A fallen Christmas Tree

Stories My Mom Never Told

No stone to fell Goliaths.

But no escape, my darling, No turning place to hide.

I offer you no amulet,

These mortal hands protect you

Only as my shadow halts the moving sun. Believe the trust you give, I will not betray you. A shadow is a shield.

-Berna Deane South from “For Trey”

My mother wrote the poem the above stanza is taken from years ago, when I was a kid. She told me when, but I don’t remember exactly. “Trey” is my family nickname.

When I read her poem now, I imagine her as a young mother and poet sitting down at the kitchen table after everybody in the house is finally asleep, and trying to work through the frustration and fear of raising the mysteriously difficult child I was. This last summer, I also found a letter to Dr. Spock from that time folded up in a picture album. In it, she desperately pleads for some answer, some way to wrangle their daydreaming, unfocused, and willful son. She was hoping for at least a hint of how to help Trey get through childhood and adolescence without her and my dad going completely crazy in the process. As I was finishing fifth grade, I think my father was becoming more concerned with the damage I might inflict on the rest of the world.

I went to elementary school in Villa Park, a working class suburb of Chicago in the 1950s. Nobody knew what ADHD was. The term didn’t exist. But everybody knew what a JD was, a juvenile delinquent, the buzzword for unruly teens. It was biggest threat to the young and society at large, after polio. But when we got the sugar cube with the Salk vaccine, the JD threat shot to the top of the charts.

We younger kids were constantly warned by teachers, scoutmasters, and policemen that it’d be better to be dead than to turn into one of those sneering, gum-chewing punks on the corner cleaning their fingernails with their switchblades. But look back at Rebel without a Cause now. James Dean’s got all the ADHD symptoms , especially in that over-the-top, rambling speech to his dad, Jim Backus. Nobody to this day knows what James Dean was screaming about. And Sal Mineo is just a complete unfocused mess. Everybody in that movie could have used some goal-oriented therapy, ADHD meds, and hand-fidgets that weren’t as pointy and lethal as the switchblades. The exception was Natalie Wood; she was the normal one who tried to keep everybody together, but she was in way over her head.

And that brings me back to my mom. I was in no danger of becoming a JD no matter how much I’d have liked to. I was a doofus ten-year-old with thick glasses and a tendency to breathe through my mouth and walk into things. Dad was gone at the university lab in Chicago all day during the week, and he worked at home a lot on the weekends.

So it was primarily Mom who dealt with things. Like a cop who brought me home completely covered in mud after he’d saved me from drowning in a deep, fenced-off slough surrounded by warning signs at a construction site where I was playing. Or the other cop who showed up at our front door after he saw me running away from a brush fire I’d accidentally started by the community center and he put out with some help from some firemen. Or the expensive bicycle I borrowed from a friend and then turned around and loaned to a stranger who promptly stole it. Or walking out of the classroom for recess and erasing the lesson the teacher had just finished putting on the board, and then telling the teacher I was acting out because my mean Grandma was visiting — but my Grandma wasn’t mean, I liked her a lot, and she wasn’t visiting, which my teacher found out when she called my mother.

I explained every time that I didn’t know how whatever happened ended up happening. I didn’t mean to say or do whatever it was. I just wasn’t paying attention. I could see the frustration and concern in her eyes. But she never lost it with me. She stayed as calm as she could, let me know about whatever consequences I had to face, and still left no doubt that she and dad loved me no matter what inexplicable thing I did next.

This amazes me to this day. My kids have ADHD. They have their challenges and sometimes act out, but they are dyed in the wool saints in comparison to me at any comparable age of their lives.

Back in the fifties and sixties, there wasn’t any of the understanding and help available to parents of kids like me that we have now. But when I look back at my childhood, I remember the main thing that my parents provided for me and my brother that got us into adulthood in one piece: unquestioning, constant love that doesn’t go away, no matter what. Then or now, or in the future, I think it’s always the main ingredient for any kid to succeed on their own terms, or any adult, for that matter.

Not to say that parents, spouses, and friends of kids like me should never give voice to their frustrations. Sometimes it’s necessary for your own survival, if nothing else. My favorite reaction from my father came on a Saturday about a month after I’d been drummed out of Boy Scouts for stealing from another Scout and lying to everybody about it for weeks. He looks out the window and sees me across the street playing with matches and accidentally starting yet another fire and then panicking and running off. After running across the street and stomping it out, he tracks me down, drags me home, and on our front lawn, howls, “My god, you’re a thief, you’re an arsonist, what’s next? Murder?”

That made an impression. At ten years old, I honestly felt sorry for my mom and dad. So I promised I’d try harder to change my behavior, and to pay attention. And I did. I tried.

* * * *

The clear glass angel shines and sparkles. It’s in the perfect place, with a blue light right behind it. It’s not hanging straight though. It’s caught up on a lower branch of the Christmas tree. If it was hanging free it would look a lot better, more like an angel is supposed to look. I can’t reach it yet. If I scoot back under and get back behind the tree I can fix it. Just a little farther, I’ve got it, but I need to break that little piece of the lower branch off I think – almost got it, if I get up on my knees… And then it’s moving away from me, the whole tree is moving away, falling, oh no… with a whoosh and a crash, the family Christmas tree falls to the living room floor. The water from the stand spreads on the rug, soaking through the wrapping on the presents.

My mom and dad rush in from the kitchen to find me standing over the lovingly decorated family tree like a seven-year-old Paul Bunyan. A blubbering, wailing Paul Bunyan terrified that he’s going to be punished horribly. His presents thrown into a pile and burned in the front yard, and he’d throw himself on top, a Christmas funeral pyre. This Paul Bunyan has an over-dramatic and morbid imagination.

“What happened? Are you all right?” My parents hug me, and tell me not to worry about it, accidents happen, “but what were you doing behind the tree?”

I try to explain, but being me, I get side-tracked into the soaked wrapping falling off the bottom of the presents and getting a peek at what’s hidden, and besides they’d never understand about the angel. I’m a normal, curious kid, maybe a little strange; but hey, lesson learned right? You would think.

Next year, on Christmas Eve, I’m scooting under the tree to drape tinsel behind the crèche scene so it’d look like icicles hanging over the barn to make it more dramatic for baby Jesus and maybe pull the one tree light down to be the star… whoosh, crash the tree goes over. This time Paul Bunyan doesn’t get much sympathy at all – my dad’s face is flushed with bottled up fury, “For God’s sake stay out from behind the Christmas Tree!” No front-yard funeral pyre, but the look he gives me is scary.

Now that should finally burn the connection between action and consequences into my brain for the rest of my life. That assumes that I will sometime before I die ever give a shit about consequences.

The next year, I’m nine, old enough to understand the value of message repetition in advertising, politics, and family dynamics. Since Halloween I’ve been working the whole family with my mature young gentleman act. There is no need to worry about the coming Yuletide; all the holiday decorations will remain upright and intact. This is my guarantee. And please, let me help you with that. After weeks of this over breakfasts, dinners and weekends my parents finally buckle and assure me that this coming year’s gift-giving, in quantity or quality will not be affected by the last two years’ tree incidents.

But as soon as my dad lugs the twine bound tree through the front door my good-hearted, liberal, understanding parents go Twilight Zone and turn into cold-eyed, flat voiced aliens.

They sit me down on a dining room chair and warn me that no tree tipping will be tolerated at all this year. No excuses no bullshit, this is serious. Great Aunt Jean will be visiting from New York. Tree falls, you die. My five year old little brother, Rob is deeply delighted that I’m not allowed anywhere near the back, or even the side, or within a foot of the front of the tree after decorating.

I’m only to decorate the front. Eye-level only. We’re not fooling around here. This year the tree stays standing up until it’s time to toss its tinsel-covered carcass in the gutter after New Year’s Eve. The day after Christmas, Dad’s upstairs at his desk, Great Aunt Jean is taking a nap and Mom is in the kitchen with Rob. I am in the living room, alone with the tree.

For days now I’ve been aching with the knowledge that I have to make one little adjustment. The red and gold antique Santa ornament should be higher and closer to the window. It just has to be that way; otherwise the whole display is out of balance. I’m the only one that sees this, so I’m the only one who can fix it. So damn the torpedoes, I move it, very carefully. I stand back and everything looks one hundred percent better. I wonder if Mom and Dad will notice when they come in. But then antique Santa slips from his branch. I dash over try to grab him before he breaks and my foot slips on the tree skirt. Over it goes. I don’t remember exactly what my parents did or what consequences I suffered. My memory is blank after Great Aunt Jean’s crystal angel tree-topper shattered against the wall. I think that year I was lucky to get out alive.

I don’t know if this is symptomatic of any disorder, but sometimes, it’s like my alarm system for even the most important relationship, career, or life-saving warnings can be completely ignored and overridden by the smallest impulse. Don’t go behind the tree. Got it. I won’t, I promise. Really. Yes, I know I promised, but the tinsel…

These incidents crossed my mind last night as my wife and I once again try to talk to my 21-year-old ADHD son about buying Christmas presents for others this year before spending what little money he has on other stuff. He says he’ll get the presents if he has enough money left after he gets the “other stuff.” Around and around we go, until finally he seems to understand and promises to get presents, just small tokens even, for other people before the other stuff.

That’s when I hear, “For God’s sake stay out from behind the Christmas tree,” echoing in my head. We’ll keep reminding him, and maybe this year or the next the alarm in his head won’t get overridden by impulse at Game Stop. I decide not to count on it. The tree looks good.

Frank’s book A Chicken in the Wind and How He Grew is available on Amazon.