Lydia Wessel (1953 - 2008)

last modified 1/2/2017

Afterword (12/13/2015)

Mom wrote a book of her childhood stories. I contributed this afterword.

The punch line was, "I ate tomatoes when I was pregnant." That was Mom's claim on what she contributed to my life. It's an inside joke. The source was a vapid story on network news about how eating tomatoes might be a good thing for pregnant women. Other stories that week probably included eating chocolate to lose weight and a car chase. The joke worked because Mom and I were opposites in disposition. I was a precocious child. Mom was an adult playing with dolls. Dad and I would (and still do) have long conversations about science and history and literature and so forth. Though few people have any curiosity for the classics themselves, everyone has a good chuckle at the novelty of a kid studying them. From a cursory glance it looked like I took after Dad. What did Mom contribute? Why, I've already told you: she ate tomatoes when she was pregnant! So there it is, one of her self-deprecating jokes.

Of course, the truth has deeper roots. The easiest way to see it is to ask, "How might I have grown up if Mom were not there? What if it had just been me and Dad?" Well, probably pretty screwed up is the answer to that question. There's a fine line between turning out screwed up or just a bit screwy.

Finding the right answers to things is more about being good than smart. A high IQ is like a fast car. It goes fast in the direction it's pointed but it's up to the driver to pick the direction. If the driver points away from where he needs to be, that fast car turns from being an asset to a liability. The important thing is to be pointed in the right direction. The fast car is just a bonus.

The difference between rationalization and wisdom is a working moral compass, or an emotional referee if you'd rather. In order to follow a matter to its logical conclusion, one must have an inner tranquility secure enough to withstand fears of weakness, ostracism and oblivion and this inner space is wholly emotional. It's a product of unconditional love experienced early and for that I am thankful to Mom. I hope the reader takes a slice of that with him from these very silly, very sincere stories that Mom wrote.

Mom and Me (1/2/2017)

Mom and I are superficially different. She liked to please; I'm assertive. She's emotive; I'm articulate. She's disarming; I'm skeptical. She liked to play dolls; I like to play chess.

We are closer to each other when the details are factored in. She always told me, "If you remember just one thing, remember this: People are no damn good." She believed in God and I'm atheist but we agreed that the Bible was authored by mere mortals. Her pet theory was that Mary cheated on Joseph and made up the immaculate conception as a cover story. Then things got a little out of hand. So, we share a perspective on human nature.

Mom made some poor life choices in her twenties. She told her story to my sister and me ad nauseam so we would make better choices. Mistakes were made but they were not swept under the rug. No topic was taboo nor did Mom expect me to follow orders on her authority alone. Though she was not the logical, critical thinking type, her parenting style fostered those traits in me.

Mom's Wisdom (3/28/2015)

Mom would begin her story in the third person. She would say, "Your mother, when she was a young woman, was very stupid." Then she would switch back to the first person, "It took me so many years to smarten up. I look back and all I can think is, 'Oh my god Lydia! What were you thinking?' It makes me angry sometimes." It really did make her angry, too. She'd flare her nostrils with contempt for her past self.

Then she would tell us how she married her first husband T_, my sister's father. "I didn't love him. I knew I didn't love him and I married him anyway. I remember on my wedding day thinking, 'What am I doing here? I don't love this man.' But, I went through with it anyway."

Mom told us her story because she didn't want us to repeat her mistakes and because she felt guilty. A mother wants the best for her children. That means picking the right father. She had failed to do that for my sister. It's not a failure that can be repaired. The best that can be done is damage control. Giving her mea culpa was part of that.

Mom was raised Catholic. God figured into that at the margins but it's the lifestyle that I mean to highlight. Let's say that, in practice, there was more mother-fearing than god-fearing in the household. Grandma's plan was to call the shots for 18 years then marry my mother off to a suitable husband. He could take things from there. Grandpa and Grandma saw no particular need to educate Mom in the ways of the world. Grandpa was a kind, hardworking man and Mom assumed that was typical. What could possibly go wrong?

It was absolutely essential that Mom be virgin when she married. That meant she couldn't move out of the house until she married. Moving out on her own, away from Grandma's watchful keeping, would mean the opportunity for pre-marital sex. As far as the Church is concerned, opportunity to commit sin and the sin itself are pretty much the same. Mom got older - 18, 19, 20. She was dying to move out of the house.

This is usually where I would interrupt to ask, "Why didn't you just move out?"

"I couldn't," she'd reply. "My mother wouldn't let me."

This bothered me and I'd argue, "But why didn't you just do it anyway? You had a car and a full-time job and money in the bank. She couldn't stop you. It would have been easy."

"You don't understand. I just couldn't. Thoughts like that didn't even occur to me. Or, I thought of moving out, but it was like this crazy idea, not something that you would really do. Your father and I raised you and your sister differently: to think. I didn't just stop doing what my mom said because I turned 18. I was conditioned."

T_ courted Grandma as much as Mom, probably more. He's a real charmer. That's not so hard when you're willing to lie profusely. He told some real whoppers. He said that he had graduated from UCLA with a degree in accounting and had a job as a CPA. The truth was that he mixed paint at a hardware store. There's nothing wrong with mixing paint. Somebody's got to do it. Grandpa was a butcher and Mom would have happily married a kind, steady workman like her father. Lying, however, is terribly wrong. Mom sometimes lamented, "Why didn't I ask him about his job? He didn't know anything about accounting. I should have asked him something." This experience would lead to Mom demanding to see her second husband's diploma a few years later, despite meeting him at work.

T_ is a funny person. He's not a malicious liar. He's not even a strategic liar. He's a pathological liar. He might say that he ate a ham sandwich for lunch when in fact he had a salad. There's no obvious motive for the lies. My best guess is that he simply tries to tell people what they want to hear, without fail. He looks deep into your eyes and figures that you're more of a sandwich person than a salad person so he says that he ate a sandwich. He's a glib, weird man yet harmless once you learn not to believe anything that he says.

"He was fun to go out with," Mom explained. "He could really make you laugh." Mom's thought-process, such as it was, was that this man was her ticket out of the house. She didn't love him but he seemed tolerable, even fun. Grandma endorsed him. Ring the church bell.

The lies collapsed quickly and spectacularly once they lived together but that's not what brought the divorce about. That came a few years later. Mom adjusted. The weird husband thing was suboptimal but her priority had been to get out of the house and she had done so. "He was like having a weird roommate. I was just having fun being out in the world."

Mom had always envisioned having children and, one day, she decided it was time to start. Like usual, she didn't really think it through. She told T_ to get her pregnant so he complied. My sister entered the world nine months later. She grew into a toddler. The maternal instinct shocked the gears in Mom's head to start turning. "I looked at him and I thought, 'Oh my god. Oh my god. This man can't be a father.'"

Through all her life, it had not occurred to Mom to be responsible for herself. Life was something that happened to her, not something she made happen. With a baby daughter - with responsibility for another - she couldn't escape realizing that choice is real and choices have consequences. She set to rebuilding her life for the benefit of her daughter, this time with scrutiny. The divorce inevitably came.

Mom had sunk her savings into a down payment on a house which she sold shortly thereafter as part of the divorce. Buying and selling a house has transaction costs. Divorce has costs, even when the exes cooperate. Mom was a broke single-mother. At least she had a steady job. She had gained some life wisdom albeit at great cost.

Mom turned her back on her conditioning and followed her own judgment. She did not move back home like Grandma told her to. She rented her own place. She dated her old high school sweetheart. They really had adored each other. Unfortunately, she discovered that he had since become addicted to cocaine. Older and wiser Mom showed him the door.

Onto the next. Mom decided to try dating an engineer. She decided to approach him instead of waiting for him to approach her. She decided not to care that he was younger than her and white (Mom is Mexican). She even gave him a second chance when his idea of flirting was to put fake spiders in her desk. She demanded to see his diploma. She demanded that they live together for a while before getting married. She even gave him a third chance when his next idea of flirting was to reinstall seat belts in her car. Mom had cut them out with scissors because they wrinkled her dresses. Well, what do you expect when you date a traffic engineer?

Thoroughly vetted, they married, and lived happily ever after. I received the full benefits of a good home. Dad raised my sister as his own. Having two dads is hard but, with a lot of honesty and support, my sister grew up to have a happy nuclear family of her own. Mistakes were not repeated.

Need for Cognition

Need for cognition is one of many dimensions academics use to describe personality. High scorers tend to analyze arguments and evidence directly using logic. Low scorers tend to look for "peripheral cues." The scale is not as simple as "high good, low bad." Sometimes the term "peripheral cues" is indeed an academic euphemism for failing to think things through carefully but not always.

Mom's personality was naturally low on need for cognition. That means she naturally focused on tone of voice, body language and whether a person seems to be popular. She focused less on evaluating what a person actually said! As the comedian Eddie Izzard says, "It's 70% how you look, 20% how you sound and only 10% what you say." It's amazing how well snap judgments work so much of the time. Mom could get a good estimate of the dynamics of a crowded room in no more than a couple of minutes.

But snap judgments do fail. Sometimes people are confident not because they are correct but because they've come to believe their own bullshit. Sometimes the peripheral cues are contrived. Admen turned it into a science at least as far back as the 1980s. The average Pepsi commercial these days is a bunch of pretty people dancing and singing in a computer animated acid trip. It has nothing to do with anything but it's chock full of "cues" and it sells an awful lot of Pepsi.

Grandma is naturally controlling and T_ is a natural liar. Mom fell under both of their spells. She could have left home had she thought it through. She could have caught T_ in his lies had she asked the right follow up questions. But, on both counts, she didn't. She fell for the worse that seemed the better. She had to learn the hard way to look beyond peripheral cues for inner character. For the second husband, she chose the better that seemed like a nerd.

Life is riddled with glib jackasses: admen, lawyers, mechanics, politicians, priests, professors, TV journalists, union reps, used car salesmen and guys in bars, to name a few. They more or less pull their tricks from the same bag. They're charismatic - not necessarily pretty but always charismatic. They sense what you want to hear and feed it to you. They flatter and wheedle and daunt. They surround themselves with sycophantic crowds. They wrap themselves up in a higher power like god or patriotism or justice or insight. Marrying one of these people will wreck your life. Even just being in close proximity to one of these people could wreck your life.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a training program that could prevent people from falling prey to charismatic predators?

There is and it's called math. There should be a poster in every math classroom reading Learn math so you don't marry a crummy husband. Studying math is an efficient way to learn to think critically. Logic is universal. Once you learn it, you'll be able to do everything better, from the small things like buying a good car at a good price (despite the salesman) to the big things like snatching up a good husband. In fact, if you're really logical, you'll get such a good husband you don't have to worry about the car at all.

Math is effective training because there are no peripheral cues. It's just you, Suzie and her 3 apples on a train headed northwest at 60mph. There's no scent, body language or tone of voice. You can't tell if she feels confident or if people like her. You can't tell if she takes care of her looks or not. There are no easy holds for the mind to grab onto, no shortcuts to the solution. Your only escape from this strange gray world is through logic. That is by design.

Math worth studying is hairy. It's word problems. Real life problems come with extraneous information and often not enough pertinent information. They don't come distilled into worksheets. You have to distill them yourself by generating the right chain of little questions that lead to solving the big question. If you learn to do that in math class then you will be able to do it in life. The big question might be, "Should I take this man to be my husband?" One of the little questions might be, "What's the difference between form 1040A and 1040EZ?" If you fail to ask - if you assume that he's telling the truth because he looks confident - then you could be in for a world of hurt.

Obituary (4/2/2008)

Lydia Wessel passed away peacefully at home on March 16, 2008, with her family at her side. Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and inflammatory breast cancer in 2000, she underwent many surgeries, tests, chemotherapy treatments and radiation treatments before finally succumbing to the breast cancer at age 55. What a trooper! Her graceful fighting spirit was an inspiration to so many people. Living life to the end, she celebrated her birthday earlier in the week by having a wonderful day at Disneyland.

Lydia was born and raised in Los Angeles, where she worked as a stenographer and secretary for 14 years. As a true professional, she raised the bar and made it look easy, while always having time for a nice lunch with friends. She moved to Ventura 24 years ago and devoted her life to raising a family.

If ever a mother lived for her children, it was Lydia. Sacrifices great and small were made without hesitation, and nothing gave her more happiness and fulfillment than seeing her kids happy. And, although she would have dearly loved to play a bigger role in her granddaughter's life, she felt blessed to live long enough to see her granddaughter born. She was worshipped by her husband, to whom she was source of strength, wisdom, and love, as well as a guide to this wild ride called life.

A lifelong love of dolls led to one of her nicknames as the "Doll Lady." She had a national and, in some cases, international reputation as a knowledgeable expert on various collectible dolls. Although she was an avid doll collector and dealer, one of her greatest thrills was to give a doll to a young girl in the hope that she, too, would come to enjoy the art, beauty, and joy that is doll collecting. Other passions included politics, eating food that she didn't have to cook, and slot machines — she never met a slot machine she didn't like!

Lydia had a phenomenal sense of empathy for everything — people, animals, even plants. She was unable to visualize her cancer cells as the "enemy" because she felt that poor things were probably just misguided. Perhaps this empathy was what enabled her to constantly lift up those around her. Whatever your problems or status of health, beauty, success, or happiness, Lydia would find a way to make you feel better about yourself. She was unpretentious, genuine, self-deprecating, always willing to be the butt of the joke, and had a wacky personality that was always fun and entertaining. To be considered the best friend of even one person in your life is noteworthy, but there were many people that considered Lydia to be their best friend.

Lydia is survived by her husband, Mark Wessel; children, Jannine Landan and John Wessel; son-in-law, Josh Landan; and granddaughter, Monroe Lydia Landan. She will also be missed by her parents, Augustine and Delia Silvas; sister, Christina Berumen; brother, Steve Silvas; and many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and dear friends.

Per her wishes, there will be no funeral. However, an informal reception will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 5, at the Wedgewood Banquet Center, 5880 Olivas Park Drive, Ventura.

In lieu of flowers, contributions will be accepted for a charitable purpose she would approve of.

Thank you, Lydia, for showing us what true humility means, as well as true love, empathy, and self-sacrifice. Wherever you went, you enveloped others in an aura of love, kindness, and laughter. We were indeed fortunate to have had you in our lives and will miss you far more than words can describe.