Home

Once upon a time, there were things you didn't talk about -- things you kept to yourself and never mentioned to anyone -- except possibly your best friend -- and more than likely not even the friend. You didn't go to a therapist because only the very rich could afford such things, and this was mostly reserved for the mentally ill because a stigma was attached. When I think back to those times, I am astonished that we could live and survive with everything bottled up inside.

For example, when I was a young mother, I attended a family bar mitzvah. The hostess was my cousin Carol who was about 40. During the cocktail hour at the reception, my mother came rushing up to me.

"Be careful. Don't tell Carol she's adopted," my mother whispered in my ear.

Astonished, I looked at my mother as if she had two heads. "You mean she doesn't know? She's 40 years old."

My mother shook her head. "They (Carol's parents) don't want her to know."

"Why?"

My mother shrugged. "That's the way they want it."

Carol is dead now, as are her parents. As far as we know, she never found out about the adoption.

Thankfully, the subject of adoption is now spoken about openly. Children are told as soon as they are old enough to understand and families speak of this openly with others -- most of the time. (I still have a friend who thinks I don't know that her son, now married, is adopted, although everyone in town knew it from day one.)

At one point in my childhood, I thought I was adopted because I sensed that certain things were not talked about in my family. I wrongly thought adoption was the secret. Not until I was 18 did I discover that the hidden information had nothing to do with me personally. My grandfather's first wife died and he remarried before I was born. He didn't want me to know that the grandmother I knew wasn't my father's real mother. By the time I found this out, I had experienced much needless unhappiness over this.

Another subject that nobody talked about was cancer. Of course people, died of cancer years ago, but it was not spoken about. In whispers, they said someone died of "C."

Infidelity wasn't mentioned either. I remember walking one evening with my father when I was 12 and stopping to see a Boy Scout exhibit in the window of a local restaurant. Through the window, I could see into the restaurant and spotted the familiar face of a relative. The man was dining with a woman we knew from the neighborhood as disreputable. My father made me promise never to tell what I'd seen -- and I didn't to this day.

And sex! Nobody talked about that for sure. Nobody sat you down and talked about the birds and the bees. Boys found out from the guys at the corner candy store. Girls huddled in the corners of libraries looking up words until they could piece it together. If they were lucky, girls received a little booklet put out by the Kotex company explaining menstruation. Those who did not get this information in advance got quite a jolt when it happened.

Homosexuality was a taboo subject altogether. There was one openly gay girl on my block when I was a child. She simply disappeared one day. We never knew if she ran away or was thrown out by her family. There must have been more gays around but they were completely invisible. A friend of mine unknowingly married one. The anguish she, her husband, and children sustained was terrible because this information was hidden. The couple had been introduced by the man's sister who had the idea he'd "grow out of it" if he got married.

Mental illness was another taboo subject. If you had a mentally ill relative, he or she got quietly shuttled off to an institution and was never spoken of again.

If you were poor, you'd put up a false front before admitting to anyone that you had no money. My family had a rich relative in South Africa. Each year he'd come to New York and take the entire clan to lunch. He'd go from one relative to the other asking, "How are you doing?" so he could give money to those with financial troubles. My father always said he was doing fine when he was not and could have used some extra money.

Death was the subject nobody talked about until after it happened. Some immigrant groups formed "societies" of people from their hometowns and purchased communal burial plots, but that was all. Most people did not have wills because they had no assets. Pre-need arrangements were non-existent.

How very lucky our children and grandchildren are to live in a time when all the above subjects are spoken about openly, written up in magazines, newspapers, and books.

Going for therapy is as accepted as going to the dentist. Such immense psychic burdens need not encumber their lives. The secret inner turmoil that any of these subjects can create is largely a thing of the past. Once out in the open, we can look for help and support. We deal with the problems with the aid of the scientific findings and recommendations of experts.

Our children have no idea how to live without letting it all hang out. They cannot understand how it feels to have a public face and a private one as well. I'm so glad they have this emotional freedom. Inner life is so much better now.

Toby Rosenstrauch, an award-winning columnist, lives in Boynton Beach, Fla.