Category: Memoirs

Helen says, “bye!”

Today was the anniversary of the death of my mother, Helen Ida (Smith) Chern. So, I have been a motherless child for 17 years. That is every bit as long as I was a child living (for the most part) with a mother. It is starting to sink in.

She really was a wonderful, magical person when she wasn’t under the shadow of her depression, illnesses, chronic fatigue, suicidal episodes, and a certain stubborn dramatic holding on to that state of mind once it had set in. I think that some of that was a desperate mechanism to get the rest of us to back off and leave her alone for a moment. Intellect really can be as much of a curse as a blessing. I guess we were a couple of the last of our kind, since I failed to pass along any genes. (as far as I know. as of yet. as they say.)

Then of course there was the decades long darkening shadows bringing on the decline of that intellect, ending finally in full-blown dementia. Though, once she had finally let go of all effort, she seemed as happy as I had ever seen her.

One of the last times I saw her in the hospital, I asked her if she knew who I was. Apparently you’re not supposed to ask that, but it didn’t seem to phase her. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. She might have been dodging the specifics. But, she replied, “Yes. You’re the love of my life.”

Now I can look back to my early childhood and see the vivacious, beautiful young version of her, prancing about the house singing during the chores when she wasn’t hating and being oppressed by them. “Today is Monday! Today is Monday…”

My Fabulous Academic Career part I a

from the overly forthcoming “Memoirs of an Escapist”

Nursery School: a drop-out from day one

I suppose it is not too surprising that I have a memory of, or a memory of a story about, my first day in “Nursery School.” Most of my early memories were burnt in by fear, shame and moments of blooming self-awareness. This experience of being suddenly forced at once into the midst of the hoi polloi and under the thumb of The System had elements of all of the above. In some strange way, the memories exist as simultaneously polar self-images: a very childish feeling of being overwhelmed and unprepared to cope, yet at the same time a sense of having moved into my adult self as I set myself apart from the children and in opposition to the Institution. The more adult self memory is navigating situations on its own. The infantile memory is having to interact with, and being viewed by, the adults.

I was somehow entering the class as the semester was already in progress. The teacher kindly offered me an out from a full-blown socialization melt-down by saying that since I was “The New Boy” I could just sit on the sidelines and observe. I readily accepted the title, and hoped to maintain the position of “New Boy” for the rest of my life. I set about my duties of non-participation with undetectable gusto, and continued to do so for days to come.

However there all too soon came the dreaded day when it became clear to the teacher that I was not about to become more comfortable, or be moved to leave my chair by the sight of all the “fun” the other children were having.

“But… I’m the NEW BOY!”, I protested.

“You can’t be The New Boy forever,” I was informed, to my everlasting dismay.

After this, all my memories become more dark and cloudy. I do remember one of the allegedly Fun Activities that we were expected to take part in, for it was emblematic to me of how the leaders were as dumb as their followers. The teacher had everyone get in a circle and prance around “like horses.” The teacher, who was probably actually a nice young Socialist girl and unfairly villainized in my memory, didn’t just let the children be horses after their own fashions but had to demonstrate how it should be done. She trotted along putting her head down and then throwing it back. “Like this!” I found this to be about the stupidest thing I had witnessed to date in my long somewhere around four years of life.

The final act of this dramatic episode was perhaps overlooked by most and forgotten by all but myself. To me it represented my first public protest; an evolutionary moment when had awareness of the situation and defined my relation to it, decidedly a source of pride to this day. The parents, staff and Administration all gathered on the last day of the ‘school’ year for a graduation ceremony. The little kiddies all marched up one by one to accept scrolls of paper while everyone cooed over how cute it was. I did not want to attain cuteness in such a cheap manner. I knew that we had not done anything for which we should be proud, we had not actually learned anything, and they were in fact really just laughing at and humiliating us with this condescension. I refused to go up and get my diploma. This pretty much set up the pattern for the rest of my life.

My fabulous academic career, chapter three. I walk out.

At least twice when I was a child I walked out of school in the middle of the day, awol and without notice to any adults. For reasons beyond my comprehension the authorities and parents got riled up about this, but it was always the only response I could muster to adult unreasonableness. Both times I think the biggest problem was a demand that I go to a room I was not familiar with to face some strange teacher. I had had enough difficulty working out how to find the rooms I attended classes in.

The first time was in 3rd grade (so, first year in Columbus) and I don’t remember what the problem with the strange teacher was, but I know I walked straight home the 1.3 miles, so I don’t know how my parents had time to become so alarmed.

The second incident was rather spectacular and I have been reminded of it a couple of times in a short period of time recently. After I had been thinking about it, out of the blue I coincidentally got a note from an old classmate I hadn’t seen since those days referencing it and even recalling the name of the teacher!

This incident was in 7th grade, my first year in the old stone prison-like institution known in those days as Jones Jr. High. I was in a large study hall early in the day, planning on completing an assignment due the next period, and discovered that I did not have any blank paper. The teacher was this German woman who I remember as being kind of a Frau Blucher type, although in updated mid-century American style of course. Her name was actually Mrs. Gudat. I slim, harsh-faced formidable character. She had strictly forbidden talking or noise of any kind in her study hall, but I was desperate enough for a piece of paper that I risked trying to whisper as quietly and surreptitiously as possible to the person in front of me to try to borrow one. Of course, this flagrant violation did not escape the preternatural hearing of the hawk-like Frau Gudat, who marched down the aisle, where I was a good ways toward the back of the room and against the left wall, so this drew the attention of the whole group, to administer admonishment and forbid the transfer of illicitly obtained class-work materials. I tried to explain that I just needed one sheet of paper and I really needed to finish this assignment, a situation for which she had no sympathy. “You should have done it last night!”, she barked, and headed back to her podium.

I sat there fuming over my untenable academic situation and the injustice of the authoritarian regime and began to have one of my incidents of rising heat and anger. In those days I always used a cartridge fountain pen, a cheap Schaeffer that was widely available. I took off the cap and made a forceful arcing gesture with it toward the front of the room, shooting a plume of ink down the aisle. The ink ended up hitting a boy quite a ways up the row from me. By a stroke of bad luck, he was a boy with a bit of a limp from some childhood disease or something, which added further shame to the whole incident.

Mrs Gudat came storming down the aisle demanding to know why I was picking on the poor cripple boy. By now I was standing, and I said, “I wasn’t aiming at him.” “Well, what were you aiming at?”, she demanded. “I was aiming at you!” I replied.

The next thing I knew she was slapping me, rather dramatically, and said, “I’LL TAME YOU, YOU SAVAGE!!!”

This seems to have started talk amongst the student population that we were having some sort of steamy affair.

Then I think there was some sort of demand that I go to some strange room after school, and I walked out. This time I just kept walking for quite awhile. I walked out of Old Arlington, I walked up Ackerman past what were in those days fields of cows, and ended up at University City Shopping Centre on Olentangy. There I remember there being a new record store that I might not have had a chance to check out as of yet. It wasn’t very good, but enough to calm me down.

In the meantime apparently there had been a lot of hue and cry and search for the missing child. I was filled with shame and fear with the thought of facing the reactions of adults and students alike. My parents had to have yet another meeting with a Principal and I got some vague report that there had been discussion of how I was a bit peculiar but apparently some sort of genius, so I would get special consideration but I’d better watch it. I think Mrs. Gudat was induced to make an apology, which was surprising since in those days it seemed like teachers could treat students however they wanted. As for the students, it may have given me a certain cachet for awhile, but also undesirable attention and they quickly got back to ever intensifying ridicule and bullying.