Coping

The way a child perceives the world is fundamentally different than how an adult does. A child uses much less logic. Instead he perceives his world through his emotions which are triggered by events that he does not have the capability to understand as discrete entities. His actions are based on instincts which begin to die as the brain becomes more objective. Perhaps this is why the survival rate when lost in the wild is highest among those under 7 years old. Whereas an adult has long since killed off his basic instincts, the child has not and is able to listen to the the most fundamental need which is to survive.

I am not really sure exactly how I felt in those early years of the divorce. One letter I still have leads me to believe that I did not have any bad feelings towards Dad or my mother. Written on July 14, 1978 from my mother's parents in Pensacola, Florida, the reader would be unable to tell whether this was the hallmark of a child in a broken family or just a second grader with moderately good writing skills.

Dear Daddy,
I can't wait until we go on the trip. I know it will be fun. I just love trips. With you it is ]
very fun! We played golf today. We saw Jaws 2. It was fun. We went fishing. We went
swimming a lot. It is a sunny day today. It is very fun down here. It was 96 degrees down
here. I struck out 14 people. And the next day I struck out 26 people. And the score was
20 to 1. by! by!

Tell a gram from me to Dad

The tone of this letter, though, was in stark contrast to other behaviors I exhibited. I insisted that I was seeing ghosts in my room. I continued to wet the bed at age 7. One day during a temper tantrum I threw a carton of milk on the kitchen floor making a world of a mess. And finally the last straw for my mother was when I used my swiss army pocket knife to threaten my brothers. It was not serious, but combined with all the other behaviors it could not be ignored.

I started seeing a psychiatrist for what my parents assumed was trouble coping with the divorce. I cannot say for sure if that is what it was, but like I said before, children act on emotions that are influenced by events they cannot understand. Perhaps there was an underriding struggle within me based on the fact that the male role model had left the household. If that was the case, though, I did not know it.

I saw the Dr. Bueller for a number of years. He was a quite and gentle man, short and bald, very non-threatening. Dr Bueller would play card games with me during our sessions probably asking me probing questions since I was distracted by the game and would thereby answer freely. We talked about baseball, one of my overriding passions in those days. I remember during "draft" day for little league he allowed me to call my former coach to see if I had made the majors or would spend a year in minor league. Much to my dismay, I did not get into the majors that year.

One, sometimes two, weekends a month we would go into New York City. Bert began to teach me some French words. Even as a very young boy I was interested in learning how to speak foreign languages. This was the beginnings of a long term love affair with espionage. Unfortunately the dream would end when Cold War extinguished America's long time nemesis. Bert would write down in immaculate handwriting a few French words with their English counterparts. I would run off into the other room and memorize them only to come back asking for more words. After the third or fourth time he grew agitated and told me we'd talk later.

One thing I loved about New York City was that my father allowed me to make long distance calls anytime I chose. Working at Ma Bell in the monopoly days had certain advantages one of which was unlimited free phone calls. This may seem like a trivial fringe benefit today with long distance calling so inexpensive, but in these days long distance was far from cheap. It was the money maker for the phone company since they were heavily regulated on the local side, hence the reason why parents kept calls to the grandparents infrequent and short. Today long distance is a relatively inexpensive commodity and the plethora of phone companies have long since taken away this benefit from their employees.

Dad would also bring home some interesting albeit primitive gadgets such as a telephone tapping device. At one end of the device was a suction cup which attached to a cord that plugged into a tape recorder. In these days phones were not cordless, so the device was connected directly to the wired headset, hardly secretive. By putting the suction cup on the phone and hitting the record button, a call could be heard. The recording was hardly recognizable, but I was hooked. Hardly incognito, I would constantly try to record my family's phone calls with what I thought must be a secret government device.

Christmas time in New York City was noticeably different than in New Jersey. Dad insisted on buying all of us very fine and expensive clothes. I remember the dress socks were something I would only wear on my visits to New York. The wrapping paper he and Bert used stood out as well. Always red with a white bow, the paper was very thick and glossy and must have been of the highest quality. The tree, which we would get each year on what always seemed like a windy, bitterly cold New York City evening, was also perfectly decorated with ornaments carefully spaced. Dad was the male version of the then unknown Martha Stewart. Christmas in New Jersey, on the other handed, was a far more casual affair. The fake tree was much bigger, and the presents were far more numerous since that is where all the relatives sent their gifts, but they were certainly less properly wrapped and construed.

I enjoyed Christmas in those years both in both New York City and New Jersey but for different reasons. New Jersey meant time with my Grandpops who would take me to get donuts in the morning and Grandmall who was responsible for my life long love of coin collecting. Grandma would spend hours with me rolling pennies into 50 cent wrappers and taking them to the bank where I would get a few dollars. Our Grandparents would come up from Florida and visit us in New Jersey for what seemed like weeks on end. One year they suggested they may not come at which I told them it would not be the same without them. It worked. They would not miss that Christmas or any other until Grandmall got sick.

Whereas New Jersey meant time with my mother's parents, New York City meant pageantry. The Rockefeller tree and skating rink, the choice of music that Bert and my father played in their apartment, everything seemed orchestrated and befitting of the occasion. Listening now to Beethoven's IV "Finale' brings back memories of dinner with Bert, Dad and my two brothers before we opened our presents. Even as an eight year old I could appreciate this.

Dad still traveled in those days, and he continued to bring me something special after each trip. On one trip from California, he brought me “fools gold.” Now as a young lad I was obsessed with the gold rush, and I thought for sure that riches awaited me on the West Coast. California seemed like the land of the pioneers to a small kid who never left the New York metro area. So the small painted rock meant the world to me when my Dad gave it to me, as did the Terradactyl egg that he insisted would hatch into a dinosaur if I kept it under my pillow for a year . I followed his instructions for about 4 months until I realized it was a solid ball of candy 5 inches in diameter at which point I began to eat it and develop my first set of cavities.

Years later I would learn that Dad had a very interesting opportunity in 1978. Tehran was modernizing its telecommunications infrastructure, and my father had the opportunity to live there for nine months while helping to pave the way for Ma Bell. He passed this opportunity up as it carried with it too much emotional risk – leaving his family and Bert behind. It was probably a good thing seeing that by 1979 the Shah was out and Khomeni was in power along with 66 US hostages that would be held captive for a 444 day period. Still Dad would regret not taking a chance for the dramatic success he knew he was capable of achieving.

I had not started yet to drift from my father, but the time was coming. Soon the trips into New York City would become a chore, one that I would attempt to avoid. I cannot say when or why this happened, but I would one day remember my father asking why I no longer enjoyed coming in to see him. He'd recall these times when I was happy to be in New York City. So when did this change?