Living in the Heartland

Pam Age Six

January 29, 2010

I was raised in a fairly homogeneous suburb in New York by parents who bestowed upon me little religious, ethnic, cultural, or family identity. Counter intuitively, I developed a fascination for and an envy of people who have strong family and ethnic ties. This is both ironic and instructive. My parents in a number of ways embody the divide that exists in this country in regards to immigrants and minorities. My mother was intolerant of people whose appearance and manners did not fit within her limited constructs of acceptability; my father evaluated people by their character and moral behavior.

Birth order, and the 17 and 15 years in age that separated my siblings from me, contributed to my limited conceptualization of family. My brother and sister were grown and out of the house before I was much more than a toddler. My parents, maybe because they were forty years old when I was born, became increasingly less engaged in my life as I became a teenager. Feelings of isolation and my disconnectedness from family grew as I got older. By the time I was married and had children, geographic and emotional distance had forced me to develop self-sufficiency. Fortunately, my husband’s family provided me with a different model; theirs was a supportive family anchored by a hardworking, devoted matriarch.

I don’t know if my family consciously set about burying our ethnic and cultural heritage, nor can I identify when the cover-up began. It may have been when my forebears first immigrated to the United States. Like many immigrants they may have chosen to divest themselves of their traditions in the belief that they had more to gain from assimilation then in maintaining ties with the past. My parents continued this practice and even went so far as to change their surname.

My mother was content to live within the confines of her Eurocentric, socio-economically privileged world. My father, however, stepped beyond its boundaries in 1942 when he enlisted in the Armed Forces. At the age of twenty-seven, with a wife, two young children, and a nice home in the suburbs, my father convinced my mother to sign the papers necessary for him to fulfill what he felt was his patriotic obligation to participate in World War II. That action in itself was not unusual for the time. Many other men harbored similar patriotic feelings. What set my father apart was his willingness to accept duty that others might have found distasteful. He became an officer in the Army’s 442^nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit composed predominantly of Japanese-Americans. Most of the members of the 442^nd were Nisei (second-generation) who had been categorized by the United States government after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 as enemy aliens and deemed undraftable. Less than a year later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that allowed the Nisei to serve as soldiers, though many of their families were subjected to forced internment.

Throughout his life my father said these were the bravest group of soldiers he’d ever had the honor of knowing. He remained in contact with some of his men until his death, and he helped to leave a lasting legacy for them by acting as a benefactor of the Go for Broke monument. The monument dedicated in 1999 in an area of Los Angeles known as Little Tokyo commemorates the heroic role the 442^nd segregated units played during World War II.

As a devoted daughter and as a writer, I have experienced since 2001 (my father died in August and we all know what happened in September) an increasing desire to be involved in the dialogue about intolerance. While I never had the chance to meet my father’s troops, I am certain that his stories and respect for these men and their families lie at the heart of my new book. However, I selected to write about women. This is because the female perspective is the one I know best. Women are the literal and figurative protectors of family, and have fulfilled these obligations long before church and state legislated their own roles. I also admit a more selfish reason for wanting to research Living in the Heartland: Three Extraordinary Women’s Stories. I sought guidance from the women I interviewed. I hoped that through them I could reconnect with my own heritage and family, and in doing so breathe life into my own stagnant family tree.

January 30, 2010

I was raised in essence as an only child.  My sister got married and left home before I was two, and my brother was soon off to college.  I had no playmates at home and few relatives besides my parents and siblings with whom to interact. My mother was an only child. My maternal grandmother was the only grandparent I ever knew. I also was aware of an uncle and aunt – my father’s siblings. My father’s sister was the only relative who seemed interested in promoting family. She did this by writing an occasional family newsletter. Her letters were, for the most part, under appreciated.  The manually-typed letters contained the names of many people I’d never met or rarely heard mentioned. Ironically, this maidenly aunt connected me only to the living; she did little to preserve the past. She shared little about her childhood, and the only family photographs I ever saw displayed in her apartment were those of her parents. I didn’t recognize how disconnected or neglected I was as a child until I became an adult. I don’t think anyone besides my husband understood this situation until after my mother died in 2008. Everyone assumed I’d enjoyed all the attention and benefits of an only child.

February 2, 2010

Maybe the story that best portrays what my life was like growing up occurred when I was about ten years old. That summer my parents sent me to sleep away camp. My mother thought  it would be a good idea for me to attend a six weeks session. Six weeks was a long time considering I’d never been away from home.  I had attended a day camp for many years prior to being sent away. I loved Beaver Day Camp and hoped someday to be a counselor there. I can’t think of any reason why I would have asked  for a change. I certainly wasn’t a rebellious child.  I can only think that my exile to Maine was really for the benefit of Mother. Her social calendar was full during the summer season. Whatever the reason for my going, I was sent. I was not happy at camp. I made that point painfully clear when my parents visited me during Parents’ Weekend. They condescended to take me home. My mother and father returned to the hotel to gather their things. When they returned my parents discovered I had been deposited at the edge of  the camp’s property. I still have a strong image of me seated on my trunk alone in the woods.  I’m not haunted by this or other such experiences. They, however, have accumulated over the years, and became the basis for an odd relationship with my mother. One I had for a long time assumed was a natural mother-daughter relationship. As a result of these experiences I learned to be fairly self-reliant.  Initially, I didn’t want to be on my own, but eventually that was the path down which my life has most often steered.

February 4, 2010

I have done no formal research to back up this supposition, yet I believe that children who are raised as only children are probably more likely to be creative. My eldest son, who is six years older than his brother, from an early age engaged in a lot of make-believe play. I wonder if this behavior wasn’t driven by the absence of someone with whom he could engage in age-appropria
te flights of fancy. Maybe it’s merely a reflection of some genetic predisposition. I don’t remember any of my early imaginings. Certainly, no one has related stories. This is not surprising since there were few people around to pay much attention to what I was doing. My first recollection of a creative thought dates back to when I would have been in middle school. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if someone could invent a machine to record dreams. I envisioned some sort of cap that would be placed on a person’s head while they were asleep. There would be wires that led from the cap to a device which translated thoughts into words on paper. I wanted such an invention to preserve some of  the stories I told myself as I fell asleep or as I dreamed. I’d wake up in the morning thinking my night time musings had been great stories which would have become a great book or movie if they hadn’t evaporated when I awoke.

February 10, 2010

I don’t remember ever saying when I was young that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Like many pre- and early teenage girls of my generation I kept a diary. I attempted to make an entry everyday, but  I wasn’t very disciplined. I wasn’t much of a reader either. I placed a very low value on any present which turned out to be a book. My two biggest passions as a teenager were watching the four o’clock movies on television and BOYS. I’d have gladly traded the old movies for a boyfriend. Funny, I used to think I wasn’t popular. Looking back, I remember there were several boys who went to great lengths on my behalf. One boy rode his bike quite a few miles to visit me. The most remarkable effort was undertaken by a teenager who drove me 200 miles so I could find another guy I had a crush on! The young man I went searching for eventually became my husband. So there was a payoff for the effort, it just wasn’t awarded to the guy who made the effort. I must have had a deep hole of self-esteem not to recognize that others found me desirable. I wonder if I’d have admitted my value if  an effort of storybook proportion had been undertaken in order to win my attention?

When I applied to college there was no reason why I couldn’t have pursued a career as a writer. It, however, never crossed my mind.  I declared myself a psychology major. My reasoning: I was good at counseling others, so why not become a psychologist.

February 16, 2010

My freshman year of college presented me with many hands-on experiences. One of my psychology classes had a laboratory component where we used a Skinner Box. Skinner, as I remember, was the father of operant training (I’m impressed that I remember this phrase though I’m not sure I could give a good definition). B.F. Skinner, according to Wikipedia, invented this box to measure responses of organisms, most often rats and pigeons. Skinner wanted to observe his subjects orderly interactions with the environment. Basically, the rats had to push a lever to get a treat. I can no longer recall what I was supposed to test, but I liked working with the animals.  I also was expected to design my own experiment. My lab partner and I decided we’d buy some mice at Woolworth’s. These mice had been housed together at the store. Our experimental plan was to separate  the two males for a few days, then put them together to see what happened. I have NO IDEA what we were thinking, clearly we weren’t doing much, because we kept the little guys separated in shoe boxes. These were cardboard shoe boxes. It wasn’t long before the mice chewed their way out of their containers which caused a minor panic in my dormitory. It was from these and more natural encounters that I developed a fascination for animal behavior – both human and animal. The animals, however, were easier to deal with, so I decided to work toward a degree in animal behavior.

Life is full of ironies. That I became interested in animals is amazing as I had little chance to interact with animals as a child.  I had few pets.  A few fish, a turtle, that’s the extent of the menagerie that I was allowed to have growing up. I didn’t have a dog until I was nearly 13 years old. For years, my mother and I were at odds about me having a dog. In the end, Mother used the promise of a dog to make me stay at camp. That was the second year I was sent away to summer camp. Clearly, my Mother found the rewards of having me away far greater than the challenges of keeping me there.  The promise of a dog worked. I stayed at camp for the entire six  week  session.  The dog I got, and how I got him, is a story in itself . Another story is that my parents sent me away to camp for a third summer.

February 25, 2010

The summer before I started college, I went to an animal shelter and adopted a dog. It was a challenge caring for Moses, because dogs weren’t allowed in the dormitory. Fortunately, I had a boyfriend who kept the dog most of the time, although his roommates weren’t too happy about it. When my boyfriend came for a visit the dog came too. Moses, I can say without hesitation, caused much less of a fuss in the dorm than the mice.

Our backstairs shenanigans with the dog didn’t go on long. The college discovered it had miscalculated its residential population. The school realized there was a shortage of dorm rooms. The administration’s solution was to make use of a dilapidated building off campus for overflow housing. Students had to apply for residency through a lottery. The off-campus living situation would have been any parents’ nightmare. It was a gift to those of us who wanted more freedom. With no authoritative supervision on the premises, students had no qualms about taking advantage of the circumstances. It was the Wild West where most anything could happen. Indeed, on one occasion two residents reenacted High Noon in the long corridors of what had been a turn-of- the-century hospital. At the designated time the two young men, one of whom had added spurs to his boots, paced methodically away from one another. When they counted out the agreed upon number of steps, they turned and fired. Flaming red balls and smoke filled the hallway as they ignited their Roman candle weapons and fired in the direction of each other. Everyone in attendance rejoiced in the moment.

Us young ‘uns felt free. I underscore the word felt. There is a difference between the notion of feeling free and the actual state of being. One afternoon the two collided when a deer appeared in the parking lot of the dorm. When the residents’ pets caught sight of the animal, they took off in pursuit. The dogs eventually came back. Later we heard on the radio that a deer had crashed through the window of a downtown store. The dogs were never mentioned.  So, the wild animal was trapped, while the pets got off free.

Moses wandered off several times during the ten years we were together. More often than not I went looking for him. Once he ended up in doggie jail. He was a good dog and my best friend. And, on one occasion he showed how much he valued our friendship. He appeared with a dollar bill in his mouth!

…more later…