The Watershed
Filmmaker's Statement
In 1972 our family moved from Long Island,
NY to Santa Barbara, CA so that my father could pursue
a new job. I was eleven years old and the eldest of seven
children. My father was a successful CPA, my mother stayed
at home and life seemed perfect. We were the typical upper-middle
class white family living in the suburbs. A year later
my father announced that he no lover loved my mother and
he left. Shortly thereafter he was fired from his new
job. My mother was devastated because her Catholic upbringing
did not prepare her for a life that would include betrayal
or divorce. My father's lack of income and the ensuing
poverty was foreign territory for all of us. To alleviate
the devastation my mother began to drink. She took to
her bed almost 24 hours a day. We were barely surviving
on welfare and foodstamps and my father rarely visited.
We struggled to take care of ourselves and attempt to
live like normal kids.
Throughout this period the relatives in
New York had no knowledge of the disparity of our lives
or of the extent to which our parents had "checked
out." Appearances were everything and we were trained
well.
Everything changed one evening, when our
mother went into convolutions as a result of excessive
alcohol consumption. She was hospitalized and the East
Coast relatives were quickly notified and arrived immediately.
They were shocked at how destitute our lives had become.
My mother survived her health crisis but her twin sister
decided she was in no condition to take care of us. Because
my father was difficult to track down and no one wanted
to see us go into foster homes, my siblings and I lived
with my our aunt, her husband and their three children
in Florida for one year, while my mother spent the year
in Santa Barbara recovering from alcohol poisoning. We
wanted her to join us in Florida where we had established
a stable family life but she refused and we were forced
to return to her in California.
The most difficult task in this ordeal
was to learn to love and respect one another again. To
this day, 25 years later, it is not an easy thing. My
siblings and I are still very close but the affects of
my parents' breakup, the poverty we were forced to live
in and the abandonment of my parents has shaped who we
are and how we live in the world. This documentary illustrates
how we survived the trauma and downfall of our family's
status and how we see ourselves now because of it. It
also depicts the phenomenon of divorce at a time when
divorce was not common. When divorce was seen as a disruption
of the anticipated American future; when normalcy was
interrupted by the impossible.
