Two Frogs and a Prince, Chapter Two

I intended to write this chapter sooner, but this damned thing called Life kept getting in the way. The usual stuff, plus seasonal activities. I entertained my first housefly of 2008 the other day, and as soon as I got out my fly-swatter, he disappeared. I'm still standing watch. It's also midge season here on Planet Bill. You probably call them gnats or no-see-ums, but I like calling them midges because it reminds me of my mom's friend, Midge Warner. Midge wasn't gnat-sized, though. She was a strapping woman from West Virginia, not fat or stout, but what John Steinbeck or Flannery O-Conner would call "raw-boned."

On to Chapter Two of our tale...

My dad seemed like Superman when I was a boy, because he never got sick. Never! This changed in 1974. He returned home from an out-of-town business conference, and my mom & I could instantly see that something was amiss when he stepped out of the car. In the full sunlight on the driveway, he glowed bright yellow. The whites of his eyes were gold, and he didn't feel well.

Persistent nagging from my mother got him to the doctor right away, and he was sent to the hospital. Surgery was indicated to remove his gall bladder, and the surgeon kept us waiting far too long for a routine operation. After about six hours on pins & needles, Dr. Miller came out and told us that my dad had inoperable, terminal cancer.

Fortunately, this diagnosis proved false, and I will write more about this someday, but there was something seriously wrong. Modern medicine just had a hell of a time figuring it all out. For the purposes of this chapter, let's just skip ahead to 1976. Following two surgeries with baffling results, my father's case was accepted by Dr. Kenneth Warren, who was associated with the Lahey Clinic. Dr. Warren, a world-renowned specialist, reviewed my dad's medical history, and wanted to examine him personally.

My father took a flight to Boston to consult with Dr. Warren, and was admitted to New England Baptist Hospital. My mother and I were thrown into a panic when my dad called and said that Dr. Warren would be operating on him immediately. Surgery was scheduled for 7:00 the next morning. It was too late in the day to catch a flight from Norfolk, so we packed the car. My father had barely survived his previous operations, so we wanted to be sure he saw us before he was rolled into the surgical suite.

We left at 5:20 in the evening on September 16, 1976. My mom notes in her diary "It took us 14 hrs. - a hard trip - Had rain & fog - Got mixed up a few times & off the road. Bill done most of the driving." Looking back, it's funny to see that hellish trip reduced to these few lines mom's diary allowed. I have never since experienced such torrential rain and heavy fog at the same time. It seemed that we were constantly paying tolls and changing roads. I did most of the driving, because when I turned the car over to my mom in the wee hours, she dozed and I had to grab the wheel to keep us from hitting a tractor-trailer.

We were both emotionally and physically exhausted, but we had to keep moving in hopes of seeing my dad. He had twice before been told he had little time left to enjoy life, and Mom & I feared that his luck had run out. We wanted him to know that we were right there with him in that strange, distant hospital. Mom & I talked to each other to stay alert on the road.

I drove north up the east coast through New Jersey, across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and headed east across New England. It was past the Witching Hour, and we were both having trouble remaining awake. The windshield wipers were hypnotic. My mother decided that it was time to take action. She took a deep breath, and told me a story that jolted me awake.

My mother grew up on a farm just outside the town of Morrison, Iowa. Morrison is still just a dot on the map, so small that several Morrisons would fit inside most neighborhoods. She went to high school in a town due east named Reinbeck, about four miles away. Although there were many photographs of Teenage Carolyn with her friends, she did not have a high school album from her senior year. There were also a couple of pictures that had been cropped so that only my mom remained in the photo.

My mom reminded me of telling me about her former husband, Jon Minor. Well, she admitted, Jon was her second husband. Holy shit! If it hadn't been for pouring rain + dense fog, I probably would have given my mom a full-on stare to be certain she hadn't metamorphosed into Elizabeth Taylor-Hilton-Wilding-Todd-Fisher-Burton-Burton-Warner in the seat beside me. Fortensky hadn't happened along yet, for either my mom or Elizabeth.

My mother married her high-school boyfriend, Wayne Prusner, shortly after graduation in 1949. They may have wed because my mother was pregnant; she didn't say, and it didn't occur to me to ask back then. They moved from their farming community to Waterloo, Iowa, which would have seemed like Metropolis compared to Morrison. I don't know much about this first husband at all, but what I have learned about this time in my mother's life still makes me very sad.

My mom was a sensitive, talented, capable person who was plagued by self-doubt and low self-confidence. The origins of these feelings are explained in this earlier post. I guess this is why she allowed herself to remain too long with Wayne after marrying him. They moved into an upstairs apartment, and once they were married, Wayne's natural cruelty became apparent. He belittled and criticized her, tormented her, and beat her. He kept her from her friends and family as best he could. He treated her worse as soon as her parents left after surprise visits. My mother grew terrified of him, and would not go down a flight of stairs ahead of him because she was afraid he would push her to the bottom.

She had every reason to be fearful, because this marriage ended just as you would expect. My mother was in the final weeks of her pregnancy, and something caused Wayne to fly into a rage. He beat her to the floor, and kicked her repeatedly in the stomach. The child, a boy, did not survive his violence.

Anger probably kept me awake for the remainder of our journey. Emotions carom like free radicals in a teenager's mind on a good day, and the thought of someone harming my mother gave me murderous fantasies. As soon as I was old enough, I would hunt this man down and kill him.

Several years later, grown and on my own, I flew out to visit my grandmother by myself. We had a wonderful time together. At one point, I told Grandma that Mom had told me about her previous marriages. "Oh, so you know about all that, huh?" said Grandma. In talking about Wayne, my grandmother told me "Clayton and I would go to see your mother in Waterloo. We would both cry all the way home. We were worried sick about her, but we couldn't get her to come home." It took that final beating and the death of her child to give my mother the courage she needed to break away.

I'm still in contact with my Aunt Issy in Iowa. Aunt Issy is in her 80's now, and we stay in contact through the Internet and snail mail. She told me that she was at the hospital when the stillborn child was delivered. The doctor, in plain sight of my mother, threw the tiny body in a bin. My aunt still gets angry when she thinks about it. My mother was too battered to attend the funeral, and remained in the hospital while her family watched the little boy's burial at an unmarked grave between my grandparents' future grave sites.

My mother and I reached Boston as dawn was breaking on a Friday morning. The day was rainy and gray. Rush hour was in full swing. We fought our way to the hospital, arriving at 7:25. We were too late to see my father. He had been taken into surgery at 7:00. I saw something I had never witnessed. My mother sank down in a nearby chair, and sobbed like a child, as though she would never stop.