The Night Song

My mom is sleeping, it is nighttime…I am not quite 4 years old…when I come to visit her, we sleep in the same bed…I usually stay for 2 or 3 days, nothing more…she is my buddy, we do stuff together like play games and watch T.V., or go to get chocolate milkshakes called “Monster” shakes cause they are so ridiculously large (Frankenstein’s picture is on the side---64 oz of chocolate!)…my mom is very pretty, not model type beauty but more like an actress (think drama)…at this point she is only around 23…she lives alone in a sparsely decorated, converted garage apartment…she is out soundly, but I cannot pass out…I know I am supposed to go to sleep, but I toss and turn gently, trying not to wake her…I decide that I am going to try an experiment and stay up all night…I creep out of bed and go out in the living room to sit on the couch…I can’t turn on the light because I’m sure it will wake her…so I just sit for hours and hours in the dark, the streetlight coming in casting long angled shadows on the carpet…I get bored after awhile, so I get up and go to the back window to look for the moon…all sorts of crazy thoughts run thru my head as my fatigue takes on an intoxicating effect…I am getting real sleepy now , but am determined to see my experiment thru…it is so quiet that I am sure my mother will wake up with every floorboard creak, but she doesn’t…I turn on the television with the sound down and stare at the wordless pictures…the only sound the buzz of the T.V. tube…I fight the waves of sleep off…it becomes really important for me to stay awake, to prove this I can make it till the morn…after what seems like forever, the first rays of the morning sun starts to rise…I am almost there I figure, but don’t realize that it is still very early…time freezes, and I feel panicked by the stillness and the roar of silence and hum in a modern home…afraid my mother will discover me sitting in the living room, I climb cautiously back into her bed…I really want to pass out, but my heart is pounding so loud in my ears, and I have almost made it…I close my eyes, pretending to be asleep, waiting patiently for my mother to wake up…this becomes the line of accomplishment: if I can just make it until she opens her eyes and wakes me up! Finally, after this eternity, my mom climbs out of bed and goes into the bathroom…I have made it…

During this time, I am passed back and forth gently between grandmothers…a week here with one, another here with the other…both my grandmothers essentially live alone, my paternal grandfather having died long before I was born, and my maternal grandfather a decorated war hero and now chronic alcoholic whom my grandma divorced back when you didn’t do that sort of thing (he is alive, but lives with his mother, my great-grandmother)…my grandmother Lillian (my father’s mother) holds the Irish/English/Scottish blood, and it shows in her natural prettiness even at 50 …she is a very warm, talkative, and supportive woman who is not a complainer and cuts a small, stoic presence wherever she goes…she was born in Kentucky, and carries an innate southern charm…she unfortunately has a mean, spiteful boyfriend, who is not friendly to me at all, and whenever he is around I am afraid to even speak…he does not live with my grandma, he only “visits”…she also has a mean black cat named ‘Smoky”, so spending time with her is great except for the dark alliance of the boyfriend and the cat…my other grandma, Grandma Connie as she is known (my mother’s mother) lives in a house she owns, with her sister (my aunt), her daughter and husband, and her brother (my uncle) living in a cramped attic apartment upstairs…she is the Italian/Sicilian blood, with dark purple around her eyes, olive skin, and black, wiry hair… Grandma Connie spoils me to death, and is the person I trust most in the world…wherever I end up staying, I feel comfortable, and I keep busy by coloring and playing in my imaginary world by making up elaborate stories and reading adult books of daring adventure (I had started reading at the tender age of 2 1?2)…Grandma Lillian works in a corporate office, so there is always plenty of paper to draw on (always blank on one side with all sorts of with company data on the other---one day I even create a paper guitar---I draw the body and strings over the many sheets, adding a long cord and taping the pieces together so the entire operation was about 15 feet …I made my grandmother take me outside in the brisk Chicago wind so I could ‘play’ and do a concert---shades of ideas to come!)…I don’t have any friends because I don’t know anyone in the neighborhoods where my grandmas live, plus I am far too little to be off on my own anyway…I take great pride in my good behavior, and am constantly lavished with praise by both grandmas for being so well-mannered, helpful, and smart…(Grandma Lillian still tells a story about us being in a toy store, and her telling me I could go pick out any toy I wanted---after about 10 minutes, she found me and asked had I made up my mind---I said that I had, but that I didn’t want the toy---when she asked why, I told her it was because it was too expensive)…

Possibly because of work schedules or the pressures of taking care of a child full time, it was soon decided that I should now go to live on a more permanent basis with my great-grandmother and her son, my grandfather Henry (who was my mom’s father---to this day, I do not know my great-grandmothers name, and I ashamed of that---no one else in my family remembers her name either)…living with them becomes the happiest days of my life, my 4th year on the planet…my great-grandmother, who is 80 years of age, speaks with a heavy accent, having immigrated from Belgium…she yells at her son, my grandfather in German (I think it sounds funny)…Grandpa takes me to the neighborhood saloon almost every day, usually all afternoon long…I spend my time learning how to play pool and pinball with his “friends” (mostly other veterans---this is at a time in Chicago where local taverns were more social, family places)…my days are simple, as I am not yet in school…I am allowed by my grandma to eat anything I wish, so each and every day I choose the same meal: Count Chocula cereal for breakfast, a hamburger with fries for lunch, and ravioli from a can for dinner…for lunch, we make the trek to the diner that was just behind us on the other side of the alley (an abortion clinic now stands in the spot)…this was our daily journey out into the world of strangers…we would eat, and then go right back home…

even though my grandfather was an every-day-drunk, he is always pleasant to be around…we sit afternoons together, side by side, and watch old monster movies or my favourite, old school pro wrestling!!…he and my great-grandmother fight occasionally in these massive bursts of European drama (I thought it was funny the way they would call each other‘dumkoff’)…these arguments are never ever aimed at me, or about me…I feel truly loved…it is a dream, as I am allowed to do whatever I want to do when I want to do it, almost without restriction…if I want to play, I play…if I want to sleep, no one ever says ‘not now’…I even get a chance to make some friends for the first time in my life, older kids who lived down the block…I wait anxiously each weekday, in a vacant lot with my grandma by my side, for these new friends to come home from school…I sleep each night alongside my great-grandmother…life is truly magical…I don’t really miss my parents much, and they don’t seem to miss me…

I do not see or hear from my mother at all during this one year stay in paradise…nor do I hear from or see my father (unknown to me then, he is out of the country)…in fact, I have almost no contact with any of my other relatives either during this time…it is, for the most part, just the 3 of us on our own little island…

my great-grandmother’s best friend is called “Nana”, and she too is from some “old country”…these two friends look like they are straight out of the movies, with their dark shawls, strong faces, and slow, cynical gait…(they view all strangers with suspicion, and wear the blank mask of ‘I don’t see you’)…they happily feed me all sorts of home remedies for the basic childhood maladies that come up, and pull out my baby teeth with pliers (even resorting to pulling a stubborn tooth out by attaching a string to a doorknob, which was to be thrown shut---I am told to close my eyes and WHAM, out comes the bloody tooth)…in their world of omens and signs, I feel part of the adventure…I am spoken to in hushed tones like I am one of them, a member of a secret club…I am in exile, but I do not realize it, so overwhelming is the love around me…

living there, my favourite thing to do in the whole world is to watch the garage weather vane (a silver tin rooster), spin violently back and forth during a thunderstorm…my second favourite thing is to play 45rpm records in the backyard, lip-synching along with the song and making up my own dance routines…I fall madly in love with a song, “Celebrate” by the rock group Rare Earth (who are notable for being the first white act signed to Motown---I must have played that song a thousand times)…the chorus of which is, over and over, “Iiiiiii…just want to celebrate!!”…it sums up the way I feel inside exactly…as I perform, I am absolutely transported, so completely lost in the feeling of my unbridled joy…

Out of nowhere, I start to wake up in the middle of the night with my face pressed up against the ceiling…I can literally see the texture of the stucco ceiling as if it is only inches away from my face…I cannot breathe, and I start having panic attacks because I don’t know what is happening to me…terror stricken after many nights of this, I finally tell my great-grandma what is happening to me, because I trust her… she gets scared and takes me downtown to the children’s hospital to have me psychologically evaluated…(I later figured out that I was having out-of-body experiences, but I didn’t understand that then obviously)…the doctors tell her I am just stressed out, and “nervous”, and to keep a close eye on me…the months pass, and outside of these ‘attacks’, everything is wonderful, as I do not have a care in the world…