Another Kind of Madness Read online

  Not all members of stigmatized groups show self-stigma. Despite the persistence of racial prejudice and bias, many members of racial minority groups in the United States have healthy levels of self-esteem. A protective factor is solidarity and positive identification with other group members. Think of Black Power, gay pride, or the women’s movement, which can thwart negative identification while promoting advocacy and positive self-regard.

  But until quite recently, who would have ever wanted to identify with a group that, by definition, was crazy, insane, or psycho? The isolation and shame associated with mental illness perpetuates internalized stigma, which in turn propels even more despair. Self-help groups and movements did not exist in Dad’s time, but today they’re a major part of the mental health landscape. Although they cannot, by themselves, eradicate either public stigma or self-stigma, they’re part of the solution.

  *

  The following spring Dad came to most of my games during baseball season. I rode my bike, getting there early for warm-ups, while he drove over for the contest. I actually got some hits and was now tall enough to be playing first base.

  I could never stand losing. Back then, Sally knew whether our team had won or lost on the basis of pure sound. Some nights, she heard my bicycle come slowly down the driveway and the jaunty footfall as I walked upstairs. “We won tonight! Is there anything to eat?” Other evenings, though, I flung open the mud hall door and the crash of the bike, which I’d thrown down hard on the linoleum floor, reverberated through the house. After storming upstairs I slammed the bedroom door.

  “Not too hard to tell whether your team won,” she teased. But she saved her teasing until later, avoiding the crossfire of my sudden rage.

  Sally and I remained close. In the years to come, I might hear her plaintive voice in the evening: “Steve, can you help me with my math problems?” With her doe eyes and pixie haircut, now growing out, Sally looked sheepish, her tone imploring. “I’m stuck.”

  “Hold on, Sal. Let me finish up my stuff. I’ll take a look in a couple of minutes.”

  When Sally was struggling with math she sometimes went to Dad, but his answers were cerebral and abstract. He couldn’t simplify the material. I carefully went over the problems with her, trying to make her see that if she just followed the steps she could get it on her own. But her response was always the same. “I can’t see it the way you do, Steve. My brain doesn’t work the same way.” I began to sense that I might cast a pretty long shadow.

  A Campfire Girl, she was always into activities and full of energy. Her friends crowded our house. Though always on the lookout for others, she had trouble bringing such care back to herself. Ultra-sensitive to her classmates, Mom, our cats, or anyone in pain, she often let her own needs take second place.

  As a boy, I was freer to look to the outside world to escape the clogged silence inside our home. Dad’s intuitive support for me when I needed it most didn’t extend to Sally. Raised with five brothers in a competitive, male-dominated household—and with his mother gone forever by the time he was three—he never received real communication from the opposite sex. He had lived most of his life in all-boy enclaves, later competing in the male-dominated world of philosophy. Although he could reach out to his wife to ask the names of neighbors following mystifying episodes of madness, he never filled her in on where his mind had gone—or what the hospitals were truly like. That realm of his existence was too private and shameful. He chose to open up to me during my freshman year of college but not to his daughter or even his wife. Self-stigma held him back; perhaps, he thought, a female wouldn’t really comprehend.

  As close as we were, Sally and I lived in different worlds. There were other reasons why Dad felt uneasy about getting too close to females, but these remained a mystery until I was much older.

  *

  For spring break of my fifth-grade year we planned a trip to Southern California. I’d finally be able to see where Dad and his brothers grew up. While loading up the car in the driveway, Dad was moving fast, sweating and grunting as he rearranged the suitcases, periodically checking his wristwatch to make sure we’d depart for the airport on time. From inside the house where I was packing my own bag, I heard a sharp cry of pain. Rushing outside, I saw Dad bent over, grimacing, his left hand covered with a handkerchief soaked in blood. Mom and Sally hurried out too.

  “I was trying fit in another suitcase,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “In my haste, I slammed the tailgate door on my left hand. I don’t think the finger is broken.”

  “Virg, perhaps we should cancel the reservation,” Mom said tentatively.

  “By all means no,” he replied. “We must make this trip. If you get some ice, maybe I can wrap it up and we can still make the plane.” Underneath the handkerchief, his finger was distended and purple. He reminded us that he’d broken this hand and wrist in high school; it wasn’t set right and had been weak ever since. No one knew, of course, that it had been shattered at the end of his brief flight off the porch roof.

  Dad vigorously chewed a couple of aspirin without water. Mom got into the driver’s seat and we were off. Once in the plane, on the runway, Sally asked whether the take-off would be scary. Dad replied that once you’re up in the air you don’t even know that you’re flying. “Think of the physics involved. How do all these tons of metal get airborne? Consider the wing shape, creating less pressure above to give lift.” Even in pain, Dad couldn’t resist teaching.

  In Pasadena, we met my step-grandmother, Nettella, at the house where Dad grew up, 935 North Oakland Avenue. The house seemed small, set back a little from the street, dark wood downstairs and bedrooms upstairs, with a small, flat roof above the front door. Sally couldn’t believe it: Kumquat trees grew right in the yard.

  “What a festive occasion,” Grandma Hinshaw repeated as the family arrived for a reunion the next day, her white hair pulled up with pins. Food covered the dining room table. I’d packed the autobiography I’d written for a school assignment, entitled “My Life, By Me.” On the first page, I’d stated how fortunate I’d been throughout my life, with all the advantages I’d experienced. After dinner, I overheard Uncle Randall and Uncle Bob remark to Dad that I was philosophical, just as he was.

  A day later we drove to a department store in Arcadia called Hinshaw’s, located in the San Gabriel Valley below Uncle Bob’s modern, low-slung house in the foothills. I marveled to see our family name in such huge letters on the store’s sign. Uncle Paul, the younger of Dad’s two half-brothers, worked at the other Hinshaw’s, in Whittier, when he wasn’t singing as a soloist for the Roger Wagner Chorale with his magnificent baritone voice. At the offices in back, I got introduced to my great-uncle Ezra, the store’s founder, who drooled as he sat in his wheelchair, his white hair ragged. I tried not to stare.

  “Ezra has a disease called Parkinson’s,” Dad remarked as we drove back. “His mind works but the brain area that controls his muscles can’t function.” He said that no one knew how it happened. It was a medical mystery scientists were trying to figure out.

  One of the great shocks of my youth occurred when we traveled again to Southern California as I began high school. Once there, we again headed to Hinshaw’s, where in the back offices I saw an older man with white hair, walking, smiling, and saying hello to many staff. A moment later, my uncles re-introduced me to my great-uncle Ezra. “You met him a few years ago, Steve, remember?”

  I started to argue about their obvious mistake, as Ezra had been the incoherent man in a wheelchair. Yet I did see the resemblance. Once more, I tried not to stare.

  Dad spoke up again that evening. “Ezra has been taking a medication for Parkinson’s called L-DOPA. It works on the affected brain area. In many cases it can bring back the functions an individual has lost.” Finally, here was proof: Miracles of modern medicine actually did exist. I longed to be part of a team one day making such discoveries. There was much to do to relieve human suffering, I was sure, and it would take both scienc
e and the right frame of mind to make it happen.

  *

  For a school performance in the spring of my last year of elementary school, we sixth graders put on a festival for which I was the host and narrator. Dad wasn’t around but I was so busy I hardly noticed. On the evening of the event, families poured into the auditorium. Afterward, Mom found me in the hallway. “Why didn’t you tell me you had such a big role?” she gushed. “My goodness!”

  To work off energy and avoid the reception, some guys and I played a chase game, racing in and out of the school building. Inside the foyer, I gained on a guy outside, who pushed hard on the door so I couldn’t tag him. As I gave it my strongest shove, it opened an inch and I grabbed the door jamb for leverage. But when he slammed it back everything stopped, a scalding ring of pain filling the air. Crimson blood gushed from my finger.

  Mom was near the long tables of food nearby. “What have you done?” she cried, eyes wide, surveying the damage. I got stitches and a shot for the pain, and a splint secured my broken finger for a month. Almost as a ritual by now, I reminded myself what happened when I got too excited. Despite my ignorance of Dad’s condition, I had a sixth sense about what happens when someone loses control. My fear was stronger than any urge to explore.

  A few weeks later, Dad was back. As usual, nothing was said. The routine had been set for years. For summer vacation we drove to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, taking Grandmother with us. After the long subway ride to Queens we saw the huge stainless steel globe and the exhibits. Dad and Grandmother were getting along well. Heading out to dinner one night, Grandmother asked where. A sly smile on his face, Dad replied: “How about the Willard?” They all laughed hard, even Mom. But I was stunned. How could they even think of joking about that place?

  Back at the hotel, there was a call for Dad from California. “This may be important, everyone; I’ll take it in the bedroom,” he told us. “I hope everything’s OK,” Sally said.

  A few minutes later he emerged, his face grim. “My stepmother died today,” he said somberly. “She’d been ill, but this is still unexpected. My brothers think I should attend the service in Pasadena, and so do I.” Mom looked sad and hugged him.

  “Wait!” I called out, frustration rising. “Our vacation is ruined!”

  “Well,” Mom said, “this is a terrible loss for your father, and you should tell him how sorry you are. But maybe Grandmother and I can continue on the car trip up to Boston and Cape Cod, as we’d planned.” Gaining confidence, she asked what Dad thought.

  “Of course,” he replied, “if you’re up to it.”

  The next morning, Dad headed off to the airport in a cab. We drove through New York’s maze of yellow taxis, pressing on to Cape Cod, Boston, and Niagara Falls. A week later, we arrived back in Columbus, where Dad had recently returned from the other coast.

  We asked one another about our respective trips. “The service was sad but dignified,” he said. “All my brothers were there. What a chance to be together.”

  As he spoke I caught a wistful look on his face. Something seemed to be on the tip of his tongue. Might he tell us something more about his family and his past? Would doors be thrown open, hidden worlds revealed? Were there memories of his stepmother and childhood that I’d never heard? I held my breath.

  But when I looked back the expression on his face had vanished. Secretly crushed, I gave it one more chance, glancing over a final time. But the moment was gone. Deflated, I knew that things would return to the way they always were, my eyes focused straight ahead, mysteries sealed over.

  6

  The CBS Evening News

  To this day I remain baffled by how our parents shielded Sally and me from the worst of Dad’s frantic episodes, including the midnight drive to Cincinnati and his sudden departures from our home. Had it not been for Mom’s superhuman efforts, we might have perished.

  When Dad was climbing through a manic episode, his judgment was horrendous and his behavior outrageous. He needed to save Western philosophy and made late-night calls to unsuspecting colleagues around the country with his wild plans. At the same time, he might become convinced that others were stealing his ideas. When in a frenzy about such supposed theft, he disrupted OSU faculty meetings. The looks he got from strangers, or the alignment of dates on manuscripts he was reading, signaled cataclysmic events that could shape world history, leading him to rush home and type up incomprehensible notes. Despite the usual, careful organization of his lectures, he might skip from idea to idea like a flitting hummingbird.

  It’s hard to imagine that he had the self-control to lie low in front of his children at those times, especially when the police came to get him to a hospital or his brother Bob appeared from California to intervene. Yet somehow, Mom—and he—kept the utter insanity hidden.

  But if the truth be told, they didn’t do it completely on their own. I was a collaborator. I didn’t want to know what was happening. Whatever lay out there beneath the measured tone of our household, I never pressed to find out. During his year-long absence when I was in third grade, I gave up after my single, futile inquiry to Mom. If amnesia powder had been placed on our breakfast cereal, I sprinkled it there. If a memory pump was at work, I must have been the one dragging it from the garage and placing it atop my skull. To this day I fight the long-held belief that I must suppress anything troubling, which is part of my learned pattern, too often keeping me stuck even now. It’s one of the key battles of my lifetime.

  *

  “Steve, look here.” Mom handed me a blue book from the huge stack on the kitchen table as I paused from my algebra homework in seventh grade. Now an instructor at OSU, she was teaching freshman composition. The head of the English department, where she’d taken coursework for her new Master’s, convinced her to forgo secondary education and teach on campus. As an advanced instructor, each quarter she taught composition courses for international grad students as well as several sections of the required freshman English class.

  Every few nights a batch of essays was strewn across the kitchen table, ready for grading. Back then there was only one admissions requirement for entering Ohio State, a high school diploma. First-year English was the make-or-break class. One of the topics for the current assignment—any issue to give some practice in writing—was the recent homecoming weekend. I peered down at the page. In a scrawl, the student had written his final lines: It rained and rained and rained. It was very muddey. I was so sad.

  My eyes bulged. This was college English? I’d been practically raised on paragraph structure and spelling. If I didn’t attain near-perfection, my world came crashing down. I felt bad for that freshman. Mom did too, as hard as she tried to teach grammar and writing style. We were a privileged family, steeped in education, while many Ohio high school graduates had little preparation at all.

  Our amusement—and horror—provided a touch of relief. It was similar with Dad when we watched the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy down in the family room. He loved those old films, his face convulsing with laughter. He was a boy once more in a Pasadena theater, the weight of the universe lifting. For a precious moment, the house’s unspoken tension evaporated.

  Yet every so often the dam burst in a different way. Stuck outside in a thunderstorm after a swim at the town pool, chilled to the bone, I banged hard on the locked storm door, frustrated that no one could hear. I punched so hard that I slammed my fist right through the glass, avoiding a severed artery by sheer luck. Another time, when I thought Sally was teasing me too much, I slammed the door to my bedroom with such force that the full-length mirror—hinged to the back—crashed straight down to the floor, the sound of the five-foot-high rectangle of glass reverberating through the house. Somehow, it didn’t shatter.

  What was it that lay a quarter-inch beneath the surface of my skin, ready to explode at a moment’s notice? My efforts to uphold the silence took their toll, leading to an occasional boiling point. Even more, I clearly carry a partial dose of Dad’s gene
s for bipolar illness. Although they yield a pale shadow of his own unchecked emotion during the worst of his episodes, I share similar tendencies of dysregulated affect. All too often, mental disorder is a family affair.

  When I was in junior high school, Dad joined the choir at the large church he and Mom attended, a progressive Protestant congregation. The choir was ultra-high quality, sometimes accompanied by musicians from the Columbus Symphony. Every Thursday, after an early dinner, he attended rehearsals. During the week he practiced vocal scales and lyrics in his study, his voice penetrating the sliding wood door. On Sunday mornings, I saw him standing in his robe behind the pulpit of the large church sanctuary, his gaze alternating between the music in his hands and the heavens above. Where did he travel at those moments? Forward in time to the eternal life awaiting him if he kept his faith? Or back to his early religious training in Pasadena?

  He told me how he combined his worlds. “I remain convinced that a supreme being created all that we see. Philosophers and scientists might attempt to comprehend a portion of the mystery.” My worries about eternal damnation were losing their grip but I still demanded perfection from myself. Suspended above a deep chasm, I clutched the narrow rope bridge, my arms and shoulders ready to give way from the strain.

  At OSU Mom taught American novels, like The Great Gatsby, plus nineteenth-and twentieth-century poetry. She showed Sally and me one of her favorite poems, Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory.” The first and last verses stayed in my mind:

  Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

  We people on the pavement looked at him:

  He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

  Clean favored, and imperially slim …

  … So on we worked, and waited for the light,

  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

  And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

  Mom said that she was trying to get her students to understand the poem’s main theme: the difference between the surface—what everyone saw as a perfect life—and the mysteries beneath, the despair no one knew. This poem, in fact, was the closest Sally and I got to any real truth about our family’s situation. Mom was committed to the sworn pact never to reveal Dad’s situation to us. It was only through discussion of literature that we received even a hint.