Rob Goldberg

Struggling to think of an apt high-school yearbook quote, I suggested Waylon Jennings’, “I’ve been a long-time leaving but I’ll be a long-time gone,” but my mother instead convinced me to use Dickens’, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”  At the time I said something like, “I guess that’s a better quote, Mom” and went on my way.  Now in the hindsight of 28 years of experience, my eyes involuntarily fill with tears every time I revisit this moment.  That one word “worst” covers a lot of ground.

In his late 60s, my father suddenly decided to stop drinking after having consumed obscene amounts of hard liquor on a daily basis for the previous 30 years or so. In short, he had been a hard-core alcoholic, although none of us in the family connected with that fact. As is usual in such situations, my mother went along for the ride. Looking back it was pretty obvious what was going on – the constant supply of jumbo jug-sized wine and booze bottles, my mom tripping coming out of the state store and breaking her ankle, the constant, general state of disinhibition and confusion.

People whose parents weren’t alcoholics, lucky folks, sometimes ask, “What was it like for you?” I usually answer that I have several “screen” memories of my early childhood, most of which focus on blissfully happy times contrasted with sudden outbursts of extreme violence perpetrated by my father.

Anne Dalke

1. Daybreak

On the night before Easter, 1981--late, too late--I got a phone call. My younger brother Chip had been in a car accident. He was not conscious. The next call came early Easter morning. He was not responsive. I called again. The nurse, who knew me from home, said, "Anne, I don't think he's going to make it."

I went to my husband, who was caring for our daughter. Standing beside her changing table, looking out the window--this was a West Philadelphia row house, we could not look far out--looking at her, not looking at him, I whispered, "I'm afraid he's going to die." Jeff said, "He can't die. He won't die." He said this with certainty, and I took comfort from his assurance. So when I got the next call, I couldn't understand what I was hearing. I asked, dumbly, "Is he DEAD?" My mother, dully: "Oh, yes. He is dead."

This is (certainly one reason) why I teach the way I do—because once I was comforted by that which was not true, by a comfort that turned out to be no comfort at all. "He can't die." Oh, yes he could. I think that, in my teaching, I refuse such false comfort, am impelled by the hope that I will not be surprised again, by facts I do not have. (Or: facts I have, but am not willing to face. Facts others have, but will not speak. Chip was dead when I spoke with the nurse. But she did not think she should be the one to tell me.)