Chapter 0001 In The Beginning
Everything you are about to read is a lie, but all of it is true. I have always found that idea a fascinating one. Memory is a tricky business and truth is even trickier. Ernest
Hemingway put it best when he prefaced his work “Moveable Feast” in 1960 by saying, “If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always
the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” Still, I will do my best to tell the truth as I remember it. If I have any goal in
writing this, it is to let my girls know and remember their father and to let them know that they have always been and always will be the most important love of my life.
Another goal is to focus my feelings of mortality that seem to overwhelm me at this stage of my life into a positive channel of remembrance. I used to often encourage my
students in my speech classes to write their biographies or a relative’s biography because it helps to focus and put their lives into a perspective of being a part of a whole.
So now I am following my own advice.
Let me start by telling you who I am and then I‘ll tell you how I got to be this way. I am first and foremost a dreamer – literally and figuratively. From a very young age my
mother had little difficulty getting me to go to bed because I loved dreaming. Even today, if I have nothing better to do, I would rather sleep and dream rather than, say,
watch TV. My dreams are my meditation. I often am able to work emotional, spiritual and physical issues out in my sleep. I also dream of a better world and believe that
we are capable of achieving it. I believe in the possibilities of a higher existence for every person and I am often amazed that everyone wouldn’t want the same.
I am secondly a student. I love the idea of learning something new. The challenging side of this is that I often jump from one thing to another before the lesson is completed
because I get fascinated by something new. This has been a major challenge in my relationships. I am not saying that this plays out as infidelity. For the most part of I have
been faithful to the one I’m with, but I lose relationships because I tend to choose stable partners who find it difficult to keep up with my changing focus. I still hold out
hope of finding someone who can follow me in this dance of learning and experiencing, but can also cope with my need to feel accepted and loved as mentioned below.
I am thirdly an entertainer who also happens to be very insecure. Consequently I am extremely shy at first, but can quickly warm up. I am most comfortable on stage
where someone else writes my scripts and I have a clear idea of where I am going. Improv has never been very successful for me for the same reasons. I like feeling as
though I have some control but paradoxically, I don’t like being in charge.
Fourth on my list of descriptors would be a writer. I love writing words. I have always felt they were magical. I will tell a story of how this started later, but I believe with
all of my essence that what makes us the image of god is our ability to form and speak words. We are creators and our world and all that is a part of it was created
through the power and magic of speaking. “And God said….” is the greatest clue to our power given to us.
The final descriptor I use hesitatingly – a teacher. I love teaching. Next to being on stage the times I have felt most successful is when I am teaching something I am
passionate about. But I have also felt the most frustrated when I felt, as a teacher, that I couldn’t keep the interest of or control of my students. It is that paradox listed
above.
This is my life, Thomas Robert Averna, Thomas Judah Averna, Tam Judah Zelig, and you’re welcome to it.
What I know now looking back is that we are defined little by little and step by step by the choices we make. When those choices are based on fear rather than love than
we draw the lines of fear around us and create scenes in our lives that are bordered with that fear. It is like an artist that chooses whether he shall paint with bright and
festive colors or drab, dark ones. We can paint with light or darkness, but one way or the other, we are the artists and orchestraters of our lives. We are nothing but light
and sound and that is comprised of only two interpretations – love and fear.
I would like to think that I was conceived in love, but it may have only been lust. My father was apparently a bit of a player in his day and my mother was an escape artist.
Both were the black sheep of their families and probably were perfectly matched to help one another, but they never gave it much time to discover that. Dad came from
Sicilian parentage and mother was Russian-Hungarian. I never really knew anything about my mother’s heritage until I was 17. We’ll get to that. I have a fantasy tracing of
my lineage on my Dad’s side and it is rather colorful. In researching the Averna name, I discovered that it appears first in England. Vercingetorix as part of the clan of
Arverni, which could easily be mispronounced as Averna. Vercingetorix defeats Julius Caesar who ultimately forces him to surrender to save the lives of his people. He is
taken to Rome around 54 BCE and is kept there for six years before he is executed in a public festival. But what if he so impressed Caesar and the royal court that he
was instead exiled to Sicily and a substitute was killed in his place. Is it also possible that his name or the name of his clan had roots in Italy and hence the name of a lake
in Southern Italy – Avernus must also be counted in the family history. This is the Lake that Virgil made famous in the Aeneid as the mouth of hell. In my fanciful journey
Vercingetorix also sires a son to a noble Roman woman, which he could have done even if he had been executed. This son is highly honored in Rome and ultimately given
a governorship in Judea after marrying a Jewish woman also of noble birth, and who knows perhaps there is a link between this descendant and Mary Magdalene who
takes the name to France where you can find a county named Averna (Clermont) there. OK, so much for my flights of fancy. I’ll return to this subject when I talk about
my mother’s lineage. You might also pick up from this my messianic complex. I have other reasons for this, which will be discussed when we get to my childhood, but I
haven’t even been born yet, so hold your horses.
So let’s return to the facts. Sometime in 1951 Thomas Richard Averna married Miriam Enrica Blankfeld. The actual month date is a little in dispute I suspect because the
counting of months until my birth is dangerously close to being less than 9 months from the wedding date. Some of my ex-wives are now cheering saying “Yes, I knew he
was bas….!” At any rate, I was born on April 10, 1952 on the first night of Passover that year. My father was in the Air Force and I was born on a base called Camp
Kilmer in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I understand the base has now been converted to a community college campus, which is fitting I think.
Life seems to be relatively good for my mother at this time. From her pictures and stories she seems to be happy. If for no other reason, she now has a family that she
wants to be a part of. Mother is quickly made a part of the Averna clan. I am also apparently a part of a trio of cousins called the Three Musketeers because we were
each born two weeks apart. I forget the order, but they included me, my dad’s brother’s son Jimmy and his sister’s son Ritchie. There was a fourth also born very close
to us, but she turned out to be a girl – a fact we tried often to accuse her of causing the fourth musketeer to be hard to enlist. Gail was born to my dad’s other sister who
was also my godmother Tessie Whitney. My godmother was also born on April 10, so I was always very good at remembering her birthday.
The few years we had together were wonderful and we remained close for many years. Gail was my first love and for a time we even talked about getting married. Our
closeness caused a great deal of concern for my godmother who had to frighten us several times with the hideous sin of marrying your first cousin and the monstrous
prodigy that would come from such a union. Fortunately for Aunt Tessie, we were soon separated by miles and lost touch, but truth be told, I have never stopped loving
her. But that is part of my nature. I do not love lightly and when I love it is for life. Unfortunately, I was never able to pin that down to one person, but again I digress.
After a year and a half of marriage, my dad apparently decided he couldn’t stay in that relationship. He apparently had been having an affair with a woman who worked at
a toy company, I think Mattel. Her name was Dolores. He eventually married her and had several children with her. Looking back knowing what I know of both of them,
I think I can piece together what led to the split. Mother has always been very insecure and in honesty not a little emotional and volatile. Dad was very easy going and
carefree. He probably had several flirtations if not affairs in both of his early marriages. So, I am certain that mother became jealous and shrewish in trying to get Dad to
give her the love and security she felt she needed from him. The more she cornered him the further away he drew until finally he decided he couldn’t stay any longer.
Dolores was better able emotionally to give him the space he needed, so they lasted longer, but ultimately that marriage would end for many of the same reasons I
suspect. It was only until Dad married a Vietnamese woman who wouldn’t put up with his BS and actually seemed to dominate him that he ended up settling down.
I believe now, especially going on the work of Harville Hendrix that all relationships are the working out of unresolved issues stemming from our relationship with our
parents. What I have since learned about what my mother may have had to deal with at her childhood home and her father that someone like Dad was the ideal person to
help her deal with it. Ironically she too would end up in a marriage where she was able to dominate her husband as Dad’s wife did him. So the moral here, and as you’ll
see I didn’t learn it in time, is that we should not be so quick to throw out of our lives those who irritate us the most. They are probably the one person we desperately
need in our life. But it is important that both partners agree to this. There is the rub.
So now my mother is a single parent and trying to make ends meet. I gather that was not so easy. Dad’s family continued to help her and me and we all still spent a lot of
time together. Actually, mother and I seemed to be more welcome than dad as I don’t remember that he was at many of the gatherings I was at. Even so life was hard for
her and I suspect for me. Mother tells the story that no one would rent to a single mother until finally in frustration she asked if she could get a place if she threw me into
the river. I can imagine that subconsciously her frustration imprinted on me and this and many other factors contributed to my own challenges with abandonment issues.
I really don’t have any clear memories until I was about 6 or 7. At this time all of my Dad’s family lived on Long Island, New York. I have vague pleasant memories of
visiting a great aunt and uncle on my dad’s side. I used to have a picture of me on a rocking horse at their apartment. I remember feeling very loved and safe there. I think
I was 5 in the picture. I remember taking a trip with my mother on a cold winter’s night and I got sleepy and curled up on the floor by the front seat and felt the car heater
blowing over me and the sound of the heater fan was very soothing. To this day I love sleeping with the sound of a fan going in the bedroom. The rest of my memories for
this time have been supplied by my mother and relatives. So I will relate stories that I cannot verify are true.
When I was born, I had a full head of hair. My grandfather Averna came to visit and brought a pair of scissors saying, “No grandson of mine is going to look like a girl.”
Supposedly I was held in high regard by grandmother Averna before she died, and the story is told that on her deathbed her last words were, “Take care of my little
Tommy,” spoken to my mother. This event was told to me by my mother and I never knew the truth of it until I attended the wedding of my cousin, Gail’s sister Kathy,
many years later. At the table I was sitting at several older relatives began to tell that same story about me, but there was a rather amusing argument over it. Some
believed, as my mother did, that she was talking about me, but some insisted that she was speaking of her son, my father. So I had mother’s story verified, but the truth of
it will never be decided. Another story involving grandmother Averna is that my mother had a dream that I had fallen off of a ship she was on and she was worried about
me and grandmother came to her and said not to worry that I would not be harmed because I had a special destiny. Here begins my blessing/curse of the messianic
complex. The last story involving grandmother allegedly happened at her funeral. According to my mother, I went around to several relatives at the burial site after she was
interred and started talking to them cheering them up and to some telling them things that only grandmother would know. This has never been confirmed. Unfortunately, I
have no memory of this woman. Grandfather remarried and his second wife is the only grandmother Averna I can remember.
I don’t have a lot of memories of Grandfather. I remember as a four or five year old staying at his place and he used to wake me up with what Dad says was a “sailor’s
whistle.” Grandfather was a sailor in his younger days. I also felt love and safety in this place.
Ironically, I don’t have many memories of mother during these times. I suspect based on what I later learned and what I experienced at an older age that between work
and dating, mother did not have a lot of time to spend with me. The one very clear memory that I believe happened when I was about four or five has impacted my life a
great deal. I remember that my mother took me with her to visit a girlfriend of hers in Brooklyn. I remember playing with her children and then being put to bed. The next
thing I remember is waking up and feeling disoriented in a strange place and a strange bed and I called for my mother. In walks a little old lady who was a little scary to
me who was trying to talk to me only it was in a language I did not understand. Mother’s friend was Puerto Rican and this old woman was her friend’s grandmother who
had been called in to watch us kids while mother and her girlfriend went out. I didn’t know this at the time. All I knew is that my mother wasn’t there and that she had left
me in the care of a very scary woman. Somehow, and no one apparently knew how, I managed to elude the old woman, unlock the front door, which had a chain lock
taller than I was, run down the stairs to the front door of the apartment building and run outside before being caught. I was now on the streets of Brooklyn in a bad area of
town in my footie pajamas. I remember walking and crying and not knowing where I was or where I was going. I remember seeing stairs that went down and I knew that
we had taken similar stairs to get home once riding on the subway. I was just about to head down those stairs when a police car pulled up and a policeman got out of the
car and managed to talk me into going with him. I then remember having a wonderful time at the police station eating ice cream and being promised that they would find
my mother. I was put to bed in a cell and was awakened by a very frantic mother.
It is from this experience and others that seeds were planted, which I am still struggling to overcome. Seeds of fear regarding abandonment. I know my mother did the
best she could as a single parent. It was a lot harder then than it is now, but I never felt as though I was the child and she was my nurturing, protective mother. More often
than not, I was the nurturing protective person of the house.
Equally ironic is that the beginning of my clear childhood memories and memories of a family begin with my kidnapping. I didn’t know I was kidnapped, however. I seem
to recall it was Christmas time and I was with relatives. Mother wasn’t there and Dad showed up. I have no memories of him in my life until that point, but I know I
recognized him, so he must have been there before. Dad bundled me up and said that we were going to take a little drive. That “little drive” was from New York to his
home in Massachusetts.
When I arrived it was to a house with a new mother, Dolores, and two sisters I never knew. I remember feeling unwelcome at first. Dolores was not happy fearing that
my presence would mean that Dad’s love would be more for me than her and her children. I wasn’t happy here until several weeks later when, and I remember this
moment clearly, I waked up in my room hearing Dolores crying. I left my room and went to her side and asked what was wrong. She began telling me that Dad was late
coming home and she was afraid he was out with someone else. This was the beginning of a strange event that would happen many times to me as a child. Adults would
open up to me and tell me things that should have been beyond the range of a child to understand. But I did understand and I gave consolation that helped her and them to
feel better about what was going on. This is what happened that night. I hugged her and told her everything would be OK and shortly after, Dad came home and I went to
bed. From that night forward, Dolores was a loving mother to me and I felt happy and safe in a home for the first time I can remember. Time went by fairly quickly. I
remember that a neighbor had a Great Dane who we used to ride like a horse. I remember laughter and fun. I was there for less than a year because I remember it was
starting to get cold again, when the next kidnapping occurred.
Apparently my mother had been trying for many months to get me back legally, but because Dad was in the military, he was fairly protected. Also I suspect that she
couldn’t prove that she could provide a better home. At any rate, she decided to kidnap me back. I remember the day before it happened, Dad came to me at school
during lunchtime and asked me the unthinkable. He said that my mother was trying to get me back, but he needed to know who I wanted to be with – her or him. This is
an awful question to ask a child, but I answered that I would rather be with him, and I think I meant it. He said that I should not worry about it then and he would take
care of it.
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