A Normal Life

Kim Rich

Description

After an unconventional childhood that ended in the tragic death of her mother and the murder of her Alaskan mobster father, Kim Rich was left on her own at the young age of fifteen to fend for herself. Ever since then, she began a nearly lifelong pursuit in chasing what most others had—a normal life.

Rich tugs at your heartstrings as you follow her journey toward normalcy, from her teen years, freshly orphaned, through her high school years spent couch-surfing at local families’ homes, then through her college years, a failed first marriage, and a rising career as a journalist. Through frank and down-to-earth storytelling, Rich also tells of her grandfather’s kidnapping, a frightening health crisis, and a six-year attempt to have children.

Picking up right where her first memoir, Johnny’s Girl, left off, A Normal Life recounts the author’s vivid story of being an ordinary girl faced with extraordinary circumstances—at seemingly every turn in life—with grace, humility, and wit.

Dedication

Neverland

Peaceful, Easy Feeling

The ‘Hey, Wow, Man’ School

‘Back to Nature’ is Hazardous to Your Health

A Warm Hat, a Whale, and a C in Chemistry

A Normal Life, Round One

The Right Stuff

New York, New York

The Writing Division

Circling the Center

Being Published

Grandpa and the Gypsies

It’s All Material

A Crossroads

A Normal Life, Round Two

Breast Cancer

When You Wish Upon a Star

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé du quotidien
• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Soutien psychologique et conseils familiaux
• Personal Memoirs
• Nueva York
• Biography
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Juneau, Alaska
• Autobiography
• Anchorage
• Juneau
• Hollywood
• Alaska
• New York

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 03 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781943328512
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Normal Life
A Memoir
Kim Rich
Author of Johnny s Girl
Text 2018 by Kim Rich
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN 9781943328505 (paperback)
ISBN 9781943328512 (e-book)
ISBN 9781943328529 (hardbound)
Edited by Carol Sturgulewski
Front Cover: background by dikobraziy/Shutterstock.com
Back Cover: author photography by Karley Nugent
Published by Alaska Northwest Books
An imprint of

GraphicArtsBooks.com
Graphic Arts Books
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Marketing Manager: Angela Zbornik
Editor: Olivia Ngai
Design Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
For Charlotte, Kristan Mary
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Neverland
Chapter 2: Peaceful, Easy Feeling
Chapter 3: The Hey, Wow, Man School
Chapter 4: Living Back to Nature Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
Chapter 5: A Warm Hat, a Whale, and a C in Chemistry
Chapter 6: A Normal Life, Round One
Chapter 7: The Right Stuff
Chapter 8: New York, New York
Chapter 9: The Writing Division
Chapter 10: Circling the Center
Chapter 11: Being Published
Chapter 12: Grandpa and the Gypsies
Chapter 13: It s All Material
Chapter 14: A Crossroads
Chapter 15: A Normal Life, Round Two
Chapter 16: Breast Cancer
Chapter 17: When You Wish Upon a Star
Acknowledgments
Introduction
T his book is for my children. But it is about me and, more important, about my generation. It is about the time when I grew up-the 1960s and 1970s.
My peers and I are not Baby Boomers (though demographers lump us together), nor are we Generation X. We grew up around stay-at-home moms, proud homemakers. We graduated high school expecting to have high-powered, successful careers instead.
I like to think of us as the Transitional Generation, too young to rebel and be hippies but too old to be on the forefront of the digital revolution. Some of us dressed like hippies, but few of my friends actually went off to live on a commune or got on the bus. But we read about it. Some of us even aspired to it-for a while.
This book also serves another purpose-to pick up where my first memoir left off. My book Johnny s Girl captured my unconventional childhood as the only child of a professional gambler, John F. Johnny Rich, and my beautiful and doomed mother, Frances Ginger Chiaravalle Rich. My parents were both the black sheep of their respective families, and both died tragically and young.
My mother, a sometimes exotic dancer who aspired to be a model, spent most of her life in a state mental institution. I last saw her, briefly, when I was nine; she died of cancer five years later. My father was murdered a year after that, a victim of his life in Anchorage s increasingly ruthless underworld. At age fifteen, I became an orphan.
Looking back, it seems only natural that I would become a journalist and writer. That career choice was determined the day I learned my father was dead. On that day, I promised myself, Someday I will write about him.
And then I walked away from everything and anyone who had anything to do with him. I was determined to live a normal life-whatever that might be.
After decades of searching for that life, I fulfilled my promise. Johnny s Girl was published in 1993. It was reviewed by the New York Times and adapted by Hallmark into a TV movie. I can still catch it on cable now and then. The book is still available in paperback.
Johnny s Girl ends not long after my father s death. Many people have asked what happened to me since.
I began this book to answer that question. But then I realized it served a larger purpose.
A friend once described me as a motherless child. Orphaned as a teenager, I have fought a lifelong yearning for something lost. Writing this book, I began to reflect on all the choices I ve had to make on my own, all the battles I ve fought, all the times I ve tried to be there for my children when no one was there for me.
So, girls-Charlotte, Kristan, and Mary-this is about who I am and how I became your mother. This is why your mom acts like a nut sometimes, why I lose my temper on occasion, and mostly why, to your horror, I ask your friends too many questions.
Your mom has always loved a party, a good story, and all three of you.
CHAPTER 1
Neverland
N ot long ago, I met an old friend from Alaska for coffee in Los Angeles, where I was visiting family. Brent and I knew each other as teens. For what seemed forever, I had an overwhelming and obvious crush on his brother, much to his brother s dismay. I was not the girl everyone wanted to date. With naturally curly brown hair and no hair dryer (and no idea how to use one), I didn t fit the Farrah Fawcett blown-dry, swept-back blonde look popular at the time.
If I had someone to show me how to make my hair look like that, I might have tried. But I was raised by my dad, with intermittent influence from his cocktail-waitress or topless-dancer girlfriends, and one wonderful second wife who lasted less than a year, when my father s explosive rage drove her away. The girlfriends were not much help in the how to be a girl department. Go-go boots and fringe and pasties? I don t think so.
In junior high school, I thought Brent was too good-looking for me. He was also a really nice guy, then and now. He is the kind of friend who would race out of his house at nearly the last minute and drive across LA to catch a quick cup of coffee with an old friend. I hadn t seen him in about forty years. Forty years.
I brought two of my young teen daughters with me-a mistake, Brent and I realized as soon as we sat down to reminisce.
The two of us grew up in Anchorage in perhaps one of the toughest eras to be a teen in America, right after the Sixties. The decades-and their pop cultural influences-don t neatly start and end when the calendar turns over. The turbulence and challenges of the late Sixties snowballed into the following decade, picking us up along the way.
Oh, God, Kimmy, remember all the parties-ah, I mean, ah
Bible group meetings?
Our conversation drifted into reliving get-togethers-ah, parties ummm, Bible study sessions-where we would listen to Led Zeppelin.
Your mom and I never Brent said, turning to the girls in the middle of our conversation.
Oh, God, no, I muttered, shaking my head in case they might have been paying attention. Never fear. Their heads were buried in their smartphone screens.
So, Brent and I took the G-rated journey down memory lane that night. We marveled how we d both gone to the first concert we had ever been to-Jefferson Airplane. I was twelve, I think, and in seventh grade. I went with a woman friend of my dad s.
At one point, Brent turned to my two daughters and said, Your mom was a rebel!
They smiled politely and returned to their smartphones and videos.
I was struck by the label. Rebel . Me?
All I ever wanted was a normal life.
T HE LAST TIME I had seen Brent, and many of my friends from junior high school, was late summer 1973. That August, my father was kidnapped and murdered.
That was the end of anything resembling a normal teen life.
The police didn t make any arrests of his captors and killers until November. That fall, I lived a life I can only describe as akin to the Lost Boys in J.M. Barrie s Peter Pan .
I lived in Neverland.
Before my father s disappearance, he spent most of his time at the living quarters in one of his massage parlors. I was left at our house-a large, two-story, ugly brown mess of a place at 736 East Twelfth Avenue. It was also known as the 736 Club, the name of the after-hours gambling parlor he operated there when I entered middle school.
Most kids want to live in a candy shop. I got a casino.
I hated the place from the moment we moved in. It was always dark inside. There were few windows, and except for one window in the kitchen, they had all been boarded up by my dad or closed with tight shades. He wanted to keep prying eyes from seeing the illegal activities going on inside.
Even my sole bedroom window was boarded up. To this day, I do not close curtains or blinds during the day in any house where I live. I cannot stand to be shut in. I don t even close up my house after dark.
Even now, I have nightmares about the place. The dreams are always the same: I am back in that house, which is usually remodeled and made to look so different that it s unrecognizable. Unrecognizable to anyone but me, that is. In these dreams, I know what lies under the shiny new furnishings. In these dreams, I wonder at whatever form the house has taken, marvel at how it doesn t look the same, and feel a vague sense of unease, disorientation, and fear that one day I might end up there again.
I N THE EARLY 1970s, Anchorage was a hard-working town of about 147,000 people. Its slapdash post-war, post-earthquake buildings hunkered between the majestic peaks of the Chugach Mountains and the muddy waters of Cook Inlet. The entire state was poised to begin making big money working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. My dad was ready to make big money off the workers.
When I was twelve or thirteen, the 736 Club opened every morning after the bars closed, around 5 a.m. It stayed open until late morning or until everyone left. The illegal gambling club was set up in two connected rooms that made up what must have originally been the home s dining room and living room. My dad hung a colored beaded curtain to divide the two. Tasteful , I thought.
In the first room were secondhand couches where patrons sat, drank, and relaxed. The other room had a craps table and large poker table. When not in use, the poker table wore a laminated wood cover my father would slip on to protect the table s expensive padded green surface. In my memory, the ro