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by

A.J. Daulerio

Illustration by Edith Zimmerman

“In this world of dreams don’t let the clock cut up your life in pieces.”

- Jim Harrison

******

There was a stack of VHS tapes wrapped in a rubber band in a large Tupperware box lying around my office for almost two years. I’d asked my mother to send them to me from Florida because she didn’t know what to do with them. “And what will you do with them? You don’t own a VCR!” she said. Moms. I told her I would send them to a place to have them all digitally transferred, and then we’d be able to share them and look at them anytime we wanted–no VCR required. 

I finally made good on the promise three weeks ago and dropped them off at a musty second-floor office building in Burbank that’s been in the “post-production” business since 1982, and they turned them around right before Easter. Most of the VHS tapes were labeled–Christmas ‘87, intramural basketball ‘87, Thanksgiving ‘91, Winter Concert 1988–but there was one that was not labeled that turned out to be the crown jewel of the collection: my mother’s surprise 50th birthday party. 

It was almost 40 minutes long and the closest thing to a this-is-your-life lineup of my mother’s friends and family, in their most vivid and memorable forms, ones that had mostly dissolved into shadowy outlines or entirely disappeared from my mind. But, poof, here they were walking and talking, reanimated and waving to the camera, time-traveling back from early fall 1993. There’s Uncle Tony! Our old next-door neighbor John! The Lanigans, the Flanigans, the Morrisses, the Melks. 19-year-old me, with a butt cut and two-hoop earrings, cos-playing Brian Austin Green. Gross.

It was too much to process at once. It also felt forbidden, like it was classified material only to be seen by me after I’ve died and spent a few weeks acclimating to whatever version of heaven exists.

And our house looked so small. It was so much bigger when I lived there. But now, all the archways appeared low, the hallways narrow, every room quaintly suburban. The taller men hunch over when they move between rooms. The kitchen wallpaper–I remember when that was new wallpaper. I think my parents invited people over to celebrate. “Come see the new wallpaper!” because that’s the type of party you had back then. Growing up, I thought that house was worth a million dollars, but when I popped on to Zillow to see the actual estimated cost back in 1993 and what they sold it for in 1995, I realized I wasn’t even close.

My mother was ecstatic when she finally saw the video. “Oh my goodness. So many beautiful memories!” Then she hit me with the math: I am currently only two years younger than she is in the video. Her mother, my grandmother, is two years younger than she is now. 

My mother does look young when she walks into the main room to greet everyone, feigning surprise. My dad also looks young, but his hairpiece does not. I haven’t seen my father speaking in complete lucidity in so long since his dementia kicked in. I can see the bone-chilling resemblance between us now, just two middle-aged dads figuring it all out, petrified of the unknown. 

And most jarringly–we all look so happy. I wasn’t prepared for that. 

*****

I had mentioned this before, but I walked into an Al-Anon men’s group by accident, thinking it was an AA meeting. That was almost exactly four years ago, so it’s an anniversary month for me in that program. The meeting was at a Theosophy church, and it had these big, spooky-looking wooden doors out front with ornate metal handles, the type of doors ancient monks or Dracula would open. And inside, the room was packed–probably 40 or 50 dudes, all dressed nicely and enthusiastic about their personal recovery and full of alpha-vulnerability. It was an ACA meeting, so it began with a reading of The Problem and The Solution from their approved literature, and this part stuck with me:

As ACA becomes a safe place for you, you will find the freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and free yourself from the shame and blame carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.

The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. We slowly move out of the past by gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief. We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love, and respect.

It was everything I needed to hear, so I’ll skip ahead.

But first, let’s travel back again. 

*****

My grandmother’s name was Athena. She was the most enchanting time traveler in this video. Primarily Greek and from a big family in South Jersey, she was eccentric and wise, and all her grandchildren loved her. She died at 95 in 2013. I consider her my soulmate in many ways, and when I visualize her, she’s smoking in the morning, drinking day-old coffee, in a rumpled robe, staring out someplace beyond the sunrise.

For most of my childhood, she lived in Key West. She would always call it “Mee-Key-West” in a hushed tone like it was some sort of fairytale land where steel drums played during cold-beer lunches and packs of wrinkle-tanned men with loyal iguanas on their shoulders rode rickety bikes towards the sunset over the pier.

She even wrote a punchy column for the Key West Citizen One of her longer pieces was about how much she loved watching children fly kites on the beach. I believe the headline was “Let’s Go Fly a Kite!”

“Life is short, so fly a kite,” was the extent of her editorializing. 

But now, here she was, dancing by herself with a cigarette in hand, to every 50’s bum-ba-heyda-heyda seashore song. She’s wearing a white nylon sweatsuit, and there’s a leopard-patterned swatch on the back. She figured it out.

Then the camera moves out to the outdoor screened-in porch area where all the smokers congregated in front of the bar, and it is a tracking shot teeming with dead people.

These are the deaths I know of–Uncle Tony, some of my parents’ tennis crew, my grandfather (on my mother’s side), and some of my mother’s high school classmates. There are probably many more I don’t know about since I’d forgotten so many of these people existed.

So many ghosts–soft packs of cigs poking out of shirt pockets, shaking hands, small-talking about retirement or Florida or the weather. I want to yell at them through the screen. “You’re wasting time!”

My nerdiest uncle holds a microphone up to their alive faces and asks them to say nice things about my mother. “Then we’re gonna send this over to Bob Saget for “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to see what he thinks.” He does this bit two or three more times throughout the night.

Jesus, Bob Saget. Also dead. 

*****

I still have the first text message to my current sponsor, Cameron, saved on my phone, saying, “Hey, I liked what you said in your share today. I’m new to the program. Can we meet?”

He had some reservations about sponsoring me because I was considered a “double winner,” and he was not. (Double winners are those of us who also participate in the 12-Step beverage program.) Plus, he was skeptical–I didn’t seem to have a good grasp of the program, especially its principles. “It’s for people who can’t afford legit family therapy haha amirite?” Wrong answer. But he took me on anyway, and we began to work through the first couple of steps.

We developed a solid weekly routine. First, we’d do the Tuesday morning meeting, then head up to the Beachwood Cafe afterward for step work and eggs. Pretty great morning. 

He was big on writing out answers to the questions found in the Al-Anon books. I told him I was a writer, so that would be no problem. But once I turned in my responses to all the First Step questions, he saw a significant problem. “You use many nice words, but you didn’t answer any of the questions.” He told me to do it again and not to write this much the next time–just answer the questions.

That was hard for me. It still is. And, as I said, that was almost exactly four years ago. 

*****

I’ve unsubscribed my mother from this newsletter a couple of times, mainly when she offers some critiques about how I remember things, especially the real heavy stuff–my stark depressive episodes, the lifelong stretches of loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. She’ll object and assure me how loved I was and tell me about all the friends I had and how happy and creative I was. She considers my memories and stories as indictments of her parenting. “I just wish you’d say something nice about me sometimes.” 

And she’s right–what I write here is very one-sided. But I’m coming to terms with my family history and figuring out the appropriate way to move forward. What are the right words, though? How do I tell a story from the past in its proper context?

As I watched this tape, with all of us so happy, I felt like a fraud. Where was this “trauma” I’d been so hindered and heartbroken by? I’ve spent a large part of my recovery feeling like a fraud: my drug and alcohol use wasn’t dangerous enough, and my consequences weren’t severe enough.

And Al-Anon, especially, has made me feel unqualified so many times because my parents weren’t the classic chaotic booze bags other people grew up with. I know plenty of people who had it much worse than I did, and some of them turned out okay, and most of them don’t have the audacity to start writing about it, let alone share it with an audience. Like, what is my damn problem, and why do I need so much clarity? Closure is a myth. Everyone knows that.

But I know this: My parents were waiting for me to become something they’d approve of, and I was waiting for them to accept me for who I was. Yet, I was the only one who moved toward the middle. I believed them when they said I needed something to fall back on or some stability in my professional life. I believed them when they said they’d be much happier if I moved home and married someone who dazzled them. If they approved of me, I’d feel better about myself. My life would become manageable. I’d find some peace, or at least they would. That was such a terrible plan. And I was in so much pain.

The camera caught none of that, though. It was just us. We were happy to be there, alive, with all the other ghosts.