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garbage-strewn back alley. The hallways stank of neighbours’ cooking and the galley kitchen was so small he had to walk through sideways. The bathtub was a rusted wreck and, with no money, he was forced to pinch his cutlery one piece at a time from a nearby diner.
My dad worked an entry-level management at a bank while studying evenings to eventually earn a master’s degree in education administration from Northwestern Illinois University, even serving as class president. Public speaking was his forte, and to this day he proudly recalls the best speech he ever delivered, addressing the student body on the occasion of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. People in the audience wept openly as his words implored the power of unity, community and hope against all odds.
In the crowd for that speech was a young woman named Bonnie Rovin. She listened to his words and was profoundly inspired. I’m going to marry that man someday, she told herself.
My mother’s upbringing couldn’t have been more different from my father’s. Coming from a wealthy Jewish family, she grew up on the richer side of Chicago. Hers was a life of country clubs, heated pools and fancy dresses. Hers was a life of comfort and ease until she was eighteen, when her father—the grandfather I would never meet—died suddenly of a heart attack. Distraught, she began to question her priorities, and she was actually in the process of dropping out of university when my father’s speech that day stirred her interests. She immediately changed her class schedule in hopes of arranging a meeting with him and, she hoped, more.
Her attempts to win Tony over were successful and, despite their cultural and religious differences, they were married in 1971. Several years of financial struggles and hard work followed, both of them working low-paying administrative jobs at the university while fighting to make ends meet. Despite the odds, they managed to purchase a modest townhouse and, later, the house in Schaumburg where I grew up.
Erin was born in June 1979. Nineteen months later, on January 20, 1981—also Mom’s thirty-first birthday—I was born. Almost three years later, Adam arrived. Other than early concerns with the discovery of Erin’s diabetes, we were a normal, healthy family. Dad tried several careers, from working at universities to network marketing firms to real estate brokerages; Mom stayed at home with us kids. Dad made sure we kept a close relationship with our entire extended family of aunts, uncles and grandparents, with regular reunions bringing us all together.
Having clawed his way up to the comfort of a middle-class lifestyle, Dad was determined for his kids to grow up with the same dedicated work ethic. “We Wiszowatys,” he insisted, “are leaders, not followers!” We were expected to always excel, particularly in academics. There were no Cs—I never received a grade below a B until eighth grade, when my distressed mother called my teacher demanding an explanation and afterward checked in weekly to track my achievements.
Dad was always fiercely determined to make his children feel powerful and confident. From an early age Adam, Erin and I fell asleep every night wearing headphones so we could listen to the motivational tapes he’d selected. These tapes played talks called “No More Excuses! Get It Done Today!” or “Get It Done and Still Have Fun!” We’d often return home from school to find self-help books on the kitchen table with a note: Dear Erin, Robin and Adam, Read Chapter Three, we’ll be discussing it at dinner tonight.
Every morning before we headed off to school, we would recite my dad’s scripted pep talks.
“Can you win?” he’d ask.
“I can win!” I’d say in return.
“Why?”
“Why?” I’d echo, following the script. “I’ll tell you why! Because I have faith, courage and enthusiasm!”
We would recite these affirmations endlessly, repeating the lines ten times a day: “I am fearless! I am determined! I am powerful! I am unstoppable!”
As I got older, I began to object to performing these routines and told Dad I thought they were ridiculous. My mother seemed to take my objections in stride, always remaining mellow, even when my father was particularly motivated and pumped up. I could see his enthusiasm was only out of love, but I still ridiculed him and refused to be told what to do, and I reacted in outbursts that grew increasingly hostile.
One night when I was fourteen, our family had just returned from a dinner out, and the moment we got home my sister had taken over the family’s only computer. I was irritated because I also wanted to use it, yet she refused. Suddenly, I was flaming with anger.
The next thing I remember is totally losing my train of thought. I heard myself screaming an incomprehensible spew of nonsense, something garbled like “hate everyone . . . computer . . . television . . .” Then, suddenly snapping out of it and realizing how crazy I sounded, I grabbed my jacket and stormed out into the winter night.
I headed along the wooded path where I usually walked Fluffy, trying to understand what had just occurred. What’s happening to me? Why did I do that? I didn’t even notice my dad behind me until he’d caught up and tugged gently at my arm.
As I fumed, he lectured me, saying he’d seen symptoms in me that he had himself experienced when younger: a feeling of helpless frustration, of not knowing how to control angry feelings.
“Sometimes you feel blank,” he said. “You don’t think straight, because you’re in such a fury.”
He was right. But I didn’t want to admit it; I’d convinced myself I hated him and the rest of my family. He said he and Mom had discussed entering me in anger management counselling.
“No!” I refused. “I don’t need that.”
But as time went on, my anger persisted. I argued about anything and with anyone. I became unbearable to live with but no one in my family made any changes to quell my anger. Dad still treated me as an ignorant child who couldn’t form her own opinions, and he forced his values of money and material success with disapproving looks and critical comments after every word I spoke. Eventually, rather than lashing out, I retreated further and further, building a wall of silence between us. Why keep setting myself up for the constant disapproval?
My mom hoped to be the family’s peacemaker. Following one of the regular blowouts between Dad and me, I overheard her on the phone with my grandmother, confessing that one of her biggest disappointments in life was her inability to maintain a proper, loving relationship with me. Naturally, I felt terribly guilty, but in my stubborn pride I could never allow myself to bend to her wishes.
To make it worse, in comparison Erin and Adam glided by, untroubled by my father’s expectations to excel, to be upbeat and outgoing, to “Go get ’em! ” Erin and Adam had no problem doing that. But I seemed doomed to always be the black sheep.
My family also struggled to observe my mother’s Jewish heritage. We were never particularly devout—unless counting our weekly Hebrew school visits, when, truthfully, we were more excited for the trip afterward to Burger King for Chicken Tenders (always the six-piece pack, until they expanded it to nine, which Mom found excessive).
I recall in my junior year we were celebrating Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holiday. Traditionally, Yom Kippur means an occasion of atoning and repenting for one’s sins. In our family’s version, we gathered at Schaumburg’s Volkening Lake to sit around a picnic table, taking turns pledging our goals for the coming year. In my rebellious manner, I thought it was all tedious. I put on my typical sour attitude, thinking, This is dumb. What a waste of time. When Mom tearfully said her biggest goal for the year was to work on her relationship with me, I felt horrible. Of all the goals she could focus on in life, she focused on . . . me? When I barely gave her the time of day, a brief glance, let alone a smile or kind word? Yet in my defiance I could never allow myself to cry in front of her, or assure her doubts.
I hoped that going away to college would be my big breakthrough. I broke up with my boyfriend, looking to make all new friends and sever all ties. I refused to bring petty distractions from high school along with me to college. I’d be far enough away from my parents that I wouldn’t have to do anything they said. I wouldn’t