One event does cross my mind with Anne. Unfortunately it’s not the most pleasant one. The kitchen in our spacious Southern Californian home sported a wonderful, brown refrigerator measuring about 6’ by 2’ by 2’. Normal in American terms, rather outrageous, though, in the European context I now find myself in. This appliance was one of the main hubs of activity in our home. I rarely missed an opportunity to open the gigantic door, the top of which seemed to stretch to the ceiling. There was always something to see in it’s cool interior and my adventuresome child’s mind couldn’t resist.

My curiosity of the refrigerator’s contents came to be a calamity on that day of confrontation with my oldest sister. Usually the freezer section of the fridge contained one or two half gallon boxes of ice cream. On this special day my mother had surprised us with mint n’ chip flavored ice cream sandwiches. The presence of the sandwiches had been known to me for I had accompanied my mother on her weekly shopping trips to Lucky supermarket.

I was peacefully playing with my 747 model airplane on the living room floor, perfectly minding my own business, as I heard sister Anne complaining in colorful terms and with language I’d not quite understood to my mother that there were only two ice cream sandwiches left in the freezer and she hadn’t gotten any yet. When I heard my name being used I perked up my ears and quickly stepped through the dinning room and into the kitchen. There stood Mom and Anne, at that time almost equal in height, gazing toward me with a look equal to the judges during the Spanish Inquisition.

Of course I can’t relay to you the look they saw on my face but it apparently didn’t reflect the innocence I felt. Mom, the internal diplomat and one who rarely saw fault in my actions, took a step back and returned to her chores. Anne, however, certain that I had secretly taken all 4 sandwiches and gobbled them down without one eyewitness, stared me down and restated her conviction that I was the obvious culprit.

My declarations of innocence landed on Anne’s deaf ears. I knew I had taken not even one of the yummy sandwiches but was unable to convince her. To this day she probably thinks I’m a cold-blooded ice cream sandwich thief. It took until my young adult days to really get to know my oldest sister. On many occasions I got to spend entire weekends with her at her house in Santa Cruz where we became great friends.

The ice cream connection brings me to my second sister, Jane. She’s a couple years younger than Anne but still at least two heads taller than I at the time. She had long bleached blonde hair (natural of course), tended not to be as thin as the rest of the gang (sorry Jane) and was always fun to be around. Being younger I have many more memories of her as a teenager than Anne.

We were a well-fed bunch back then. Hamburgers grilled on our own gas barbecue every Saturday, Sunday breakfasts fit for a king. The above-mentioned fridge seldom failed in satisfying our boredom and hunger (sometimes hard to differentiate). Evenings were often spent in front of the boob tube and to top it off we regularly ate a bowl of ice cream. Jane would often make Mary and I a bowl (don’t worry there’ll be plenty of time to talk about Mary) and bring it to us in the TV room. More often than not she would show up with a second, freshly filled bowl in her hand. Her seniority prevented me from complaining that I too wanted more.

For me Jane was always the active one, looking for stuff to do, someone who was gonna go out and take on the world. She was so excited in the months before she got her drivers license. She’d spend many afternoons polishing “Ruby” the red, 4-door Datsun predestined to be hers. One day my friends and I came up the driveway and curiously moved over to see what she was up to on her car. “When I get my license I’ll drive you guys all to Disneyland, ok”. We all three responded with pure delight and excitement. We never did hold a grudge that the trip didn’t ever materialize. She just remained a cool sister with a cool car.

That Jane was the social, party type must have been printed in indelible ink in my mind on the morning of her 18th birthday when I woke up and saw our entire backyard covered with toilette paper. A sign was glued to her bedroom window reading “Watch out world, Hag’s a women!” Her becoming a woman was soon to become a bitter reality for me. The next summer I accompanied my mother and father as we brought Jane to her new home at a high rise dormitory at Cal State San Diego. Although it marked a major change in the structure of my childhood, the scene was very banal. Standing there at our car in the middle of a huge parking lot we gave each other a big hug and she walked off to her new life in that strange tall building.

What drastic changes my family went through over all those years. The unimaginable years before my birth, my early childhood, living alone with my parents as the last of six kids. It’s very strange to go back and think of the 31 year period in which my parents had kids running around the house. It’s amazing, it’s sad, it’s moving, exciting, it’s mysterious. Thinking of my own years as a father - it’s already been 16 years - seems much less romantic, colorful and moving. I guess there’s just a lot of “Sehnsucht” (yearning, nostalgia, homesickness) in me when I look back. (The German term, I’m afraid, seems to hit the point the best.) My parents are gone, the house I grew up in is gone, the land of my childhood is a million miles away. I wish I could leap back in time and touch the moment. I would touch the pavement on our driveway. I would smell the exhaust pouring from the garage. I would brush my arm up against the course, white siding of our house. The hard and course materials would sooth my soul. The lightness of the air, the deep blue of the sky and the faded green of the trees would lighten my being. Of course it’s impossible to go back, at least physically. I’m left with my memories, and with the distortion and exaggeration  of them. Perhaps I can take heart in what Isabelle Allende’s daughter once told her mother [sic]: “You are so good at turning your memories into fantasies.” And what a possibility that is. Think of all that one can recreate through fanciful remembering.

So I got kinda distracted here in recounting my sisters. Now it’s Mary’s turn to come on stage. She is just one year older than I so we basically spent our entire childhood, to varying degrees, together. Although I can’t recollect it myself, I’ve been told by numerous eyewitnesses that already at a very early age Mary kind of adopted me as a son of sorts. When she went into the kitchen to ask Mom for a cookie she would never fail to take an extra one for her beloved brother. For a time we shared a room and spent hours horsing around together. My favorite game was when we would climb up on the high bed and wrestle, roll, push and just wildly and physically play like baby bears in the woods. The height of the bed gave the undertaking an extra thrill. The upper mattress reached to my four-year old shoulders and was thick and soft. Under it was a spring mattress also about 10 inches thick. These were set into a dark wooden bed frame with carved wooden posts and a head board of decorated, carved wood. Of zero interest to me at the time, I later learned that my father and uncle once slept in them in their parents luxurious home in New York. At any rate the soft mattresses, not used by my father 40 years previously, aided in our “horse” game.

I soon learned the joy of being a boy and pleasured in beating my sister at wrestling or varieties thereof. Later it was a simple spook or threatening move with my arms and upper body that got her to cringe. I trust that it wasn’t that bad for her. My sister and I did drift apart in later years, but I assume that wasn’t because of my threatening moves.

Again only hearing this second-hand, I apparently was a very, very quite boy. Mary was my spokesgirl. She not only requested cookies for me, she told my Mom what I wanted for dinner, she complained that I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet and she called whenever I needed help. I have to say I am eternally grateful for this assistance. I’d probably have had a cookie-less childhood if it weren’t for my big sister Mary.

In my later years I discovered that my first relationship trauma happened when Mary left me for kindergarten. Life was never the same after that. Imagine, for my entire life I’d had my sis’ at my side as my playmate, caretaker and role model. Then, out of the blue, she was gone for school. From 9 til 12 every single day I had to come to terms with life all by myself. With no spokesman around I had to cry louder and, perhaps, even express myself if I wanted or needed something. A tragedy. I don’t know if Mary knows how terrible that was and I doubt the California Board of Education is even aware of the pain and suffering they caused me.

 So I too grew and aged. By the following fall I took the great leap and went to kindergarten myself. It didn’t help, though. Mary had advanced to first grade and had found new friends and new challenges. We did remain buddies and played lots together in those earlier years. On vacation with Mom and Dad we swam together in motel pools, hiked together to the tops of mountains, ran together in 10k races. She even tagged along with me and my friends sometimes. I had three good buddies right next door and she often joined us playing soccer on the street or in handball against the garage door.

She was always a very popular girl in school and had lots of friends. At least by the time she entered Junior High School our social circles were separate. While she managed to find many new friends in Junior High School, I wasn’t quite as lucky. My grammar school buddies were either one year younger or one year older than I. I remained friends with Kent, the younger one, a bit longer than with Brad and Bobby. By the time I moved on to the new school in 6th grade, I’d been pretty much lost my best friends. In the fifth grade I had found a new friend who kind of replaced my early childhood friends. Robert was a cool guy and we met every day to walk to school together. He initialized me into the world of girls and tried, unsuccessfully in the end, to help me find a girlfriend.

Fifth grade was, in fact, quite a tumultuous time. During summer school I was transformed by my first contact with that miracle of puppy love. Theresa was her name (funny, that’s also my daughter’s name). She wasn’t the prettiest in the crowd and she was even a bit taller that me. As with most of my first contacts with girls, nothing came out of this relationship except a few glances and funny feelings in my stomach. That same year I was blessed with the presence of a dark-haired girl with hazel colored eyes. She wore dresses unlike any of the other girls; paisley, laced cloth with dark green and blue shades. Her penetrating green eyes, dark eyebrows and long, black hair remained imprinted on my mind. Her name, Gabriela Cintra, will certainly accompany me many years to come. Her mystique is also symbolic of the secrecy which, for me, still today surrounds humans of the opposite sex.

One day I was granted the chance to actually talk to Gabriela. I was visiting a friend’s house who lived just a block from the dark-haired girl of Spanish decent. John Maneri and I were on the street when, all of a sudden, we heard shouts coming from down the street. It was Gabriela with a friend of hers and they were actually calling us to come over to them. It was a combination of pride (“you come here first”), shyness and plain old cowardice that prevented me from responding let alone moving my body in her direction. While I was pretty damn young at that point, those feeling accompanied and hindered me with the girls for many a year to come.

I think we boys were pretty screwed up as far as what a relationship to a girl could actually mean. Remember Robert? I mentioned him above. He was a cool dude. He saw himself as a cool dude, which I guess isn’t really that cool. I mean, I was pretty cool too so I didn’t have a minority complex with him (that came later). One sunny day during recess we were walking along the corridor separating the grammar school from the kindergarten and Robert asked, “who do you think the most popular kid in this school is”. I, in my insightful, diplomatic manner, knew right away what he was getting at and my answer was not what he was looking for. “Well, in what way do you mean popular?” I enquired. “You know Bruce is the strongest and Jimmy’s the best soccer player and Brad gets the best grades”. He looked at mean with a flash of resentment in his pretty blue eyes and ran off.

The next afternoon I was at his house. His Mom, single and working, was gone as usual and his sister was no where around. We’d been pretty active in the field of crank calls so I initially wasn’t surprised when he made a certain proposal. “Gus, you haven’t made it with any girls yet like I have. Let’s call Jill and you can tell her you like her”, Robert, the gigolo said. Although I knew it wasn’t what I wanted, I went ahead with the call. It was a total failure and I felt like a total jerk.

It wasn’t until the end of 7th grade, at a school dance that I had my first intense and physical experience with a girl. Tracy Cord was her name and she was the daughter of the vice principle. Boy, pretty courageous of me messing around with the vice principle’s daughter. Well, it was really that bad. In fact it was great. A slow song came on and somehow Tracy had her arms slung around my shoulder and we were dancing. I’m certain I didn’t ask her to dance myself. That was light years from my ability. Somehow she was there and the song must have gone on for hours. Actually it was just one slow dance together and I was finished. As mentioned above, though, my shyness prevented me from asking her to dance again. The next and following days, although I was quite overcome with her, I didn’t even get up the nerve to smile and say hello to her.

Well that’s life, I guess. And that was a little piece of my life for the record.

Thanks for listening.