Happy Father's Day 2025

The Extravaganza/What a Day... (Excerpt 4 of 5 from "Opening the Naked Window" book II of the memoir series)

These passages are from book/season two, chapters/episodes 18: "The Extravaganza" and 19: "What a Day..."

~~~~~

I was bounced right back to reality soon enough after The Extravaganza. At our post-production meeting, we were already planning a second and bigger show months later and discussed the future schedule for Lonely, but my father's surgery was upon us and he got through it like a champ. The recovery process was another story. Then my mother, who was trying to be strong, was slowly falling apart - just a little.

She told me that she felt God doesn't put too much on us to handle, but she was just kind of wondering. She said she had a bad feeling about Dad and that losing her brother, Uncle Dennis, just a few months prior was a bigger blow to her than she let on. Now her mother was sick. I told her we would get through it, and then I laughed to myself. It’s like who's needing whose shoulder here. I hadn't realized Dennis being such a loss to her and it may sound cold and selfish to you, but that was because he wasn't that big of a loss to me.

You see he and my mother didn't get along until about a year before he passed. He was a reformed alcoholic and a wife beater and I remember having candid conversations with Ann, his wife. She was more Googles’ age than that of Dennis or my mother. I had very little or no respect for him, and as my mother cried to me to tell me he died, I felt nothing. Sorry. So, I had to learn quickly that this revelation my mother made to me was something I couldn't squawk at or make fun of. She was seriously grieving him, so I just held her hand and we waited to hear how my father was to recover.

I told my mother I was going to get some coffee. Little did I know she and I were actually heading to the same place, outdoors for a much-needed smoke. I had no cigarettes on me, because it wasn't a habit yet. I figured I'd bum or buy one off of somebody else because sure enough I was stressed and just knew somebody else would be. I actually had choices, as there were about a dozen or so smokers outside taking a break from their respective loved ones.

As I sipped on my vending machine coffee, I wondered why I felt so bad about the way I felt about Uncle Dennis. I wondered if my dad would pull through his lengthy surgery. It was just a time for wondering the unknown. I lit up my bummed cigarette and inhaled. I no more than exhaled, when my dear mother was tapping me on my shoulder.

Usually, I would have expected her to be sarcastic or perhaps slap me, or say a prayer on the spot, but much to my surprise she only asked how long and how often did I smoke. She told me to not act like I had to do it behind her back anymore either.

"Because, my sonny, when the smoke clears...ah ha... the truth always comes out," she admonished.

We laughed, if only for a minute.

*

I got home from a hard days work and a meeting, only to find my dear mother pacing the floor. She stopped me in the kitchen and told me that she bought my beeper for me for a reason and just knew I was more responsible than the way I was acting. I apologized all over the place because my dad had fallen out of bed again and this time, in his medicated state, there was absolutely no way I would be able to get him back in bed, without causing him much harm. Mom and I tried to pick him up, but she was too challenged herself in the health and strength department.

I called Frankie, Anya's dad, over. He was always a great neighbor to us and was quite the handy man. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know what we would have done. We couldn't get over how weak my dad was. He had since started radiation treatments and the pain he was in was unbearable to him - this from a man who rarely complained. That was it, though. That's what really got my mother and me. Who knows how long that all had been brewing in his body?
We figured for several months to over a year, he was always with his back to the wall - looking like he was scratching or something. Then he started going to specialists, then chiropractors. They just told him it was his degenerative arthritis doing a number on him, at a rapid and steady pace. We just held on to hope, knowing he could be worse off - dead or crippled by what was eating him from the inside.

Frankie was great. He was always joking around, so much so that he could be downright annoying at times, but that day his humor was right on time. He even made my father laugh, which was a miracle in and of it self. My father was a lot like him, always joking around and telling stories from when he was a boy; and from his Army days. He was very proud of me. Why? I never knew, but he would always tell his friends all the things I was doing. That's why it was so difficult to see him that way, on the floor - defeated.

Frankie no more than left, then it was up to Googles flat where I, once again, discovered her sprawled out on the living room floor. This time she had been up there all day long like that, longer than before and she couldn't get up. I sat there on the chair in her living room and we talked. I called on the phone down to my mother. Now, mind you, my mother was unable to go up and down stairs. She had a history of blood clots in her legs. She would from time to time, but at that time with her being on blood thinners, having fought diabetes all her life, kidney problems, weight problems... My poor mother was a walking medical encyclopedia. So, I found it wise to call her to see what the next step was.

"Mom, I hate to tell ya, but Googles fell again." She was uncharacteristically silent.

"Don't just blurt it out like that, baby," said Googles. She apparently failed to see the seriousness of her own situation.

"Can you help her into her bed?" My mother and I were both hoping.

"No. She's hurt her arm. Last time she was able to balance herself by wrapping her arms around my neck. This time she can't. I think it may be broken."

"We might have to call an ambulance. She won't like that." My mother knew this was going to be a hard sell, but I would have to be the one to sell it.

"Oh, we will!" I told Mom, “We have to.”

I hung the phone up.

First of all, ever since Googles had her stroke some year’s prior, aside from very important doctor's appointments, she hardly left the house. The closest she got to the outdoors was when she cracked the door to her porch open. On a good day she’d throw a few slices of bread to the birds. My friends often mused on whether we had someone living up there at all. Maria would joke that it was like Mrs. Bates from Psycho. She would ask if my grandmother was really alive, because she would never hear her walking around or anything. That was true. Googles was very quiet in her own powerful way. She loved her movies and books and that was about it. That and sitting in her chair thinking.

Thinking about her life, her children - both with their own problems, but lived their lives the best way they knew how. I often wondered what Googles thought of her damaged children and of my mother's damaged children. Where did it start in our line? Did it start from her? And if it did: Why? Why was she so bitter? Sure, her husband left her, but I always thought she was stronger because of it. She seemed to brood a lot, but would laugh it off.

She wasn't laughing now.

How often did she think of her strained relationship with them? And even though her and my Uncle Dennis made amends in the eleventh hour, how did she feel about his going before her? I am sure it weighed on her mind and her very soul heavily. A woman, who once thrived and had so many in her life, now had just a handful as her very backbone. She was devastated over my father. He was like another son to her.

My father, despite losing his patience with her time and again, in turn loved Googles as if she were a second mother. My dad loved my mother tremendously and treated her mother like the Queen Mother herself. She was very special to him and, in time, the feeling was mutual. She ached at the thought of his suffering and she took time out, as she lay on her living room floor, panting, to tell me how sad she suddenly had become. She commented on the fact that my father was still a young man. I believed her when she said that she would willingly trade places with him.

Be careful what you wish for, for you may only be joining one in their misery.

I helped her to a sitting position and she asked me about my dad. She hadn't known yet, and I hated to, but I told her we just picked him up off the floor. She found it peculiar that they both had fallen on the same day, twice. She was not alone in her wonderment of the coincidence.

When I began to tell her we might have to call an ambulance because I thought she broke her arm and was definitely dehydrated, she wanted nothing of it. She said after all she's done for me and given me, I had to promise her that I wouldn't let my mother put her in a nursing home.
I explained to Googles that some things we had no control over. I understood her fears. She had them driven into her own mind that being put into a nursing home, no matter how well-established it was, would surely be the end of her days.

She refused to see how burdensome the situation was becoming. I won’t lie. It was definitely becoming a burden. So many people run around lying to themselves, or worse lying to others, saying their ill loved ones aren't "a burden at all." Bullshit! They can be downright pains in the ass. I am not ashamed to say it, but that's because I knew full well putting Googles into a nursing home was what was best for not only her, but all involved and we certainly were not the type of people who would just leave her there to rot.

I told her that we just needed to get her to a doctor, but she wouldn't have anything of me calling 911. She no more than said it again and I got up, went to the phone in her bedroom and called a private ambulance. That way we would be able to send her where we wanted. When I came back to her in the living room, I can barely put words to the expression on her face. She looked devastated, like she could not believe I had betrayed her in such a way. It didn't faze me in the least. I felt like I was taking control over a situation I once had very little control over.

*

My mother shocked both of us. She had made her way upstairs to Googles flat and her timing was that of a good comedian. She sat and had a cigarette with Googles, as I went to keep one eye on Dad and the other on lookout for the ambulance. My mother came back down a little while later, just as the ambulance pulled up. She instructed me to follow the ambulance in the car, to keep Googles company in the hospital. I thought to myself how much I would hate to wait in another hospital waiting room, but that old guilt crept in quickly and I knew I would do what I was told.

Watching my dear Googles be handled by the emergency medical technicians was painful. She seemed like a little girl. I think she knew in her hardest of hearts that it would be the last time she'd see her home. That she would never return. She had tears in her eyes. She was fit to be tied.

They ended up admitting her into the hospital. She could not care for herself at home. I was told to relay to my mother that Googles would need to be placed in a nursing home. I find it ironic to this day, but something else was quelling beneath the surface of Googles very being. Within a few days, after all her bitching and whining, tests and more tests, visits with Mom and Uncle Ralph - my beloved, dear Googles was diagnosed with the same exact small cell carcinoma lung cancer that my father had.

Unlike Dad, Googles would end up opting out of the cruel radiation treatments.

She would be strong.

She was determined.

She seemed even willing to face God, a being she had given up on many years before.

She'd face him long enough to shake her finger in His very face.

Maybe she'd even give Him a good whack at His foul sense of humor.

She was going to ride that pony out for as long as she could.

Then she would leave this earth - laughing.

...but she would ride it bitter and cold, devastated and misunderstanding the many wonders of the body, mind and soul... of life....

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Opening the Naked Window is available for purchase at >>>>AMAZON<<<< and other fine online retailers. Thanks!

Photos (l-r): My beloved Googles as a little girl...with my Uncle Ralph and Gramma Lou & Googles circa 1992 during one of our many awesome conversations about movies, music & current events, which I touch on throughout the series.

Memoir Journal: I had a lot of challenges writing my life story. I was very careful, as I touch on a variety of topics that affected me and the people involved whose presence, whether constant or a fleeting moment...the details lay in the randomness and the continual coming and going of many different characters. The almost vagrant approach to developing these characters based on real people from my life is intentional. People come and go in all of our lives, but I have seen so many pass through my line of sight due to life events and/or choices that I was very specific in giving that almost voyeuristic view on my own life. People like Googles, they are the constants that I plan to really touch on in the final book of the series that I am slowy working on this and next year.

Father's Day (excerpt 3 of 5 from "Opening the Naked Window" book II of the memoir)

Here are passages from book/season two of the memoir series, chapter/episode 17: Father's Day...

~~~~~

What my lives in the theatre, work and school provided was a huge relief from the reality we were facing with my father's steadily, deteriorating health. Oh, but wait - there's more...my grandmother, my dear understanding and giving Googles was seemingly going through the same exact ailments as my father. My mother and I also had to look after my great uncle Ralph, Googles religiously fanatical brother - a World War II vet.

So, I got very little sleep and my mother kept me busy, as I was sole runner for all involved, yet I somehow maintained enough of a business sense to get The Ecstasy complete, rehearse for both The Extravaganza and Lonely, while squeezing in a few much needed dates in between. That was a time when those so-called 'booty calls' meant so much to me, because it provided a great escape from the realities that were haunting me - even if I hadn't realized their pressing reality at the time. Blue and Ken were both great sounding boards for me during our late night, pre-dawn trysts at your local motel.

You see, as I came up, people like Dad and Googles, and even Uncle Ralph seemed indestructible. Sure, I am not stupid, I know people die, but I don't know ...I always thought I would have many years with my loved ones. You know, be blessed like some of my friends, who don't seem to know what they'll be missing when they talk negatively about their parents or grand parents. I shrug my shoulders and shake my head in disbelief when I hear such nonsense because in the scheme of things; we are so pressed for precious time and life is indeed short. Short in a sense that I was brought up to find good in everything and everybody, to pay attention to the details and to accept people for who they are.

A lot of my adult life, I would look at these people who are blessed to be well into their forties and fifties, yet pained by caring for an ill parent or better yet by having their parent's still in their lives. They don't know where I have been and while a friend of mine told me that was a sick way to think, to be jealous of such, I beg to differ. Yet that is the way of the world. What is a burden to one may not be a burden to others and so on. I just wish people could see what I went through. How I felt such a great sense of loss and sunk into a deep depression, - not once or twice, - but three times in my adult life. I am finally finding some sense of joy, but again - IT is a process.

The philosophies were instilled in me at a very young age by my parents, who for the most part, gave all of us kids our share of rough love. Looking back I don't think I would be the person I am today if it weren't for the foundation they laid for me. My father would get on my last nerve, always making me apologize to my mother when we'd argue. Hell, I only argued with her because she raised me to speak my mind. I did so with a sense of jurisprudence and with much conviction. She'd tell me if I thought something was wrong or someone was wrong, I should expose it. And I exposed my parents more often than not to their many oversights. However, my father explained to me one day that my mother also needed to be respected and she in turn would learn to respect me in time. He predicted that she and I would become "Judy's" or the best of friends.

Like he was gonna die or something... get outta here.

*

After many rigorous tests, trips to specialists, chiropractors and many painful, painful days there was a light at the end of my dad's tunnel. That year on Father's Day morning, bright and early at 6:30 am I drove my dad to the hospital for an MRI. I tell you, that was something that probably should have happened month's before, but I digress. What a way to spend Father's Day, which was a day he and I shared many fond memories over the years. That year, we had planned to go to breakfast, the Tiger's baseball game then meet up with Mom for dinner. We went on with our plans and I am glad we did - now.

My father labored through his soon-to-be revelation of a test.

Then we shared a nice breakfast and went to old Tiger Stadium. It was at the ball game that I witnessed my father found some comfort, at least for a little while. For some reason, unbeknownst to me at the time, I really paid attention to his every move that day; his singing the National Anthem and Take Me Out To The Ball Game, his enjoying a hot dog and beer, his telling me the differences in pitches, as he did so many times before, but this time it seemed to be worthy of a listen, his banging the empty seat next to him to cheer the home team on. He recalled how he and I celebrated the Tiger's winning the World Series in 1984 and how he was so happy he got to share that with me in his lifetime. He got to escape for a change and it was a wonderful memory.

*

On the flip side of a good memory...

Two days later, my mother received an urgent call from my dad's doctor. They were to go into his office bright and early the next day. My mother, at her most dramatic I am sure, mustered enough information from Dr. Jeffries to get him to agree to see them that evening. My mother had already grown tired of waiting until "tomorrow" for what she could find out today and spare another night of lost sleep due to worry. Her husband was in pain, whimpering like a damn child and she was downright angry about it. She wanted to know what the hell it could be that a simple blood test or x-ray couldn't pick up. What exactly was it that was making her 'bear' act more like a cub every day?

CANCER...

It was official.

My father had lung cancer; more tests would reveal that it was small cell carcinoma. The reason he was in so much pain, more so than usual for his condition, was that he had huge massive tumors, which had collapsed two of his vertebrae in his spine. Surgery was needed to prevent paralysis. This was very bad news. My mother and I thought my father had passed his highest threshold for pain already, but we would soon find out he hadn't even reached the halfway point.

*

GUILTY...

I was for not really being there as much as I could have been for my parents. The more I heard about my father, the more I saw him suffer, the closer his surgery got, the more I dove head first into rehearsals. I drank myself stupid many nights trying to cope with my biggest fear, which was not so much my father dying as that seemed to be the inevitable. I saw the situation as hopeless and yet I failed to really let the reality of all the implications his impending death would have on my mother and I sink in.

*

One night, I came home and Dad had fallen out of bed. My mother couldn't do anything, but pace the floor and wait for me to get home. My beeper had been blown up on the drive home... The Extravaganza with Miranda's big debut was in three days and I was exhausted from all the energy I was forced to pump out on cue at a moment's notice from any taker at hand. So there I was, lifting my dad off the floor. The bulky weight of him, fighting gravity it took all the strength and patience I could muster to get him back in bed. It was exhausting. My father was crying because he felt ashamed for being so damned helpless. It was heartbreaking.

Then, I no more than caught my breath and my mother told me she hadn't been able to get Googles on the phone. She wanted me to go up to her flat and check on her. I took a chunk of chocolate cake up to her - not realizing what grim reality I was about to face. Upon getting up to her flat, I soon realized that Googles had also fallen. This was becoming more and more of the case and normally she would be able to crawl to the phone or pull herself up onto her bed. That time, on that day of all days, she had fallen down – hard - and couldn't get up. Now, I remind you she was a stickler for her pride and she had soiled herself. She was more worried about that disparaging fact than anything else. I mustered up enough strength to dig in, pick her up and carry her to her bed.

After all, I thought about what I had done to her credit card accounts; this was the least I could do. Guilt is a (expletive deleted for this post)! It will make or break you and will give you the strength to do the unthinkable. You see, I was always trying to do things for her to atone, but this was way beyond anything I had in mind. I will never forget how she clung to me and cried at her rescue. She seemed to have so much to work on with her very soul, at such an old age.

Things were happening way too fast for all of us, and as I changed her soiled nightgown and looked away in respect of her pride, I thought, "What the f--- am I going to do?"

Not "why me?" Never "why me?" That's not good enough for where I come from, from what I am made of, but "what the f--- am I going to do, Lord?"

*

It was the night before The Extravaganza and my dad's tumultuous surgery would follow two days later. I was in quite the foul mood. Gary was kind enough to serve me drink after drink and with each passing cocktail the bitter bitch inside me showed her blistering cold face. I was outdone. I felt a bit betrayed that Diva Kingsley wouldn't be doing my makeup. There I was going through all of this shit with my family and she was no where to be found. I was on the brink of becoming what she was - a female impersonator - and didn't have a clue all of what it took. I still viewed the whole idea as an asinine joke. I still looked down on the likes of them unfavorably, due to Tiger's rejection of me.

I thought back to all the men I did oral favors for, but here I was practically in tears, sweaty and full of stage funk wondering where my favor was. When would I shine? When would a man love me? Just love me. Not want me to f--- and suck, just hold me and love me. I thought about how I had treated so many men so kindly, either with a kind word or gift or deed and how they mistreated me in return or just didn't take notice, or hell even dismissed me by making me feel invisible.

Yet, I wasn't invisible when I was deep throating their manhood.

I certainly wasn't the man my father raised. Or was I? I had so much to say to him, but I couldn't bring it out. As expressive as I can be, again when it was for something or someone important. I was practically speechless and now that night before the opening I was drunk by rehearsal's end. I was drooling, sweaty and enebreated. Allen would be working the door the next night, yeah my third ex. He has been very supportive of me. He had the nerve to look down at me and tell me how disappointed he was. We went to the bathroom and in my drunken state, I pretty much told him to go to hell. I told him that he didn't have a clue what I was going through.

I mean, people go through shit, but I had so much thrown on me at once and all he could do was scold me and make me feel bad. F--- him! I couldn't believe he did that. He always had a way to make people feel common next to him and he wasn't going to make me feel stupid, not that time. I told him he was kicking a dog who was down and to leave me the f--- alone, save it for Marshall (- his new lover of over a year). Then, it turned into an argument that wasn't about what it initially started about. Has that ever happened to you? It's very powerful, if you can manipulate it and I did. It was wonderful.

Instead of hugging me and being a friend to me in a down moment, he thought he would just let me have it.

Well, I wasn't having any part of it and people in the cast and crew were both shocked and appalled at our fierce argument.

None of them could believe I had gotten that drunk on the set.

To hell with them all, I thought.

It was MY show, with MY money and MY ideas and it was MY father who was dying and MY grand mother who was sick and MY mother who was increasingly needier and needier and I needed some f---ing attention!!!!

And I got it, oh boy did I ever...by the time I left them all I had pissed most of them off and had showed my definitive ego.

As I cried in my car, I was afraid I was too drunk to drive home.

I actually questioned myself on whether they would show up and do the show the next night...

and you know what...

{in a whisper} I didn't give a damn...

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Opening the Naked Window is available for purchase at Amazon >>>>CLICK HERE<<<< and other fine online retailers.

Photo: a restoration I did of my father's high school graduation picture.