Father Fight

To my dear 'Beej' (Brittney) and Eric--My Battle in a Thumbnail

Eric--Los Angeles 1980

Eric and dad- 1980 Van Nuys: Denial Island

Beej 1985-

Beej- Christmas 1987



Dad and Eric--1988; the summer I won custody. Vacation, Ocean City, Maryland

Eric sixteen-1994

Beej-- SanFrancisco 1999 and 1985

Eric and Beej-2003

Beej and Paul- September 18, 2009

To my beautiful son Eric Michael Evans and beautiful daughter

Brittney 'Beej' June Evans Purdy-- I Love You Both with all my heart....always will.

From December 24th 2002-

Dear Kids; A couple of months ago I had a patient where I work who was an editor 'Guide Posts', a little magazine that was founded by Norman Vicent Peale the pastor from Pawling who 'The Foundation for Christian Living (FCL). I told him how Dr. Peale how he helped me and how I unexpectedly met one day. It inspired me to put the story down....it certainly doesn't tell the Whole story but gives a little picture....a thumbnail, so to speak.

In the fall of 1985 I was forced to put my kids in foster care, the same month my brother Philip lapsed into a coma on our mother’s living room floor, he died 54 hours later at the age of 33 from liver failure, due to seventeen years of a slow self-murder. I had hit the bottom ….hit the wall…all that was dear to me was gone or slipping away. Jarred eye-popping awake from the sirens of insanity, I had to find the courage to change……everything.

With my daughter Brittney (two) and my son Eric (eight) now in foster care with the state of Connecticut, I was at my wit’s end. I had no family, they had no mother….she had left for greener pastures, they barely had a father. My wit’s end became my beginning….I was determined to get my kids back…..my blame game was over, the blame game that I used so effectively for so long, the blame game that allowed me to sit and stew in my own frothy insanity of denial: “repeating the same things over and over again and expecting different results”. Blaming my father for leaving when I was five, blaming my mother for leaving my father and the years, the years of her poor choices and the walking away from such a magnificent career, blaming my father for what he could have or should have done and blaming both their fizzled careers, and all the beautiful promise, Not to mention all the blame I could lob on the “genetic” insanity; the alcoholism, the mental illness.

Now I was on the verge of leaving and losing my kids, the blame game was over, I was going to be a father, I had no real clue much less a template but I was going to be a father……… I had no idea of the battle that lay ahead, only an intense sense that it was up to me and no one else.

I was scared.

Little did I know how uncertain and tough this fight it would be, Little did I know of the trials, the tribulations that faced me; inter-state government agencies unbendable in proving my fathership, the suitable housing, psychological evaluations, the home studies, the “right job”, the “proof” of my parenting skills. A bureaucratic behemoth-like microscope to be sure, but the demons within me were the real fight….these demons were invisible, unrecognizable, unidentifiable….but identifiably imbedded in my very soul…..I was wracked with self-loathing and a self-esteem that was barely measurable.

During this shaky attempt of a comeback and it’s bright-with-hope road to fatherhood…. There were two books that became instrumental in these new uncharted waters—and now, these many years later, for the first time, I recently looked back on these two yellow, crumply paperbacks, the folded and torn dog eared pages, the underlined and highlighted passages, my scribbled notes along their paged borders, I can see, feel and remember…..the little light in this soul of mine. Although many times, barely a glimmer, it was a passionate glimmer, a glimmer of light called faith.

The first book-- “THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED”- “A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth” by M. Scott Peck ( 1978-Simon and Schuster). In it’s inside cover my friend Irene wrote, “ To Michael, Sometimes after the roads we’ve traveled, we have to look at the ‘road less traveled’. With warm regards, Irene” This book was, for me, remarkably painful to read. It cried out and screamed my truth to me….I cried while it taught me “to feel is to heal.”

I had found “the right job” in Carmel, New York just across the Connecticut state line. Now I had to find affordable and appropriate housing (three bedrooms were mandatory….one for each kid and me), I put ads in local papers, “Single dad with two small kids looking for housing….”, I canvassed local real estate offices with flyers and peppered their agents with questions. Then, one day I walked in and interrupted an agent in Pawling, New York and suddenly found the affordable and appropriate housing in a three family home. Pawling was a quaint, bucolic place (founded by the Quakers in the 1700’s). I felt comfortable there. I made small repairs, carpeted the bedrooms (with my own money), struck up a deal with the landlord for a small percentage off the rent, I’d keep the sidewalks clean and mow his little yard. Goodwill and the Salvation Army became my interior designers. I was excited and glowed with hope that maybe my prayers would be answered. But never ever anxiety free of the jabs and pokes from the demons that criticized and jeered from the bleachers of my psyche.

In Pawling, as I would drive in and out of the village I would pass a campus-like compound. On it’s gate read “The Foundation for Christian Living” (FCL). Although the word “cult” did enter my mind…it seemed like an odd but welcoming place. And besides, anything connected with faith……I would make a beeline to, especially in these very jittery times.

I discovered that F.C.L.(and Pawling) was the home of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale the well-known pastor of New York City’s Marble Collegiate Church on 29^th St and 5^th Avenue. Having grown up on the upper Westside of Manhattan I was familiar with the church and “the old guy….who ran it that seemed to have influenced a bunch of people”.

While visiting FCL’s book store, there was one book that jumped off it’s shelf with it’s pink cover and blaring title;

“Over Three Million Copies Sold” “Norman Vincent Peale” “The Greatest Inspirational Bestseller Of Our Time” “THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING”—“Read This Book & Change Your Life!”

I opened the book to it’s first chapter and read the first line; “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities!” I bought the book.

In the months leading up to my placing of the children in foster care….I would feel the simmer of my family’s demise, the craziness, the lunacy. I could sense it, know it was there, but my wife and I were left clueless time and again of how our demons had us by the ears, dragging us through this muck of madness ad infinitum. I contemplated suicide and then sit at night in the closet crying while reading the bible as hard as I could……maybe my death would save them or maybe God would save us, we needed to be saved…to be rescued. I couldn’t stand the pain and utter confusion anymore, It was the only way I could see….supernatural intervention.

I had a friend who was a self-described “born again”, a Christian …. swearing to me how Jesus had saved and changed his life, He asked me to come with him to his Pentecostal church….it would make a difference he promised. I had my doubts.

·

While living in California a few years before all this chaos, I had been to more than a few evangelical churches. I loved the music….the gospel music, Mom and Dad were both singers, fine musicians, once well known thoroughbreds at the top of their game. I myself sang, being at one time, a semi- professional singer with a strong soulful voice. I connected to the music and the power of faith. it was real to me. I loved the energy…..I loved this expression of the heart. Although I would quickly get turned off by the dogma, the judgment, the subtle and not so subtle put down of other faiths, and the “this-way-is-the-only-way!” message that would pervade.

But it didn’t matter anymore, I was desperate and ready for complete surrender. My friend promised and I took him up on it....ready for a miracle. God had to save my family, envisioning a great swirling descending cloud of supernatural intercession that would cleanse us, purify us, finally, of this chronic mayhem. Little did I know that most of the time, for most of us, it starts within….as an inside job.

It was a Palm Sunday that would lay the foundation, opening me up for the “swirling descending cloud” that would “tune me up….turn me ‘round” for that inside job. I accompanied my friend and his wife to the Pentecostal church in Connecticut to be desperately reborn.

It was a rousing and spirited service lead by an inspired pastor who would thrust the crowd to it’s feet during his sermons. At the end of the sermon, as the music would softly sift and resonate through the congregation, scores of parishioners would have arms raised, many with tears streaming, outstretched arms with palms waving and pushing to the sky as if ready to levitate towards God’s pulsing beacon of Love…it was very real that morning….the air vibrated with the Energy of the Spirit….this pure power of Faith was bona fide and self-evident.

After many minutes of this tender and magical expression, the pastor asked all who were ready to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior to come down to the podium to be saved and put right. With eyes wet, I went down with about thirty others to be released and delivered.

With his new expectant flock tightly packed against the platform, our heads followed his every effusive and pacing move. Amid arms flailing and neck veins bulging, he admonished the Satan in our hearts, I could feel the steam from his words, We all felt it, how could anybody not, this rising volcanic rumble of consecration.

Preacher man suddenly whipped around, both hands and fingers wagging, thrusting them all in my direction, seemed to look me straight in the eye and growled, “Who over here has been thinking of suicide?”

Well, that’s all it took….I broke down, buckled and collapsed to the floor weeping….not just tear duct weeping but all duct weeping……nasal slop, tear slop, balling like a newborn.

He asked the flock to lay their hands on me, asked the congregation to pray as the choir began to sing “Amazing Grace”. Sounds like a movie? This is what happened, I wept and I wept….I thanked God, I felt Jesus, I felt “born again.” Little did I know how I was saved, just then, for that “inside job” down the line.

It was the fall of 1986 in Pawling and as I was diving head first in preparation of my new child-friendly home with hope, love and “The Joy of Cooking,” I was also diving feet first into the new job, “the right job”…..the right job? I was selling cars. I never sold a sack of tomatoes much –less an automobile… I was terrified. I would stand in the middle of the show room floor in my new tie and get-up… with wave after wave of overwhelm crashing against my lungs…”what am I doing here?”….I really was terrified!. I was much more comfortable in “menial” jobs; driving taxi’s and collecting rents for skeevy apartment buildings, nursing home/hospital orderly, cable TV guy…etc. I never graduated high school, college was another planet…..I was thirty five and a recently retired blame game pro.

I looked pretty good and spoke pretty good….I liked people…so I guess when you put these three things in a tie and jacket….you sell cars. Guess it was the right job at the right time! Although it took awhile to figure out the calculator….I did all right. All through-out though my dark ever-so-familiar friends of fear, shame and self-loathing… would lie in wait, persistently nipping at my loafers. And then to be sure that I was still vulnerable and not to far from their virulent grip, I would more often than not take a head-on assault by these wretched little fellows….necessitating a sudden jog to a far end lot of used cars for a prayer and a breath. I ran scared on many fronts; single father-ship…alone father-ship; no auntie Beatties, cousin Bobs or uncle Franks….zip, I was alone. The State of Connecticut wouldn’t let me forget it either, several times they’d suggest adoption because there was “no one else.”

The State had me fighting scared, while Dr. Peale was showing me where there was a will ….God’s will… and a faith…there was a way. “The Power of Positive Thinking” with Dr. Peale rode and walked with me everywhere, sat in my desk top drawer, accompanied me to the bathroom and on a sunny hillside afternoon. The book was a daily source of strength, helped to teach me prayer, trust, attitude, faith and perspective; “Sometimes Heaven is just a new pair of spectacles”.

After a Chinese dinner during this time, I opened my cookie…the little slip said “God helps those that help themselves”, that little slip floated ‘round my wallet for a long time. Peale’s message in cookie.

Recently, on one very yellow and crumply page (120), I found a prayer that I had highlighted (among many lines) and utilized countless times; “I believe I am always divinely guided, I believe I will always make a way where there is no way.” Amen. I also got to know Dr. Peale through his “prayer-line”…..a local Pawling number that I would call andto listen to his two minute recorded voice expounding daily prayer and affirmation, I’d sit down with my morning coffee, close my eyes. He’d speak directly to me in his warm gravely way, energizing me with strength and hope for the day.

My kids were in a foster home together (thankfully) in central Connecticut about an hour and a half from Pawling one way. As part of the State’s requirements to set up the legal return of my kids….I needed to do and prove a “few” things; actually there were many hoops big and small, high and low…..they’d say jump….and I, like Pavlov’s dog, learned to say “how high?” I painfully got the drift….keeping my eye on the (bouncing) ball.

It was a maddening slow, frustrating process. For many, many months I would drive to Connecticut, pick the kids up on a Friday and would need to have them back by Sunday at five. Three hour round trip, twice a weekend. It got cut back for a time (three months) to only five hours on Sunday when they found out that I rented a movie that was rated “R” for Eric and I to watch….he was nine, innocently told his foster mother the name of the movie and she told the state. It was strange, she was my friend and advocate one minute, the next my nemesis,….an exceedingly tight and endless hoop, she became increasingly possessive, and two faced, had a household of kids in many sizes, her and husband made good use of the manpower. Eric hated the place. And I learned about movie ratings and parental guidance….while crying and pounding my steering wheel… ”can I do this!?” “can I do this!?....”Please God” ….”Please God….give me strength!!!” As Dr. Peale’s book would lay silently on the seat next to me.

·

“The Power of Positive Thinking” was first published (Prentice-Hall) in 1952 and arguably became the father of the huge self-help movement that we enjoy and can become so easily confused…by it’s sheer immensity…today. It was a simple and easy message to appreciate. Solidly conveyed through the Christian vernacular that so many could understand. It has been sold over 20 million times in 41 languages.

Peale is also the person who was most responsible for bringing psychology into the Church, mixing the psychological with the spiritual…..the inside job. This model whether it being eastern or western religion or a hybrid….is the integration of psychology and spirituality now being utilized more than ever into this new millennium.

Unfortunately and sadly, fanaticism and man’s religious ego is rampant…. “Our way is the ONLY way”, and the mind boggling phenomenon of the suicide terrorist… “I’ll show you, I’ll kill me!“ Ego (In the name of God) run amuck….Edge God Out (EGO).

Peale denied the necessity of believing in the virgin birth, and contended that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists….all were “right” in their paths! Christ was one of the ways. And for me, Christ was huge, always will be with me, on this path. It’s my belief that God essentially is of the Heart. But there are miracles everyday…big and small….not just inside job miracles like my resurrection in the Pentecostal church but miracles that are only explainable (as if such a thing can or even should be “explainable”) by God or spirit intervention. These happenings are all around us everyday. As in the power of prayer, the power of faith, the power of belief!

In these last years I have been a clear witness to this power, most intensely when I began to research my family history, parent’s careers and my other family’s demise, and the pain that it would bear, strange happenings, over and over that kept pointing me back-to-track, confirming “that you have to do this!” I even coined a word to help me make sense in the midst of this swirl…

“Synchrondipity”---

1-Concidence of multiple events that occur in a synchronous/ simultaneous and fortunate (?) way.

2- celestial orchestration beyond the five senses.

But all this has become and continues to become fodder for another (sometimes beyond my understanding) project for this very reluctant new-fangled writer.

Here’s the last couple of paragraphs from Dr. Peale’s EPILOGUE from “The Power of Positive Thinking”:

“I wrote this book out of a sincere desire to help you. It will give me great happiness to know that this book has helped you. I have absolute confidence and belief in the principles and methods outlined in this volume. They have been tested in the laboratory of spiritual experience and practical demonstration. They work when worked.”We may never meet in person, but in this book we have met. We are spiritual friends. I pray for you. God will help you—so believe and live successfully.” Norman Vincent Peale

In late November of ’86 I went to the local Grand Union with my daughter Brittney (3) to gather up the essentials for our first Pawling Thanksgiving. We parked… and as I swung Britt up into my arms and headed into the GU….I noticed an elderly man and woman loading groceries into the trunk of their car, he was handing the brown sacks to her as she set them in. I looked a little closer and to my complete surprise it was Dr. Peale and his wife Ruth. I was excited, like seeing an old friend, I walked up and introduced myself and Britt, “Hello Dr. Peale….my name is Michael Evans and I’ve been reading your book “The Power of Positive Thinking”….I’m really enjoying it!” He responds in that warm familiar gravely voice, “Oh thank you, my boy thank you….and what do you do?” I said “I sell cars” and he replied “Well, what kind of cars do you sell!?” I told him and incredibly he says almost as excited as I felt, “Oh that’s a wonderful car, son!” I gratefully thanked him for his inspiration, telling him it was a pleasure to meet him and in that warm gravely voice he said “God bless you my boy.”

God bless you too Dr. Peale, God Bless you too!

Our first 'Joy of Cooking' Thanksgiving as a'threesome.'

1986

The Jaymie Vortex

1996--Returning home after trying to rescue my mother from my mother.

After coming home the second time from California, things began to settle down and sink in.
I was encumbered, relieved and excited by this copious family material that I suddenly had in my possession. The letters, the photos, the newspaper clippings, the short stories by my brother Phillip written in his hand. I marveled at the letters. It became all so fascinating to me yet all so painful. One late August evening I was going through some of Philips things and came across a tape of John Gary. Philip would listen to John Gary. In particular ‘Unchained Melody’, sung beautifully by Gary. Philip would listen to it over and over. My mother, Philip and I would sit in our apartment on 82nd in the late 1960’s and listen to it over and over.

I put it on and began to sift through family photos, coming across a photo of the four of us in London. It was from a series of publicity shots celebrating the birth of my brother to “South Pacific’s singing star Wilbur Evans” for London’s ‘The Evening News’ dated September 20, 1952. Phillip two weeks old, me barely two years old and my mother and father beaming. I suddenly began to weep uncontrollably, I mean gut weeping for many minutes.....I was weeping...grieving for my brother which I had barely ever done.......I was weeping ...for my mother, I was weeping for my father, I was weeping for the family in that photo, where in that photo, it seemed, that the nano-second of flashing light was as close as we ever got, I was weeping for the years of pain, chaos and confusion....the loss. The weeping was good. It seemed to me that I was on a divergent path. A snails path. A path of ancestral responsibility? Why me?

Old, saffroned, crumbly newspapers with that musty smell I always had a particular fascination with. They held time, they held history as it happened, a simple wisdom, an aromatic wisdom? Now suddenly I had dozens of these articles of not just history but of my family’s history, with a revered sense of a family connection.... ancestral responsibility? Why me?

On Portia--

During this time, once a month on Thursdays evenings, Marianne Williamson would lecture at the Town Hall up on W. 43st. Marianne has had several bestsellers, “Return To Love”, “The Healing Of America”, Illuminata, lecturing frequently on matters of the heart and spirituality. I had heard her before , enjoyed her ideas.

This evening that I left the Bobst Library , it was a Thursday and Marianne was scheduled. Although I was tired, beat, I headed on up to catch her message.

On this particular night (as with every other night I’d seen her) it was crowded and the line flowed out into the street and down the sidewalk. I was tired and irritated and just not sure I wanted to be there, considering an early evening train ride home. My sense for “stand in line martyrdom” prevailed and I joined the rank.

As my part of the line approached the ticket takers, I began an exchange of shared disgruntled feelings on the molasses like movements of these ticket takers with a couple of women behind me; an attractive gal around my age with the other gal appearing in her seventies.

After getting in and finding my seat, I found that my two disgruntled comrades on the line chose seats next to me. As the murmuring crowd settled in with anticipation for Marianne, the younger gal and I began some chatty small talk,....... she asked where I was from? I told her I lived upstate but was originally from the city...she asked where in the city? I said 82nd and Columbus. ‘that’s where I live!,’ she said. Well, what a ‘coincidence’?.....connection?

Marianne said her peace and as we began to file out...the 82^nd St. gal asked me if I had an e-mail address? I said no...that I hadn’t quite reached that cutting edge but I did have an analog phone number, which we exchanged and went our way.

I called “Jaymie” the next day and before I tell you of the resulting fireworks, angelic violins and cosmic howls encircling this call, I must put forth a little history.....

While Susanna was under contract with Paramount and Universal she had a couple of close friends... Barbara George (Barbara was from Minneapolis) and Portia Nelson (then she was Betty Mae, later changed to Portia). My mother met Barbara just after finishing her first film ‘The Great Victor Herbert’ She and her father rented an apartment from Barbara’s mother in Hollywood. Portia she met a little later on while under contract with Universal (Portia composed and sang, working for the publicity department at the studio). All three gals were in their late teens, early twenties and were inseparable. All three played the piano, sang, harmonized together, Portia would compose and Susanna would sing Portia’s stuff. There were “garage” recordings....they were lost.....Barbara, a terrific writer whom my mother says could rank with any of them.... “Capote, Carson McCulloch, Harper Lee.... any of ‘em!”

These were names I would always hear as a child...You know, when you were a little kid your parents would talk about certain friends and family. Like a printer’s iron template on the psyche of a five year old, these names I could never forget…..Barbara and Portia.

'

In my first stages of my Comeback (1988), three years after my brother’s death and after 'temporarily' placing the kids in foster care (at this time I had already gained custody of Eric, and Brittney’s custody would follow the next year)....I was visiting with a counselor, I noticed something on the wall:

An Autobiography In Five Short Chapters

I- I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall

in I am lost...I am helpless It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find

a way out.

II- I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the

same place but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

III- I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

see it is there. I still fall in...it's a habit. My eyes are open. I

know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

IV-I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

walk around it.

V- I walk down another street.

The author at the bottom of the page was.....Portia Nelson.

Portia Nelson!!....I ‘shared’ with my counselor that my mother had a dear friend....Portia Nelson! I figured how many Portia Nelsons could there be....this must be the same woman....!

I asked for a copy and got several. This therapist seemed to love the copier, any chance she had to make a copy and then some...she would.

Over the years in my comeback process, I would come across Autobiography in Five Short Chapters ....self-help books, the counseling milieu etc...

It was the quintessential definition of insanity; “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...” and the path away from it.

Over the years Autobiography In 5 Short Chapters would always hang somewhere in my home helping to ever remind me of my own path through insanity.

Back to my phone call with “82st and Columbus Ave. Jaymie”: We shared the obligatory incidentals....I asked her “Who was the older woman with you?... your mom?” she says, “no, that’s my friend.............. Portia Nelson”.

Well let me tell you, this is where the angelic violins and cosmic howls swirled and thrusted me from my seat!

My God! Portia Nelson!..... And Jaymie from Eighty Duece!....centimeters from where I grew up!! .....Eighty Duece?! oh geesh, forget centimeters........this was it........ .....my turf.....my roots......signed, sealed and delivered.

With all that had happened regarding Susanna and our family history that year....the Universe suddenly decides to open this vortex and plop Portia and Jaymie in my lap!

Yikes....Much to say and recall from this time....I simply am not sure how to put it all in the right EMOTIONAL context to begin to get this Portia/Jaymie vortex thing down, down on the hard drive. These past years...the wind and waves of the Portia vortex continue, pushing the envelope of synchrondipity a wee further........let me go on....

Well Jaymie and I were abit taken aback by this “coincidence”....well, really....for me, forget taken aback.....I was pridefully catatonic for days.

Jaymie and I would begin to date.....believing that the Gods (and Jaymie’s angels) with all their wisdom and heavenly orchestrations, put us together for a reason. More on presumed destiny….awee later.

After getting off the phone with Jaymie, I heard from Portia about an hour later, remember..... the last time I saw Portia I was about seven years old.

She was just as excited as I was...(now in her eighties) ...she told me where she had gone with her career.... appearing in several motion pictures; Sarah Doolittle in Dr. Doolittle, Sister Elizabeth in The Trouble with Angels with Rosalind Russell, Sister Berthe in The Sound of Music....among others, years on the soap All My Children, author, painter, a well respected cabaret ‘diva’ on the city scene (I later learned) . Composing many songs.....she authored “Make a Rainbow” performed by Marilyn Horne at Bill Clinton’s first inaugural.

More Wib (my father) stuff from the Universe

My father was married four times: 1) to Florence Monroe, married in the early 1930s, divorcing in 1945 for 'irreconcilable differences' (I assume). 2) to my mother SF where two boys were produced, myself and my brother Philip. While doing this research I would learn that my mother tore his heart out when divorcing him. Approximately 5 years after their divorce, my father married again to a woman he was appearing in....in a local El Paso, Texas, Ft Bliss show. She soon would leave him literally overnight.....his wallet and car keys were gone the next morning. She disappeared into Los Angeles, eventually marrying his agent. And the fourth was to a Japanese woman named 'Masako'.....that could barely speak a word of English.

It was during the years he was married to Masako that my father and I began write each other. In one of his last letters to me, he assured me that I was placed in his will to receive what was left of his music library, have his Marine Sword that I admired so much as a little boy.....and a 'little money'....barely enough to "buy a used car."

After his death, I contacted his lawyer and was told that 'there was nothing in the will for me.'
I would call Masako ....and would plead "just the Marine Sword!!" She would hang up on me.

Fifteen years later.....I would suddenly find everything that was meant for me (except the Marine Sword and 'the little money') on e-bay. I ended up having to purchase it for several thousand dollars. Masako had passed away and her nurse's aide sold it all to an auction house.

Two nights ago I received four mid-sized boxes from Miami. They were from a man and his family who took care of my father's first wife Florence for many years. She had appently saved everything from her marriage to my father; love letters, endless canceled checks, decrepit photo albums, newspaper clippings of her 'famous' husband.....etc etc. These items were 75 years old.

This man and his family found me on the Internet. Photo of some of the contents below.

Susanna's ashes ....

Today on Susanna's 85th birthday.....December 6, 2009, my two kids, son-in-law and myself spread Susanna's ashes across her ancestor's cemetery plot; her great-great-grandparents Reliance Hopkins and David Crosby in Putnam County New York's oldest standing cemetery--1751.

This was an area where I had no ties; we were from NYC and Los Angeles via Illinois and Minnesota. Years ago I 'synchrondipitously' came across them while living here.

Our story will resume shortly.

From my brother Philip- a long ago memory.

My brother Philip, hanging on to his mother S.F three months before his death- August 1985.

Autograph party. I believe the man on the right is actor John Abbott.

I found this crumpled among Philip’s things…. penned three months before his end.

Recalling a distant day on Eighty Deuce (verbatim):

August 1985

A Perfect Day-

I woke up earlier than mom and Michael one Sunday morning when we were living in apt 3A so I guess I was about 8 years old because we lived for two years in each of three separate apartments at 32 w. 82nd. The very first thought I had was “I wanna walk Barney to the east end of castle lake, where I could sit on the rock with him and have the sun on my back while I coaxed him to go swimming. It was a beautiful summer’ like spring morning so I only wore a short sleeved blue and white patterned shirt, blue jeans and sneakers. Mommy always said once I got something in my head-something I desired-I either achieved or got it (or died as children often do in their imaginations). So anyway I quietly got up and asked Barney if he wanted to go’ bye-bye’. He said “sure” the way only Barney could. So we softly left. We did exactly what I wanted to do. Boy, it was a beautiful day. And mom, to this day doesn’t know that Barney went swimming unless she reads this or you tell her or both. I don’t snitch myself. For me, at that time, this kind of thing was MY own paradise. Just a few blocks from home and I WAS home. And vice versa. When I got back we didn’t see anybody except a few kids I knew from across the street. I began talking to one of them who was a year or so older than. He had a pretty big plastic toy truck. It was about the size of Barney’s head. He asked me if I would trade Barney for the truck. I said no. BARNEY LOOKED INDIGNANT. He was though, glad to be home when we got upstairs ‘cause mom and Michael were awake and he (Barney) was dry and naturally sniffing in the kitchen. I don’t remember the rest of the day but I do remember the night.

Michael and I had pushed our beds together and seeing how we had the television in our room and the next day was school, my brother and I got under our quilt and sheet covers and mom and Barney lay in between and we watched The Late Show movie about a British highwayman with all the lights off. Boy, that was a great day. The TV was like a fireplace telling a story. It was love it was home it was peace. And I’ll never forget it if I lived to be 200 years old. Just the four of us. It was home. The Result? Thirty-two pointless failure laden years.

And on the back he writes: “The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal; the tragedy lies in having no goal at all.”-------Benjamin Mays

1996 and Portia--

After coming home the second time from California, things began to settle down and sink in. I was encumbered, relieved and excited by this copious family material that I suddenly had in my possession. The letters, the photos, the newspaper clippings, the short stories by my brother Phillip written in his hand. I marveled at the letters. It became all so fascinating to me yet all so painful. One late August evening I was going through some of Philips things and came across a tape of John Gary. Philip would listen to John Gary. In particular ‘Unchained Melody’, sung beautifully by Gary. Philip would listen to it over and over. My mother, Philip and I would sit in our apartment on 82nd in the late 1960’s and listen to it over and over.

I put it on and began to sift through family photos, coming across a photo of the four of us in London. It was from a series of publicity shots celebrating the birth of my brother to “South Pacific’s singing star Wilbur Evans” for London’s ‘The Evening News’ dated September 20, 1952. Phillip two weeks old, me barely two years old and my mother and father beaming. I suddenly began to weep uncontrollably, I mean gut weeping for many minutes.....I was weeping...grieving for my brother which I had barely ever done.......I was weeping ...for my mother, I was weeping for my father, I was weeping for the family in that photo, where in that photo, it seemed, that the nano-second of flashing light was as close as we ever got, I was weeping for the years of pain, chaos and confusion....the loss. The weeping was good. It seemed to me that I was on a divergent path. A snails path. A path of ancestral responsibility? Why me?

On Portia……

During this time, once a month on Thursdays evenings, Marianne Williamson would lecture at the Town Hall up on W. 43st. Marianne has had several bestsellers, “Return To Love”, “The Healing Of America”, Illuminata, lecturing frequently on matters of the heart and spirituality. I had heard her before , enjoyed her ideas.

This evening that I left the Bobst Library , it was a Thursday and Marianne was scheduled. Although I was tired, beat, I headed on up to catch her message.

On this particular night (as with every other night I’d seen her) it was crowded and the line flowed out into the street and down the sidewalk. I was tired and irritated and just not sure I wanted to be there, considering an early evening train ride home. My sense for “stand in line martyrdom” prevailed and I joined the rank.

As my part of the line approached the ticket takers, I began an exchange of shared disgruntled feelings on the molasses like movements of these ticket takers with a couple of women behind me; an attractive gal around my age with the other gal appearing in her seventies.

After getting in and finding my seat, I found that my two disgruntled comrades on the line chose seats next to me. As the murmuring crowd settled in with anticipation for Marianne, the younger gal and I began some chatty small talk,....... she asked where I was from? I told her I lived upstate but was originally from the city...she asked where in the city? I said 82nd and Columbus. ‘that’s where I live!,’ she said. Well, what a ‘coincidence’?.....connection?

Marianne gave her spiel and as we began to file out...the 82^nd St. gal asked me if I had an e-mail address? I said no...that I hadn’t quite reached that cutting edge but I did have an analog phone number, which we exchanged and went our way.

I called “Jaymie” the next day and before I tell you of the resulting fireworks, angelic violins and cosmic howls encircling this call, I must put forth a little history.....

While Susanna was under contract with Paramount and Universal she had a couple of close friends... Barbara George (Barbara was from Minneapolis) and Portia Nelson (then she was Betty Mae, later changed to Portia). My mother met Barbara just after finishing her first film ‘The Great Victor Herbert’ She and her father rented an apartment from Barbara’s mother in Hollywood. Portia she met a little later on while under contract with Universal (Portia composed and sang, working for the publicity department at the studio). All three gals were in their late teens, early twenties and were inseparable. All three played the piano, sang, harmonized together, Portia would compose and Susanna would sing Portia’s stuff. There were “garage” recordings....they were lost.....Barbara, a terrific writer whom my mother says could rank with any of them.... “Capote, Carson McCulloch, Harper Lee.... any of ‘em!”

These were names I would always hear as a child...You know, when you were a little kid your parents would talk about certain friends and family. Like a printer’s iron template on the psyche of a five year old, these names I could never forget…..Barbara, Portia.

In my first stages of my Comeback (1988), three years after my brother’s death and three years after placing the kids in temp care (at this time I had already gained custody of Eric, and Brittney’s custody would follow the next year)....I was visiting with a counsler, I noticed something on the wall:

An Autobiography In Five Short Chapters

I- I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall

in I am lost...I am helpless It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find

a way out.

II- I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the

same place but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

III- I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

see it is there. I still fall in...it's a habit. My eyes are open. I

know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

IV-I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I

walk around it.

V- I walk down another street.

The author at the bottom of the page was.....Portia Nelson.

Portia Nelson!!....I ‘shared’ with my counselor that my mother had a dear friend....Portia Nelson! I figured how many Portia Nelsons could there be....this must be the same woman....!

I asked for a copy and got several. This counselor seemed to love the copier, any chance she had to make a copy and then some...she would.

Over the years in my comeback process, I would come across Autobiography in Five Short Chapters ....self-help books, the counseling milieu etc...

It was the quintessential definition of insanity; “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...” and the path away from it.

Over the years Autobiography In 5 Chapters would always hang somewhere in my home helping to ever remind me of my own path through insanity.

Back to my phone call with “82st-and-Columbus- Ave- Jaymie”: We shared the obligatory incidentals....I asked her “Who was the older woman with you?... your mom?” she says, “no, that’s my friend.............. Portia Nelson”.

Well let me tell you, this is where the angelic violins and cosmic howls swirled and thrusted me from my seat!

My God! Portia Nelson!..... And Jaymie from Eighty Duece!....centimeters from where I grew up!! .....Eighty Duece?! oh geesh, forget centimeters........this was it........ .....my turf.....my roots......signed, sealed and delivered.

With all that had happened regarding Susanna and our family history that year....the Universe suddenly decides to open this vortex and plop Portia and Jaymie in my lap!

Yikes....Much to say and recall from this time....eighteen months have past, it’s taken me this long to begin to get this Portia/Jaymie vortex thing down, down on the hard drive. These past eighteen months....the wind and waves of the Portia vortex continue, pushing the envelope of synchrondipity a wee further........let me go on....

Well Jaymie and I were abit taken aback by this “coincidence”....well, really....for me, forget taken aback.....I was pridefully catatonic for days.