Family in Unexpected Places

By KCY

“Who is this?” a friend asked, pointing to a picture on my nightstand.

“Oh, that’s just Bogie,” I replied.

“Bogie?  What is a Bogie?” she asked.  I laughed as she said that.

I first met Bogie when I was nine years old.  My mother, sister and I had just moved to San Francisco from the Bronx a few months earlier.  My parents’ marriage had been rocky, to say the least.  So my mother had transplanted me and my sister to San Francisco, where she grew up, to make a new life.

One night, my mom told me and my sister she had someone important for us to meet.  My sister and I looked at each other, wondering what she meant.  The doorbell rang.  She opened the door.  A short, round, balding man with a trimmed dark blond beard stood at the door.  He had one of those baby faces, where no matter what age, remained like that of a 10 year-old boy’s.  I saw my mom whispering something to this strange man standing at the door.  She turned to me and my sister and called out.

“Girls!  I want you to meet my friend.  Come here.”  My sister and I dutifully scampered to the doorway.

“This is my friend Mr. Bogiages.  Can you say hi?”  I held back a smirk.  Mr. Bogi what? 

My sister, ever the obedient six year old, whispered in her baby voice, “Hi Mr. Bogie.”  He smiled when he heard this, shaking her hand.

“Nice to meet you.  Your mom has told me so much about you.”  He turned to me.  “I am so happy to meet you.”

Over the next few months, my mom arranged for me and my sister to go on outings with Bogie.  I could not help but compare him to my father, like so many other children who were victims of divorce.  I still clung to my father with a fierce loyalty, despite not hearing from him since we left the Bronx.  Where my father was fit and athletic, Bogie was soft and stout.  Where my father was loud and expressive, Bogie was quiet and introspective.   In my mind, Bogie did not measure up to my father in any way.

We finally moved into our own apartment.  A one bedroom apartment.  Bogie moved in with us.  My mom and Bogie slept on a futon in the living room, while my sister and I shared the bedroom.  At first, it was not too bad.  The toilet seat left up.  The socks left on the floor.  The paper towels used as snot rags strewn across the living room floor.  As a super organized little girl, these things bothered me a little but as I entered my teenage years, those small things became monumental in my mind.  The socks on the floor now seemed to be piles of socks, even when it was just one pair.  The paper towels appeared to me to be reams of paper towels unfurled and spread out much like on pranked houses on Halloween.

“Why can’t you throw your socks in the hamper?” I would scream.  “Don’t you know where the garbage can is?” I would yell.  Bogie would sit there quietly, watching television, seemingly unaware of my rage. 

My mom would answer me, “Stop.  You are mean.  It’s not a big deal.” She would rush to pick up those socks and throw them in the hamper and to throw the paper towels into the garbage can.

My friends would ask me who Bogie was.  I never really knew what to say as my mom and Bogie had not married.  It seemed silly to call Bogie my mother’s boyfriend.  After all, they were old.  So, who was Bogie in my life if not a stepfather?   I didn’t know.  He just seemed to be a thorn in my side.

Things at home became worse.  I was in high school by then.  Everything about Bogie bothered me.  The way he ate.  The way he burped.  Why couldn’t he just say excuse me when he burped?! 

One night, in a fit of anger, I screamed at him, “Why are you so fat?  I hate you.  I wish you would leave.”  Rather than staring straight past me at the television like he normally did, Bogie answered me this time.

“Grow up,” he said in his deep baritone voice.  He turned off the television, put on his shoes and left the apartment.

I felt victorious.  That didn’t last long.  My mom, angrily, confronted me.  “You really do need to grow up.  I love you but I don’t like you.”

Her words had no impact on my hormone filled sixteen year old brain.  I turned to her, saying, “Why do you always have to take his side?”  I ran to my room, slamming the door shut.

When it came time for me to apply to colleges, I chose to apply all over the country.  Rather than going to Berkeley, just a BART ride away from home, I chose to go to a college on the east coast, sight unseen.  I only knew what I saw from the college catalogues.  I also knew it was three thousand miles away from Bogie.

My first year was difficult.  Even though I had lived in the Bronx up until I was nine years old, my body had forgotten about the harsh, cold winters.  And somehow it was so much colder!  Snowy and gray all the time.  It was also in the middle of nowhere, not as close to the city as I had thought.  Two hours by train.  Hardly a short trip.

I was lonely.  I had never lived away from my mom.  I had never drank alcohol.  I had only had one boyfriend.  Suddenly, there were parties, alcohol, drugs, boys, sex.

I found myself calling my mom more frequently.  Sometimes my mom was not home, but Bogie was. 

“Can you just have her call me back?” I would ask. 

“Sure,” he would reply.

One day, after a particularly bad day, I called.

“Your mom’s not home,” he said.

“Okay, have her call me back,” I said, feeling the tears build up inside.  I burst into tears, breaking the dam.

“What’s going on?” Bogie asked, his voice laced with concern.

“I’m just having a really awful day,” I said.

“Well, tell me about it,” he said, “maybe I can help.”  Over the next hour, I talked to Bogie.  He listened.  Every once in a while, he would say things like “I understand.”  But he mostly just listened.  Made me feel like someone was on my side.  That I was not judged.

I started calling to talk to Bogie, not my mom.  His quiet nature intermixed with his nonjudgmental attitude was a comfort to me.

I moved back home in between college and the start of graduate school.  My sister was gone by then, having also decided to attend college three thousand miles away from home.  Things were different this time between me and Bogie.  We talked when I got home from work.  His socks and paper towel snot rags were still strewn across the apartment but they didn’t bother me as much.  Perhaps it was because I wasn’t home so much or because there was one less person in the house.  Or perhaps I had finally “grown up” and could see past all of that superficial nonsense and appreciate Bogie for the love and support he gave me.

People continued to ask me who Bogie was.  I still struggled with my answer.  He was a constant.  Present at my every major life event.  The person who I would call when I was stressed and sleep deprived.  Instead, I said he was my mom’s partner as this is now what my mother and Bogie called each other.   “Partner” seemed to confuse people, as they then thought my mother was gay.  I never really knew what to say to that and would just leave it alone.

When I reconnected with my father after medical school, I could not help but compare my father to Bogie this time, not Bogie to my father.  My father was larger than life and full of incredible stories.  However, I discovered I could not talk to him.  As much as I tried to confide in him about my hopes and dreams and conflicts, he appeared uninterested.  Perhaps he did not know what to say.  After all, I had last seen him when I was nine years old.  I was now twenty-five years old.  My father had not been present through my big plastic glasses, dorky stage in middle school.  He had not seen me off to the prom.  He had not seen me graduate from medical school.  He just did not know me. 

I still did not know what Bogie was to me.  He wasn’t my father.  He wasn’t my stepfather.  He was a friend but that did not seem to do him justice.  He was so much more than that.  But then, perhaps a label was not so important.  There are so many labels.  Mother.  Father.  Brother.  Sister.  Co-worker.  Anyone can call themselves any of these names but did this mean that they truly lived up to these roles?  After all, how many people had parents who never really parented them?

Years later, a family member said to Bogie, "gosh, how can you eat so much?!  You are so fat."  I found myself infuriated about something I, myself, would have said years ago.  Bogie, as was his way, simply continued eating his dinner, ignoring him. 

"Be quiet.  Let him eat.  What an awful thing to say," I scolded this family member.  Bogie looked up at me with his fork halfway to his mouth, raising his eyebrows at me, with a nod.

So who was Bogie?

I shrugged at my friend.  "He's just our Bogie," I said, "You'd be lucky to have a Bogie in your life.”