that I’ll be back in a couple of hours. And then we’ll go. I knew this was a bad idea bringing some kid I didn’t know camping.”

If looks could kill he would have been dead where he stood. But he didn’t die, but he did take me home and never said a word the whole way. He drops me off in front of my house. I grab my bag and head into my house.

My mother is standing at the stove cleaning up the breakfast dishes. She’s startled when I walk in. “What happened are you alright? How come you’re back already?”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story, but for now let’s just say it turns out I’m not much of a camper and leave it at that. And if Joanie calls any time in the next couple of days. Tell her I can’t come to the phone. Needless to say, that was my one and only camping experience for many years to come.

To read more, enter your email address to Subscribe to my Blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28