Randi Becker Walls was in her early thirties. It was the 1980s. It was a special occasion and she was attending an intimate family gathering at a relative's apartment. She hadn't seen her Aunt Lil and Uncle Hy for several years. They exchanged hugs and kisses. Preempting the start of any normal conversation, her Uncle Hy made this pronouncement:

"You had the worst, most terrible childhood that anyone could ever have had"... thanks Uncle Hy, she thought, for reminding me. Somehow, she made it through that "family" gathering that day. She was used to it. That is how it usually went. Always someone, somewhere, would bring up her less-than-wonderful childhood. The Ritual of Randi had to be performed before they could be engaged in any other meaningful type of conversation with her. But why? After all, she was the one who lived through those years! And while she was living through them she didn't always know that it was so bad. Hello??? How about seeing her some other way, for once, like the fact that she was now a grown woman with a wonderful career and a mountain of accomplishments under her belt. Fold Your Arms and Smile! is her story, the story of not only who she was, but of who she's become, and includes all the beautiful parts of her life, as well.

Fold Your Arms and Smile!

My Mosaic of Love, Loss, and SurvivalBy Randi Becker Walls

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Randi Becker Walls
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-9830-4

Contents

Acknowledgments..................................................................xvIntroduction.....................................................................xviiWhat I Am Writing About, and Why.................................................xixChapter 1 Meet Me, Meet the Family..............................................1Chapter 2 The House on Hawthorne Avenue, My Real First Home.....................9Chapter 3 You Want Me to Go Where?..............................................15Chapter 4 Marvelous Chicago!....................................................17Chapter 5 About Irv.............................................................20Chapter 6 Life with Dad and Lee.................................................24Chapter 7 About Lee.............................................................30Chapter 8 Way to Go, Stepparents................................................33Chapter 9 It's a Girl! It's a Boy!..............................................34Chapter 10 Thank God for Stepfamilies............................................38Chapter 11 The Young Traveler....................................................43Chapter 12 Been There, Done That!................................................46Chapter 13 Back to Cincinnati, Court, and Junior High School.....................52Chapter 14 A Turning Point.......................................................56Chapter 15 Freshman Year and Back to the Windy City!.............................61Chapter 16 The Humiliation.......................................................64Chapter 17 A Baby Boomer at Senn High School in the 1960s........................65Chapter 18 First Love............................................................71Chapter 19 Moving through College-Literally......................................76Chapter 20 Marriage, Motherhood, and College.....................................79Chapter 21 The Photograph........................................................81Chapter 22 The Crux of It All....................................................84Chapter 23 Another Turning Point.................................................91Chapter 24 Irv's Big Ending......................................................98Chapter 25 Mom's New Life........................................................100Chapter 26 Marriage, New Kids, Grandkids!........................................102Chapter 27 In Youngstown? Yes....................................................105Chapter 28 An Unbeatable Team....................................................110Chapter 29 The Home We Loved.....................................................114Chapter 30 Jane..................................................................116Chapter 31 Several Elites and One Dysfunctional Dude.............................118Chapter 32 After Twenty Years: I Love Youngstown!................................121Chapter 33 Retirement: Mixed Feelings............................................125Chapter 34 About "Don't Give Up".................................................128Chapter 35 The Last Colorful Piece...............................................131Six Major Regrets About Which I Grieve...........................................137What I Have Learned..............................................................139Anger Analysis WorkSheet.........................................................143Issue Resolution Worksheet.......................................................144Author Background Information....................................................145

Chapter One

Meet Me, Meet the Family

A beautiful baby with big, brown eyes entered this world at 4:47 AM, the morning of March 18, 1949, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

See? I started out with a positive self-image! Little did I know that it would take many years before I began to feel comfortable and at peace with my life and me once again, and even that would be fleeting. It has been unfortunate that during my childhood I had to deal with constant challenges to satisfying my basic needs and to a healthy psychosocial development. I would be subjected to emotional and physical abuse. The ripple effects would continue throughout my life, and depression and anxiety were to become my constant companions.

I was named Randy Beth Becker. The spelling of my first name was later changed to Randi-then, by gosh, after awhile the Marines and Army stopped sending me those recruitment letters. (No, that did not contribute to my rejection and abandonment issues.) My parents divorced while I was a baby, and both remarried within just a few years, presenting me with two stepparents. Both sets of parents presented me with a new sibling, and I inherited two sets of stepfamilies. Here is some family history, as I am told and/or remember.

My Dad

My father, Joseph Becker, was born in 1920. When he was a young boy, he had his day vision, but he struggled to see at night. He grew into a tall and good-looking man, a brilliant person. He was an artist, loved to sing and loved music, and was enticed to travel and have adventures. When old enough, he would just take off alone and travel to other places without saying a word to anyone. He traveled by Greyhound bus. He was a bit of a problem child, somewhat troubled and troublesome, but the one thing that contributed to his burden in life was his night blindness, which was to become total blindness in time. Doctors and society in general knew a lot less then than they do now about retinitis pigmentosa, his diagnosis, and his handicap was an embarrassment to him from the time he was a child through young adulthood, one that he felt he must hide from others. When he began dating girls (he loved girls), he would have to double-date so that the other guy could do the driving at night.

Dad told me that back in the old neighborhood where his family lived, Drexel Street in the South Avondale section of Cincinnati, some people considered his family to be lowly immigrants. Later their status in the Jewish community was elevated. My grandparents purchased and moved the family to a large, three-story, yellow brick house in North Avondale. It sat on the corner of Glencross and Mitchell Avenues. Across Mitchell Avenue was the small city of St. Bernard, a "city within a city." My grandparents rented out an apartment on the first floor of the house and lived on the second floor. There was also a nice two-bedroom apartment on the third floor and, of course, a basement, which I never visited.

My grandparents' apartment seemed huge to me, and it was filled with beautiful furniture. I specifically remember the living room, the front porch facing Mitchell Avenue, the huge dining room with its beautiful flamingos on the wallpaper, and the dining room table where the family would sit on Friday night for the Sabbath dinner. I also remember the huge china cabinet that they had. In my own dining room, I have evoked the look of their dining room. I still have in my possession a photograph that was taken of me as I stood in front of that very china cabinet.

The Beckers, my father's family, were a huge clan. Back in Russia, first cousins married.

As Dad always said, marriages between cousins can produce some extreme results. "Genius and insanity," he would say. Boy, was he right about that. My grandparents were first cousins, and I believe one set of their parents were first cousins. My grandfather, Zeyde (Yiddish for grandfather; his given name was Morris) and grandmother, Baba (or Bobe, Yiddish for grandmother; her given name was Sara) produced six children. Dad had five siblings: Bertha (who died at age twenty-five of leukemia), Dorothy, Laura, Ralph, and Albert, affectionately known as "Uncle Obby." They all eventually married, and some produced first cousins for me. Dad's was the only divorce among his siblings. There were several divorces among my generation of cousins.

I remember how I adored my Zeyde, a big and burly, lovable Russian immigrant with a heart of gold. He could lift a cow with his strong arms. He died in 1959 from heart problems. I remember that once, at the end of one of my summer visitations with my dad, Zeyde cried as he, my dad, and I made our way from the house to the car because it was time for me to return to my mother. He felt so bad about the situation. I shall never forget that specific moment, or him. He was such a good-hearted, sentimental man, my Zeyde.

My aunts would often buy clothes and other gifts for me as I was growing up. Dad made sure that I knew the entire, huge, extended family and that they all knew me. I had first cousins once removed, second cousins, and great-aunts and uncles. My great-grandmother, Baba's mother, was named Mary, and she lived until the 1960s. I idolized many of my father's siblings. My Aunt Laura always brought Doris Day to mind for me. Aunt Laura called me Randi Beth. Her husband, my Uncle Saul, reminded me of Dean Martin.

It is unfortunate that I stopped idolizing some of the members of my dad's family in later years for various reasons. In fact, I developed very negative feelings for a few. My father worked so hard when I was little to make sure that all the family knew me and that I knew them so that I would have an emotional base among my kin and would never have to feel alone when I grew up. With the Becker side of the family who are still living, I have no contact whatsoever today. Obviously, the outcome that he had hoped for has not been my experience. People have followed different paths, most have moved a good distance away, and there have been family squabbles.

Dad had to quit school around the eighth grade. The family owned a kosher butcher shop in Avondale, and Dad had to help his father, my Zeyde, in the store. My father's five siblings remained in school through high school graduation while Dad worked at the butcher shop. Later the family bought and ran a slaughterhouse. I can remember visiting there once when I was very little. I'm surprised that the experience didn't turn me into a vegetarian.

As adults, the males in the immediate family, including my aunts' husbands, worked at what we called "the plant" with the exceptions of Dad, of course, and Ralph. As a boy and young man, Dad worked in the butcher shop; as a young adult, Dad operated a small laundry business and later was given property by my grandfather. It took years, but Dad actually developed into quite a successful money-maker.

Ralph became a teacher, then a school psychologist, and eventually worked as a psychologist for the state of Ohio at institutions for the mentally retarded, such as Orient. He developed a test for the retarded that he published and marketed-the Reading-Free Vocational Interest Inventory. The test was later revised to include other special populations. He also developed and marketed the Becker Work Adjustment Profile. He was an expert in statistics. He eventually earned his doctorate degree from Ohio State University.

My grandparents were poor immigrants from a small town in Russia just outside of Kiev. They and their children and grandchildren became very successful members of our society. Thank you, America!

My Mom

My mother, Miriam Ellen Klein, was born in 1927, also a child of Jewish and European heritage: Russian, Romanian, and some German. When she met my father, my mother was young, very pretty, light-footed, and feminine. She was a ballet and tap dancer and teacher of dance, and she had artistic talent that she expressed through drawing. She has been playing piano beautifully since she was a young girl. She is still dancing and playing piano in her eighties. She participated in dance recitals when she was younger and later performed in many community theatre shows as a senior citizen in Florida. She danced with the Happy Hoofers and Fab Follies all around the greater Orlando area in the 1990s and early 2000s.

My mother has always been an excellent homemaker and still is. She has sewn throughout her life and still sews today. I remember the beautiful pumpkin costume that she made just for me to wear to a Halloween party in the neighborhood park back in the 1950s, along with gorgeous sweaters and throws and many other creations through the years.

Mom said that Dad was very nice to her when she met him. It was unfortunate and rather ominous that my mother's grandmother passed away on the day of their wedding. The ceremony took place, but the reception was scaled down; the family moved it from a hotel in downtown Cincinnati to their house, and related festivities were canceled.

After they were married, my mom and dad lived off and on (about three times) with his parents in the house on Glencross. As the marriage evolved, Dad became increasingly unkind to my mother. For example, he would make derogatory remarks to her, such as, "You don't deserve to live in an apartment, you can't run a household!" His unkind comments hurt her very deeply. She was also hurt by behaviors such as his failure to notice when she dressed up nicely for him. A couple of times, just a few months after they got settled in a new apartment, there was always some reason that they would have to sell all their furniture and move back in with the Beckers on Glencross. (Was this an excuse to avoid spending money that they didn't have, I wonder, or to save money that they did have?)

When my dad's sight deteriorated so much that he could no longer work in the family butcher shop, Zeyde helped set him up in a small laundry business. For a while my parents lived in an apartment that my maternal grandfather, Sam Klein, owned on Price Avenue in Price Hill, on the west side of Cincinnati. Mom helped Dad in the store. When she became pregnant with me, she says, Dad treated her with scorn when she became sick to her stomach. Dad reported to me that Mom generally resented having to work in the store; for example, she would slam things down on the counter.

My grandfather Sam didn't like Dad much, and they butted heads for years. Then again, my grandfather Sam didn't like a lot of people and could be difficult, so it was hard for Mom and Dad to get along with him and please him.

One scuffle occurred when Dad and Sam had a disagreement about paying the rent. Sam owned the building and felt that he should get some type of rent, family or not. Dad felt that, because they were family, he and my mom shouldn't have to pay rent, especially considering Dad's oncoming blindness and limited means for making a good living for his family.

Meanwhile, during this period, I was born. When the laundry business became too much for Dad to handle, Mom and Dad moved out of Sam's apartment on Price Avenue and went back to the Beckers' yellow brick house on Glencross in Avondale. My Baba did not take too much to my mother-there were many people whom Baba didn't like. Mom has told me that she found it really hurtful when she and her sisters-in-law, Dad's sisters, would come home from shopping trips together, and Baba always showed great interest in the treasures her daughters had found-but when my mother opened her packages, Baba couldn't have cared less. Figuratively speaking, Baba pushed Mom aside.

My mother became unhappier as time went on, living with my dad's family and with my father who, as his eye condition worsened, became more and more neglectful and emotionally abusive toward my mom. Finally, after taking as much as she could of the whole lot of them, she took me, moved out, and went back to her family home on Hawthorne Avenue in Price Hill.

From then on, I experienced trauma each time I had to separate from "Daddaly," which I called him when I was a baby and couldn't say Daddy. These partings broke his heart.

And mine.

Chapter Two

The House on Hawthorne Avenue, My Real First Home

Everyone called my maternal grandmother Mom or Mom Klein. Her name was Sarah Fenster Klein, and she was well-liked and loved by many. Even my dad continued to refer to her as "Mom" through the years. Indeed, she was a kind and caring woman, a surrogate mother to me through my early childhood. Mom Klein was always singing, cooking, cleaning, crocheting, knitting, or putting items of laundry like pillow cases through an ironing machine that she called a mangle. She was an active member of civic organizations. She called me "Cook," short for Cookie, and provided me with lots of hugs and kisses. I felt that she loved me unconditionally, as my daddy did. Interestingly, Mom Klein was not physically affectionate with my mother, and I in turn don't recall my own mother as being very physically affectionate with me.

My grandfather used to hum a lot. We all called him "Gab." (I don't remember where the nickname came from. His name was Sam Klein.) My maternal grandfather was a bit aloof and on the gruff side, but we all loved him.

My mother had two siblings. Her brother, my Uncle Art, was three years her junior. Her younger sister, Phyllis, who was the rather spoiled baby of the family, was thirteen years younger than my mom. Phyllis was only about eight years old when I was born. Phyllis became more like my sister than my aunt, given our closeness in age. We played together, and she teased me mercilessly! She was to become a very integral part of my life in the years to come.

I later learned that my Gab (Sam) was quite hard at times on my mother and her brother, Art, as they were growing up, but never hard on Phyllis. I saw a bit of that side of him too. He hated my father, and it showed. For example, when I was very young and beginning to draw, my Gab criticized me for using my left hand because, he said, that the trait came from my dad's side of the family. It made me feel really bad, but I could not help it. So I just moved my little rear under the dining room table and out of his sight when drawing. I still loved him, though. He had the biggest stash of Dubble Bubble gum that I had ever seen, and guess who got to have plenty of it? He couldn't have been all bad! Actually, I was very fond of my Gab, though always a little cautious about what I said or did around him.

Mom Klein and Gab owned a wonderful, three-story, gray-shingled house on Hawthorne Avenue in Price Hill, on the west side of Cincinnati. Gab raised honeybees in the back of their house, and Mom Klein made applesauce and jelly from the fruit of the trees and bushes. I used to love to sit in the grass under those trees in the backyard, mesmerized by the clouds floating over me in the blue summer sky. The house was surrounded by tall trees and lots of sweet-smelling grass and flowers. I can still hear the calming swoosh of the leaves on the branches of the enormous trees as they swayed to and fro in the soft summer breeze. Swoosh! I was in heaven ... that was truly my very first "Happy Place." There many of my earliest memories of family life formed.

The house sat up on a hill, back and away from the street below. It seemed to me that you had to climb a thousand steps to get from the sidewalk to the house. Up and up! The house had a lovely, big, rounded, wooden front porch that you had to climb more steps to reach. As I recall, the porch was painted gray. Mom Klein and Gab had a slider bench, rocking chairs, and other furnishings on the porch. We'd sit out there on summer nights talking, smelling the sweet evening air, and listening to the cacophony of the insects. Inside, at night, while Mom Klein and Gab were in the living room watching television, the house became an adventure land for Phyllis and me. We would play hide-and-seek or cowboys at night, having the kinds of adventures children can conjure up and enact among the nooks and crannies of a dark house.

Actually, my grandfather Gab remodeled the house when they first moved in. It had been a single-family home with a typical entry foyer, from which a lovely staircase wound upstairs to the second and third floors. There was a huge stained-glass window on the first landing. This window was walled up during the remodeling. He took out part of the staircase and moved a few walls around, and the first floor became a single-family dwelling. That space was still pretty big, even for one floor. The bedrooms on the second and third floors became rental rooms, which could be accessed from the outside by the renters and from the inside by the family. I still remember the old-house scent of the second and third floors, the house's memories of its own past. As soon as you opened the kitchen door leading to the upstairs steps, that aroma was there, like the patina on an old, fine piece of gold.

(Continues...)

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