Love Makes A Family - Part V (Michael)

Love Makes A Family – Part V

Michael James Tompkins was born in Columbus, Ohio in August, of 1946. His parents, like many of their generation, heard California calling them to a better life, lived in a balmy climate, with limitless opportunities. So, in 1951 his parents packed up all their belongings along with Mike and his two older sisters Sandy and Betty and they headed west. They ended up settling in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. In those days the area now known as Canoga Park, West Hills and Chatsworth were fertile farmlands with citrus and avocado groves as far as the eye could see.

Along with the citrus farms were a few very large horse farms and ranches. Many of these ranches were owned by Hollywood actors, directors and producers. The Tompkins kids quickly made friends with the kids from one of those big ranches down the road from their small 3 bedroom home. They grew up thinking it was normal to be playing with the kids of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

They were lucky that their days were filled with sunshine and the sweet smell of orange blossoms mixed with the pungent odor of the horse barns surrounding their neighborhood, because their nights were filled with the constant bickering and crazy-making demands made of them by their inebriated parents. The opportunities the young couple had hoped would fall in their laps had not materialized and their coping strategy was to drink. They drank daily and they drank a lot. Vodka was their poison of choice. It got them to a numbed state of consciousness quickly and they rarely remembered what havoc they had wreaked the night before. Michael and his sisters stayed as far away from their house as they could.

When Mike was 10, his little sister, Patti was born; “our little mistake” the parents called her. He was no longer the baby and because of all the attention being focused on Patti, Mike used the diversion to gain a little freedom for himself. He started doing odd jobs for local horse owners in exchange for riding time. He had his favorite horse in every stable in the north valley and he soon became a very skilled horseman. He rode bareback and barefooted and the ranchers all said he reminded them of a young Sioux or Cherokee warrior.

Mike was always smallish, but from mucking out all those stables he became very lithe and wiry. When he entered 9th grade he tried out for the swim team at Birmingham High School. He made the team, as team manager. But he didn’t give up. He did the team laundry and then swam after the team practice was over. He eventually made the team mainly because his work ethic impressed the coaches. He seemed almost obsessed with being the hardest worker.

By the time he was a junior he was one of the two fastest swimmers on the team. He was racking up trophies and ribbons, and was featured on the sports page of the Daily News several times setting records in the 100m butterfly.

The Tompkins kids were lucky in one respect. They had good neighbors. Sandy, Betty and Mike were all smart and engaging, motivated and energetic. Their neighbors could see, and hear, what they were up against at home, and they reached out. Sandy and Betty would spend as many nights at friends’ homes as they would at their own. They made themselves perfect houseguests, helping with housework, always making their beds, doing dinner dishes, even vacuuming. They did not want to jeopardize these oasis relationships within the neighborhood. Their relationship with neighbors was more like normal family interactions than they could ever get at their own home. Mike, being the youngest, wasn’t granted that freedom. His Mom wanted her little boy at home to wait on her, hand and foot. She berated him if he didn’t get the vermouth to vodka ratio just right. He remembers burying his head under pillows to drown out her shrill threats hurled at him and his dad.

When Mike started gaining notoriety as a swimmer, his father, who had never supported his endeavors in school before, began to show up at his practices and swim meets. This would normally be every boy’s wish, to perform and achieve great things in a sport with his father watching and encouraging him. It would have been so for Mike had his dad not shown up at these events stumbling drunk and slurring his words; yelling at Mike to “do what I taught you, you little sumbitch!” Of course, his father had never taught him anything about swimming. In fact he had given him precious little fatherly guidance about anything, much less affection. But, he was now living vicariously through Mike and getting massive pleasure out of lording it over the swim coach and Mike.

One of Mike’s other traits, besides being extremely ethical and big hearted is that he does not deal well with BS. He suffers fools, not at all. He proved this in spades at the Olympic time trials in 1964. Mike was a senior in high school and had just missed making the Olympic swim team. He was still in training because the cumulative times of the candidates for the final alternate were inexplicably tied. He still had a slim shot to make the team. His father showed up at one of the training sessions, drunk as usual, and was hurling epithets at Mike for “not being man enough to make the real team”.

The swim coach had reached the limit of his tolerance for this blowhard who bullied everyone with whom he came in contact. He told him to leave or he was calling the police and having him removed. It was too late. Mike had also reached his limit, and he knew what would pull the rug from under his father. He slowly turned around, picked up his gear and walked away from the pool without looking back. He never swam another stroke competitively. His father went apoplectic. Mike was grounded for the rest of his senior year, but he went to bed smiling every night knowing that he had finally gotten even in some measure for all the abuse he had endured at the hands of this cruel, bitter alcoholic.

Both Mike’s parents had threatened him with a life of servitude to them as soon as he graduated from Birmingham. They constantly harangued him about all the servile jobs they had lined up for him and that he could kiss his jobs working with horse’s goodbye. By this time Mike had no respect for them and felt empowered by quitting the swim team. He knew that he could always outsmart the two lushes when they would try to control him. He joined the U.S. Army the day after graduation from high school and more or less told his parents where they could stick their summer jobs.

Mike was actually enjoying his time in the army. After boot camp he was lucky enough to get assigned as a driver for a general in military intelligence and he spent most of his time sitting outside high level intelligence meetings. After one year, 4 months and 14 days of military service, word came that his father had died, apparently of alcohol poisoning. He was forced to go to the funeral, but didn’t shed a tear. He was only angry that he didn’t get one last time to tell him how much he regretted getting stuck with him as a father.

Michael had become quite cynical due to all the disappointments he had dealt with in his life. He was bitter about his relationship with his parents, but he was not a negative person at all. He had a very dry sense of humor, but was not humorless. He loved to laugh and loved to make other people laugh. He had a quick mind and an acerbic style when delivering a punch line. If he had been a comic, his style would definitely have been in the vein of Don Rickles or Paul Lynde . People at his father’s funeral remember Michael cracking jokes at the reception. It was his way of dealing with his ambivalence about the loss of his father.

He went back to active duty after only a week of bereavement leave. A few months later, his mother followed her husbands lead and drank herself to death. Cirrhosis of the liver was the official cause of death. Because both of his parents died and because his older sisters needed him at home, he was given a hardship discharge from the army. No matter what your relationship with your parents, when they leave you abruptly, you can’t help but have abandonment issues. You are an orphan at this point. Knowing about abandonment would play heavily on Michael’s consciousness in the future. He would always automatically empathize with people who suffered rejection and abandonment.

Patti was now 8 years old and Betty and Sandy needed help to keep the family together. Mike became the man of the house just before his 19th birthday. Various aunts and uncles contributed what they could but the income for this parentless household was completely on the shoulders of the three older siblings. The older girls worked as waitresses and Mike became a trash man for the city of LA. The next five years flew by as they all worked hard so that Patti could have a stable home and get through school. The three of them were making enough to pay rent and buy the groceries and Mike worked a second job at a gas station to start a savings account.

Sandy and Betty both had boyfriends and were starting to think about getting married. Patti, had reached the age of 13, that wonderful age when we all think we now know it all and resent being told what to do. There was a struggle going on in the house because of Patti’s normal urge to rebel, and her older siblings thinking they were supposed to quell this rebellion by being ultra strict. Patti began to act up and act out. She was hanging with a bad crowd and had begun to smart mouth her older siblings when they set limits. She would run to her room and slam the door, screaming, “You are not my parents, you have no right to tell me what to do!”

Her problem was that they did have that right. Michael was her actual legal guardian and he wasted no time intervening on what he perceived as her path to self destruction. If you read the book or saw the movie “Mommy Dearest” you may remember how Joan Crawford dealt with her maturing daughter when she felt threatened by her budding sexuality. That’s right. She put her in a convent. Well, Mike put Patti in the same Catholic boarding school and convent where Joan Crawford sent Christina.

Patti was mortified and went there literally kicking and screaming. But to this day she says it was the exact right thing to do and she has thanked Mike over and over again for caring enough to take drastic action. She saw the error of her ways, got a great education, and she is a devout Catholic to this day. She has sent both of her children to private Catholic schools from first grade through to high school graduation.

As I said earlier, Mike identifying with anyone struggling with abandonment issues was only natural. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Michael expressing a wish to help Cari and Anna. Reaching out to help other people is one of his traits. At the time it was just a gleam in his eye. He didn’t even know their names yet. He only knew what I had told him and yet he knew that they had gone through some life experiences with which he could relate. His heart ached for these two sisters whom he had never met.

I told him that even though the girls were being discharged precipitously with their treatment plans less than half way complete, all wasn’t lost. Ex-patients were allowed to call the pay phone on the unit and I had already been told that I would be allowed to make and receive two phone calls a week from Anna and Cari, once they were situated in the group home in Santa Barbara. Because Cari’s threats to run away from the group home had escalated, there was also some discussion among the treatment team that it might be good to plan some supervised visits to help support the transition. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? They often go astray? It is one of those sayings I hate because it has come true so many times in my life.