Benjamin

At the end of 1974 Cathy was a fulltime student a Cal State LA.  Sean was in kindergarten at Glenfilez Boulevard Elementary School and Ted was enrolled at the pre-school at Cal State LA.  I was working in the Urban Affairs Department at Bank of America.   Cathy and I had had a rough time in  our marriage.  We had gotten through England OK, even with a bad start, but when we got home, the tensions began to increase.  Cathy seemed to be angry and jealous of my going to school and then off to work.  I wasn’t committed to Cathy and things were rough between us.  I think we had married very young and it didn’t feel very comfortable to either one of us as we began to grow up.

Then we went to Marriage Encounter.  It was in the early days of Marriage Encounter and Chuck Gallagher, a Jesuit priest, was leading most of the weekends.  Chuck and a small circle of couples had adapted encounter groups to married couples and devised this weekend without much sleep.  The honest sharing of encounter was between the couple who attended it.  We were encouraged to tell each other our innermost feelings and to share them in a loving way.  For Cathy and me it came just in time to save our marriage.  It worked and that was a good thing.  

There were cultish aspects of Marriage Encounter.  They intimidated the participants into giving a lot of money and attending information meetings and other events over getting sleep and other obligations.  They proselytized with a heavy hand and we were expected to bring everybody we knew to Marriage Encounter.  We were encouraged to go to weekends as often as we could and outside the weekends we formed groups that met in homes and we got to know other couples.  Marriage Encounter was very Catholic and we began attending church.  Marriage Encounter created community in a way that wasn’t usually seen in Catholic parishes.    

It was a very good thing for us.  Cathy and I became respectful of each other and much more loving.  It helped us to develop and nurture the love we had for each other. 

These weekends conducted at local hotels, started Friday night and couples would share intimate aspects of their relationship.  After a sharing by a couple on a subject, we would go back to our rooms and write to each other about the topic.  The communication on difficult subjects made it a very intimate weekend with breakthroughs in our relationship that continued on.  We learned like other couples to bring a jug of wine on these weekends.  Alcoholism was never one of those subjects discussed.  The Catholic Church we threw ourselves into, was very Irish and alcohol was a common social lubricant.  I never heard it discouraged by anyone.  I think among Catholics alcoholism was the elephant in the living room. 

In February, 1975 Cathy told me she was pregnant.  We were Catholic but we still practiced birth control.  Early on Cathy had used the pill.  She had tried an IUD but didn’t do well with it and in 1974 and 1975 we were using a spermicidal gel.  It was inconvenient but easier healthwise and apparently not all that effective.  At the time, I thought Cathy’s pregnancy was convenient for her.  She was doing well in school, had gotten a job with the day care center as a clerical person and things were going well, but my thinking at the time was that she was frightened of success and the pregnancy let her off from that.  I had felt railroaded when pretty much on her own she decided to have a second child just before we got out of the service.  I think my role at the time was very passive and I resented that she seemed to take advantage of that. 

I think it’s important that pregnancies and birth be viewed in the most positive aspect and so I did when Cathy announced she was pregnant.  I don’t know how Catholic we are but I think children born should always be greeted as gifts from God.  We were in a good place and it was a good thing.  I was doing well at Bank of America and at Cathy’s insistence we began house hunting.  Before the baby was born we found a house in Glassell Park and bought it.  The house a little way up the hill from Eagle Rock Boulevard cost us $33,000 dollars and we used the GI Bill to make that purchase.  It stretched us financially; the payments were $333 a month.  I was making $12,000 a year and taking home about $700. 

Benjamin was born October 14, 1975, two weeks after we moved in.  Our friends from Marriage Encounter helped us with the move and we were welcomed into the new parish, St. Bernard’s, by couples we already knew.  Benjamin was born at Kaiser Hospital on Sunset, our first American born child.  As I had with Ted, I got to attend the birth.  Shortly after Benjamin was born we got a dog and became the classic family, three boys and a dog.. 

Life was good, little league, involvement in our local parish, community.  We went on vacations to Uncle Warren’s farm.  Warren and Frannie were Cathy’s aunt and uncle in Bellingham, Washington.  Benjamin himself was quite a character.  I think he had to be tougher than the other boys just to survive.  Early on he began wearing a red fireman’s hat, something he was never without from the time he was less than two years old for the next two years.  He was well known wherever we went.   He liked action figures and sports.  He seemed to have an easy going character and he was cute as the dickens.

It turned out Benjamin was great in sports.  He was a star in t-ball, one of the kids who could actually catch the ball. He went on to be an outstanding little leaguer and an incredible flag football quarterback.  He was an interesting young man.  He seemed to me to be quiet and able to take care of himself.  I think he had a hard time with two older brothers and they kept him in his place and while he was a sweet kid, he was a tough kid too, able to roll with the punches.   

Benjamin turned eight when Cathy and I separated.  I remember on his birthday, I picked him up and took him to the Grinder, a coffee shop in Glendale.  We were both enjoying our time out together.  I told the waitress that it was his birthday and he was surprised and delighted when the waitresses came with a birthday cake and candles burning.  He couldn’t believe they knew it was his birthday.  I remember also at that dinner, I drank numerous glasses of white wine.  Not unusually I was probably a little sloshed.  That is, thank god, the last time I remember drinking with any of my children around me.  I got sober two months later.

When we separated Benjamin had just turned 8, Ted was 12 and Sean was 14.  Benjamin seemed to do OK.  He was deeply involved in sports and sought after by coaches in baseball and football.  Ted was involved in swimming and went to long practices every afternoon and meets on the weekends.  Sean began acting out right away.  He was expelled from Loyola High School for having marijuana at a football game.  After that he went to Providence and after that Eagle Rock High School.  He dropped out of school when he was 16.  Neither Cathy nor I seemed to be able to get him to settle down and we had less and less control over him as time passed.

From then until Ben graduated from high school I tried to live as nearby to where they lived with their mother as I could.  I drove Ted and then Benjamin to school every morning at Loyola near downtown LA.  I stayed involved with them and while the divorce wasn't easy on anyone I think we survived it.  Cathy or I never did manage to regain control over Sean, still true today, but he managed to turn out very well himself.     .