I wasn't raised in a bigoted family. Except for living in the Orient for almost a year, we kids were just never exposed to cultural diversity. There simply weren't any people of color around where we were. There was, however, some bias that bled through from my mother about whom I should choose as my friends. (I find that amusing now since we moved around so much, I never had many friends at all!) For example, Danville, IL, where we lived for almost four years, had a low-income housing project called Fair Oaks. Mom suggested that the kids who lived in Fair Oaks were probably not up to our family standard as playmates.
What WAS our family standard?? I wish I knew! We were raised to be good students, hard workers, and well-behaved. My father wanted his daughters to "act like ladies" and his son to be respectful of women and authority. Profanity was not allowed. Actually, not only profanity, but coarse words like "butt" and "puke" and "fart" were also on the no-no list. Family was everything. My father was an officer in the Navy. People saluted him. He wanted all of us to live up to that level of respect, and my mother came from a Christian farm family that required dignity and propriety to be part of our raising. You get the picture. As I grew up, I came to see my family as "special". I believed we were head-and-shoulders above other families, just because we were tight-knit and knew our boundaries. We weren't snobs because we weren't rich, but we weren't part of the redneck population, either.
As a military family, alcohol was part of the "celebration equation" in Casa Covill. There was always beer around, and Jim Beam Bourbon. On special occasions, there would be martinis. It was part of the adult experience. Most of the time, we didn't have to deal with roaring drunks around our house, but there were times... Mom and Dad didn't party much, but there were occasional Hail and Farewell parties for Navy folks coming in to a new duty station, or leaving. An occasional Happy Hour at the Officer's Club, where my folks rubbed elbows with the "brass", etc. Most of the time, they came home happy! Sometimes, they came home drunk. And as we three kids came of age, we also imbibed in drinks of choice. It was a rite of passage. And after the parents retired to the farm, drinking became all too common...not in celebration, but rather to stave off boredom!
There are several events that occurred in my family where alcohol was involved that stick in my mind:
*Once, when I was very young and we were living in California, my parents came home from someplace, and Mom was throwing-up-drunk. Dad was taking care of her and not very happy about it. Shari (my sister) was upset. I didn't think much of it. It was all happening outside of my realm of existence.
*Another time, we were living in a god-forsaken home in Danville. My brother was only about a year old, and I think my mother was about up to her neck with kids and didn't have any friends in town. I remember that she hung diapers to dry on a clothesline strung throughout the living room--not her idea of the Ritz. On Christmas Day, Dad was supposed to take us to the Navy Club for Christmas dinner...but he had left the house in the morning and was late getting home. When he did come back, he was quite inebriated and needed to sleep it off. Mom was disgusted. She piled us three kids into the car and went to the Navy Club without him, but I don't remember it as a particularly happy situation. I think Dad probably got the cold shoulder for awhile after that!
*Later, when we were mostly all adults, we gathered at the farm for Thanksgiving. Mom had fixed a shaker of martinis. My grandparents were not drinkers, but they would imbibe on special occasions. We were to have the traditional turkey dinner, which we jokingly called "toikey boid" as if we were from New Jersey. Well! My grandfather had TWO martinis before dinner. He sat at the table and ate a big meal, with his little cheeks just as pink as could be, then retired to the living room where he promptly fell asleep. When he woke up, he wanted to know when we were going to eat the "boid". Poor Popo had missed the meal, even though he had eaten it!
*After my folks retired to the farm and my brother was back from his 7-year stint in the Navy, we had a family cookout. (I'm guessing this was in the early 80s.) Present were my mom and dad, my sister and brother-in-law, and my husband, daughter, and I. The beer and wine flowed freely throughout the afternoon, and then it came time to light the grill to cook the meat. (I should probably mention here that my brother and brother-in-law were both volatile personalities. They both knew everything there was to know and were always right. They had, in the past, had a spat that kept them not speaking to each other for a year or two. You get the picture.)
The grill was a propane unit on a portable stand. It was on the patio, under the canopy of eaves. When it was lit, a small leak showed up at the regulator...a little flame that shouldn't have been there. We all immediately thought the worst: the propane tank would explode and set the house on fire. What to do became a topic of panicked discussion. My brother had one idea...and since HE had been through fire school in the Navy, HE knew best. My brother-in-law had another idea, and HE knew best...and the match was on! Doug (my brother) argued with Roger (my bro-in-law) and got obnoxious. Roger was just as obnoxious. My sister--always the peacemaker--took her husband's side. In a moment of temporary insanity, she slapped Doug...and Doug slapped her back. Then the fight escalated! My husband--who was no stranger to violent behavior--grabbed our young daughter and took her down to the bridge at the entrance to the farm, just to get away from everything, although I'm quite sure the shouting could be heard even there. My father was furious that his son had slapped his sister, even though she had slapped him first. My mother decided she was going to leave but was in no shape to drive, so I grabbed her car keys and wouldn't let her. It was absolute mayhem! To be honest, I don't remember how it all ended. I know that the propane tank was rolled away from the house and the fire put out. I'm pretty certain that we didn't sit down to eat together. I imagine that we all departed for our various places of residence, a little the worse for wear.
*There was one other event that happened just a few days after my father's funeral. My sister, brother-in-law, my daughter, and I were at the farm, trying to tie up some loose ends. We had written thank-you notes to everyone who had expressed sympathy...and did some drinking as we did. We were all emotionally exhausted. My daughter, a bored-out-of-her-mind freshman in high school--who was also just a bit resentful that she was having to spend her spring break in a funeral situation--was acting like a brat. She managed, in a hissy-fit, to spill a glass of water that was on a TV table. Uncle Roger snarled at her. I snarled at him. Megan said, "Maybe I should just kill myself!" My sister jumped in and said, "Maybe you should!" That cut me to the quick. I don't think anyone knew or appreciated that I had been working for years to try to bring my daughter out of a depression. I started to cry. We packed up and left. I was in no condition to drive, so we went the 25 miles to the next familiar town, with me crying all the way, and stayed in a motel there before leaving for Indiana the next day. I think I went three months without speaking to my sister.
I got a letter from Shari saying, "I don't know what's wrong, but I miss my sister!" I called her and told her what my problem was. She had no memory of it. Didn't remember saying what she had, but apologized...and I realized, in that moment, that alcohol was the real culprit in all of it. Shari and I have not had a cross moment since. That year, 1994, was the year we both realized that we were orphans. Both of our parents were gone. We--and our brother (which is another story)--were all that was left of our "special" family.
Aside from the obvious lesson about booze and emotions, I learned that my family wasn't any better than any other family on the planet! It shook me, actually. It took me a LONG time to understand that people who are close and love each other intensely can be the source of hurt. I came to accept my family members with their quirks. (Of course, I don't have any quirks, so no one has to work hard to accept me!) Age helps. Things that seemed important in my 40s just don't in my 60s.
Why is it that we get wise when it doesn't matter so much...and when we really need to "get it", we don't? I wish I knew!
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