Tea With Me: 7th August 2021, Saturday
So on this day in 1948 my Mama wed my Papa. She at 21 and he at 27 were children of the Depression and had lived WW2 era. They were embarking on a journey to create family over the next 5 tumultuous decades which hurled change at them with ever increasing speed.
I am so blessed to have been their child. I will not here go into our own particular well of dysfunction. All families have their own version. Its taken me all my six decades to finally settle peacefully into the knowing that none of us escape dysfunction and those who profess immunity are in denial for whatever reason.
We had food, we had shelter, we had room to play, we had schools, we had chaos of the too many kids kind. We had safety and security. We had room to dream and room to create.
And most of all, we had Love.
I had an imaginary friend as a wee thing. He was a horse. I called him Nusty. I have no clear memory of this as he partnered me so early, I lived only in the moment as all small children do. My family tells me in stories running through the family legends of how I was with Nusty.
He changed color. He visited but did not stay. And would come back as it suited him. But when he was with me, I was to keep him close.
We lived in suburbs of New York City. My Papa’s path to earn a wage gave him purchase in the corporate law of companies who homed in NYC.
His family was in Ohio and every summer for a week he would pack us all in the family wagon and we would ride the PA Turnpike West across to the eastern edge of Ohio for a visit with his Mama and Papa and our cousins.
Those rides were utter madness. In a Ford stationwagon with no headrests and no seatbelts, my younger brother and me in the way way back with no seats, 400 miles of five bright kids messing with their brains fighting, laughing, crying, wiggling, hitting, pinching, tickling, Mama charged with keeping the Roar out of the front seat. My Papa focused on the road, silent, headed to his family.
The Pee Parlors on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the 60’s were the iconic the iconic forebears of today’s convenience stores, aka the Blue and Orange of Nose Pickers Paradise, so dubbed by my Mama, aka Howard Johnson’s. Starbuck’s owes deep homage to HJ.
So a trip west in the summer of 1963 in the Era of Nusty, and let me remind you, I remember naught of this, found the pile of us needing a pee pit stop 200 miles or so into the ride. So in my Papa pulled to the Blue and Orange Pee Parlor and out we apparently piled skittering to find the stalls so the Nusty Legend goes.
Then all seven of us emptied and the gas tank fed, we piled back into the Ford and assumed our positions, three older sisters in the middle seat and my little brother and I in the way way back. And Papa started the car, resumed his silent focus on the road, and we merged back onto the Turnpike headed West.
About 20 minutes down the road closer to his family and Ohio, apparently I erupted with a teary Nusty update-I had left him in the pee pot stall in 20 miles back HJ’s.
My older sisters perched in the middle seat heard me as I tried not to cry loud enough to incur what was sure would be the Wrath of Dad but somehow word traveled quietly from the sisters’ middle seat to Mama who oh so deftly let my Papa hear my beloved Nusty was not with me.
Apparently we were all stunned as my Giant of a Dad, uturned the family wagon and drove the 20 miles East to HJ’s parking lot. My Mama fetched me from the way way back through the back back door and holding my hand, walked to the pee pot parlor door and I went straight to the stall I had annointed and fetched my Nusty.
Back to the car and back to Eastbound Turnpike ride we went.
I am so so so lucky to have been so loved and understood by two parents who knew what imagination means to childhood.
There are so so many multitudes of children and their folks who are not safe right now. So many who have lost so fast and getting faster. And so much we do not know and cannot ascertain the certainty of.
Except for Love. If we feel it, it is for sure. And the more we allow it the more it grows, and glows.
I was loved. Still am. They are both on the other side of here and I feel them everyday.
Thank you both.
Tea was black and creamed.
Ta.
Tea With Me 