Sunday family dinner.

Like many a household, family dinner on Sunday evenings was a ritual for at least the entire time we lived in Michigan and somewhat so as I ended my teenage years and my parents' marriage came to its overdue inevitable end in New Jersey. It was one family activity my Father felt was important, albeit not all ended well. He traveled constantly, over 180 days a year he boasted at times. He wasn't into his marriage to my Mom, clearly evident from the 3 abortions he paid for with affairs he was having (which I learned just in recent years) and verbal and physical fights I witnessed over the years. He loved Christopher and me growing up as well as he knew how to but he has been quick to admit later in our lives he was never good with young children. That's an understatement as you'll learn reading this blog.

Sunday dinners varied over time and, to a large extent, how my Father was doing financially. They were spaghetti and meatballs, pasta with calamari (where my Mother still had meatballs), to lobster most often or other seafood. He was almost always moving up "the ladder" but there were a lot of gaps and he never built any retirement or other security. To a Millennial or GEN Zer this sounds like par for the course in the US today. For my Father, part of the Silent Generation or a Post War Cohort generation (born 1939), this was far from the norm.

Many Sunday dinner conversations would often have conversations about my Father's business dealings and travels. It was part of what developed my great interest in travel. By age 9 or 10, I asked him (and he usually remembered) to bring me back the postcards and stationery from the hotels he would stay in while traveling. I took great interest in his every hotel stay, the restaurants he would eat in and anything else he shared about the journeys.

I don't recall Sunday dinner conversations being focused on my brother or me much of the time. There were occasions if my Mother brought up a concern about something at school or about neighbors. My Father made efforts to coach soccer teams for both my brother and me until he was kicked out of the league for being a foul-mouthed, offensive (to both parents and children) drill sergeant (and my generation was expected to take more, not be complimented all the time, no ribbons for losers) and his dialogues would be about all the "fuck-ups" whether other coaches, parents, the league or kids (players).

60 Minutes was often on during Sunday dinner, not to be missed. We did have a television in our kitchen. I don't remember how when I was really, really young, but it was otherwise a small television in a corner cabinet after my parents re-modeled the kitchen in Michigan and again in New Jersey.

While I didn't find the 60 Minutes episode for this blog post (and wasn't going to pay for CBS All Access), I am fairly certain it was a very early report on what I don't recall was known as AIDS, but GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). I asked my Father why he thought Gay people were getting this disease. He bluntly explained how they were sticking their dicks "where they don't belong" (I guess he wasn't into anal with women?), licking where they shouldn't be and something to the effect of generally dirty. Having been recently molested for the first time, it made me only all the more insecure. His tone let me feel I would be shamed and shunned for speaking up. I never did until my It Gets Better video decades later and after my Mother had passed away.

Many Sunday dinners became confrontational. I remember my Father coming home and sitting in dinner in a velour "sweat suit." These were very popular at the time. My Mother complimented it and said (something like) "that's very nice, I should get something like this." My Father replied "I don't know, it's quite expensive." That cost my Father dearly. My Mother had gone years without buying herself much of anything overall with my Dad's up and down career, his extracurricular expenses and 2 children. That evening, she had enough and I remember going to Saks Fifth Avenue with her following and buying an all the more expensive plush suit. Thereafter, every birthday and Christmas thereafter she had demands on what she wanted which grew in costs. I remember many as I was often sent to buy them for my Dad. Whether jewelry, clothing or just another bottle of Shalimar or Chanel No. 5, I usually bought them. Luckily, I liked shopping. I was wandering Marshall Field's with my Mother in a stroller in Chicago, visiting Nana working at Bamberger's in Morristown, NJ  (long before "officially" being our home) when we visited every summer first from Chicago, Short Hills Mall and other shopping in New Jersey, countless runs to Somerset Mall in Troy, Jacobson's in Birmingham, among others places. By middle school, as part of a generation of "mall rats," going to the mall was a rather frequent activity, especially in Michigan where lack of options and long winters made indoor malls a bit of a sanctuary. While I have some fond memories, some of the most traumatizing and to some extent still unsettled events in my childhood happened at malls.

Bamberger's Morristown many years ago. (love that traffic light!)

Nana and my Father had a mutual disdain for one another, though I think there was also some mutual love and respect over the years. But, she would visit us and be at our table in Michigan - whether the kitchen table with everyday dishes, or the decked-out dining room with dry clean linens, china, crystal and silver - and there would be some nasty confrontations. My Father could be very degrading and as I watch Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and all that has been exposed not just about what they did wrong, but overall demeanor, among others in his age group, I am uncomfortably reminded of how he was almost geared to be misogynistic and self-absorbed. He was never physically violent towards Nana but horridly verbally so. Nana, who had come from great wealth to a family that lost it all in the Depression, never was able to finish college herself (after all, it wasn't that important anyway), and married a lawyer from a wealthy family only to lose her husband and become a single mother in her 40s in the 1950s. She had traveled a rough road. I am only telling part of the story now. She had her thoughts and opinions, right or wrong, and an independence ahead of her generation. She didn't put up with Jack's shit (my Dad) or anyone else. My Father explained to me more than once he didn't think she was a Lesbian, just a "man hater."

Perhaps one of the most confrontational family dinners I recall is when my step-brother, John, was living with us. I was in 2nd grade. He was from my Father's first marriage. I had never learned about a first marriage nor having a teenage brother until about 2 weeks before he came to live with us. He was sent to us in his senior year of high school severely "damaged" and a drug addict. I will write more about John in future blogs, but he raised severe havoc in our home during his time there, especially when my Father traveled. He was dismissive and disrespectful to my Mother, certainly not much of a brother figure and ultimately physically violent. I don't remember what exactly brought on the confrontation this Sunday night other than it seems to me to be when my Father finally stood up for my Mother after John had thrown her down the staircase while he was away. I recall John saying something and my Father leaping up from the table, knocking it and all of our plates, grabbing him by the hair (I want to say he made some comment about his "dumb-ass hippie hair" or something, certainly would have been my Dad) and John took a swing at my Father and ended up through our sliding glass door into (I am pretty sure) snow and a below zero evening in beautiful Southeastern Michigan. Now, my superhero memory of this story is that he literally smashed him right through the glass. When I dig deep down and think, though, I think my Father knocked him to the ground, picked him up, opened the door and threw him into the snow. That is far more logical. For one, I don't recall emergency repair crews (which would have started with being 8 year old me) boarding up the door, let alone an ambulance.

Among credits I will give my parents, not only at Sunday dinners, but in general, is they had a great way of introducing us to all sorts of food. Things most kids then and now wouldn't think of eating. They expected us to try it. They built it up so you wanted to do so. But never were we allowed to leave the table until we finished our food. Why do you think I love calamari (and NEVER fried)? I will admit that at some point my brother and Dad would cut it up and the slime and odd blood were gross, but I went for such activities and just had dinner. I can make a mean Caesar salad with anchovies that as long as I don't tell most love because they don't have to overcome their perceived aversion.


History of Somerset Mall, Troy, MI

CNN explanation of American generations