The Crash of The Barbie Townhouse
and other childhood, mental health crisis'.
One night as my parents were having a cocktail party, I was in my bedroom by myself watching The Sonny & Cher Show on my tiny 13” black and white TV. I loved watching them singing, dancing and performing their silly skits. Sometimes at the end of the show their little girl Chastity would come out in her pajamas looking sleepy. I was always jealous because we were almost the same age.
While Sonny and Cher were wrapping things up singing “I Got You Babe”, I was also playing with my Barbie. Not Barbies, just Barbie. I only had one. I wasn’t big into dolls so one was more than enough. I preferred playing outside, riding my bike, ice skating in winter, and hanging out at my girlfriends houses playing school, but at home by myself, I had Barbie and my records. I had gotten her in 1976 so she came with a red, white, and blue one piece bathing suit in commemoration of the summer Olympics. Because I didn’t have a pool she had to settle for swimming in one of my moms aluminum saucepans. Barbie didn’t seem to mind.
With all of my ADHD issues, I had three things going on at once, Sonny & Cher, Barbie in the pool, and deciding to make myself dizzy by spinning around in circles. We all did it. Spin around and around in a circle then stop abruptly and you’d feel really light-headed and dizzy. I didn’t understand the science around it, I just did it. Probably foreshadowing for my future with drinking, I didn’t understand the science around it, I just did it because it made me feel really light-headed and dizzy. Anyway, I spun and spun in circles, ‘round, and ‘round, and ‘round I went, then I stopped. I spun so much I tilted sideways and went flying across the room, crashing into and knocking over my three story Barbie townhouse.
The whole house went silent. Then almost immediately I heard, “Kristen! What happened?”, followed by hurried footsteps.
“Nothing” said as the typical kid answer. I was still dizzy so I couldn’t move fast enough to get off the floor and do damage control.
My mom burst into the room to find me and the townhouse on the floor. The townhouse luckily was still in tact, if not a little dented, and my mom yelled, “What the hell happened in here?”.
“I tripped and fell” I lied.
“Jesus Christ, are you okay?” she said as she picked the townhouse up first then me second.
“I’m fine” I lied again, my side hurt.
“Ok well be more careful and go brush your teeth it’s almost time for bed” she snapped, closing the door she went back to her party and I could here her telling the story which led to an eruption of laughter.
I didn’t think it was that funny.
In the early to mid 1970’s, these were the kind of problems and stressors I faced as a kid. Knocking over the Barbie townhouse, working on a new badge for my Girl Scout sash, memorizing the ten commandments for Sunday School, and setting my new Snoopy watch 10 minutes slow so I could stay out 10 minutes longer with my friends. I was crafty at an early age.
Life as a whole was pretty easy. For now…
The year was 1976. My sister Robin was 16 and I was 8. She was not only the best big sister but she was my best friend, protector, and mentor.
When she was home I followed her around incessantly like a puppy, and she let me. I was like a little mascot to her. She never shooed me away. To the contrary, she’d let me tag along with her and her teenage friends a lot which was a huge deal to me. I felt cool, accepted, and protected. She was my fearless leader.
I always looked up to Robin because she did so many cool things. She played tennis, dabbled in guitar, the trombone, was a drum major in the school marching band, and was on student council. She was always writing letters to the editor of the New Britain Herald about her political and social “grievances” from a very young age.
Let’s just cut to the chase…
One night while having another solo night in my shared bedroom, I started to hear some commotion coming from the other room. Loud voices, banging, scary stuff to an 8 year old. I got off my twin bed and opened my bedroom door.
This scene is forever etched in my brain.
My mom was crying, hard, and screaming at my dad. My dad was trying desperately to calm her down. She picked up a chair from the kitchen table and threw it across the room. I became petrified. She continued to scream and yell, banging on the table, knocking over chairs, and crying insanely hard. I couldn’t make out anything she was saying but thought it had something to do with Robin.
I immediately went into fight or flight mode and became frozen. I’d never seen her act like this and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
This went on and on, her thrashing about like a wild animal and my dad, the lion tamer, trying to control her. About this time there was a knock at the door. Lucy, the land lady who lived below, knocked again then walked in without being invited.
Lucy and her husband George were like family. My parents had rented our little 2 bedroom apartment from them since before I was born and they were literally a part of our daily lives as we couldn’t come in and out of the house without running into one or both of them.
“Duane, stop it!” she exclaimed as she walked in and saw the scene with my hysterical mother, overturned chairs, and my dad struggling to get my mother in check.
She assessed the scene and then as if she knew something else wasn’t right, she made eye contact with me. I was at the end of the little hallway peering my head outside my bedroom door just enough to see what was going on but not enough for either parent to realize I was witnessing all of this craziness. I too was crying. Between sobs I had tried to tell my mother to stop but she couldn’t hear me.
“Duane, you need to calm down. Look, Kristen is watching you and look how upset she is”. She put her arm around my mom and turned her body in the direction of mine, my mom sat down on the kitchen bench and sobbed.
“Kristen why don’t you come with me, I think your dad should take your mom to the doctor, she’s not feeling well.” Lucy said as she looked at my dad. It was as if her eyes said “I’ll take care of this one, you’ve got your hands full”.
I looked at my father who just gave me a small nod but his face spoke volumes. Whatever was going on was big and he looked worried, exhausted, and defeated.
I shuffled through the house in my footie pajamas and passed both parents while Lucy put her arm around me and guided me downstairs to her apartment. I gained my composure as she sat me at her kitchen table and gave me a glass of grape Kool-Aid. My mom always bought Hi-C so Kool-Aid always tasted weird to me. Like someone forgot to put all of the flavor in it. It was bland.
“What’s wrong with my mom” I asked her as I sipped my grape tinted water.
“She’s not feeling well but you don’t need to worry about that, your daddy will take her to the doctor and I’m sure she will be fine, let’s go watch TV with George”.
We got up and went into their living room. They had plastic covers on all of their furniture which I thought was really strange. When you sat on it it made all of these crazy loud noises and it wasn’t very comfortable. Why buy nice furniture then cover it all up? My parents said “it’s because they’re Italian”. I don’t know what that had to do with it but I figured adults knew better than I did so I never asked again.
We watched All in the Family and The Jeffersons. I liked both of those shows but sometimes the grown ups laughed at things I didn’t understand. Archie Bunker was funny but really rude. Once again, I figured adults knew something I didn’t so I just went along with it and laughed when they did.
A few long hours later my dad called Lucy and said he would be home soon. My mom would be staying at the hospital a few days so they could get her better. I was relieved.
For the next few days my dad would go visit my mom at certain times of the day but I wasn’t allowed to go. I was too young. Visitors had to be over 10 and I was only 8. I just wanted to know if my mom would be okay and my dad reassured me that she would. He explained that she was really tired and was having some problems “coping” with things. I had a pretty strong vocabulary as a kid so I knew from the way my mom talked that “coping” meant being able to deal with and handle things. She’d say things like “I can’t cope with this right now” which meant to leave her alone.
After a week my dad told me “I want you to see your mother and I know she’d like to see you too, let’s sneak you in the hospital”.
WOW! This was going to be a cool adventure.
“Really?” I beamed.
“Yes, you’re taller than most kids so no one will think you’re 8. If anyone asks how old you are, you tell them you’re 10”. He instructed.
This was epic, sneaky, devious, and I loved it. I put on my denim jacket with the snoopy outlines all over it and got myself ready for 10 year old mode. We walked into the hospital and went to the floor my mom was on. This was the first time I’d ever been into a hospital to visit someone. My only prior experience was as a patient.
We got to her floor and got off. We walked to a big room with lots of tables and chairs and when she saw me she smiled and gave me a hug. Not a big, normal, bear hug, but a hug you’d give an acquaintance. She looked and acted a bit, drifty. Like she was there but her mind was on something else.
“Hi honey how are you?” she asked.
“I’m good how do you feel?” I asked her nervously.
“I feel wonderful. Look what I made”. She handed me a ceramic ashtray she’d made. Why was she doing art projects in the hospital? I never got to have art class when I was in the hospital. Something was different about this scene and I didn’t understand it. I was also a bit irritated she didn’t even comment on how proud of me she was that I made myself look older to sneak in to see her.
“That’s really nice, I like it a lot”. I replied, still extremely confused as to what the hell was going on.
She and my dad proceeded to talk and I just sat there assessing the situation. This big room was full of more zombies talking to their visiting loved ones. Why did everyone look so drifty? Why wasn’t my mom in a hospital gown? Why was she making ashtrays? Why wasn’t she hooked up to oxygen or IV’s? What was happening? This place was weird and I didn’t like it one bit.
She and my dad talked about things like her going to “group” and her “medications” and how she was “coping”. I knew what “group” meant because she went to therapy at a lady named Jean’s house. Sometimes she met with her alone and other times she went to “group”. I went with her a few times and sat in the waiting area. One time when she was in group, all I could hear was a room full of ladies screaming at the top of their lungs and I thought someone was being attacked. When my mom came out and saw my horrified face she just laughed and said “Oh Kristen we were having scream therapy, its good for you”. I told her it scared me and I didn’t want to come with her again to which she replied, “Oh don’t be so dramatic”. So much for sharing my feelings.
When we left I asked my dad how long she would be there, he thought maybe another few days.
“It was weird there, why is mom making ceramics?” I inquired.
“It part of her therapy, she will be fine. I know she’s looking forward to coming home soon. You did a good job pretending to be 10, I’m proud of you”. He was clearly deflecting the subject so I let him. I wasn’t a fan of weird things and this was too weird for me, but he did say he was proud of me acting 10 so that made up for all the weirdness at the hospital.
My mom eventually came home and it was like nothing had happened at all. No discussions, no explanations, nothing. Just mom and dad back to the status quo.
Around this same time, Robin moved out. One day she was there, the next she was putting all of her things in black plastic Hefty bags and taking them to the car. She was moving in with her friend Patty and would finish high school in another town. I knew Patty, she was Robin’s new friend she was playing tennis with. She rode a motorcycle. I didn’t know anyone who rode a motorcycle so this was really cool and intriguing.
I was pretty upset that Robin was moving out but was kind of excited that I’d have our room all to myself. This meant I could have more sleepovers because we had two twin beds in MY room. I immediately starting covering my walls with Shaun Cassidy posters.
One Sunday morning a few short weeks after my mom came home from the hospital, me, my mom, and dad, were in my parents bed reading the Sunday paper. We did that every weekend. They got the paper and I would go in their room, climb up in their bed and dig out the funnies. Snoopy was my favorite. I’d read the comics cover to cover then do all of the activities in the Mini Page, a small section of the funnies that had word searches and other puzzle games for kids.
“Kristen, I want to tell you something.” my mom said while putting down her paper and staring intently at my dad.
“Okay” I replied. The look on my mom’s face said it was something serious.
“Robin’s gay”. she stated.
“Okay” I replied again.
“Do you know what gay means?”. she asked uncomfortably.
“Yeah, it means a man loves a man and a woman loves a woman”. I said with confidence. I don’t know exactly where I’d heard it or learned it, but that was the extent of my 8 year old knowledge.
She and my dad looked at each other. It was as if they expected to have to go into some deep, dark, discussion about the perils of homosexuality with their elementary school aged daughter and were slightly taken back that they didn’t.
“Okay, that’s right. Do you have any questions for us?” my mom said, probably not knowing what to expect next.
I stopped and thought a second. Did I have questions? What did this mean? Did it change anything? Robin was my mentor and I truly looked up to her. What she did I copied, what she did, I mimicked, it had been that way since I was born. I came into this world and Robin was there as one of my number one role models, from day one.
“No, I don’t think so… but if Robins gay then maybe I’m gay too”. I stated proudly.
The 3 of us were in family therapy the following week.
It would be years, maybe even a decade or more before I realized that what had happened was that my sister came out to my parents and my mother had a nervous breakdown. Not so much because Robin was gay, but because in 1976 in rural Connecticut, someone you knew being gay was pretty much unheard of and was as if somehow the parents had failed the child, or badly parented them. My mother took it as a reflection on her, sort of a “how could she do this to me” moment. This was the farthest from the truth. My sister and I have amazing parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. She told me years later that she was looking up “homosexual” in the dictionary in elementary school because she knew she was different from the other girls. On other numerous occasions she told me “this has nothing to do with our parents, this is how I was born”. Take that for what you will in your own belief systems.
These events were key moments in my young life. It was like witnessing an epic, Shakespearean tragedy but not realizing it until 20 years later. Somewhat of a “you don’t know until you know” scenario. It would take years of long, deep, conversations with Robin as an adult to find myself repeatedly saying “oooooohhhhh wow, that makes so much more sense now”. Many of these conversations were heavily fueled by alcohol which also made so much sense at the time.
The events of Robin coming out were like the beginning of an early maturity for me. I became thrust into adult situations and conversations even more so than before. I was always academically advanced and talked to more like an adult than a child but this was real life adult stuff. Coping skills, group therapy, and the hospitalization of my mom was like taking a crash course in Mental Health 101. This, of course, was before people said “mental heath”, they just said you were “mental”. Little did I know I’d dive deeper and deeper into the inner workings of mental health throughout my entire life.
As for Robins “new way of life”, I quickly became accustomed to acceptance. If you love someone dearly and there is something different about them, you don’t shun them, you continue loving them. You learn about them, you ask questions, you support them, and you never, ever turn your back on them. Learning she was gay at a young age didn’t damage me, it propelled me forward into doing what I believe the bible tells us to do which is to love all. I have some of the greatest stories of my childhood from my times spending the night at Robin & Patty’s apartment and I wouldn’t change a thing. I also commend my parents for handling the situation with me the way they did even though I had friends criticize my parents to me for exposing me to homosexuality at such a young age. I emphatically disagree. Their openness with me opened a dialogue that would have likely not happened and I would’ve moved forward in life forming my opinions mostly from pop culture and school kids biases. My young exposure was a blessing for me, my sister, and many of my dear friends to come.
So thus abruptly ends my Barbie townhouse filled childhood. Let the adulting begin.