Ep.4 - Do You Know Where Your Parents Are?

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Paul attends Carol's Zoom memorial, where her children don't speak of Carol with the reverence that Paul is accustomed to hearing at funerals. Additionally, no one from The Silver Chain is there to say goodbye. 

Paul interviews two of Carol's daughters, Kimmer and Lisa, who share the story of Carol failing as a parent while trying to get outside of her world to find greater meaning.

Episode 4 Transcript

Linda: Let us pray. Into your hands. All merciful savior, we commend your servant, Carol. Acknowledge. We humbly beseech you, a sheep of your fold, a lamb of your flock, and a sinner of your own redeeming, receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace. And into the glorious company of the saints. In light. Amen…

It’s Sunday, August 21st at 2 PM and I’m logged in to attend my first ever Zoom funeral. Carol’s daughter Kimmer set this up for family and friends who were unable to make the in-person service a day prior:

Kimmer: We had 16 people at the church. It was very nice. I have to admit that the minister went on longer than made anybody happy.

After all of our talks and email exchanges, Kimmer is kind enough to include me. And with her permission, I reach out to a few other Silver Chain members and share the link. People who knew Carol decades ago, saw her at every monthly dance, even met with her on Sundays for New Horizons. Or perhaps knew her more intimately. 

Maybe they didn’t get the email. because… none of them are in attendance. The same is true for an estranged daughter of Carol’s, who hasn’t spoken to the family in decades. And Carol’s older son, who passed away years earlier. 

In fact, today’s ZOOM consists of fewer people than the in-person memorial: Carol’s two daughters, her younger son, two grandchildren, a woman who knew Carol less than a year, the daughter of another Silver Chain member, and one old friend who never quite figures out how to adjust the volume on her microphone:

Marilyn: Zoom can't always be counted on to work just the way you want it to. 

And me. Which puts me more in the spotlight than I anticipated:

Kimmer: This is Paul Ditty. He is doing some research that involved my parents. 

Super awkward. But hey, at least I’m popular.

Kimmer: Oh, yeah. Did you ever see Paul in person? 

Nola: No, I did not. 

Kimmer: I'm sorry, because it was a hell of a lot of fun. 

Nola: What bet? I tell him if he ever gets a Georgia ticket to drop by. So. 

A powerpoint mixes photos of Carol’s prized Iris collection with old black and whites of Carol as a smiling baby with eyes as big as saucers, followed by pictures of Carol as a teen, early years with her husband George, family portraits from the 60s and even a few snapshots from The Silver Chain featuring Carol and George in a series of matching outfits. 

And later photos of Carol. Older, maybe a bit world weary, but still smiling. All to one of Carol’s favorite songs. 

Linda: I picked the song Puff the Magic Dragon to honor Mom because there really was a childlike character to mom. And I can remember listening to this song, playing as a kid. 

And her singing along with this twinkle in her eye. 

And as I was preparing since mom's death, this was the only song that really was able to pull out my emotions.

That’s Kimmer’s younger sister, Lisa, who is not only an attendee but also the officiant. Lisa wears a dark robe and white collar. And it’s a role Lisa takes to naturally because she’s an actual real-life pastor.

Linda: Mom was intelligent. She had a lot of interests; archeology, sociology, psychology,. And she had a lot of wisdom. I know she would say things that I would later encounter in my sociology course work in college, where she would talk about the power dynamics between people. And she always talked about it came down to who had the power and how were they trying to hold on to it. And I think that was big because she was. 

Always trying to root for the little guy. She had a lot of warmth. But I don't have a lot of actual positive memories of Mom. 

This is a different kind of tribute. No one is gushing or paying reverence to the deceased. There’s love in the room. But for those still alive that were closest to Carol, there’s also a vulnerability displayed that’s willing to reveal the scars. This feels less about loss. And more about closure.

LInda: Mom wasn't a bad person. She just had so many problems and struggles of her own that she wasn't able to be the mother that I needed.

I’m Paul Ditty, and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain.

[THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

The full disclosure during Carol’s memorial is a sharp contrast to other funerals I’ve attended. 

But at the same time this raw, unedited version of Carol’s life, presented by her family, it also doesn’t surprise me, based on what I learned during my conversation with Carol’s daughter, Kimmer, just a month earlier in Modesto, when Carol was still in the ICU.

We’re going to be sharing Kimmer’s interview today. And with it, we’ll also be talking with Lisa – as in Pastor Lisa, Kimmer’s little sister. 

My meeting with Lisa brings me to my hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota. Lisa’s parish is in a nearby town, and we agree to meet at The Hampton Inn, with its breathtaking, panoramic view of Lake Bemidji. 

Coming home is always a mix of emotions. I can revel in a memory of where my high school once stood and then be upended by a recollection of being bullied the next. It’s not the most stabilizing place for me to do an interview. But maybe that’s appropriate, because my talk with Lisa is anything but.

Linda: my family wasn't traditional in that we we were free range kids. We had a bell that my parents would ring when it was time for dinner and time to come in at night that you could hear for almost like a two block. And people knew when that bell rang. If they if they saw us and we didn't respond, they'd tell us.  

And it it was a different time. You still had a lot of women that were still at home with their kids. So we got you know, the husbands went off to work and the the mothers would have their coffee clutches that would get together and the kids would then I'll be playing. My grandmother, my mother's my dad's mother lived with us as our nanny, great cook.

Every kid in Lisa’s suburban St. Paul neighborhood sees her grandma as grandma. But for Kimmer and Lisa, they see don’t see her as grandma at all. To them, she’s Mom. Here’s Kimmer:

K​​immer: I think of mom as being like absent. I think of grandma as the person that was raising us up until she left. Mom was sick in bed. She always had a headache or something, whatever. She was very sickly. I don't think she's sickly. I think that she's got stuff going on in her head. 

This strikes a chord with me. I have memories of my own mom failing to get out of bed in the morning to get me ready for school. And parallels of dark moments in my life, when my bouts with depression took over. And clogged my spirit. Weeks after meeting with Kimmer, it’s Lisa who validates my suspicions about Carol.

Linda: My mother had bipolar disorder and was never treated. So that's kind of like growing up with someone who's an alcoholic or, you know, they're all over the place. It's like that walking on eggshells all the time. You don't know if they're going to be hiding in a corner, depressed and unavailable, or if they're going to go be off on their high, their manic side and be. Sporadic something or just blow up over something that's totally doesn't make any sense. 

So in my mind, my grandmother was my mother. I know that my mother was my biological mother, but she was never my nurturing mother. And when I encountered problems where I really did need help, my mother could not, could not or would not help me. I, I she could have helped me, but I don't think she believed she could help me. So there was a lot of dysfunction there. And when I say we were free range, once my grandmother was out of the house, we were left alone a lot. My parents went out and they socialized and they left us alone. 

So we got ourselves up. We got we fed ourselves. We dressed ourselves. We got to school. We came home, we did our homework, everything. We did it all for ourselves. My mom was not involved in that.

Kimmer is eleven and Lisa is seven when Grandma’s health issues leave Carol and George with no other choice than to put her in assisted living. For the first time, Carol and George are without help in the parenting department. And this leaves a huge void for Kimmer, Lisa and their three siblings. Here’s Kimmer: 

Kimmer: 

My dad was not involved in our lives. You know, we saw him on the weekend sometimes. 

I think that the biggest deal with my dad was that he was an undiagnosed. He was autistic. It was awful. Everything had to be perfect.

And the autism made it very difficult for him to get along with people. 

He was an expert at dressing you down at a rate where when he was done talking to you and he never raised his voice, he never swore. He never used bad language, anything... He could dress you down to the point where you could walk upright under a closed door. He was really good at it and did it to his children all the time. 

Lisa agrees that George could be harsh. And that often, it was Carol who was on the receiving end. 

Linda: My father was a very critical person. my mom had the brunt of that and she had a lot of stress. She didn't know how to deal with her physical condition. She didn't know how to deal with my dad. She really had no capacity to be a parent. 

It’s 1971, two years before the official start of The Silver Chain, when another significant change occurs in Carol and George’s household.

Kimmer: They dropped out of church when I was in seventh grade. I don't know why. Just all of a sudden, we stopped going. We went to church every Sunday. We were in the Christmas pageant, you know, the whole nine yards until all of a sudden, one day, we weren't. And nobody explained it to us.

And most of these changes are at George’s urging.

Kimmer: That's something that Mom told me. She said that Dad. Had pushed for some number of years before they they decided to enter that arena. And the way they entered the arena was they put a private or a personal ad in a publication where there are that kind of things and met some people that way. And then. You know, as as they met couples that the four couples that ended up being the leaders of this group just seemed to get along really well. And so that I guess that's why they started it. But they were all doing it before before The Silver Chain started. 

“It” of course being swinging. Before long, Carol and George are away on weekends and most weeknights. And when home, they’re still not available to help the kids with book reports or science projects. Because they’ve started a project all their own. 

Linda: The executive couples would come to the house and like at least once a month, and they would do all their planning and they're putting together their newsletter and all of that stuff. 

Here’s Kimmer, talking about other changes at home:

Kimmer: I know they put a separate phone line in the house in the basement.

There was a telephone and an answering machine and a mimeograph machine on the desk. So, uh, the newsletters that you've spoken about were run off on the memo machine on the desk. 

Paul: So do you remember seeing those growing up? 

Kimmer: Well, when Mom was printing them. Hell, I printed some of them.

Mostly,  Carol and George are going out. And what that means, the kids aren’t so sure. But it’s definitely in a style Kimmer’s not accustomed to seeing her parents in.

Kimmer: They were always dressed to the nines. My mother had a closet full of long gowns. 

Everyone in my family, all five of us, just always had a laugh. There would be these public service announcements that would say, parents, do you know where your children are? 

AUDIO CLIP: IT’S 10 PM…Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Kimmer : And we all laughed about it because it was always, no, it's "kids, do you know where your parents are?" And the answer to that was, "Not a clue!" If we ever had any emergencies at the house, I don't know what would have happened because we did not have any idea. 

But those laughs. Moments of levity. They don’t come around often. 

Carol and George’s lack of parenting skills, even basic oversight, leaves Lisa in the most awful position imaginable. 

Linda: My oldest brother was autistic, but that was before they really identified and worked with those kids. And of course, my parents had no idea what to do with that. And he he he would molest me. And I got blamed for that as well. 

Paul: By who? 

Linda: By my dad... 

He took me and my brother aside together and said that this was bad behavior. We needed to stop, like it was consensual. He he made the assumption that we were both at fault and that it was consensual. 

So when you start to bring in the silver chain and what the Silver Chain is, you can understand. I have a lot of hatred. 

—

Linda (Linda): It's hard for me to separate how much of it is just the crap that was normal dynamics of my family and their problems? And how much of it was about that piece of it that came into a dysfunctional situation? 

Lisa is an assault survivor. But that phrase. It just doesn’t sound adequate when hearing Lisa’s story. The sexual abuse by her older brother continues for ten years.

Linda: It didn't stop until when my brother was 20. My dad literally moved him out of the house because he was he had he gotten out of high school and he couldn't hold down a job and he was just sitting around in the house and my brother had explosive tempers problems, which is something you deal with when you're autistic and you can't make sense of the world. So my dad finally moved him out of the house and that's how I got peace. 

Of course that’s not enough. The damage is already done. Lisa is now fourteen and mentally and emotionally adrift. Coping with her trauma in self-destructive ways.

Linda:  anorexia is a way of trying to assert some control in an environment where you have no control. You know, I couldn't control where I lived. I couldn't control anything around me, but I could control not eating. That was the only thing I could control in my life. And unfortunately, those things, while they start out as being just like taking pain pills to numb yourself, that then takes over and becomes a problem that escalates. So yeah, so I was the eating disorder got really out of hand.

When I was 16 in high school, I got a steady boyfriend, and we were active sexually and it was this he was over all the time and we were in our bedroom,. And it was like the it was highly encouraged by my mother for us to be very sexually active. So and I had other boyfriends along the way, but, and it yeah, I got positive reinforcement for being sexually active and having other guys. That was how I got their approval. Wow. 

if I'm being raised to see having sexual attraction is being powerful. Mm hmm. That is my only access to power. So me going and having power over men that way is seen as a positive when it's actually killing me inside. 

You know, I dated a lot of guys. And the longer the you know, for the longer that went on, the more and more depressed and dead I was getting. 

So one of the things is that and this is the part that I can't share with my congregation at this point is I also have bipolar and it's set in in my teenage years. And I went to my mother for help. And there was none to be had. So, you know, I was like, Mom, I'm having these horrible feelings, like I'm going to hurt myself. And she said, Well, go sit in a restaurant. So you're surrounded by people. 

I’m sorry Carol, but your daughter is an abuse survivor, struggling with an eating disorder and bi-polar. This is – by far – the shittiest advice I’ve heard. But Lisa actually listens. By taking a job at a restaurant. 

Linda: McDonald's was a place where… it's almost like a light switch flipped. And I just took off and I became like a shift manager and just could run circles around people. And so I worked there for three years, and it gave me a place where I felt like I was good and I could feel confident about myself. And I got away from my horrible family life. And, yeah, there were it's like there's these little glimmers in my life of places where I found a place to blossom. And that's what McDonald's was for me. 

Paul: So when you were living with your family and going through high school. Were you counting down the days to when you were done?

Linda: No. Because. Because I didn't know that there was anything better out there. And I didn't have the confidence to go out and search for it. 

Even when Lisa finally takes the initiative to attend a local junior college, she still can’t escape Carol’s shadow.

Linda: Oh, and my mother did go to junior college, too, and she went to the same school I did. And she was the she was the type that sat down. And all of the all the other students liked her. I mean, she basically was like trying to be my sister in college. 

Did anybody tell you what she wanted to do to go to college, to become. 

Paul: No. 

Linda: A sexologist so she could teach teenage kids that sex is beautiful? 

Paul: Is that is sexologist. Do you can you get a degree to be a sexologist? 

Linda: I, I don't get it.  I really don't get it. But somehow she was going to go into psychology to somehow help people with their sexual hang ups. And I'm like, Oh. 

Spoiler alert: Carol never does become a sexologist. At least not a licensed one. Instead, a life decision takes Carol and George on another path.

Linda: When I was in the last semester of that program, at the at the midterm point, my dad moved him and mom sold the house and moved to Colorado. 

Okay. So I. And they never, ever said anything to me about, you know, you can move with us and let's see what how we can transfer credits or anything like that. Nothing. They just said, oh, dad got a new job and we're going to be moving.

Lisa stays in Minnesota and is once again adrift.

She struggles to support herself for four years until she meets the man she eventually marries.  

Linda: During that first year of marriage, everything blew up for me, psychologically, totally blew up. And the eating disorder got worse to the point where I couldn't feed myself and I got desperate enough. I decided I wanted to live. And I told my husband, I said, Hey, I've got to do something here. 

MUSIC

Linda: when I was diagnosed with being bipolar and I told my mother, she says, oh, yeah, they told me that when I was 21 that I had bipolar. And I'm like, What? And she's. Oh, yeah, but so what sort of thing? 

When I was married, I became I did become my mother victim. She had told me at one time in my twenties that there was power in being a victim. And I had I had, in fact, taken on a lot of her same attributes. I was I had migraine headaches and I, you know, full blown bipolar that caused me to have struggles. 

I had gotten to the point where I really I woke up one day and I was like, I am not going to be my mom. I am not. If I stay with this, I am going to die. And I just walked away and said, no, I have to walk away. And I had asked my mom numerous times why she never divorced my dad because I thought I would have had a chance at a better life if they hadn't stayed in this horrible marriage. And she always would tell me that she didn't know anything different. And that was what was that's what was comfortable. It's familiar. 

Lisa knows she has to change. She commits to therapy. As you can imagine, it’s a lot. But in time she’s able to regain her health and start a family. And eventually she’s also able to confront her feelings about Carol.

Linda: It took a long time for my therapist to get me to the point where I could say she wasn't a good parent and I and that was bad in itself. Wasn't okay. That doesn't mean I hate her or that, you know, you can still be mad that you didn't get what you were you needed and what she should have given you. It doesn't mean that you're going to get it. That doesn't happen. But you can acknowledge that you still had a right as a child to be raised and be protected and taken care of. 

I remember once her being at her house and talking and she's like, Oh, I'm so proud of you. And I did such a good job with you. And I looked at her and I said, You did not, mom. You did not raise me. I raised me. And left. 

As Lisa finds her voice, she also makes a discovery that completely transforms her. But as with most things in life, it’s a long process.

Linda: In my thirties I'm going through this counseling and I have a spiritual awakening and I say, I want to become a pastor. But I hadn't gotten my four year degree yet. 

The act of getting a four year degree – takes twenty years. Because Lisa still has to deal with a marriage that holds those old patterns that no longer match her new life design. 

Linda: It's when I finally kicked him out…, I went and finished my degree. 

I spent every last dime I had going to college, and then I took out, of course, a ton of other money. And when I at one point, I stop. I went to college for four. I went to seminary for a year. And the financial stuff was eating me up and I said, I can't do this to my kids. I stopped. I was trying to find other work and I went into deep depression. And I looked at my son and I said,, this is the situation now. I have a choice. I can either keep trying to find another job and find a way to work our way out of this. Or I can go to seminary and it's going to be really tough. And my my son, looked at me and he said, Mom, you need to just go for it. I have the support from my kids. I've never had from my parents. And every time I. Every time my back has been up against the wall, there's been some little opening that has helped me to go keep moving forward and. I just want to know what I'm supposed to do to repay. The blessings of my kids. They have been my spiritual teachers all along. It's like I’ve been parenting myself through them.

—

“When did you know?” This is a question that has so many connotations. When did you know your husband was cheating? When did you know you were gay? When did you know it was time to quit your job? When did you know you’d never make a living as a sexologist?

But in Kimmer and Lisa’s case, this question holds a different meaning. Remembering the moment of realization that their parents are swingers is murky at best. And maybe that’s because Carol and George were living so many aspects of their new lifestyle out in the open.

Linda: To begin with, it was a social club, whatever that meant. And we we had family camping trips with other families, and they had that. The kids, you know, would go to bed and everything and the parents would go party. So it was separated, but not really. 

It wasn't something that they told us they were doing for probably the first five years. They were just gone.

Here’s Kimmer:

Kimmer: They used to have themed Halloween parties And so because the kids all ended up in that house, that set of parents had to stay home. But they had they had what I would think of as epic parties at my house. Decorated the basement.They did Roman columns one year. And everybody came in togas They created flames. One year they had painted flames like three or four feet tall. Big things that were around the finished room of the. Of the basement. 

Paul: Were they supposed to be in hell? 

Kimmer: Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly.

Lisa believes it may have been a photo from one of those house parties that initiated the conversation.

Linda: I think it was that Kim found some photographs from a party of theirs, and that that's how it came out. 

It's not something I would talked about with my classmates or anybody, but inside the home, it was just known, it was like nothing. My dad had a very large pornographic collection that he kept that wasn't very well hidden. They had a lot of artwork around the house that glorified sex. It was it was just in your face all the time. 

Kimmer remembers it differently.

Kimmer: I think my mother actually told us about it. It wasn't it wasn't of. I discovered it. I think mom told us. But I don't remember the conversation in any way, shape or form. It was never a surprise. It wasn't something somebody sprung on us. 

Think of it like somebody telling you something new about somebody that you sort of kind of know who they are, but you don't know them as people. And when they tell you this new thing, you're like, "Oh, okay."

It might have answered. Oh, so that's what you've been doing on all of these weekend days when you're going off and doing your thing? Oh, okay. Oh, that's nice. It didn't change anything. 

Kimmer is five years older than Lisa. A gap that seems not so big now that they’re both in their sixties, but during childhood can seem like a full lifetime.

Kimmer – I have no doubt – managed her upbringing with the same dry wit she maintains today. She is matter of fact. And she seems to take her parents’ lifestyle at face value. Even when talking about painful experiences, Kimmer reports on it almost as if the events happened to someone else. Take for example when I ask about how The Silver Chain ended.

Kimmer: You said that Mike and Mary left first, which would have been the beginning of the end. You know, when you when you take something that is working really well and you change the dynamics, it doesn't matter what you do, but when you change the dynamics, a lot of things are going to change that have nothing to do with you and that's going to exert other pressure in other ways. 

and I don't know, maybe Daddy taking a girlfriend was part of it 

Paul: What do you mean his the girlfriend is news to me. 

Kimmer: You didn't know my dad had a girlfriend? 

Her name is Marilyn. 

I was teenager. I was. And still living at home. So I don't. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know the years. I don't know timing. I just know that I was a teenager. I remember getting a Christmas present from Maryland one year and being totally incensed. 

Paul: Did you know her? 

Kimmer: I knew she was my father's girlfriend. 

Paul: How did you know? 

Kimmer: They told me. My parents were not into keeping secrets. 

Paul: Do you know how long they were boyfriend and girlfriend? 

Kimmer: No. I just know that it was a while. I know she would spend nights at the three of them would spend the night in the water bed downstairs.

my mom became friends with the new Marilyn. And just it was okay. It was okay with mom. And if it's okay with Mom, why the hell do I have an opinion? It was just weird. 

My dad's got a girlfriend, and he's still living here with my mom. Okay. 

But the longer you speak with Kimmer, the more she allows of herself. 

Kimmer: My big issue or one of my big issues other than being afraid of frickin everything. In ninth grade, I managed to break my eye tooth off at the gum line and my parents did nothing about it. 

So I did not smile for the three years I was in high school. So, you know, my dad's got a girlfriend. Who fucking cares? I had my own problems. My dad didn't care. And if you know and I've asked him. I did. I asked him, so why didn't you do anything about it? And he takes the attitude that I didn't know. And I'm like, I'm your daughter. Theoretically, you saw me on a fairly regular basis and you didn't notice that I didn't smile. And if I did accidentally smile, there's a fucking hole in my face. 

When Kimmer turns eighteen, George agrees to help with the dental surgery. By co-signing a personal loan for 1200 dollars that Kimmer will pay off.

The next year, Kimmer joins the army. She meets and marries her first husband during advanced individual training. And they spend three years of marital bliss in Germany. But even with the physical distance from home – and the changes in Kimmer’s life. It still doesn’t erase the past.

Kimmer: Does it help to tell you that I was suicidal until I was in my mid-fifties? From the time of, oh, probably 15. 

I didn't do anything about it. When I was younger. I spent a lot of time planning. I never did anything about it, but I did spend a lot of time planning once my son was born. Even planning was no longer an option. You don't do that to a child. You just don't. Doesn't change how you feel. Well, I was never depressed enough to commit suicide. But it was there. Always.

Kimmer carries the weight of her depression for most of her adult life. 

She  divorces her husband, and she and her son  move to California, where Carol and George have moved for work, and eventually get the idea to buy an Insty Prints franchise.. . In a short amount of time, they enlist Kimmer to help run the business. For eight years, Carol and George struggle to keep the store afloat until finally – at age 67 – George files bankruptcy.

The one positive in all of this is that – through helping her parents run their business  – Kimmer’s gained a new set of skills that actually land her a job working for a graphic design company. Then Kimmer gets fired. It’s a devastating moment for sure, but one that compels Kimmer to start her own print and design business. A decision that changes her life.

Kimmer: So up until I started running my own business, I don't have any friends. I didn't know anybody. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't do anything because I was afraid of fucking everything and everybody. So I started doing this and when I turned 60, which was only four years ago, I had a birthday party for my birthday party. We did painting because painting pottery is what I do for relaxation and fun and all that good stuff. Anyways, so I invited all my friends to come paint with me and one person on the list decided that she couldn't come. So she came to the studio, brought me a card, spoke to me for less than 5 minutes before she left again. And in that short conversation, she gave me the best gift anyone has ever given me. She let me know that she was on a list I didn't know I had. And the list was the gift. The list is a group of people that are friends in the way that if my back were against the wall and I desperately needed help, there is a list of people I could call. They are that kind of friend. It's a two way list because I would do the same for all of them. But to know that you have real friends who would really be there for you under any circumstance was a gift I had never thought I'd have.

As Lisa completes her schooling – and Kimmer finds a different calling – it’s now Carol and George who are adrift. They buy an RV and spend summers in Washington State and winters in Palm Springs, working at the respective RV parks to make ends meet. They do this for 12 years before settling into a mobile home park in Arizona. When their health problems become too much for them to bear,  Kimmer arranges for them to move just a few lots down from her mobile home in Modesto.

Kimmer: Me supporting my parents, even emotionally right now is a really big deal because we never did it for each other. It's just the way it is. 

I had, uh, had an altercation with my mother last year. 

She made the comment that I was the strong woman that I am today because of, uh, how she raised me. And I got mad and yelled at her and I said, No, it fucking doesn't. You turned me into a frightened child that was incapable of doing anything. Who I am today is who I am because of what I did. Not what you did. You will not take credit for that. 

Paul: When you said that to your mom, how did she react?

Kimmer: She didn't. Which was kind of annoying. I wanted her to hear me, and I don't. 

Paul: Think she wanted a reaction. 

Kimmer: I wanted her to hear me. And I don't really honestly believe that she did. I think that, like, dad, she wants to live in her fantasy world that I made you. You gave birth to me. And we'll leave it at that.

If this conversation sounds familiar, it’s because it’s almost identical to a conversation Lisa had with Carol, with a similar unsatisfying response.

Linda: For me when my mom died, the biggest tragedy was that she died without ever acknowledging any of this that stuff. I had hoped and I had encouraged her through the years to get some help, but she always says, Oh, no, I'm fine. I just manage it just fine sort of thing. And I had always hoped that her seeing me get freedom would give her that inspiration that she could also. And it never did.

And now Carol’s gone. I’ll never have that 100% accurate version of who Carol was. But even if she were still alive, I wouldn’t either. Because her children lived with her for a lifetime. And even they don’t know.

At Carol’s memorial, in my meetings with her children, I’m questioning what actual truth is represented in the newsletters. Honestly, after these discussions, I’m prepared to cancel Carol. And double-cancel George, if that’s a thing. After all, I mean how can I – or anyone – see good in people who raised their children this way?

And you may be thinking, “Paul, what are you trying to do? It sounds like this woman created a hell for her children.” I’m not going to argue that. Neither would her daughters. 

But that’s where Kimmer and Lisa’s maturity and intelligence shines through. They can separate the woman Carol was from the mother they desperately needed her to be. It’s an outlook that Carol herself may have instilled upon them.

Linda: If she wasn't my mother, I could see a totally different woman. My mother was very intelligent she was very astute with people. Very astute with people. And she she taught would tell me things that I later learned about in my sociology major that she had observed herself. So I know my mother was a very intelligent woman and very forward thinking. So from that perspective, yes, I get that. And I'm okay with people going out and trying things. I'm just trying to say there's a cautionary side. 

What Kimmer and Lisa are doing is telling the truth about a person.

Because Carol, like the rest of us, was human. We’re all complicated. And like Carol, we are all weighed down by our own limitations and capable of creating both good and bad, oftentimes without ever realizing the impact we have on others. Because we are so in our own heads to even notice. 

So I think I have to balance how I feel right now with the parts of Carol that are universal. How we all try to get outside of the barriers of our lives – both physical and mental – to accomplish something that we feel is a representation of our true self. Something to be proud of.

And we know that Carol was looking for something to be proud of. When she applauded herself on raising Kimmer and Lisa – yes it was delusional – she was lying to herself. But I believe it’s because she was searching for a way to leave her mark on the world.  

What I’m learning is that you can’t be all of these magical things to everyone all the time. You have a finite amount of time. So even if Carol was at her best and brightest – let’s say ten hours out of the week – then there’s a whole other 158 hours that the newsletters do not represent. 

I expected there to be a hundred people – maybe even more – at Carol’s memorial. But those of us who are in attendance, I have to believe we are all honoring Carol in a way she would have appreciated. Maybe even the way she wanted us to all along.

Linda: I love Mom and I wish her bliss on the other side in Christ's arms. Mom, I hope you have found the peace and healing you needed.

MUSIC

A few months after Carol’s memorial, I reach out to Kimmer. And as we’re catching up, we revisit a topic from our earlier conversation.

Kimmer: I'm still friends with Marilyn, by the way. 

Paul: Is Marilyn, the Marylin that was at the memorial. Yes. Wow. And she lives in California now, too. 

Kimmer: Yeah she lives in Fremont. 

That’s when I find out that a member of The Silver Chain actually did make it to Carol’s memorial. Marilyn – the woman who had her speaker turned up to max throughout the service – was not just Carol’s technologically challenged friend. She was also a member of The Silver Chain, and over the span of a year and half in the 70s, she was also George’s girlfriend. The woman in the basement waterbed who was once embroiled in a three-way relationship with Carol and George. 

Kimmer : I think she was intensely disappointed that mom would not reach out to her. When I brought her back to California. You know, and I and it's not like I didn't push. I did. But I can't make her decisions for her. But yeah, Marilyn would have loved to to see her. 

I’m Paul Ditty and this is Time Capsule: The Silver Chain