Reality Shmeality

Chapter Seven

Nanna was the hero of the family and credited for keeping us all sane and together during the first year following the accident. Since she was living with us at our home on Woodsmeadow Lane, it was easy for Mom and Dad to go back and forth between physical therapy and rehab without having to worry about me and Sunshine.

On my first day of first grade, in September of 1989, Dad received a phone call about a gig for an Aerosmith concert in January of 1990 at the Rochester War Memorial. The concert promoter was an old friend of Dad's and knew that he had been out of work since the accident. He knew that Dad was taken care of financially for life because of the settlement from the accident but also remembered his work ethic and figured that he was dying to get back to the grind. Dad was excited about getting back to work but was quite nervous due to the sporadic pain in his leg. He decided to suck it up because he missed the action and was looking forward to meeting up with Joe Perry, the guitarist from Aerosmith, who he had known since the early 70s.

Dad was able to pull his weight with the setup of the show, proving to himself that he was not completely down and out. He brought Mom along with him so she could get out of the house for once, and the two of them hung out backstage and headed to the hotel afterparty with Joe Perry and partied with the band. It was a night both Mom and Dad were needing for the years leading up to it. Dad finally got to feel useful outside of the house again, and Mom got to see him shine once more.

Unfortunately for Dad, it was difficult to find national and international gigs after being off of the radar for so long, and he didn't have any other jobs lined up until the end of April when he would work the Rush show at the Rochester War Memorial. Since Dad was close with the show promoter for the War Memorial, he was pretty much guaranteed those gigs. Over the next few years, he would work with the Jerry Garcia Band, Pearl Jam, Candlebox, Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, and others.

Even though it looked good on paper, all of these shows were spread out. It was the mid-90s and Sunshine and I were in school full-time, and Mom got work as an art teacher at French Road Elementary School, leaving Dad to feel very alone. Grandma had passed in the spring of 1994, and Nanna had moved in with Howard, a man she had been seeing for about ten years. To overcome boredom and fight off depressions during all of his free time, Dad started drinking. Luckily, it wasn't an everyday thing, but when he drank, it was long-winded and damaging. He never got violent or treated any of us with disrespect. He would disappear into the garage to drink for days at a time, and would only enter the house to use the bathroom. I hate to say it or even think it, but sometimes he was too drunk to even make it to the bathroom. He would wallow away in self-pity thinking of his glory days on the road. He would sit there with his record collection having conversations with the faces on the albums as if he was backstage with the artist like the good ole days. He would get so down about how things ended up that he would talk about hurting himself.

I remember worrying about him a lot. Sunshine and I would hide in our rooms crying when he would yell at his albums, slurring the words while asking Jimi or Janis what had gone wrong. Sometimes I blamed myself for being the first child and taking away what he had had with Mom before I came along. Mom would ask Dad to leave when Sunshine and I took his benders personally or when his private behavior and self-abuse escaped the garage and entered the house. Even though he would get crazy on his own and abuse himself during those binges, he would never question Mom and would get in a taxi without ever putting up a fight. Mom would pack a bag while fighting away tears – she wanted to stay strong for me and Sunshine – and she would call a cab to come and bring Dad to a motel not too far from the house. When the cab would pull into the driveway, Mom would slowly go into the garage with Dad's bag and say the same thing each time: "It's time, Willie. The kids are scared so you should get going."

She would hand him the bag and he would sadly take it from her and walk out the garage door, never putting up a fight. He avoided the house so as not to see us kids while in disarray. He was embarrassed, and luckily he never realized that every time he took the walk of shame down the driveway, that Sunshine and I were peering through the blinds, tears pouring down our little faces.

What made Dad's case different from many of those who suffer from alcoholism is that he was able to stop. He never quit completely, but his binges would come and go like waves. Sometimes they would be frequent, and other times he would go a year without taking a sip. It wasn't until I was much older, that he finally was able to control things with alcohol and put an end to the heavy benders. Every time he was sent out of the house by Mom, he would spend a couple of days in the motel to sober up and try to collect his thoughts. He would practice yoga by himself and meditate for hours each day to try and find some kind of peace before returning home to the family. It was really hard on all of us and scared the hell out of me and Sunshine. Neither of us ever wanted to drink after seeing what it did to Dad and how it made things at home. When Dad would come back from his time at the motel, he would always act as if nothing happened in front of me and Sunshine, like he had just come back from some concert gig or something. I think he knew deep down that we were both aware of why he was actually gone, but it crushed him to even consider that notion.