Thanksgiving

92

As a surprise gift my not as older brother, who was currently stationed in Washington, D.C., sent my mother and me airplane tickets to join him and his family for Thanksgiving. Now with his second wife and two daughters of his own, he wanted to have a full family Thanksgiving to fill their new townhouse. He also roped in my eldest brother and his wife to join us! While I had seen my not as older brother off & on over the years when he'd visit my mother during some of his leave time, I hadn't seen my eldest brother since leaving New England over eight years earlier. Adding to my anticipation my high school friend, Luke, had also moved to Washington, D.C., with his longtime girl friend as he had taken up a job with the Library Of Congress.

I knew my other high school friend, Van, had visited him from time to time there and pulled out his old home phone number and gave his family a call. I reached his mother and reintroduced myself to her after all the years and then asked if I could have Van's current phone number. She was willing and I was off to call Van. To my surprise I immediately reached him and chatted with him briefly. This was our first chat since his confessional phone call to me so many years earlier. I told him the news of going to Washington and asked him if he had Luke's current phone number and if perhaps he might have the chance to come down to D.C. himself for a small reunion. While he felt the whole idea was fun, he declined and said he couldn't. And for that matter he didn't seem interested in talking about his life either, but he was willing to give me Luke's phone number and wished me the best of luck. I gave him my apartment phone number should he ever want to call me sometime and catch up and he said he might.

Calling Luke, he seemed happy by the news I'd be in town and confirmed that we could meet and catch up on life, perhaps even having dinner. I was thrilled and then realized I'd probably need to pull out a bit of money from my checking account's line of credit to afford side items during the trip. Not ideal, but given this once in a lifetime circumstance I wasn't going to hesitate. As Irony would have it, after a year since the antibiotics, I was back to my ideal weight and my very balded head had sprouted a carpet of fresh hair so when I saw Luke I wouldn't look that much different from the last time he saw me eight years earlier.

Daina agreed to look in on my place while I was gone and get my mail and she gave me a ride to my mother's where we picked her up on the day of the flight. Daina dropped us off at the little local airport and stayed with us until we boarded. The flight would connect with Denver's Stapleton airport where we would then get on a direct flight to D.C.. Even though we had an hour & a half layover in Denver, as a side thought once we got off the small hop plane I suggested we confirm the departure time of our next flight. It turned out it had been canceled due to mechanical problems, but they would be able to get us squeezed into an earlier flight that was leaving in ten minutes. With a brief stop at a payphone to let my not as older brother know we'd be early, we rushed to the gate number and boarded the plane as the last passengers, ending up with separated seat assignments.

When we arrived at D.C., he met us and we went to the baggage area to retrieve our luggage only to find it hadn't made the flight given the sudden change of plans, it was still in Denver awaiting assignment to a future flight. The airline took my brother's address & phone number and told us they'd deliver our bags once they arrived at the airport. We were out of the building and onto the famous 'beltway' highway for the next hour or so until we reached my not as older brother's new place. Along the way he pointed out various beltway adjacent sites to us and even pulled off for a bit to drive us around the Pentagon where he now served. As my eldest brother & wife had arrived the day earlier, we were already prepped for a full family dinner. I found out our tentative plan of events for the week and then called Luke to let him know and better firm up our own visit plans.

The first day our family spent unwinding from our flight and seeing the local sights, visiting the local mall and returning to the townhouse for Chinese take-out and to await the over a day delayed delivery of our luggage. The next day was dedicated to visiting the National Mall, seeing the various monuments and spending the afternoon at the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum. Of all the wings of the Smithsonian, I think they chose the Air & Space Museum for me and I'm very thankful for it. The next day was dedicated to the Thanksgiving meal itself, with a nighttime drive back and around the capital to see it bathed in golden lights. Friday was a routine day of visiting and each family member doing various errand runs before we again gathered for a meal at an Italian restaurant, and then me itching furiously from the apparent red food coloring #3 in the sauce as we went out to see a movie. The following day was a quick drive up to and around Baltimore before we dropped off my eldest brother & his wife for their flight from the Baltimore/Washington airport. Sunday we gathered our belongings and were off to Dulles airport for our own flight home.

We didn't have any family conflict until Thanksgiving day itself.

Asking my eldest brother about all that had changed in New England since I had left I found out he now had a computer of his own, which was novel to me as I had originally been the only family member with a computer, and then I expressed surprise as well that our rural neck of the woods now had cable television! ''WE AREN'T A BUNCH OF BACKWARDS HICKS!'' my eldest brother snapped at me in reaction to my surprise. I was stunned by this as, for me, New England hadn't changed in my mind since I'd left it eight years earlier. I was delighted by all this news, so I was shocked that he took offense at my questions and tried to apologize.

Later in the afternoon, mother felt the need to bring up her ceaseless retelling of the time she dislocated her knee and how she was alone with me and I just stood there throwing rocks at her as she lay helpless on the ground writhing in pain. A story which she had first started telling in front of me soon after we moved to the New England apartment in Nineteen Seventy-Five, she seemed compelled to tell it to any new friend I might bring home. As I was too young at the time to know for myself what had happened, I had come up with the defense of pointing to the small brown birthmark on her forehead and saying, ''That's where she got that bruise from,'' as my only way of shielding myself from the story.

Given that she had a new audience to tell this story to, my not as older brother's wife and two kids, she couldn't help herself and told it again. As she did, I poised to give my follow-up comment but when she finished I didn't have a chance as my not as other brother burst out, ''That's not what happened!'' She had made the mistake of telling the story in front of other family members who knew better. He compared memories with my eldest brother about the day: My not as older brother had been the one alone with my mother as the rest of the family was away with our father in the Volkswagen bus. This news made more sense to me as I knew my sister had been the one taking care of me until she went to College. My not as older brother had called the ambulance at my mother's request and the rest of the family had arrived home just as the ambulance was loading mother to take her to the hospital.

Mother was mute and paled as she realized the mistake she had made by telling the story in front of my brothers. Not only had it embarrassed her, perhaps bringing her own memory into question, but I now knew for certain that she had been telling this story to all of those friends of mine over the years just to poison me in their eyes, and not because it was true. I had the proof that it had been a false story and she wouldn't be able to tell it again in front of me now knowing I had the truth. Mother just remained silent for the next hour or so until we loaded up for the nighttime drive around Washington D.C..

I visited with Luke midday early in the week, perhaps before the family made to trip to the local shopping mall. He must have gotten some time off from work to meet me as his girl friend was at work herself at the time. We discussed life in general, and compelled by years of habit during our high school time, I brought with me a box of computer disks to show him my programs of the past few years in Colorado. It turned out his plans to become an engineer hadn't panned out. In fact all of my high school friends who had gotten into the 'advanced placement program' I was barred from had all intended to become engineers and all of them had washed out. With some family working in the D.C. area, Luke had fallen into a small job helping out with document preservation at the Library Of Congress and was thinking of taking it up as his profession.

We met again for dinner the Saturday before I left and he and his girlfriend took me out to eat. I noted my attempts to write for television. They also knew someone who had been trying to sell scripts to 'The Other Show' and it hadn't worked out either. I told them of my years of health problems and surprise cure just a year earlier, I didn't explain why it had taken so long for it to have been addressed. I told them I was now getting back on my feet and hoped to return to College to complete my degree. When I asked about Van, they really didn't know what he was up to anymore. They thought that he might have been looking into becoming a veterinarian after his own college plans hadn't worked out, but they weren't sure as Van had seemed to withdraw more and more over the years. At the end of the meal they offered to pay and, given my tight finances, I didn't protest too strongly and thanked them.

We parted promising to keep in touch. He soon moved to Texas for a scholarship in document preservation and a few years later I lost touch with him. When I got home, I would call Van for that chance to better 'catch up', but after leaving a message on his answering machine, he never called back. Given Luke's note about Van withdrawing from his old friendships, I didn't call again and pry, remembering my own times wanting to withdraw from friendships rather than pass on bad news about my life.

On the flight home, this time I was seated right next to mother and she reverted to her old compulsion to derisively dismiss and belittle my two brothers' wives and my new nieces as she did with everyone she met in her life. Having become sick of her doing this over the many years since she took me from the family home to the New England apartment, I asked her if that was all she had for her memories of the trip: Nothing but negative bile and no happy times? This befuddled her and while I had thought I might have to ask if there was a free seat elsewhere in the plane I could take to avoid her for the next few hours, to my thankful surprise mother kept her silence for the rest of the flight.

When we arrived back in Colorado, then caught our connecting flight, Daina picked us up at the airport and took mother home and then me. She offered to take me out to dinner so I could bring her up to speed on the trip. I agreed.

In less than two weeks, I would be reported dead.

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Friend/Frenemy

11

Generally, I'm keeping this mostly chronological with the occasional tidbit from my future to tease you. Yes, I'm talking to you! I can see you from the other side, looking at these words and wondering when I'll get back to the point... What was it? Oh, yes, I could have you wade through the next five and a half years of my life to find out what the end of the last installment meant, as I had to. But as I'll already have enough other things going on then, I thought I'd address it now and thus put my childhood years fully to a close for this tome.

You see, it comes down to Pete. My earliest childhood friend and subsequent not quite friend. In my later years I found out that my sister had been the babysitter for him in his preschool years and thus I might simply have first come to know him as the other kid my sister took care of like she took care of me. This may also explain the mentor role his father, Zack, took in my life as he was already familiar with my family and me, as well as being his son's friend. But ultimately the question I will always have and never trust the answer for: Was Pete my friend in my later school years or something else?

In eighth grade when I wanted people to think I was fat and thus place their attention on my fakely bulging belly rather than elsewhere, I knew Pete was the perfect person to pass this on to as he would delight in spreading a disparaging notion about me. Yet that same year I'd invite him over for a few sleepovers and one time chatted in our side by side beds about boys & girls and what it meant to maybe be one versus the other...

By our Senior year of High School, Pete had taken up lacing his fingers under a table that we both sat at and lifting it up with his knuckles while waggling his eye brows at me like it should mean something to me. I would witness these moments with perplexed curiosity as it definitely seemed to mean something to him. But it was completely lost on me. When some of our friends were at the same table, they would avert their eyes as they seemed to be tuned into what it was supposed to mean as well. By our Dungeons & Dragons time, he was doing it so often that his upperclassman friend finally told him to knock it off, and he mostly did.

At the age of thirteen, to disguise my growing breasts, one trick I relied on was rolling my shoulders forward to allow my shirt to drape. As it would look silly having my hands dangling in front of me when my shoulders were forward like this, I gave them each a task to do, left hand in the pant's pocket, right hand holding my notebook. When Van, as part of his confessional phone call, told me the reason I was given the title of 'The Sneakiest' in our High School yearbook was because of my notebook, I was completely stumped and it would be more than five years later when I'd learn what that comment must have meant while watching an episode of Quantum Leap.

A more Science Fantasy show than Science Fiction, as there didn't seem to be much science in it, the show centered on a man from the future whose spirit was propelled into the bodies of various individuals of the past where he was to live though a critical moment of their life and ensure a proper outcome. In one show, that was deemed so controversial the network buried it, the guy 'Sam' ends up in the body of a woman. For late nineteen eighties television that was a seemingly unthinkable thing that many found very disturbing. Then the character of 'Sam', as the woman, tries to prove to another character in the story that he's really a man in this woman's body because he knows what it's like to hide a hard-on in school with his notebook.

Like having my own Quantum Leap at that moment, I relived moments of my past as I realized what Van must have meant by using that comment. My school mates must have assumed I held my notebook that way, not to distract attention from my bulging breasts, but to hide something down there. Pete must have been lacing his fingers and raising the table with them while giving me a knowing look to convey an expanding penis reaching and lifting the table from beneath. On my last night in New England Pete had us sit on straight backed kitchen chairs to watch his videos rather than on the living room's couches. His videos were porn and in retrospect: Was Pete trying to have us 'reveal' ourselves without anything to hide our 'interest' with, such as a couch pillow, as we watched the movies? If so, I cluelessly won the challenge as I had a built-in advantage versus the rest of the friends there that night.

Had Pete picked up on our late night chat when we were age thirteen and concluded I needed help passing as male? Thus, he subsequently developed and socialized the story of why I held my notebook like that and then added to it with his lifting of the table while looking at me as if making fun of me for something. Or had Pete actually thought I had a perpetual 'hard-on' issue, really thinking I was hiding it all the time with my notebook, and was truly making fun of me for it? Had my going away party my last night in New England been planned to embarrass me in front of our friends as my last memory of my childhood and it didn't work out as Pete intended?

And thus is the mystery of Peter. Given the friend/frenemy balance, I doubt I could ever believe the answer he'd give me if I asked him all these years later: Would he be taking credit for helping me when he truly hadn't meant to? Or would it be the other way around?

The one thing I did know as I finished my own leap through my history which knitted all these moments together in a flash of insight: I had truly earned the title of 'The Sneakiest' at school.

With my cluelessness, in my attempt to hide my 'situation' from my school mates, I had dramatically over achieved!

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Revelations

10

After my left ear was back and working, I realized it had been about six months since I'd sent my old High School friend 'Van' a letter, and having a harrowing story to tell seemed like a good time to put one together. Not only noting the illness and subsequent recovery, I mentioned that I had finished my second quarter of Business College and realized that he, too, must have finished his second year of College. I don't remember if I mentioned anything about the job stuff, probably not.

After having completed her second year working at the hospital kitchen, it was pointed out to my mother that she had two years worth of vacation time to use. Never before in her life had she had a job which included vacation time and so she hadn't thought of taking it. But now she had little choice and debated what to do with it and the only vacation thing she could think of doing was a return trip to see old friends and relatives in New England. It had been five years since she had come to Colorado and I think one of her goals was to see the grocery store owner 'Joe' and discover why he had never come out to Colorado to 'sweep her off her feet' once he realized his longing for her.

And so by June I ended up with the mobile home all to myself and it was during one of these quiet afternoons that I received a surprise phone call... From Van.

He told me when he had received my first letter noting 'how he must have started his second year of College' that he had been able to ignore that bit but, when he received the second letter assuming he had finished up his second year, he felt the need to set the record straight: He had flunked out of College during his first year and had spent this past year working full-time at the ol' grocery store across the hayfield from my family home. It turned out that once he'd gotten to College and away from any parental oversight, he had just spent his free time there playing Dungeons & Dragons to the wee hours and often overslept, missing too many classes. As he realized what this meant to his grades and College success, he buried himself into more Dungeons & Dragons to escape. Apparently as the game had saved my life, it had helped Van destroy his own.

He had already planned a return to working at the grocery store for the Summer after his first year of College and simply stayed working there once Summer was over. This explained why he had been keeping his distance from me the previous year as he hadn't wanted to let me know he was blowing his future. I assured him it was all right and as he knew I had my own troubled year in school and recovered from it so I was sure he would... But it turned out I didn't understand and he needed to explain to me other things that had happened. Things that he had kept secret these past years and it had been eating a hole in him.

During the start of my Senior year of High School, I was to have 'Advanced Math' class with my mentor Zack Hatch while taking 'Calculus' with the second most senior math teacher in the school. But Zack was missing that year, as it turned out his wife had cancer and so he'd taken a year's sabbatical to help her through that. The third math teacher instead took over teaching 'Advanced Math' and for some reason I kept getting all of my test answers wrong and could never figure out why. I eventually dropped out of the class before the end of the quarter to avoid the 'F' being posted to my grades, but while I was doing well enough in 'Calculus' I had to drop that class as well. 'Advanced Math' was a prerequisite for taking 'Calculus' and by dropping one I had to drop the other.

Van was also taking 'Advanced Math' class with me that year and on the very day I didn't attend due to dropping out, the third math teacher had spent the entire class time crowing about it. He had been pissed that someone like me had been taking away attention from his Math Club over the previous two years by being deemed 'A Computer Wiz' and taken to various computer activities by Zack. When it came to people admiring math students, it was rightfully the place of his Math Club and his collection of students, not me. Especially not SOMEONE LIKE ME. Van mentioned how he had waved the disenrollment form around with glee as he said all this. Then the teacher mentioned that if I was supposed to be so bright, why couldn't I figure out all he was doing on my tests was marking my correct answers as wrong?!?

Van had been stunned that day, but as he had 'expectations' by his parents that he would be going on to College, he couldn't report this to me or the Administration for fear of becoming the next student to have to drop out of class. As 'Advanced Math' was deemed a college preparatory course, he didn't feel he could sacrifice it.

The story sounded wild, especially since Zack had warned me at the end of my Junior year of High School that these things -- other staff members over the years actively denying me my opportunities in school -- happened quietly in back rooms and not touted about in front of other students. But at the same time, it made complete sense. It explained why I could never understand how my test answers were always wrong even though I checked them time & again and thought they were right. It explained why the math teacher hadn't been willing to walk me through my test answers to help me figure out how I'd gotten them wrong. Van had been particularly consoling of me that year, but I thought it had simply been because he was a good friend. Now I could see he was feeling guilty at the time and his looking out for me was to, in part, assuage some of his own guilt.

Also the way he told me this story on the phone this day seemed to evoke memories of a few sentences from the anonymous letter I had written to the Principal once I was told I wouldn't be graduating from High School. When the Principal had returned that letter to me, I decided once I had gotten home that I should keep it. Yet I couldn't find it and couldn't remember where I had left it. I toyed with pulling the rough draft out of my trash can and saving that in its place, but decided it wasn't that important. Now listening to Van I remembered I had the letter with me when he had given me a ride to work from school that day and I must have left it in his car. I suspected now that he must have found it and read it, perhaps even kept it.

He was wondering if I could forgive him for not having come forward and telling me about this during our Senior year of High School. And the answer was I could. It had been two and a half years since, so there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it at this point, especially now living on the other side of the country. Further, my father had disowned me at the same time for wrongly assuming I was Gay and the school guidance counselors had explicitly chosen NOT to help me look into my college prospects at the start of my Senior year of High School despite my high Junior year grades. While there was a chance that continued success at math may have helped me weather the other two negative factors in my life at that time, if the math teacher didn't want me in his class, then going to the office staff about that fact wasn't going to have changed that. After all, what could they do about it other than scold him and put me back in his class and then that teacher grudgingly giving me the lowest possible passing grades that year, instead? The other math teacher was slammed having to take the majority of the class load from Zack's absence, so it's not like he could have independently taught me 'Advanced Math' on the side. It seemed true to me that the only result would have been that it would have torpedoed Van's chances of passing that same class that year. What good would have come from that?

And yet the guilt had been burning a hole in him ever since and apparently contributed to his flunking out of College the following year.

Since he was in an informative mood about the behind the scenes machinations of High School and he knew someone who had been on the year book committee, I decided to ask him a question that had been teasing me for the past two years. ''So why did I get 'The Sneakiest' notable listing in the High School year book?''

He laughed and said, ''Everyone knew what you were hiding with your note book!''

The only problem with this answer was, I didn't.

Now I had a whole new mystery to tickle my brain for the next four years...

My mother returned from her New England trip some days after and I picked her up at the airport and she was brewing about something during the ride home. Once I got her bags in the door, she closed it behind us and burst, ''How could you not tell me Joe had gotten another girl friend!?!''

I honestly returned, ''How could I?''

That answer she immediately understood and accepted with all the rage dissipating, leaving behind just grief. She took her chair and I decided to sit as well as she talked about her trip, seeing other friends and even having a whole day with Joe, at the end of which Joe explained he was with another 'someone else'.

Mother's whole idea had been to temporarily move to Colorado until Joe realized how much he missed her and came to sweep her off her feet and back to New England. It never occurred to her that he would simply find another girl at the store to 'comfort him' on those long work evenings and weekends. In fact I didn't even know if mother had been told it was another employee or not and I decided not to fill in that blank.

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Prospects

4

You know how you go on a trip and always forget to bring something? As the cooler temperatures of the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Three arrived, I realized I had left my coat in New England. Given a money crunch at the time, I felt buying a new coat was a bit much and so I just toughed it out in my jeans & tee.

Colorado came with a few surprises for a naive rural New Englander like me. Such as a phone call where I discovered I had 'won a free prize' of a photo sitting. I was thrilled to have won, but as I really didn't like having my picture taken, I asked if I could give my 'prize' to someone else. They paused for a bit on the phone and then said, ''Sure, what's their name and phone number?'' My friend with the unlisted phone number wasn't too happy to get the subsequent phone call and explained to me the gimmick behind these things was the photo was free, the resulting prints were pricey. I was not to give out his phone number again and to take surprise phone calls in Colorado with a grain or two of salt. So when I received a flier in the mail to enroll in a new Business College, I was suitably suspicious of it... And yet, unlike my High School where they told me I had no future educational options, this flier was pretty sure I did. I decided to go visit.

'American Business College' was a small building, about a third the size of my High School, but was bustling with students. Talking to the enrollment adviser, I told him right up front of my dismal Senior year of High School and how it likely disqualified me from being accepted. But he assured me that they judged people based on their performance at their own campus and I could enroll and see how well I did and decide if I should stay. I debated this and wondered if they had any course of study in computers and sure enough they did. Not only did they have a variety of course subjects, but each was taught by 'a professional in the field' rather than a stodgy college professor shy of any real world experience. He gave me a tour of the building; about the right size for an Elementary School, I wondered if it formerly had been. Each room was full of students of various ages and the room dedicated to computer classes had a respectable enough TI 990 minicomputer for the students to learn with. Returning to his enrollment office, he asked if I had any other questions or concerns. I pointed out that I didn't have any current job so I probably couldn't afford it...

There, it turned out, I was in luck. When my not as older brother had tried to go to College, student aid was based on our father's level of income as my brother lived at the family home at the time. Given his management position at a ski area, my father was deemed to have more than enough money to pay for my brother's college studies and thus he didn't qualify for any student aid. Despite the fact that dad wasn't going to help out anyhow. In my case, my mother's level of income was low enough that it wouldn't be a barrier to my receiving Pell Grants and applying for student loans. All I'd have to do is have my mother come in with her most recent tax return to confirm her income level. This seemed iffy to me. So I asked what sort of degree I could get from them, an Associates? With a cheery smile and a laugh he let me know that they didn't do those traditional degrees, but once done I'd receive a certificate of completion and I could cite that as I filled-out job applications in the future. I said I'd think about it and went home and debated it. While I wasn't sure how good their computer classes would be, I was pretty sure of my existing abilities and decided to pass it by mother to see what she'd say. She thought my pursing some form of higher education was a good idea and was willing to bring in her tax form as long as she wouldn't have to pay anything toward my going there. And so I enrolled for their winter quarter that started in November.

As luck would have it, Al's software company had a short term job for me as well. During the past few months he had been writing a package of educational games based on the Apple computer for school districts to buy and, as he neared completion, they found out their publisher also wanted the same package for the Trash 80 line. Would I be interested? Absolutely! Al was going to allow me to port and adjust his code for the project as it needed to be completed by the end of November but I asked if I could first just try out what he had and go from there. He agreed and they bought a brand new TRS 80 Model 4 for the office that I could use. As I had my own Trash 80 at home, I could write much of the code there, then bring it in to show Al and he could recommend tweaks. Looking over his package of about six games from Hang Man, Cross Word puzzle and Word Search generators, etc. I decided just to write my own code from scratch to produce the same results and by the end of the month was done at the same time Al finished his three month effort. We were both pretty happy with the results, as was his math teacher turned start-up owner, and I got paid a few hundred dollars for my work. I was thrilled as I kind of had my first computer job in Colorado and asked if there was anything more I could do for them? Nope.

So I thanked them for the opportunity and went straight to the local ski store and bought myself a new jacket for the winter and picked up ABC's ''Beauty Stab'' album to listen to. As I had taken up getting my food from the 'Academy Burger Company' for my daily meal next to Al's office while I worked for them, I wrote my old friend Van back in New England of my 'ABC's of life. I wrote that I missed visiting with him, Luke, and David at their dorm but assumed they were once again engrossed in studies as they must have entered their second year of College this Fall.

Little did I know.

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