As the daughter of an Army Intelligence Officer who worked with the C.I.A. and a mother born, raised in Nazi Germany, the author picks up her shovel and digs up the family secrets as well as the secrets of Germany and the USA. It is a conversational memoir that some reviewers called a roller coaster ride that had them laughing and crying.
"Our family secrets cannot be understood separately from the secrets of Germany, the Catholic Church, the Army and the C.I.A. which provided the foundation and set the stage from which the days of our lives unfolded without the permission of the children."
I loved Nancy Drew as a child and it was my Nancy Drew detective skills which led to the uncovering of more family secrets (I thought I already knew them all) and piecing together the puzzle pieces from history (I go back to the mid-1800s) to figure out what happened historically to provide insight at the micro-level of what produced our family.
Alcohol was a valued family member and the only family member father would never leave or betray. Through Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, James Joyce and Beowulf father's journey and view of the world comes into focus and understanding.
The original inspiration for the book was to say a thank you to my brother's friends in Anacortes who gave him a few fun years before he was killed in Vietnam in 1969. Putting pen to paper took me other places I didn't know I would go to before I started this journey. I figured out father's secret which led to understanding why father drank.
I shed light on Sigi, Adi and Germany's cruel Dr. Spock (you're going to be astounded, can you guess who I'm talking about?).
I also astound readers as to who exactly created are so-called mental health system as well as our public education system.
You'll either be relieved and thankful or angry at me when I say there is no such thing as mental illness and that all war is about child abuse.
I give a nod to Frank and Malachy McCourt whose writings taught me to ride the edge and bring in humor to balance out the horrific. Some reviewers wrote my memoir provided them a paradigm shift in seeing the world from a new perspective.
Men have been very kind in their reviews of my manuscript, a kindness and compassion that provided more healing to this author.
Some enjoyed my writing about the cars I loved. Cars for me met freedom and joy. Open windows, speeding out on the flats in Skagit County with 60s music pumping out and warm summer air melting into the cool of the evening, my teen years in Washington State after returning from 5 1/2 years in Germany.
Excerpt
Ronald David Laing (R.D.) Laing
Ronald Laing was Scottish, a psychiatrist (born 1927, died 1989). Hey, he was the same age as mother and father!
Wikipedia writes about Laing's take on mental illness. "Insanity, Madness and the Family (1964), Laing and Esterton give accounts of several families, analyzing how their members see each other and what they actually communicate to each other. The startling way in which lies are perpetuated in the interest of family politics rings true to many readers from "normal" families,and Laing's view is that in some cases these lies are so strongly maintained as to make it impossible for a vulnerable child to be able to determine what the truth actually is, let alone what the truth of their situation is."
It's like our family...you know...our Leave it to Beaver family. Mother's admonishment that "no one needs to see our dirty laundry" left us with duplicity, a fragmentation, a multiplicity of facades as to how we were to present to the world. "Dirty laundry" was not defined to us.
Father had top secret duties and we were taught not to ask questions about his work. The walls had ears in a stairwell that housed six apartments. No one ever called the MPs (military police) on the raging fights and smashing glass in our apartment.
Laing wrote about children being placed in a double bind, unable to obey conflicting orders from mom and dad, but the child does not blame mom and dad. In turn the family members are not aware that they are doing such things. They are as confused as the children. In "Politics of Experience, Laing wrote: "We are effectively destroying ourselves with violence masquerading as love."
That makes me think of the cruel Dr. Spock, Dr. Moritz Schreber of Germany and his horrendous child rearing teachings. Another quote from Laing: "The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to noitce, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
Even though he loved Army life father's failure to notice and/or control his love of alcohol along with his increasing strident wife caused his failure to be promoted thus ending his military career. As you will read a number of times in my little memoir, Alcohol, was father's most important family member; the one he would never leave and never betray; he loved Alcohol until the very last day he spent on this planet.
Daniel Paul Schreber was born in 1842. Paul became a lawyer and then a judge. His brother committed suicide. Paul's first "mental" breakdown came when he was 42, the second at age 51. Paul was in an institution for 9 years. Music entered his life in the institution which opened the door to his getting well enough to plan a strategy to get out.
When he got out things went well until his wife died then back to the asylum until his death in 1911. Paul's father died at age 53.
In short the cruel Dr. Spock of Germany was a mess and he messed up his family; and then they all died young.
Rosetta was born in 1909 as the youngest of ten children. The family had more laughter than money and neighbors would knock on their door to ask, "Can we come in and laugh, too?"
Asa D Seeley, a young Afro American man, shares his struggle to leave his past behind as he reaches for his future. In his one-of-a-kind style, he searches for answers...from the visible & invisible. A Memoir in Poetical/Prose form.
