The Norman Rockwell Life

In The Blind Side, there is a scene where Michael Oher looks at the Norman Rockwell painting "Freedom Frrom Want". It shows a family seated at a Thanksgiving table, a woman presenting a large turkey to the eager group. Instead of watching football on sofas as his adoptive family does, he sits alone at the dining table, and they join him. I identify strongly with that scene.

I wanted a Norman Rockwell life.

We had four for Thanksgiving every year until my father died, and then it was three. No relatives, no friends, no neighbors. My mother did not start the cooking until about eight in the morning, not her best hour. The cooking was accompanied by shouts, worried looks, tears, and curses. On the other end emerged a roasted turkey, stuffing, instant mashed potatoes, French's gravy, and her apple pie (the best part- it was dark brown with cinammon, and it remains the standard against which all other apple pies have failed all my life). 

My father was so uremic he had urate crystal deposition udner his skin, sort of like having gout everywhere at once. He was in so much pain that every day he took Darvon and Demerol (synthetic opioids) and stripped to his underwear the moment he came home. One of my abiding images of my father is of him this way. He ate Thanksgiving dinner in his underwear.

The house was perpetually a wreck. Mail and papers scattered everywhere, overflowing ashtrays, dusty furniture, forgotten science project items in the refrigerator, the freezer frozen almost solid until defrosted amid hot water and cursing, soap scum. A maelstrom of pain, shouting, disorder, and sickness. 

Not a Norman Rockwell life.

I wanted what our neighbors had- a spotless home, a grand piano, manners (even though their dad drank a lot of beer and yelled when he did). I wanted the homes of my friends. One was a 10,000 square foot house with a cook, live-in housekeeper, and nanny for the children. As you can imagine, it was spotless. I wanted our housekeeper Ethel, with her incredibly kind face and cry of 'come and get yo' doggies, Teddy!'

Unsurprisingly, I value order, cleanliness, silence, and respectful conversation, to the point of Zen, monk sparseness. My wife injected a great deal of humanity into my life- decorative pillows, herbal teas, stylish clothing, candles, background music. But it was her family that gave me one of the very most memorable days of my life. It was Thanksgiving, 1988, my first one I had with her parents. I met her cousins (3), her siblings (3 more), their spouses (3 more), their children (4 at the time), her maternal aunt, her paternal uncle and his wife, and several other relatives. In all, 29 people sat down to dinner that day, in the dining room but also at card tables in the living room. We were at 'the kids' table', so named because the adults then sitting at it had been children when it was named.

That day, Norman Rockwell's painting came to life. There was all manner of family stories, and none of them involved underwear, foul language, or disorder. There was ample good-natured recollection of personal foibles. There were, as I recall, 5 desserts, two different stuffings, turkey and ham. There was a senior man (her father) at the head of the table, and a senior woman (her mother) at the foot. 

That one day, my dream of living a Norman Rockwell life came true.

I've tried to live that kind of life. It is a whole life sadness that I am not suited to it. I wanted to dress in the clothing of Main Line WASPS, only to find out that instead of a long, slender build, I have the body of a Greco-Roman wrestler- barrel chest, short legs, thick arms and legs. I look best in double-breasted suits. When younger, I looked like a Mafioso, just as my father did when young. My hair was wavy and dark instead of fine and blonde, my arms and legs covered in dark, curling hair, my beard shadow visible across football fields.

My personality isn't well-suited, either. I have few restraints on conversational topics. I love talking about sex, religion, politics, philosophy. All the things Norman Rockwell people never say. I am loud, emotive, easy to laugh and easy to tears, completely out of step with the buttoned-up people of WASP extraction, at least as I knew them.

My life has reflected the emotional riot of my upbringing and of my personality. Two divorces, many relationships, not all 'proper', a career in segments, such that we have lived in seven homes, not counting brief rentals or our first apartment, in 34 years. Military officers do better.

I raised my children with no required church attendance after confirmation, forgetting that their schools did not give them the religious and philosophical grounding I had from my school. I was very intellectually permissive while insisting on respectful behavior. We've shared about half our Thanksgivings with my wife's family, and had friends and neighbors over for others. I think we've made as good and welcoming a home as anyone I know.

But a Norman Rockwell life has eluded me, even on the terms of my own body and emotions.

After most holidays I have been consumed with guilt over my ongoing failure to be as kind, calm, or loving as a Norman Rockwell painting should be. I've tried, Oh how I've tried, and it doesn't seem to be in me. I am forced to acknowledge that I ssem to be incapable of that kind of calm, happy, multi-generational life. After all, I am the oppositional son of an oppositional father and grandfather. My grandfather eloped at age 23, my father quarreled violently with my grandfather, leaving Greece for America, and they hardly spoke a civil word again. My father chased me out of the house in an argument when I was 12, and we didn't speak for a week. Who knows what would have happened had he lived, but I doubt it would have been peaceful.

And now that history has been visited upon me as a father. My son has yelled at me several times over the last three years. I tolerate this very poorly, and it has placed an increasing strain upon us, upon me. That most recent episode was this past Christmas, the worst Christmas since I was 18 years old. Neither of my children has called, texted, or emailed me since then. This is, predictably, hurtful, but there is also a non-trivial aprt of me that has had far more than enough of being chastised, silenced, and insulted by my children. If they don't want to talk it at least spares me those experiences.

I wish I could have been a Norman Rockwell father, the kind of man who is always wise, calm, helpful, and does yardwork and home repairs. Instead I'm a moody, emotional, touchy, intellectually and spiritually abstracted man.

I will never have a Norman Rockwell life, and that is the most bitter accompaniment to my aging.

Ted