Well, it's been about a year since Shawn walked away from us. He never has admitted his part in the break up of our marriage but he has admitted to plenty of other things that have opened my eyes. And I have watched him turn into someone who isn't very likable. I have watched him kiss up to people who he thought could be helpful to him in a monetary or visibility sense as he follows his dream. He has asked people for money so that he could achieve his dream, rather than working to achieve it on his own. It embarrasses me and if we were still married in the true sense of the word I would be ashamed. And when it came time to acknowledge those "littler" people in his life I haven't seen a word of thanks.
He told me of kissing one of my best friends, one whom I knew he had developed a crush on, and saying it was my fault because I accused him of having a crush on her. Constant private emails and texts to another man's wife?
When I woke up the next morning, still blown away by this new knowledge, and came into the cabin of the Sea Bear still upset, he told me to "Get the fuck off of his boat". And yet, I still let myself get sucked back in to his words that he still loved me. All those years of saying he was never unfaithful - well I guess he justifies his attempt at doing so as not being unfaithful since he didn't actually get to fuck her - but he would have if he could.
He has put himself deep into debt, cashed out his 401K and accepted over 30,000 dollars for his boat and his dream, but still asks me "Are you going to pay for it?" when I told him that I had hoped that after Alaska he would want to try to make time to work on our marriage. Again, I am made aware that I am not worth his time or the money. And I still love him.
He asked me if I would visit him in Washington, but last May I was told that, except for the house payment, I was on my own. I was told I HAD to get a job. So I did. And now he wants me to take time off to visit him.
Everything has always been on Shawn's terms. What we did as a family, what he bought, the purchase of both boats, and even our marriage. I left him once in CA and he begged me to give him another chance. And fed me another huge lie: that if he could (he knew damn well that he couldn't too) he would sell the boat rather than lose me. So he just waited until he could do that on his terms as well.
And here's the kicker: when I say any of this to him he will turn it around. Tell me that I am making accusations against him. How is the truth an accusation? Tell me that I am being abusive. I did become emotionally abusive, but I also realize that I endured years of emotional abuse at his hands. I can admit that I did - he cannot. He always turns it around in an attempt to make me feel guilty or to shut me up. He tells me that I am bringing up the past - right after he has done so himself. So many double standards. So many lies. So many subtle put downs to make me doubt myself. So many promises made and then withdrawn, while saying he never made them. Telling me I was crazy. Letting everyone think that I was just a nag trying to hold him back.
He told me years ago that I would be second choice after the boat and he has proven it time and time again. It is time I let him go to live with his choice and quit hoping that someday I might have come first.
Happy First Anniversary.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Finding Myself Again & Acknowledging Our Mutual Abuse
Yesterday I heard "Annie's Song" by John Denver and it said what I wish I could say to Shawn and what, until recently, I still hoped he might one day say to me. And I told him that. Big mistake. Or maybe not. Because he called me, his voice full of accusation and distance, telling me that I must have forgotten the reason why he left me - that I am abusive, and that sending him all of these romantic words is a further denial of my treatment of him. I hung up. Then the texting began. You see, in all of these months leading to our separation I had hoped that he would see that we both mistreated each other, and that we could begin by getting counseling to help us learn to communicate again instead of fighting and accusing and hurting each other. But he pulled the plug before it could happen, but he had acknowledged that his behavior had also been hurtful and abusive and that he needed to change it.
But there was one thing I wanted to get done. Back in the spring when I had gone in for my yearly exam my doctor found that the lining to my uterus was thicker than it should be. I had had some intermittent spotting as well, which he hoped could be attributed to a polyp that had grown in my vaginal wall. The thickening could have been menopausal or it could have been something scarier. So he had me go in for an ultrasound, which confirmed the actual thickness of the lining. I had an appointment to discuss the results and when I got there his staff had already gotten authorization for the next step - removal of the polyp and clipping some tissue samples from my uterine lining for biopsy testing. I wasn't expecting that but went ahead and agreed to get it done. It was painful and uncomfortable. Well, it turned out that the samples he retrieved weren't conclusive, so rather than having me undergo surgery right away he placed me on medication until April to see if the lining has thinned. The reason for this background is that I had decided that I would move to the Bay area with Shawn more permanently so that we could go to counseling together, but I told him I wanted to finish up this process with my current doctor first. I trusted him, he always took the time to explain everything and answer all of my questions, and never made me feel like I needed to hurry up. Shawn didn't like it but he agreed. Then he made the call that tore my world apart, leaving me to deal with the worry and the fear alone.
In the time leading up to the separation I had had a friend suggest that I was being gaslighted - a form of mental abuse that makes the victim question themselves and become less and less confident in who they are. That is the short version. And as I researched it and thought back over the years I realized that many of the signs did indeed match what had been happening to me. I had approached it with Shawn and he had begun to indicate to me that he was willing to at least talk to a counselor about it. Then he left us. Deserted not just me, but our kids. The kids who had looked to him as a father for most of their lives. No contact. He had taken up the practice of calling me to ask about them - not in tones of concern or genuine interest, but sounding more like an interrogator with every call. Not that there were many. He just had too many other more important things in his life. Becoming a rich, successful filmmaker living on his sailboat was more important than saving his marriage or his relationship with his kids.
Then in the weeks leading up to his graduation from film school and the departure of the Sea Bear for Alaska we came to terms with where we were - we acknowledged that we still cared about each other and decided to try to be friends. The night of his graduation was tough - I was not the wife standing proudly by his side, just someone else who showed up that he didn't have time for. And that night I was attacked by our slip neighbor from our time in San Diego - I was asked how I dare choose Bella, the GSD I rescued two years ago, over my husband. I was taken aback and then the anger flared. I asked her to go ask Shawn how he dare tell his wife that he would choose a boat over her, or how he dared to abandon me in the middle of my medical issues with so many unanswered questions to ask alone. She couldn't believe that he would do any of it. But he did. He chose not to give me the time to get my answers before staying with him to get counseling. He chose his desires over my very real fears of cancer. I also told her that I truly believed that that crazy dog was sent to me for a reason. She probably saved my life one night and if she would not have been there I may have sunk deeper than I could save myself from. And again, it was because of Shawn. Then later that night he disclosed an indiscretion that he had committed, and I was understandably more hurt. The next morning when I was still reeling and told him so he told me to get the fuck off of his boat.
So the months have gone by and I have begun to feel happy again with myself. Friends tell me that I look happier than I have in years. People who didn't know me before Shawn's dreams changed tell me that they have never seen me look better. No one that has encouraged him to follow this know how close to ruin he was willing to bring us to achieve this. We were not rich sailboaters, so what was seen as my negativity was actually my realistic view of our finances. When we split up we had less than 10,000 in savings. Who thinks they can retire on that? Who would feel financially secure in their declining years with 10,000? So I was cast as the negative, unsupportive wife and Shawn was encouraged to go find his happiness. I hope that those who encouraged him to make this leap will be there for him if it doesn't work out.
Meanwhile, his words have convinced me that there would never have been any compromise for us. It has always been his way or nothing when it came to the bigger issues in our marriage. My dreams are not part of his equation and never really were. So it's been a bad day for me out of a lot of others that are getting better and better. And I'm going to be ok.
Then in the weeks leading up to his graduation from film school and the departure of the Sea Bear for Alaska we came to terms with where we were - we acknowledged that we still cared about each other and decided to try to be friends. The night of his graduation was tough - I was not the wife standing proudly by his side, just someone else who showed up that he didn't have time for. And that night I was attacked by our slip neighbor from our time in San Diego - I was asked how I dare choose Bella, the GSD I rescued two years ago, over my husband. I was taken aback and then the anger flared. I asked her to go ask Shawn how he dare tell his wife that he would choose a boat over her, or how he dared to abandon me in the middle of my medical issues with so many unanswered questions to ask alone. She couldn't believe that he would do any of it. But he did. He chose not to give me the time to get my answers before staying with him to get counseling. He chose his desires over my very real fears of cancer. I also told her that I truly believed that that crazy dog was sent to me for a reason. She probably saved my life one night and if she would not have been there I may have sunk deeper than I could save myself from. And again, it was because of Shawn. Then later that night he disclosed an indiscretion that he had committed, and I was understandably more hurt. The next morning when I was still reeling and told him so he told me to get the fuck off of his boat.
So the months have gone by and I have begun to feel happy again with myself. Friends tell me that I look happier than I have in years. People who didn't know me before Shawn's dreams changed tell me that they have never seen me look better. No one that has encouraged him to follow this know how close to ruin he was willing to bring us to achieve this. We were not rich sailboaters, so what was seen as my negativity was actually my realistic view of our finances. When we split up we had less than 10,000 in savings. Who thinks they can retire on that? Who would feel financially secure in their declining years with 10,000? So I was cast as the negative, unsupportive wife and Shawn was encouraged to go find his happiness. I hope that those who encouraged him to make this leap will be there for him if it doesn't work out.
Meanwhile, his words have convinced me that there would never have been any compromise for us. It has always been his way or nothing when it came to the bigger issues in our marriage. My dreams are not part of his equation and never really were. So it's been a bad day for me out of a lot of others that are getting better and better. And I'm going to be ok.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Out With the Old and In With the New...
The love and support I have received from my family and so many of our friends has helped tremendously. I know it is hard for some of them who love us both.
2016 also brought many joyful occasions for me. I saw my daughter married to a man who restored her belief in love. I saw one of my biggest dreams realized when my son and his family came out for her wedding and I had all of my kids and grandkids together in one place for a few short days. Over the summer my oldest granddaughter came out as she has done for the last few summers and I had the joy of her in my life again. There is the steadfast support of my son, who has watched me dissolve in front of his eyes and helped pull me back together. And there is the weekly joy of having my youngest granddaughter here for a few days. Having her to focus on in those first weeks after Shawn declared our marriage lost saved me.
So I sit here watching the sun set on the last day of this year. I am alone in the sense that I have lost the love of my life, but I know now I will never ever be alone. There is someone watching over me and I know I will be alright. I'll be better than alright, because now I can focus on making myself better instead of trying desperately to be something I am not for someone who told me years ago that I would be second choice. And I was.
So welcome 2017! Let this be a new beginning for me!
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Falling Apart
It's been over a year since I wrote a post. A lot has happened. We lost both of Shawn's paternal grandparents within six months of each other. Shawn quit his job to go to filmmaking school in San Francisco. I lost my job trying to figure out how to be the wife that Shawn wanted me to be - supportive of his dream even though it shattered all of mine. And our marriage fell apart. We finally acknowledged that his dreams have done a complete 180 from what OUR dreams were together.
So I have been a somewhat emotional train wreck that just kept gathering momentum. We talk, but it is more like friends calling to see what the other one is up to. No words of love. Not allowed.
Tonight I came home from a cook off that I took part in. I was feeling pretty good. Shawn's avoidance of talking to me in anything other than platonic terms is helping me to realize that he really doesn't see me in his life anymore. I woke up this morning for the first time in a while and it didn't hurt so much not to wake up without him. Because through all of the fighting and resentment and hurt I still found solace just having his arms around me and laying my head on his chest at night. And it is all I have wanted for weeks now. But I have to let it go. Anyway. Back to coming home. I walked in the door and the very first thing I see is one of my very favorite coffee cups shattered on the floor. I had left it next to the sink this morning and Bella had pulled it off of the counter. This cup was special - one of a kind, irreplaceable. Shawn's mom bought it for me in Caltagirone, Italy on a trip and I have loved it ever since. I should have put it away a long time ago, but there was something about drinking coffee out of this mug that brought back so many good memories that I just kept drinking out of it. And now it lay shattered on my kitchen floor. I just knelt down to pick up the pieces and began sobbing. And I sobbed, and screamed even, angry that I had been so stupid as to leave it within her reach if she misbehaved. Angry that it had to be THIS cup, not one of the more generic ones that didn't matter as much. Angry that this happened when it seems like so much is going wrong. The dogs were so alarmed that they went and hid. Bella went outside and lingered at the fringes of the light, knowing that SHE was the reason for my grief. Normally she is so attuned to my moods that if I am even the tiniest bit sad she comes and licks me and tried to put her paw on me. But not this time. This time she knew it was because of her that I was curled up in a ball on the floor crying my eyes out, holding a silly piece of pottery and crying over it as if it were a living thing. But I realized that it was the culmination of all of the grief from the last few weeks, months and even years that was releasing itself over broker shards of pottery.
As if on cue, Shawn called at that moment. I don't know why I even answered the phone in the state I was in. He sounded alarmed until he heard the reason for my sobs, then he said he was sorry but it didn't sound sincere. Shawn has always been so sympathetic to my hurts and when he says he is sorry you can tell in his voice that he is sincere. This wasn't the same. So when we got off the phone I cried some more. Poor Ryker, he came and stayed by me for the longest time. Then I dried my eyes, got up and went to find Bella and hug her. And that is how I will look at things - dry my eyes, pick my ass up and do what needs to be done. The hurt will lessen over time and I will work to achieve MY dreams without feeling like I didn't have the right to dream for myself anymore. I will pick up the shattered pieces of pottery and drink out of a different cup.
So I have been a somewhat emotional train wreck that just kept gathering momentum. We talk, but it is more like friends calling to see what the other one is up to. No words of love. Not allowed.
Tonight I came home from a cook off that I took part in. I was feeling pretty good. Shawn's avoidance of talking to me in anything other than platonic terms is helping me to realize that he really doesn't see me in his life anymore. I woke up this morning for the first time in a while and it didn't hurt so much not to wake up without him. Because through all of the fighting and resentment and hurt I still found solace just having his arms around me and laying my head on his chest at night. And it is all I have wanted for weeks now. But I have to let it go. Anyway. Back to coming home. I walked in the door and the very first thing I see is one of my very favorite coffee cups shattered on the floor. I had left it next to the sink this morning and Bella had pulled it off of the counter. This cup was special - one of a kind, irreplaceable. Shawn's mom bought it for me in Caltagirone, Italy on a trip and I have loved it ever since. I should have put it away a long time ago, but there was something about drinking coffee out of this mug that brought back so many good memories that I just kept drinking out of it. And now it lay shattered on my kitchen floor. I just knelt down to pick up the pieces and began sobbing. And I sobbed, and screamed even, angry that I had been so stupid as to leave it within her reach if she misbehaved. Angry that it had to be THIS cup, not one of the more generic ones that didn't matter as much. Angry that this happened when it seems like so much is going wrong. The dogs were so alarmed that they went and hid. Bella went outside and lingered at the fringes of the light, knowing that SHE was the reason for my grief. Normally she is so attuned to my moods that if I am even the tiniest bit sad she comes and licks me and tried to put her paw on me. But not this time. This time she knew it was because of her that I was curled up in a ball on the floor crying my eyes out, holding a silly piece of pottery and crying over it as if it were a living thing. But I realized that it was the culmination of all of the grief from the last few weeks, months and even years that was releasing itself over broker shards of pottery.
As if on cue, Shawn called at that moment. I don't know why I even answered the phone in the state I was in. He sounded alarmed until he heard the reason for my sobs, then he said he was sorry but it didn't sound sincere. Shawn has always been so sympathetic to my hurts and when he says he is sorry you can tell in his voice that he is sincere. This wasn't the same. So when we got off the phone I cried some more. Poor Ryker, he came and stayed by me for the longest time. Then I dried my eyes, got up and went to find Bella and hug her. And that is how I will look at things - dry my eyes, pick my ass up and do what needs to be done. The hurt will lessen over time and I will work to achieve MY dreams without feeling like I didn't have the right to dream for myself anymore. I will pick up the shattered pieces of pottery and drink out of a different cup.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Moving On...
I have told the story of my grandmother's death and the time up until we found out the truth of what my mother did with her body. My mother was sentenced to time in prison, with time served and the chance at early parole.
By the mid-nineties my marriage was coming apart. There had been a couple of abusive incidents and my answer to this was to go out with my girlfriends on the weekends. I still didn't think that I was one of those "abused wives" that you see covered in bruises - these incidents only happened every six months or so. Then there was the afternoon that I came home on a Saturday from work, exhausted. I just wanted to sit back on the couch and relax for a few minutes. My husband was roughhousing with my oldest son and I asked them if they could please stop for a while so I could get some peace and quiet. It kept on. I asked again, and again - until finally I just stood up and said, "I'm going for a drive to relax." I walked back out towards the Jeep and heard him come out the door. Before I turned around all of the way he had slammed into me, and that was all I remember. I just climbed in the Jeep. Then, he pushed my son out the door, called him a 'pussy' and told him to go with me. Without a word we just pulled out. Within a few blocks his teeth were chattering - it gets cold really quick in Washington when the sun goes down. - and I knew I had to swallow my pride and ask to get a jacket for my son so that he could be warm. So I stopped at a phone booth and told Ron that we needed to come back for jackets. He said that I needed to come back because base security was there. The neighbors had seen his freight train rush at me and called the police. So we went back and they took him away, and asked me a few questions. They said that the neighbors saw him hit me. I didn't recall being hit. They asked me if I felt sore anywhere and I realized my upper arm was hurting. I pulled up my sleeve and my whole bicep was dark purple. So he wasn't allowed to come home for three days...(wow) and was instructed to attend anger management classes.
As he deployed my friends and I spent more and more time hanging out with the Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys from the base. They were a lot of fun to hang out with and they didn't seem too concerned with what other people thought of them. I made a few good friends out of that group, although they were chauvinistic assholes at times. They had a lot of groupies. Then came the night that I saw Shawn. My friend Brenda and I were having a couple of beers and saw our buddies with a new guy. He was VERY drunk and had already been cut off. He could barely walk a crooked line, much less a straight one and we had quite a laugh at his expense....
Next time we met was in October. Shawn's best buddy Kevin called Brenda and asked us if we would take him out for his 25th birthday because most of his friends were on various jobs away from the island. So we met him and had a few drinks with him and some other friends, then we realized that our friend Tracy had wandered out. Somehow she had climbed in the back of my Jeep and passed out. We had no idea how we were going to get her home and get her out of the back. So a bunch of us went to Taco Bell and the friendship began. I always felt comfortable around Shawn, even when I barely knew him, like I wasn't expected to talk and make conversation just to make noise.
Then came the point when Brenda told Kevin and Shawn about my marriage. All of a sudden I had a lot of very protective 'big brothers' worrying about me. And Kevin and Shawn gave me a key to their condo and told me to 'use it if I needed it'. Not much was said about why.
I was beginning to realize that I had more feelings for Shawn than I should. And it scared me. We had a great time together, but he was younger, single and enjoying it. And he would be leaving when his tour was up. He and his buddies taught my oldest son how to snowboard, and bought him blue hair dye when he complained I wouldn't let him dye his hair. After all, it wasn't their kid right? And yes, that is the excuse I got.
Then everything came apart at home. I was so uncomfortable with my husband (and falling in love with a man that I thought would be leaving in another year) that we hadn't been together for a long time. We slept in the same bed, but I always found myself at the edge of it, and always fully clothed. One day, we were having a disagreement, not a fight. There wasn't any yelling going on. I said something and next thing I knew he was on top of me, choking me. Then nothing. Then I came to realizing that my oldest son, who was 14 at the time, had come in and pulled him off of me and was trying to keep him away from me. And my two little ones were in their room crying and screaming "You're killing momma! You're killing momma!". That was it. I didn't say a word, just went to the kids and sat in their room hugging them. He hung around and kept saying he knew he had to leave, as if waiting for me to say no, and finally left. Then Shawn showed up. Joel had called him. He didn't stay, just looked at us all and asked if we were alright, shaking his head.
That was my wake up call. My oldest son had literally saved my life. My kids were terrified. I couldn't let them grow up thinking this was normal. So I began the divorce proceedings. The retired judge who helped me told me that only 5% of abusers learn to quit. And that abuse always escalates, usually ending in death if the victim takes no action. (As it could have for me.) I found a place to live. And dealt with Ron stalking me through town on my lunch break. Kind of hard to do when you drive a bright red IROC-Z, by the way. So my bosses started letting me use cars off of the car lot and I would sometimes drive right past Ron as he was out looking for me. I was thankful when he took orders to California. I felt bad the day he left, but I knew I had made the right decision. I was on my own, a single mom with my kids and a dog. Scared, but free.
By the mid-nineties my marriage was coming apart. There had been a couple of abusive incidents and my answer to this was to go out with my girlfriends on the weekends. I still didn't think that I was one of those "abused wives" that you see covered in bruises - these incidents only happened every six months or so. Then there was the afternoon that I came home on a Saturday from work, exhausted. I just wanted to sit back on the couch and relax for a few minutes. My husband was roughhousing with my oldest son and I asked them if they could please stop for a while so I could get some peace and quiet. It kept on. I asked again, and again - until finally I just stood up and said, "I'm going for a drive to relax." I walked back out towards the Jeep and heard him come out the door. Before I turned around all of the way he had slammed into me, and that was all I remember. I just climbed in the Jeep. Then, he pushed my son out the door, called him a 'pussy' and told him to go with me. Without a word we just pulled out. Within a few blocks his teeth were chattering - it gets cold really quick in Washington when the sun goes down. - and I knew I had to swallow my pride and ask to get a jacket for my son so that he could be warm. So I stopped at a phone booth and told Ron that we needed to come back for jackets. He said that I needed to come back because base security was there. The neighbors had seen his freight train rush at me and called the police. So we went back and they took him away, and asked me a few questions. They said that the neighbors saw him hit me. I didn't recall being hit. They asked me if I felt sore anywhere and I realized my upper arm was hurting. I pulled up my sleeve and my whole bicep was dark purple. So he wasn't allowed to come home for three days...(wow) and was instructed to attend anger management classes.
As he deployed my friends and I spent more and more time hanging out with the Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys from the base. They were a lot of fun to hang out with and they didn't seem too concerned with what other people thought of them. I made a few good friends out of that group, although they were chauvinistic assholes at times. They had a lot of groupies. Then came the night that I saw Shawn. My friend Brenda and I were having a couple of beers and saw our buddies with a new guy. He was VERY drunk and had already been cut off. He could barely walk a crooked line, much less a straight one and we had quite a laugh at his expense....
Next time we met was in October. Shawn's best buddy Kevin called Brenda and asked us if we would take him out for his 25th birthday because most of his friends were on various jobs away from the island. So we met him and had a few drinks with him and some other friends, then we realized that our friend Tracy had wandered out. Somehow she had climbed in the back of my Jeep and passed out. We had no idea how we were going to get her home and get her out of the back. So a bunch of us went to Taco Bell and the friendship began. I always felt comfortable around Shawn, even when I barely knew him, like I wasn't expected to talk and make conversation just to make noise.
Then came the point when Brenda told Kevin and Shawn about my marriage. All of a sudden I had a lot of very protective 'big brothers' worrying about me. And Kevin and Shawn gave me a key to their condo and told me to 'use it if I needed it'. Not much was said about why.
I was beginning to realize that I had more feelings for Shawn than I should. And it scared me. We had a great time together, but he was younger, single and enjoying it. And he would be leaving when his tour was up. He and his buddies taught my oldest son how to snowboard, and bought him blue hair dye when he complained I wouldn't let him dye his hair. After all, it wasn't their kid right? And yes, that is the excuse I got.
Then everything came apart at home. I was so uncomfortable with my husband (and falling in love with a man that I thought would be leaving in another year) that we hadn't been together for a long time. We slept in the same bed, but I always found myself at the edge of it, and always fully clothed. One day, we were having a disagreement, not a fight. There wasn't any yelling going on. I said something and next thing I knew he was on top of me, choking me. Then nothing. Then I came to realizing that my oldest son, who was 14 at the time, had come in and pulled him off of me and was trying to keep him away from me. And my two little ones were in their room crying and screaming "You're killing momma! You're killing momma!". That was it. I didn't say a word, just went to the kids and sat in their room hugging them. He hung around and kept saying he knew he had to leave, as if waiting for me to say no, and finally left. Then Shawn showed up. Joel had called him. He didn't stay, just looked at us all and asked if we were alright, shaking his head.
That was my wake up call. My oldest son had literally saved my life. My kids were terrified. I couldn't let them grow up thinking this was normal. So I began the divorce proceedings. The retired judge who helped me told me that only 5% of abusers learn to quit. And that abuse always escalates, usually ending in death if the victim takes no action. (As it could have for me.) I found a place to live. And dealt with Ron stalking me through town on my lunch break. Kind of hard to do when you drive a bright red IROC-Z, by the way. So my bosses started letting me use cars off of the car lot and I would sometimes drive right past Ron as he was out looking for me. I was thankful when he took orders to California. I felt bad the day he left, but I knew I had made the right decision. I was on my own, a single mom with my kids and a dog. Scared, but free.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Like a Freight Train...
Sometimes the memories flood in - things you haven't thought much about for years. Today, a song came on that I hadn't heard in years. It was "Everything I Own" by Bread, from 1972. It was also the last song I used for a ballet solo, since I quit ballet when I was 15 because I was more interested in a boy. My mom was so disappointed in me - I had been taking ballet since I was a little girl.
So, this song comes on. I turn it up and next thing I know I am that young teenage girl again - performing my solo in my den in front of my two dogs, who don't quite know what to think. Not as thin and not as graceful, but in my mind I can see the dark royal blue leotard with silver sequins and a matching ballet skirt and I am there again.
Then comes the freight train of memories with the following verse:
"Is there someone you know
You're loving them so
But taking them all for granted
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear the words you long to say"
and I become a sobbing heap on the floor - huge, gasping, grieving sobs for so much that has been lost in the forty years since I last danced. And the realization that I am also grieving what is happening in my life - the widening gap between the man that I love more than I thought possible and myself. Because we both love each other, but we are both taking for granted that somehow this huge mess is going to work out - he is convinced that somehow I will come to love living in the confined spaces of a boat in places where I can find no privacy or peace or quiet, and I am convinced that somehow, as he continues to follow his dream with or without me, that he will be ready to settle down when it is done in one place and want me there beside him. Deep down I know I will lose him to his dreams, and the words we don't say to each other are becoming an ever deeper abyss.
So, this song comes on. I turn it up and next thing I know I am that young teenage girl again - performing my solo in my den in front of my two dogs, who don't quite know what to think. Not as thin and not as graceful, but in my mind I can see the dark royal blue leotard with silver sequins and a matching ballet skirt and I am there again.
Then comes the freight train of memories with the following verse:
"Is there someone you know
You're loving them so
But taking them all for granted
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear the words you long to say"
and I become a sobbing heap on the floor - huge, gasping, grieving sobs for so much that has been lost in the forty years since I last danced. And the realization that I am also grieving what is happening in my life - the widening gap between the man that I love more than I thought possible and myself. Because we both love each other, but we are both taking for granted that somehow this huge mess is going to work out - he is convinced that somehow I will come to love living in the confined spaces of a boat in places where I can find no privacy or peace or quiet, and I am convinced that somehow, as he continues to follow his dream with or without me, that he will be ready to settle down when it is done in one place and want me there beside him. Deep down I know I will lose him to his dreams, and the words we don't say to each other are becoming an ever deeper abyss.
This was in 1972 - I was nine in this one.
Friday, September 12, 2014
It Is Time...Part I
I started this blog over two years ago planning to use it as a form of catharsis - to tell some of the stories of my life, but ultimately to tell the story of my mother and grandmother. But I kept shying away from it. So now, after finding myself wide awake shortly after 3 a.m. I am going to truly begin. So here goes...
On Friday, December 8, 1989 there was a knock on my door. (We had moved to our first duty station at Whidbey Island, Washington the previous May, and Erika had been born a month later. We lived in a very tiny two bedroom unit in military housing, and we hadn't had the money to get phone service, so our neighbors let us use theirs when we needed to. ) It was my neighbor, Ellen, and she told me that my mother was on the phone and needed to talk to me.
My mother told me that my grandmother had died. If you have read my blog before this post, you know that my grandmother had Alzheimer's, and that she lived with my mother. She was in the advanced stages of the disease when I last saw her before our move. But she had died three days earlier, on Tuesday, December 5. My mother told me that she hadn't called me right away because she "knew I wouldn't have had the money to come home for the funeral" and thought that if she waited it would save me from having to agonize over it. I was heartbroken, but it made some sense. I didn't know at the time that the Red Cross helps family members get home for funerals of immediate family. I had had no experience with death before.
Fast forward to December of 1991. My son Brandon had been born on December 13th, and it was the week before Christmas. My ex-husband called and told me that he thought he should call me before I heard it on the news - my mother had been arrested for social security and pension fraud related to the suspected murder of my grandmother. Even now, over twenty years later, writing it down hurts almost as badly as it did that day. I don't remember very much of the next few minutes, just the shattering shock that I felt.
The following months were a nightmare. There were calls from prosecutors and defenders alike who tried to lead me into speculative answers about what had been going on in the time leading up to my grandmother's death. I was truthful, but when they tried to get me to cross that line I just refused. They asked if my mother ever displayed abusive actions. So I told them about the night that she tried to push me down the stairs, and how on that same night my grandmother tried to come out of her room in my defense and of my mother slamming her arm repeatedly in the door until she withdrew it and stayed inside. How that was the night I left, sneaking downstairs to say goodbye to my brother and tell him that I loved him. (That night my grandmother came into my room and told me to go, hugging me and stroking my hair as she had done when I was little).
During all of this my then-husband had an affair because he felt he wasn't getting enough attention. I remember how dumb-founded I felt at his reason - I had had a baby in the middle of a move to larger housing , found out my grandmother was possibly murdered, my mother had been arrested - and I was supposed to make him the center of attention somehow. Somehow we worked through it, and for a while it actually seemed to make our marriage better.
The events leading up to my mother's arrest began to come out. The phone call to me three days after my grandmother's death was part of her cover up. She did something similar with my sister, telling her that there would be no service and that my grandmother's ashes were sent to Texas for scattering. And my brother, who actually lived in the house at the time? The day before Grandma died, Mom told him that she thought Grandma might die soon and she didn't want him there to see it, and sent him to my father's house in northern Alabama.
At this point you may be asking what seems to be a pretty obvious question: Why didn't the siblings discuss this and figure out that something was wrong? Because we weren't close enough, that's why. Even then, I had already had a falling out with my sister and we weren't on speaking terms. As for my brother, I always heard about him from my mother. He lived in the same house, so if I called Mom always answered the phone and if I asked about him I got his news from her - he was usually out doing something and even if he was home she always said he was 'busy' and so I rarely got to talk to him. It didn't strike us as odd - that was just the way it was. My mother had built up these walls for years - as it turns out she had done it with a purpose every time. More on that later.
We had relatives in Texas, whom we hadn't spoken with since we had moved away (remember the walls). One of them was my grandmother's nephew, Johnny. Since both of my parents were only children, we had called him Uncle when we were little. Uncle Johnny was very close to my grandmother, and unbeknownst to me, had been staying in touch with my mother as a means of learning about Grandma's health. As her Alzheimer's had progressed and after her death, my mother continued to respond to his letters with news of my grandmother's decline. I have never seen them, but in the fall of 1991 he had begun to grow suspicious of what was actually going on and hired a private investigator, John Dear, to go to Alabama and find out what was happening. This investigator discovered that my grandmother's church had a notation of her death in their books - my grandmother was an avid churchgoer before she could no longer do it, and members had been trying to come by and see her for some time. (They had always been politely turned away at the door.) Somehow my mother had slipped, or perhaps out of some sense of guilt, had notified Grandma's church of her death. Mr. Dear then began watching what was going on at my mother's house. A few days before her arrest he began to become alarmed when he found that she was getting rid of lots of papers, and he contacted the authorities. Her arrest followed shortly after.
My mother was the news headline in the area for quite some time. She had been a pillar of the community in so many ways - always involved in school activities, a formative part of the soccer community when it was still a new sport in the United States, eventual president of the school board, etc. etc. She was so intelligent, and it is so sad that she used that intelligence in the wrong way. The authorities dug up parts of the yard looking for evidence - and of course my grandmother's body. You see, none of the stories she told the various relatives were true. There had been no cremation, no burial. No ashes spread in Texas, or Alabama. The story she told the authorities was that she had had a man named "Johnny" take my grandmother and asked him to bury her under a pretty tree somewhere. "Johnny" had no last name at the time, and when she did give him one finally, he was dead.
To add to this, my brother was arrested briefly as well. As he tried to leave the house a day or two after my mother's arrest, he was accosted by a horde of reporters shoving cameras and microphones into his face, trying to get a reaction. Well, his reaction was to shove one of the cameramen out of his path, and charges were filed. It was let go, thankfully, when the private investigator kindly stepped into the situation and talked to them about what my brother was enduring.
So the months leading up to her trial passed. I had been asked by both sides to testify, but ultimately her defense lawyer felt that nothing I would say would help her, so I would be questioned first by the prosecutors. The trial had already begun by the time I got to Alabama. My sister and brother had already been questioned. I went to the courthouse the day before I was to take the stand and arrived in the outer foyer right before her trial let out for the day. One of my mother's dearest and most steadfast friends came out first, and she saw me and came to me, hugging me. Other people began to file out, then my sister came out with her husband, Rick, Uncle Johnny, Aunt Charlene, and a couple of others. She came straight at me, loudly accusing me of telling lies about her to people, about her doing drugs, stealing, being a liar. She attracted a lot of attention, as I believe she meant to. Then my childhood aunt and uncle intervened, telling her that maybe we should get together later at their hotel and talk about all of it.
Tanya and Rick left, and I was reunited with these two kind people who I remembered so well from my childhood. Before we left Texas we had visited with them and their children often, and I did not know why we had not seen them since. So we went back to their hotel, and their side of the story began to come out. They had stayed in contact with my mother all of those years, and she had dutifully filled them in on all of our news...but never told us about it. If we asked about them as children she always told us that they didn't want to come visit, and we never went back to see anyone. My mother had carefully, almost surgically, cut our ties to what little family we had in Texas and we never knew it.
They asked me questions and told me things about my childhood that began opening my eyes to the things that had shaped my mother and led to the tragedy of my grandmother. They carefully and kindly asked me if I remembered my mother holding a gun to my head and threatening to kill me. They told me that my mother, at the young age of sixteen, had hit my grandmother if she wasn't allowed to do something she wanted to do. They told me how my mother had tried to ensnare my sister's father, her boss, into marriage by seducing him and getting pregnant. It didn't work. My father was next - another boss, and this time she succeeded. He married her. So our lives had moved on, until we moved to Alabama. Then she began cutting our ties. Then my parents divorced. Whatever my grandmother knew about my mother, she was alarmed enough when she learned that my father would no longer be around to protect us that she left everything dear to her in Texas - her sisters, her home, everything familiar - and moved to Alabama to be closer and try to protect us from our mother. We didn't know any of this at the time of course. I just know that I loved spending every bit of time that I could at my grandmother's house. Then, at some point, to make things easier financially she moved in with us.
Then it was time to try to fix things between my sister and I before she got back. My sister, who I now believe to suffer from the same depression that my mother did, had already moved in with her silver tongue and told her story. Somehow she had transitioned her actions to me and convinced them before I arrived that I had been the drug addict and the runaway who had stolen the car at 13 and driven it to Oklahoma, but that I needed sympathy, not judgment. How kind of her. I still remember how flabbergasted I was by all of this. Thank God my brother was there and was able to collaborate my version of events. I did not "slam" her, but I did set the story straight. Very kindly they said that they did not know or understand her motives, but that we should try to work through our differences and help each other. When Tanya and Rick arrived it was hugs and tears all around.
The next morning we arrived at the courthouse. It was my turn. I would have to face my mother in court and talk about her slamming my grandmother's arm in a door, about how scared of her I was as a child. The attorney came in and said that apparently my mother didn't want me to testify and had asked to plea bargain that morning. Everyone was stunned. And why me? Maybe because I was the only one of her three children who had refused to step beyond only those events that I had actually witnessed was she concerned about what I might have to say. That is what the private investigator and the defense attorneys later told me was what they believed.
Her deal? She would cooperate with the authorities in the efforts to locate my grandmother in return for a lesser charge of the check fraud and 'abuse and neglect of an elderly person' rather than outright murder. The prosecutor was rather eager to pursue the more serious charges and I really believe he was disappointed that we agreed to this. But of course we agreed. All we wanted was to know where our grandmother was and to be able to give her a proper resting place. One other part of the deal is that she was not to contact any of her children unless we requested it. We were all so very angry at her. How do you continue to talk to your mother when she is not who you thought she was, but a sad, greedy monster who had done something so awful to one of the most wonderful people in the world?
I haven't explained the financial side of it, but of course she had taken control of my grandmother's social security checks as well as her pension checks from her years as a teacher in Texas. Over the two years after Grandma's death she had received about $24,000. Before that she wrote herself rent checks from my grandmother's accounts in the amount of $800.00 - a pretty exorbitant amount of money for a smallish three bedroom home in the late 1980's.
Her plea bargain made headlines throughout the state. (Her case was the basis for stricter laws related to care of the elderly and handling of their financial affairs, so it did have a positive side to it for others). We expected to hear news of where we could find our grandmother at any time, but a couple of months went by and all we learned was that she would insist that "Johnny" had buried my grandmother under a pretty magnolia tree in Mississippi - but every time she failed the lie detector tests, so they kept after her.
Then came the phone call from my father. It was a Saturday morning, and we were getting ready to go to a mall because my husband wanted to go to a pet store there that handled reptiles. I sat at the kitchen table while my father told me that my mother had been questioned again and this time she told a different story - one that passed the machines they hooked her up to to see if she was telling the truth.
After sending my brother away she sat and waited and watched my grandmother. She insisted that Grandma died on her own, which may very well have been true. Then she says that she panicked, thinking about how she would get by without the extra income from my grandmother's checks. About 3:30 in the morning she had wrapped my beloved grandmother, her own mother, in black garbage bags, put her body in the back of the car and driven out to the Causeway, the old highway over Mobile Bay that connected Mobile to the Eastern Shore. There, she took my grandmother out of the car and dumped her body over the side of the barrier and into the dark, black water below. She stood there, smoking, then got in her car, stopped for a six pack and went home and drank it.
When I heard this I felt a nausea overcome me unlike anything I had experienced before. those words hurt so bad, so deep, that I couldn't even cry at first. Then I couldn't stop. All day, in the car, at the mall (yes, my husband still insisted on going - he said it would help keep me from thinking about it - as if I could.)
So of course we still never did find our grandmother. Somewhere in the swampy, alligator infested waterways of Mobile Bay and its waterways she sunk below the surface. She may have been swept out into the Gulf of Mexico for all that we know, but of course we never will.
On Friday, December 8, 1989 there was a knock on my door. (We had moved to our first duty station at Whidbey Island, Washington the previous May, and Erika had been born a month later. We lived in a very tiny two bedroom unit in military housing, and we hadn't had the money to get phone service, so our neighbors let us use theirs when we needed to. ) It was my neighbor, Ellen, and she told me that my mother was on the phone and needed to talk to me.
My mother told me that my grandmother had died. If you have read my blog before this post, you know that my grandmother had Alzheimer's, and that she lived with my mother. She was in the advanced stages of the disease when I last saw her before our move. But she had died three days earlier, on Tuesday, December 5. My mother told me that she hadn't called me right away because she "knew I wouldn't have had the money to come home for the funeral" and thought that if she waited it would save me from having to agonize over it. I was heartbroken, but it made some sense. I didn't know at the time that the Red Cross helps family members get home for funerals of immediate family. I had had no experience with death before.
Fast forward to December of 1991. My son Brandon had been born on December 13th, and it was the week before Christmas. My ex-husband called and told me that he thought he should call me before I heard it on the news - my mother had been arrested for social security and pension fraud related to the suspected murder of my grandmother. Even now, over twenty years later, writing it down hurts almost as badly as it did that day. I don't remember very much of the next few minutes, just the shattering shock that I felt.
The following months were a nightmare. There were calls from prosecutors and defenders alike who tried to lead me into speculative answers about what had been going on in the time leading up to my grandmother's death. I was truthful, but when they tried to get me to cross that line I just refused. They asked if my mother ever displayed abusive actions. So I told them about the night that she tried to push me down the stairs, and how on that same night my grandmother tried to come out of her room in my defense and of my mother slamming her arm repeatedly in the door until she withdrew it and stayed inside. How that was the night I left, sneaking downstairs to say goodbye to my brother and tell him that I loved him. (That night my grandmother came into my room and told me to go, hugging me and stroking my hair as she had done when I was little).
During all of this my then-husband had an affair because he felt he wasn't getting enough attention. I remember how dumb-founded I felt at his reason - I had had a baby in the middle of a move to larger housing , found out my grandmother was possibly murdered, my mother had been arrested - and I was supposed to make him the center of attention somehow. Somehow we worked through it, and for a while it actually seemed to make our marriage better.
The events leading up to my mother's arrest began to come out. The phone call to me three days after my grandmother's death was part of her cover up. She did something similar with my sister, telling her that there would be no service and that my grandmother's ashes were sent to Texas for scattering. And my brother, who actually lived in the house at the time? The day before Grandma died, Mom told him that she thought Grandma might die soon and she didn't want him there to see it, and sent him to my father's house in northern Alabama.
At this point you may be asking what seems to be a pretty obvious question: Why didn't the siblings discuss this and figure out that something was wrong? Because we weren't close enough, that's why. Even then, I had already had a falling out with my sister and we weren't on speaking terms. As for my brother, I always heard about him from my mother. He lived in the same house, so if I called Mom always answered the phone and if I asked about him I got his news from her - he was usually out doing something and even if he was home she always said he was 'busy' and so I rarely got to talk to him. It didn't strike us as odd - that was just the way it was. My mother had built up these walls for years - as it turns out she had done it with a purpose every time. More on that later.
We had relatives in Texas, whom we hadn't spoken with since we had moved away (remember the walls). One of them was my grandmother's nephew, Johnny. Since both of my parents were only children, we had called him Uncle when we were little. Uncle Johnny was very close to my grandmother, and unbeknownst to me, had been staying in touch with my mother as a means of learning about Grandma's health. As her Alzheimer's had progressed and after her death, my mother continued to respond to his letters with news of my grandmother's decline. I have never seen them, but in the fall of 1991 he had begun to grow suspicious of what was actually going on and hired a private investigator, John Dear, to go to Alabama and find out what was happening. This investigator discovered that my grandmother's church had a notation of her death in their books - my grandmother was an avid churchgoer before she could no longer do it, and members had been trying to come by and see her for some time. (They had always been politely turned away at the door.) Somehow my mother had slipped, or perhaps out of some sense of guilt, had notified Grandma's church of her death. Mr. Dear then began watching what was going on at my mother's house. A few days before her arrest he began to become alarmed when he found that she was getting rid of lots of papers, and he contacted the authorities. Her arrest followed shortly after.
My mother was the news headline in the area for quite some time. She had been a pillar of the community in so many ways - always involved in school activities, a formative part of the soccer community when it was still a new sport in the United States, eventual president of the school board, etc. etc. She was so intelligent, and it is so sad that she used that intelligence in the wrong way. The authorities dug up parts of the yard looking for evidence - and of course my grandmother's body. You see, none of the stories she told the various relatives were true. There had been no cremation, no burial. No ashes spread in Texas, or Alabama. The story she told the authorities was that she had had a man named "Johnny" take my grandmother and asked him to bury her under a pretty tree somewhere. "Johnny" had no last name at the time, and when she did give him one finally, he was dead.
To add to this, my brother was arrested briefly as well. As he tried to leave the house a day or two after my mother's arrest, he was accosted by a horde of reporters shoving cameras and microphones into his face, trying to get a reaction. Well, his reaction was to shove one of the cameramen out of his path, and charges were filed. It was let go, thankfully, when the private investigator kindly stepped into the situation and talked to them about what my brother was enduring.
So the months leading up to her trial passed. I had been asked by both sides to testify, but ultimately her defense lawyer felt that nothing I would say would help her, so I would be questioned first by the prosecutors. The trial had already begun by the time I got to Alabama. My sister and brother had already been questioned. I went to the courthouse the day before I was to take the stand and arrived in the outer foyer right before her trial let out for the day. One of my mother's dearest and most steadfast friends came out first, and she saw me and came to me, hugging me. Other people began to file out, then my sister came out with her husband, Rick, Uncle Johnny, Aunt Charlene, and a couple of others. She came straight at me, loudly accusing me of telling lies about her to people, about her doing drugs, stealing, being a liar. She attracted a lot of attention, as I believe she meant to. Then my childhood aunt and uncle intervened, telling her that maybe we should get together later at their hotel and talk about all of it.
Tanya and Rick left, and I was reunited with these two kind people who I remembered so well from my childhood. Before we left Texas we had visited with them and their children often, and I did not know why we had not seen them since. So we went back to their hotel, and their side of the story began to come out. They had stayed in contact with my mother all of those years, and she had dutifully filled them in on all of our news...but never told us about it. If we asked about them as children she always told us that they didn't want to come visit, and we never went back to see anyone. My mother had carefully, almost surgically, cut our ties to what little family we had in Texas and we never knew it.
They asked me questions and told me things about my childhood that began opening my eyes to the things that had shaped my mother and led to the tragedy of my grandmother. They carefully and kindly asked me if I remembered my mother holding a gun to my head and threatening to kill me. They told me that my mother, at the young age of sixteen, had hit my grandmother if she wasn't allowed to do something she wanted to do. They told me how my mother had tried to ensnare my sister's father, her boss, into marriage by seducing him and getting pregnant. It didn't work. My father was next - another boss, and this time she succeeded. He married her. So our lives had moved on, until we moved to Alabama. Then she began cutting our ties. Then my parents divorced. Whatever my grandmother knew about my mother, she was alarmed enough when she learned that my father would no longer be around to protect us that she left everything dear to her in Texas - her sisters, her home, everything familiar - and moved to Alabama to be closer and try to protect us from our mother. We didn't know any of this at the time of course. I just know that I loved spending every bit of time that I could at my grandmother's house. Then, at some point, to make things easier financially she moved in with us.
Then it was time to try to fix things between my sister and I before she got back. My sister, who I now believe to suffer from the same depression that my mother did, had already moved in with her silver tongue and told her story. Somehow she had transitioned her actions to me and convinced them before I arrived that I had been the drug addict and the runaway who had stolen the car at 13 and driven it to Oklahoma, but that I needed sympathy, not judgment. How kind of her. I still remember how flabbergasted I was by all of this. Thank God my brother was there and was able to collaborate my version of events. I did not "slam" her, but I did set the story straight. Very kindly they said that they did not know or understand her motives, but that we should try to work through our differences and help each other. When Tanya and Rick arrived it was hugs and tears all around.
The next morning we arrived at the courthouse. It was my turn. I would have to face my mother in court and talk about her slamming my grandmother's arm in a door, about how scared of her I was as a child. The attorney came in and said that apparently my mother didn't want me to testify and had asked to plea bargain that morning. Everyone was stunned. And why me? Maybe because I was the only one of her three children who had refused to step beyond only those events that I had actually witnessed was she concerned about what I might have to say. That is what the private investigator and the defense attorneys later told me was what they believed.
Her deal? She would cooperate with the authorities in the efforts to locate my grandmother in return for a lesser charge of the check fraud and 'abuse and neglect of an elderly person' rather than outright murder. The prosecutor was rather eager to pursue the more serious charges and I really believe he was disappointed that we agreed to this. But of course we agreed. All we wanted was to know where our grandmother was and to be able to give her a proper resting place. One other part of the deal is that she was not to contact any of her children unless we requested it. We were all so very angry at her. How do you continue to talk to your mother when she is not who you thought she was, but a sad, greedy monster who had done something so awful to one of the most wonderful people in the world?
I haven't explained the financial side of it, but of course she had taken control of my grandmother's social security checks as well as her pension checks from her years as a teacher in Texas. Over the two years after Grandma's death she had received about $24,000. Before that she wrote herself rent checks from my grandmother's accounts in the amount of $800.00 - a pretty exorbitant amount of money for a smallish three bedroom home in the late 1980's.
Her plea bargain made headlines throughout the state. (Her case was the basis for stricter laws related to care of the elderly and handling of their financial affairs, so it did have a positive side to it for others). We expected to hear news of where we could find our grandmother at any time, but a couple of months went by and all we learned was that she would insist that "Johnny" had buried my grandmother under a pretty magnolia tree in Mississippi - but every time she failed the lie detector tests, so they kept after her.
Then came the phone call from my father. It was a Saturday morning, and we were getting ready to go to a mall because my husband wanted to go to a pet store there that handled reptiles. I sat at the kitchen table while my father told me that my mother had been questioned again and this time she told a different story - one that passed the machines they hooked her up to to see if she was telling the truth.
After sending my brother away she sat and waited and watched my grandmother. She insisted that Grandma died on her own, which may very well have been true. Then she says that she panicked, thinking about how she would get by without the extra income from my grandmother's checks. About 3:30 in the morning she had wrapped my beloved grandmother, her own mother, in black garbage bags, put her body in the back of the car and driven out to the Causeway, the old highway over Mobile Bay that connected Mobile to the Eastern Shore. There, she took my grandmother out of the car and dumped her body over the side of the barrier and into the dark, black water below. She stood there, smoking, then got in her car, stopped for a six pack and went home and drank it.
When I heard this I felt a nausea overcome me unlike anything I had experienced before. those words hurt so bad, so deep, that I couldn't even cry at first. Then I couldn't stop. All day, in the car, at the mall (yes, my husband still insisted on going - he said it would help keep me from thinking about it - as if I could.)
So of course we still never did find our grandmother. Somewhere in the swampy, alligator infested waterways of Mobile Bay and its waterways she sunk below the surface. She may have been swept out into the Gulf of Mexico for all that we know, but of course we never will.
I will stop here for now. Re-telling this exhausts me - it brings back all of the emotions and the hurt. It took me many years to be able to think of my grandmother without crying, and now I find myself reliving it all again and it hurts as if it was just last week. I had vowed I would tell this story and now I have begun. I will move to the next chapter another time.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Feeling Overwhelmed...
Today I am feeling overwhelmed with everything taking place in my life. There is so much uncertainty, especially in my relationship with Shawn. I know that he does not need me in his life to continue with his dream. All that is holding us together at this point is that we do still love each other, deeply. We don't have meaningful conversations anymore - hell, we hardly have conversations at all. I am scared to speak, not knowing what words will blow up in my face. So I stay silent, and he spends all of his spare time looking at anything related to sailing. At night we still hold each other and know that this touching is truly meant, not just another action that we do out of habit. I NEED him. His touch saves me, he is still sexy to me, and his kiss still melts me. The thought of not being with him breaks my heart. But his first love is now pursuing his dream to sail the world, and although he wants me there with him he will do it with or without me. We were talking about his decisions to buy things, to move our finances and other things, without telling me or talking to me about it. I told him that I feel that I am just HERE. Not part of a partnership. He feels that if he offers me a choice in our financial decisions I will "shoot him down". I realized that we are not in a partnership, nor even a good marriage and I told him so. We ended our night in silence, except to still tell each other we do love each other. But it is not enough to sustain us.
So what do we do - what do I do? Send him away with my blessing and hope that one day he will understand that I did not want to hold him back, just that my dream and his weren't the same? Hope that one day he will want to return to me? Or send him out to do this thing and go to him occasionally? All I know is that we cannot continue as we are. Counseling has been suggested, but does not seem to be received with enthusiasm. And just as we reached a point where we could arrange it, his work schedule has gone topsy turvy and we do not even know where we will be in a month. But I can't live like this much longer - feeling like I am alone even when he is by my side.
So what do we do - what do I do? Send him away with my blessing and hope that one day he will understand that I did not want to hold him back, just that my dream and his weren't the same? Hope that one day he will want to return to me? Or send him out to do this thing and go to him occasionally? All I know is that we cannot continue as we are. Counseling has been suggested, but does not seem to be received with enthusiasm. And just as we reached a point where we could arrange it, his work schedule has gone topsy turvy and we do not even know where we will be in a month. But I can't live like this much longer - feeling like I am alone even when he is by my side.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Packing Away My Dreams...
The last year or so has led up to facing today...packing our belongings and choosing what we will keep and what will go away. Shawn, who has been working in California for over two years, has rediscovered his love for being near the ocean and the home that we bought together in the desert is no longer where he wants to be. I have fought it - literally and figuratively - since it came up over a year ago, but I cannot afford to pay for our home myself, and I cannot ask Shawn to put his money into a place he has no love for and forego living his own dreams. And because I love him I am trying to adjust to a new lifestyle away from everything else that I have held dear - my own home, being close to two of our three kids, having SPACE and privacy when I need it. And someday I still want to have weekends when my grandkids will come over and spend the night, when the family will have dinners at each others' houses on weekends. I feel suffocated in California - closed in by neighbor's houses and trees, people and traffic everywhere always. No place where my dogs can run to their hearts' content because they have to be on a leash everywhere. I have found one spot where I can let them loose and have some privacy, but they aren't really supposed to be there.
Today is my beautiful daughter's 25th birthday. Instead of putting the wine rack we bought in Spain into storage I am going to take it to her house so that she can make use of it. Shawn has agreed to hold onto these mementos of our time overseas, but I don't know that I will ever have a place where I will be able to use them again. As I began to remove the glasses and bottles, the marble shelves I started crying and had to stop. This has happened before when I have half-heartedly begun this inevitable task, but this was worse. It is becoming too real, too fast - but it will always be too fast because I never wanted it in the first place.
Am I sad? Yes. Depressed? Hell yes. Resentful? You bet. When one person's dreams change and the others don't you just pray that your love is enough to get you both through it.
Today is my beautiful daughter's 25th birthday. Instead of putting the wine rack we bought in Spain into storage I am going to take it to her house so that she can make use of it. Shawn has agreed to hold onto these mementos of our time overseas, but I don't know that I will ever have a place where I will be able to use them again. As I began to remove the glasses and bottles, the marble shelves I started crying and had to stop. This has happened before when I have half-heartedly begun this inevitable task, but this was worse. It is becoming too real, too fast - but it will always be too fast because I never wanted it in the first place.
Am I sad? Yes. Depressed? Hell yes. Resentful? You bet. When one person's dreams change and the others don't you just pray that your love is enough to get you both through it.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
A New Year
My sister also took painting lessons and I believe she could have been very good if she had stayed with it. Unfortunately, drugs became a priority at that time in her life and as far as I know she never painted again.
My mother sang. That was her talent and her art, but I never heard her sing solo myself. She won a lot of talent shows with her voice, but I suppose everyday life - school, a job, pursuit of marriage - marked the end of following it any further. The only time I saw my mother put her name to a piece of art was when she forged her name onto a small painting that she was giving to someone as a birthday present. I am still ashamed of seeing that to this day.
So this year I will start to paint. I have wanted to paint in watercolors for many, many years and dabbled with it, but never taking the time to really learn techniques or the proper way to go about it. I began a couple of days ago, picking out a book to get me started, getting the basic supplies I need and sketching out the first project. Then, yesterday I did it! I completed my first project - a monocolor (burnt umber) painting of a brick farmhouse with trees behind it. While in my minds' eye I had hoped it would come out better than it did, I can't say that I am unhappy with my first attempt. I see what I need to improve on and will practice on them before moving to the next project. So we will see. And maybe I will also try oils one day and use my grandmother's painting as my first project.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Life's Uncertainties
Monday we will move some of our belongings into a new house in Pacific Grove. I am trying to be excited, but I only find myself plagued with unhappiness over the choices I am being forced to make. I know that either way I choose I will never be truly happy again, because either way I am giving up something that I love.
Sometimes people's dreams change. Mine have stayed the same - a home of my own with my own space, where I could decorate as I wanted, putter around as I wanted, with unlimited views. A home where my kids and grandkids might one day gather whenever we wanted, without having to figure out days off, travel times, costs of tickets, etc. But my husband's dreams have changed - he has no wish for our own place, or the space that I long for. He wants to pursue his passions, no matter where that takes him. And, at least for now, he wants me to be a part of it. But as our shared dreams become more and more different I know that the day will come that our love for each other will diminish as we begin to feel more and more the differences between our desires. So do I go along for the ride or do I bow out gracefully while there is still love? I do not want to wait until the day that the sad acknowledgement comes along that it is gone.
Now I start the process of trying to accept having strangers ten feet away from my bedroom window, of not being able to look out my windows and seeing the sunrise or sunset again, of having to get into a car and fight with traffic to get to a place where no one is around and I can wander with my own thoughts while the dogs can finally get off of their leashes and run as they wish. I wish I could find something to be excited about in this move besides being with my husband, but I can't. It takes me away from everything else about my life that I loved. He is all that is left, and I don't feel that I will be able to keep him happy for long since what he wants and what I want have become so different.
Sometimes people's dreams change. Mine have stayed the same - a home of my own with my own space, where I could decorate as I wanted, putter around as I wanted, with unlimited views. A home where my kids and grandkids might one day gather whenever we wanted, without having to figure out days off, travel times, costs of tickets, etc. But my husband's dreams have changed - he has no wish for our own place, or the space that I long for. He wants to pursue his passions, no matter where that takes him. And, at least for now, he wants me to be a part of it. But as our shared dreams become more and more different I know that the day will come that our love for each other will diminish as we begin to feel more and more the differences between our desires. So do I go along for the ride or do I bow out gracefully while there is still love? I do not want to wait until the day that the sad acknowledgement comes along that it is gone.
Now I start the process of trying to accept having strangers ten feet away from my bedroom window, of not being able to look out my windows and seeing the sunrise or sunset again, of having to get into a car and fight with traffic to get to a place where no one is around and I can wander with my own thoughts while the dogs can finally get off of their leashes and run as they wish. I wish I could find something to be excited about in this move besides being with my husband, but I can't. It takes me away from everything else about my life that I loved. He is all that is left, and I don't feel that I will be able to keep him happy for long since what he wants and what I want have become so different.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Leaving Part of My Heart Behind
I am not sure where this falls. It is not a story from my past but a story of today. Today I found that even when it seems your dreams are falling into place that they are in fact falling apart. As I have gotten older I have wanted a place to settle, a place of my own, and hopefully one where I could have at least some of my kids close by, and possibly their kids as well. I thought I was here. I looked forward to days when maybe my daughter would call and ask if she could drop the kids off for a while so that she could go shopping. Or nights where they would spend the night so that mom and dad could have a date night. But what started out as a mutual dream with my husband is no longer his, and he no longer wants to be here. In order to have him I must give up everything else that I loved about my life. So I will follow the man that I love to places that he dreams of and leave most of mine here, in the desert, and hope that I can return and that, unlike the grandchildren I have who live far away, that these others yet to be born will know me well and not see me as a stranger that they only see once a year. My heart had to break into two pieces - otherwise I could not bear what I know I need to do, so I will leave a part of me behind.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
My Mother's Writings
Today I am cleaning out the spare bedroom and getting it ready for the visitors that I hope to have this summer - my oldest son and my granddaughters. I came across an old appointment book from 1942 that my mother used for her journal. If she began writing in it that year then she would have been about nine years old. She, like I did when I was that age, obviously loved dogs and horses. The first pages is a table of contents, followed by a number of pages of kennel names that she imagined and then the stories that she wrote about beloved pets. There must be over 100 names that she came up with - names such as "Sunny Ridge", "Dardendale", "Broadlawn" and Wolveshampton".
Then comes her first short writing. Entitled "Gray Dawn" it reads as follows:
"Gray Dawn died on Memorial Day, 1929, falling quietly asleep on his rug close beside the desk in my study here in Sunnybank and forgetting to awaken.
Gray Dawn's color was a soft blue merle."
Further on is the story of Lad:
"Greatest of all Sunnybank collies was Lad. he was the palaces first collie. He was a great and gallant dog. Sunnybank Lad died one September day in 1918 when, the sixteen year old collie should fall asleep in the cool angle under the back veranda hammock and should fail to awake again."
As I read some of these I began to wonder if they weren't stories that were told to her by her father, who was killed in a car wreck when she was 16, and if some of them aren't actually a legacy of dogs that he had before she was born, since some of the stories talk about sires and dams and are pretty factual for a nine year old girls imaginings. I won't ever know.
Then there are what seem to be actual journal writings - descriptions of days - cold, gray days, stormy days and once she wrote of an "apple green day": "Today was an apple green day. The sun was shining brightly as if ashamed of the way the weather has been for the past days. The shadows were just beginning to settle when I took Mickey and went exploring in the old orchard. The shadows fell though and we had to leave."
And as I thumb through the dry, yellow pages I start finding dates, so this journal encompasses a number of years and shows that my mother wrote in it sporadically (another trait I seem to have inherited!). Now I find an entry dated January 1947, followed by one dated December 1946. Both of these entries are dedicated to dogs.
And now, I find an entry written after she lost her father. She was barely sixteen years old. It is titled, simply, "My Dad" and is dated January 20, 1950. It reads:
"It's been a long, long time since I've written, almost three years now. My life has changed so much that I feel as though the Jeddy of yesterday, carefree, happy, dreamy little Jeddy was just a dream. Maybe a can put down on paper what I feel and ease the pain in my head.
Dad is gone now. Gone to a better land than this, I know. But I'll never, never forget my dad, for to me he was the greatest man in the world. I can still see him about 12:00 on Saturday afternoons, packing up the "old car" to go on one of his hunting or fishing trips. The old khaki pants on, a brown shirt, and an old straw hat. On these days, he was always happy for he was doing the thing he loved most in the world. Going on his beloved trips into the country. Maybe he was by himself, maybe not. Either way he was happy. It was his life and the life he loved most."
This is it - and it leaves me with questions. Does this answer some of the questions surrounding my mother's later problems? It sounds as if my grandfather left every weekend without his wife and daughter. I know that even back in those days families went on camping trips together, but it doesn't seem to have been the case here. I know that there were times when my grandmother had to warn my mother to stay away from him when he was out on the porch - days when he would sit out with a gun across his knees, obviously suffering from some mental disorder that he may have passed on to my mother. Did his passing leave her idolizing a man who was disappointed that he didn't have a son, scarring her in the process? I could go on and on coming up with more questions that will never be answered, but there are days when I wish that somewhere, part of the mystery would unlock.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Moving On
After a few years in Lake Forest I guess Daddy's latest job switch affected our income, so we moved to Fairhope. This house was much smaller - I am guessing that the place in Lake Forest was somewhere in the 3000 square foot range, while the new place on Morphy Ave. was definitely under 2000. It was a small ranch-style brick house with a separate garage, which served as our laundry and storage area instead of a place for our cars.
My favorite part about the new house were the woods and the gulley that ran behind it. The schoolyard for the public school was also nearby, which meant we had a playground at our disposal when school wasn't in session. What fun we had here in those first years! The gulley occupied a lot of our time when we were kids - the explorations and adventures that we had! It's walls were about 35 or 40 feet high, and there was a large drainage pipe jutting out of its far wall. The sides were deep, dark red Alabama clay, and when it rained they would get oh, so slick! We ruined who knows how many items of clothing sliding down those sides after a rain shower. One time Daddy brought home some telephone cable on a large spool. The spool became a table under our treehouse, which stood at the top of the gulley, and the cable became a zip line that Daddy attached to a branch and ran to the bottom of the gulley. We had a blast.
We also had a small empty sand lot on the property on the other side of the garage. My brother and I would build roads with his Tonka trucks, and then drive his Hot Wheels on them. I still played with Barbie dolls too, but driving cars was more fun.
We had some good neighbors here. The people next door used to smoke mullet in the back yard and would always give us one of the fish. I loved it! There was an elderly lady across the street who had the same name as Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun. She was very sweet to us and had a cat and a old Lab mix. I still remember her out in the yard with her pets following her around as she tended to her plants. Sadly, she collapsed one day and went to the hospital. She passed away a few days later. Her cat went to live with a sister but the dog stopped eating and followed its owner to doggy heaven shortly after. I remember how incredibly sad it made me.
At some point I guess Daddy began looking for another job. He found one in Birmingham and went up to get started and find us a house. When he called my mother to tell her that he had a place for us to live she informed him that she wanted a divorce. I must have been about 11 years old. My father told me years later that he was devastated - despite the fighting and her indiscretions, he still loved her and had no idea that she was contemplating a divorce. We weren't told right away - so since we had been used to his traveling when we were young and just thought he was away working maybe it didn't have the same impact that it does on children whose little worlds are torn apart so badly when their parents split.
It was also about this time that my grandmother moved from San Antonio to Fairhope. During my mother's trial I was told that she had done it to protect us from our mother - with my father out of the house permanently she apparently feared for her grandchildren. I was so happy when Grandma moved to town! I spent so many happy hours at her house - I think I probably spent more time at Grandma's then I did at home. Thinking back this probably suited my mother - and if I got sick during that time she usually dropped me off. I can remember running a high fever and being in my bed at Grandma's house while she tended to me patiently - singing "You Are My Sunshine" and laying her wonderful hands on my burning forehead, making sure I was tucked in and constantly at my side.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Storm Clouds Gather
When we first moved to Alabama things didn't seem so bad. We moved into the big gray house that my father had rented for us. I remember it almost down to the last detail - the rooms, the furniture that we had, the yard. My brother and I had the two downstairs bedrooms, while my sister and parents had the two upstairs rooms. Now that I think about it it seems strange that my brother slept that far from my parents since my mother was so protective of him, but I guess it was due to the fact that my sister may have been starting to get in trouble, even though she was only about 12 or 13 when we moved there, and maybe that was a way to try to keep an eye on her.
At first I loved my room - it was painted in pastels and I had chiffon curtains on the windows. That changed shortly. Our backyard was fairly large, with lots of skinny pine trees and bushes along the back, and someone had installed a street light in the back corner. One night as I was preparing to go to sleep I looked out my window - and saw the very clear silhouette of a body hanging outside, even down to the detail of a rope extending from around the neck up and out of my line of sight at the top of the window sill. I promptly got completely under my covers - and slept that way for years. I have tried to think if what I saw could have been caused by a bush or tree, and even now I cannot figure out anything that it could have been. After that night, I was so scared of the dark that I would sleep under my covers whenever I was alone and it continued nearly into adulthood. I am not a big believer in ghosts, just for the record.
During this time my mother was very active in the neighborhood. She was a member of the garden club and I can remember the hostess gowns that she wore to some of the events. One was a gold lame', and one night I fell asleep on her lap, thinking how pretty my mother was in her gold gown. We had a boat, but she didn't like them very much and rarely went with us when we took it out on the water. We had friends in the house "next door" - we were separated by two or three vacant lots - and across the street that we played with, and my parents were good friends with their parents as well. Unfortunately my arrival broke up the friendship of the girls of these families - since I was "new" they both vied for my time I guess, and after a while they disliked each other intensely.
Eventually the family across the street moved away and I played mostly with Scarlett, who lived down the hill. My mother and hers got along well - they both enjoyed social activities, and were very much the picture of what a proper Southern lady should be for that time. At the time, both families had housekeepers that came in a couple of times a week. Scarlett was scared of hers, while on the other hand ours was scared of my mother. She must have been getting a good dose of my mother's powerful personality.
It was during our first years in Alabama that my sister started getting in trouble. One of the first incidences was on Halloween. I remember my dad going out on the front porch and firing a pistol into the air - teenagers were rolling our yard with toilet paper. They had already succeeded in making a huge mess. As it turns out, my sister was part of the group and she carried a large part of the burden of cleaning up the next morning. Then she broke into a neighbor's house and painted a lampshade in the son's room - he was a couple of years older and she had a crush on him if I remember correctly. She was already smoking pot at this time, and was dabbling in other, stronger stuff too. She ran away twice during those years. The second time was when she stole my mother's car.
My parents started having horrible fights too. My mother would have a few drinks and the rages would begin. Usually my dad kept his voice level while hers rose more and more and she called him really nasty names. My siblings and I would cower in a bedroom sometimes while she went on - my sister and I knew what she could do when she was mad. One night when I was five or so I was awakened in the middle of the night by my bedroom light coming on. I opened my eyes to see her coming at me with a belt and rage flashing in her cold eyes. I still don't know what I had done that she had stewed over while she drank, but at some point she decided I needed to be punished. It must have been while my dad was traveling - in the earlier years he was gone quite a bit. My dad did get fed up one of those nights. Strangely enough I saw it - he had returned from a trip and brought me a set of small porcelain dogs, which I realized I had left on the coffee table when the fighting started. As I stood there my mother reached out with her foot and knocked the table over. It landed upside down on my new gifts and I finally braved it and went over to see if they were broken. Miraculously they weren't and I picked them up and started to go to my room when my mother picked up a very heavy book - it may have been our family bible - and hurled it across the space between her and my father, who managed to move enough that it only glanced off of him, knocking his glasses askew. I had stopped dead in my tracks and watched as my father sat, perfectly still, for a few moments, then reached down, picked up the book and threw it back at her. It hit her in the leg. I don't know if it shocked her so much that she got quiet, but I cannot remember what happened after that. The next day her leg was bruised so badly that my dad took her to the doctor.
There was a night when she got so bad that my father loaded the three of us in the car and drove around for a while. When we pulled into the driveway a bit later he saw flames in the front window. I remember him exclaiming, "My God, she's set the house on fire!" He instructed us to wait in the car. Soon the fire trucks showed up, and the cause of the fire was put down to a cigarette being left in an ashtray that was too close to the curtains.
There were good memories here too. In the fall our back yard would be full of leaves that Daddy would rake up - but first he would rake bike trails through the yard for us, looping the trail around trees before finally making huge piles that he allowed us to jump into before finishing the job. I also remember the Easter morning when I awoke at dawn and thought I would look out my window and see if I could spot any eggs and get a jump on my sister, who usually got the lion's share. Instead I saw the "Easter bunny" - my dad, walking around with cartons of eggs. I never said a word until just a few years ago, when I told him about it.
There is so much to remember and tell. There are also apologies I wish I could make to the people who were hurt, but I think most of all I wish someone could have understood what was happening to my mother before she destroyed not only herself but others around her.
At first I loved my room - it was painted in pastels and I had chiffon curtains on the windows. That changed shortly. Our backyard was fairly large, with lots of skinny pine trees and bushes along the back, and someone had installed a street light in the back corner. One night as I was preparing to go to sleep I looked out my window - and saw the very clear silhouette of a body hanging outside, even down to the detail of a rope extending from around the neck up and out of my line of sight at the top of the window sill. I promptly got completely under my covers - and slept that way for years. I have tried to think if what I saw could have been caused by a bush or tree, and even now I cannot figure out anything that it could have been. After that night, I was so scared of the dark that I would sleep under my covers whenever I was alone and it continued nearly into adulthood. I am not a big believer in ghosts, just for the record.
During this time my mother was very active in the neighborhood. She was a member of the garden club and I can remember the hostess gowns that she wore to some of the events. One was a gold lame', and one night I fell asleep on her lap, thinking how pretty my mother was in her gold gown. We had a boat, but she didn't like them very much and rarely went with us when we took it out on the water. We had friends in the house "next door" - we were separated by two or three vacant lots - and across the street that we played with, and my parents were good friends with their parents as well. Unfortunately my arrival broke up the friendship of the girls of these families - since I was "new" they both vied for my time I guess, and after a while they disliked each other intensely.
Eventually the family across the street moved away and I played mostly with Scarlett, who lived down the hill. My mother and hers got along well - they both enjoyed social activities, and were very much the picture of what a proper Southern lady should be for that time. At the time, both families had housekeepers that came in a couple of times a week. Scarlett was scared of hers, while on the other hand ours was scared of my mother. She must have been getting a good dose of my mother's powerful personality.
It was during our first years in Alabama that my sister started getting in trouble. One of the first incidences was on Halloween. I remember my dad going out on the front porch and firing a pistol into the air - teenagers were rolling our yard with toilet paper. They had already succeeded in making a huge mess. As it turns out, my sister was part of the group and she carried a large part of the burden of cleaning up the next morning. Then she broke into a neighbor's house and painted a lampshade in the son's room - he was a couple of years older and she had a crush on him if I remember correctly. She was already smoking pot at this time, and was dabbling in other, stronger stuff too. She ran away twice during those years. The second time was when she stole my mother's car.
My parents started having horrible fights too. My mother would have a few drinks and the rages would begin. Usually my dad kept his voice level while hers rose more and more and she called him really nasty names. My siblings and I would cower in a bedroom sometimes while she went on - my sister and I knew what she could do when she was mad. One night when I was five or so I was awakened in the middle of the night by my bedroom light coming on. I opened my eyes to see her coming at me with a belt and rage flashing in her cold eyes. I still don't know what I had done that she had stewed over while she drank, but at some point she decided I needed to be punished. It must have been while my dad was traveling - in the earlier years he was gone quite a bit. My dad did get fed up one of those nights. Strangely enough I saw it - he had returned from a trip and brought me a set of small porcelain dogs, which I realized I had left on the coffee table when the fighting started. As I stood there my mother reached out with her foot and knocked the table over. It landed upside down on my new gifts and I finally braved it and went over to see if they were broken. Miraculously they weren't and I picked them up and started to go to my room when my mother picked up a very heavy book - it may have been our family bible - and hurled it across the space between her and my father, who managed to move enough that it only glanced off of him, knocking his glasses askew. I had stopped dead in my tracks and watched as my father sat, perfectly still, for a few moments, then reached down, picked up the book and threw it back at her. It hit her in the leg. I don't know if it shocked her so much that she got quiet, but I cannot remember what happened after that. The next day her leg was bruised so badly that my dad took her to the doctor.
There was a night when she got so bad that my father loaded the three of us in the car and drove around for a while. When we pulled into the driveway a bit later he saw flames in the front window. I remember him exclaiming, "My God, she's set the house on fire!" He instructed us to wait in the car. Soon the fire trucks showed up, and the cause of the fire was put down to a cigarette being left in an ashtray that was too close to the curtains.
There were good memories here too. In the fall our back yard would be full of leaves that Daddy would rake up - but first he would rake bike trails through the yard for us, looping the trail around trees before finally making huge piles that he allowed us to jump into before finishing the job. I also remember the Easter morning when I awoke at dawn and thought I would look out my window and see if I could spot any eggs and get a jump on my sister, who usually got the lion's share. Instead I saw the "Easter bunny" - my dad, walking around with cartons of eggs. I never said a word until just a few years ago, when I told him about it.
There is so much to remember and tell. There are also apologies I wish I could make to the people who were hurt, but I think most of all I wish someone could have understood what was happening to my mother before she destroyed not only herself but others around her.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The Ugliness
I have been thinking about my grandmother a lot, and I realized that I have evaded the most shameful part of my story: my mother's past and her time in prison. This is what I alluded to when I said that my story would not always be chronological, because so many years made up what my mother became and the destruction of our family that resulted.
After hearing hidden stories from relatives and putting together what happened around me when I was younger I realized that my mother was a very hungry woman. She also had a willpower that was hard to stand up to or overcome. My older sister, who I no longer speak to, fought against it. She ran away from home in her very early teens - at the age of twelve she stole my mother's car while we were living in Lake Forest, Alabama and made it all the way to Oklahoma before she was apprehended and my mother went to pick her up. I am sure that the car ride home was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my sister's life. I was the mouse - I didn't talk back and tried to do what was expected of me without making waves. My brother? He was probably the most victimized since my mother made him her "sympathy card" - after brain surgery as an infant she coddled him and protected him, refusing to let up on the reins even when he was in his twenties. Her influence on him is still evident to this day.
I suppose it is best to lay out the facts of the events that led to my mother's imprisonment and then go backwards in subsequent posts.
My grandmother developed Alzheimer's Disease in her 70's, but we were not aware of its insidious creep into her life until later. Unfortunately for all of us, by the time it began to clearly show it's ugliness, my grandmother had moved into my mother's household to ease the financial burdens on both she and my mother.
I left home on the night of Christmas Day, sneaking out in the middle of the night after a horrible fight with my mother. My boyfriend (who I was not supposed to be seeing anymore...his "sin"? Not leaving his parents high and dry after a hurricane to come help MY mother clean up HER yard - literally) had braved her hatred to call and ask if he could come by with a small gift for me and she allowed it. This made him brave enough to call me later during her "awake" hours, and then to do it again a bit later. Needless to say I had begun saying it was other friends, but she got suspicious. It got very ugly. At one point she tried to push me down the stairs, and when my grandmother tried to intervene I watched as my mother forced her back into her room and slammed her arm in the door two or three times until Grandma gave up. When I left later I went to her and told her I was going and she didn't try to stop me. Just told me that she loved me very much. Then I snuck down and said goodbye to my brother.
It didn't last long. When my mother called my father (I guess she didn't want the embarrassment of the town knowing she had TWO runaway daughters so didn't call the police) he knew where I was and drove to Jody's parents house from where he lived in Birmingham. They had allowed me to stay there that night, but they all explained that we had no choice. So I "moved" to live with my father and stepmother.
Those were my last days under my mother's roof. I never went back, but the rest will come in another post. I wonder if things would have been different for my grandmother and my brother if I had stayed. Maybe not, because I am sure I would still have moved out and away before the worst of what was to come.
It didn't last long. When my mother called my father (I guess she didn't want the embarrassment of the town knowing she had TWO runaway daughters so didn't call the police) he knew where I was and drove to Jody's parents house from where he lived in Birmingham. They had allowed me to stay there that night, but they all explained that we had no choice. So I "moved" to live with my father and stepmother.
Those were my last days under my mother's roof. I never went back, but the rest will come in another post. I wonder if things would have been different for my grandmother and my brother if I had stayed. Maybe not, because I am sure I would still have moved out and away before the worst of what was to come.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Early Years
I imagine that when I was small my mother was almost content. My father had a good position with a large company and the income was probably decent. As the years went by though she began to want more and more and pushed my father to find better paying jobs - which of course backfired after a number of years because no one wanted to hire someone who only stayed at his job for two or three years. My father went from being the regional vice president of sales for an aircraft corporation to a man who years later had to sell his furniture in order to buy groceries.
I only remember bits and pieces of my childhood. I was born in San Antonio, Texas but I don't particularly remember the years that we lived there. You have to understand that by the time we moved to Alabama when I was in second grade that we had moved from Texas to Oklahoma, back to Texas and back to Oklahoma again, so my time in those places only comes back in fragments. I remember visiting my grandmother and our great-uncle Johnny and great-aunt Charlene when we lived in Texas. Oddly, we had no cousins or aunts or uncles - both of my parents were single children. I remember that my grandmother had a mid-sixties Chevy Bel-Air four door sedan, beige colored, that she would take me to the store in. I remember living in a Spanish style two story home in Harlingen, Texas because it had blue ceramic roof tiles, and because that is where I defied my daddy's instruction not to try to roller skate alone when he took a phone call and gave myself what I believe was my first concussion...or it could have been the time my sister pushed me too hard in the swing so that I fell out and hit my head. And I remember the park in Oklahoma City that Daddy used to take my brother and I to - it was at a hotel, but they opened it to the public. Our favorite part of this park was a rocket ship - it was red and yellow and had a ladder that you climbed up to the top where the cockpit was. From here we captained our ship to the moon. This is also the time when I had my first boyfriend - a blond- haired, brown- eyed boy named Bobby who held hands with me on the playground and even kissed me on the cheek once! I remember saying goodbye to him on my last day at school before our move to Alabama - odd that I can still see him standing there after all of these years. I also had chickenpox during those years - I think we lived in Oklahoma then, but I'm not sure. I remember chickenpox because 1) they were so bad that I couldn't even wear pajamas - they irritated my skin too much and 2) I had chickenpox on my birthday. All of the kids in my class made me a book of birthday cake pictures, which I still have to this day...and instead of a party a friend who had already had chickenpox was appointed to bring me my book, while some other children stood outside my room and wished me a happy birthday.
Our move to Alabama must have coincided with my advance to an age where I would retain more memories. I remember flying into Mobile in the spring when the azaleas were in bloom. The old Southern homes lining the streets, the oaks and the Spanish moss and the vibrant colors of the azaleas made a lasting impression on my young mind. We stayed in the Holiday Inn on the old causeway until we could move into the house that Daddy had rented. That first night he came "home" from work and wanted to go right away to show us where we would be living. We had dinner and by the time we got to the house it was dark. This was the second oldest home in the area. The power was not yet turned on, the brick was painted dark gray and a storm was moving in when we got out of the car. As we looked up at this forbidding house lightning struck in the distance behind the house, giving a certain six year old girl a very scary first impression of the place that we would be living in. Maybe it was a premonition since, to me, this is where our lives started taking a turn for the worse.
Monday, April 2, 2012
My Grandmother
My grandmother. She is one of the few truly good people I have known, and she was also a good Christian-not a hypocrite like so many others who use it for their own purposes. And I know that if I can ask myself at the end of any given day if she would be proud of me and answer "yes" then I have done well. That is what I strive for.
She was born Olive Beauchamp Dry on January 8, 1901, in Stephenville, Texas. Our family descends from the Beauchamps of English royalty but we also had a pirate, which I always thought was more exciting. There is almost no mention of this obvious black sheep of the family, but since I have long felt like our branch were the black sheep of the line, this pirate appeals to me - maybe he is as misunderstood as I am by the family that shut my brother and I out after what our mother did. Maybe they never gave him a chance.
Before we moved to Alabama we spent so many happy days visiting Grandma! Then, I remember my happiness when she left Texas to be nearer to us. My visits with her were spent helping make oatmeal raisin cookies, enchiladas and hamburgers. Those were my favorites, and to this day my kids all love her enchiladas. She would line the the ingredients up on the counter and my brother and I would work a little assembly line. And the hours I spent playing in her yard, making up imaginary games - I now look back and laugh as I can imagine what I looked like as I "galloped" on my racehorse across her yard.
As I got older she was my defense against all that was bad in our lives - my parents' divorce, my mother's rages, her drinking and the parties that she threw for my sister's older friends as she gathered information to feed to the police department. My brother and I were constantly sent to Grandma's house during this time, but I didn't know everything that was going on then, and Grandma's was my favorite place to be anyway.
She only ever cursed once, at least in front of us. My brother and I were picking at each other and bickering. She must have been so tired. She finally uttered, "Oh, hell!", which stopped us both in our tracks and shut us up.
My favorite story about her is one that to this day I can't quite fathom. Thinking of her disobeying even to this day is almost unbelievable. I guess a lot of people feel that way about their grandmothers. But when she was a young girl, about ten, her parents had strictly forbade she and her siblings (she had nine!) from climbing on the roof of the shed. Not only did she climb up on it, but she also slid down its wood shingles. In the process she managed to get a four inch long splinter in her bottom, which she was scared to tell anyone about. After a couple of weeks it was infected and she had to tell her mother what she had done. After they got the splinter out and she healed she got a spanking.
Every night I was at her house she would come in and stroke my hair and sing "You Are My Sunshine". I was the only one she sang it to...
I miss her and I hope I make her proud.
She was born Olive Beauchamp Dry on January 8, 1901, in Stephenville, Texas. Our family descends from the Beauchamps of English royalty but we also had a pirate, which I always thought was more exciting. There is almost no mention of this obvious black sheep of the family, but since I have long felt like our branch were the black sheep of the line, this pirate appeals to me - maybe he is as misunderstood as I am by the family that shut my brother and I out after what our mother did. Maybe they never gave him a chance.
Before we moved to Alabama we spent so many happy days visiting Grandma! Then, I remember my happiness when she left Texas to be nearer to us. My visits with her were spent helping make oatmeal raisin cookies, enchiladas and hamburgers. Those were my favorites, and to this day my kids all love her enchiladas. She would line the the ingredients up on the counter and my brother and I would work a little assembly line. And the hours I spent playing in her yard, making up imaginary games - I now look back and laugh as I can imagine what I looked like as I "galloped" on my racehorse across her yard.
As I got older she was my defense against all that was bad in our lives - my parents' divorce, my mother's rages, her drinking and the parties that she threw for my sister's older friends as she gathered information to feed to the police department. My brother and I were constantly sent to Grandma's house during this time, but I didn't know everything that was going on then, and Grandma's was my favorite place to be anyway.
She only ever cursed once, at least in front of us. My brother and I were picking at each other and bickering. She must have been so tired. She finally uttered, "Oh, hell!", which stopped us both in our tracks and shut us up.
My favorite story about her is one that to this day I can't quite fathom. Thinking of her disobeying even to this day is almost unbelievable. I guess a lot of people feel that way about their grandmothers. But when she was a young girl, about ten, her parents had strictly forbade she and her siblings (she had nine!) from climbing on the roof of the shed. Not only did she climb up on it, but she also slid down its wood shingles. In the process she managed to get a four inch long splinter in her bottom, which she was scared to tell anyone about. After a couple of weeks it was infected and she had to tell her mother what she had done. After they got the splinter out and she healed she got a spanking.
Every night I was at her house she would come in and stroke my hair and sing "You Are My Sunshine". I was the only one she sang it to...
I miss her and I hope I make her proud.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Trips Down Memory Lane
A few weeks ago Shawn and I made a trip to San Luis Obispo. Last April after Shawn's mother sold her house in Los Osos Shawn and his brother, Damian, helped her load all of her belongings into U-Hauls to take to her new home in Astoria, Oregon. What didn't fit went into a storage unit. The trip we made was possibly our only chance to get the items that she was giving Shawn until his current contract is finished. Along the way we also got to stop in Paso Robles at the home of some great people who have taken on the task of running a small family owned vineyard and are producing some fantastic wines while using some of the profits to help the Wounded EOD Warrior Foundation.
Shawn's father was such an amazing craftsman in so many ways. Not only was he a commercial fisherman, he was a potter and a woodworker as well. He had handcrafted a dining table out of redwood planks and carved out the base as well, and also built some wonderfully sturdy bookshelves. There were also some of his pottery pieces that will be displayed in our home with great pride. These are part of Shawn's memories of his father and he wanted very badly to clean up the bookshelves and put them to use in our office, so last weekend we turned our office into a disaster zone and moved everything out in order to rearrange it and get the bookshelves in.
Now I am working to get everything sorted out and put into its new place. To jump back to another story, when we moved my father to Nevada last January I tried to bring some of his belongings that would be familiar to him - a few of his wall hangings and some photos, and an old scrapbook and photo album. I had looked through the scrapbook, but somehow never looked at all of the memorabilia that he had tucked away into the photo album. As I dusted off his old photo album a handful of pictures and things fell out. One was a folded piece of paper. When I opened it I saw that it was a sign in sheet for visitors to Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama, where Daddy was the regional vice president in charge of sales for Lear Siegler in the 70's. What made this sign in sheet so special is that it had the signature of then-governor of Alabama, George Wallace. As soon as I saw it I was transported back to the day when the whole family got dressed up to go to work with Daddy, and we watched from an executive office as my father walked out and greeted our governor and shook his hand. I was very young and only had a vague idea of what "governor" meant, but I knew this was an important person and that it was an honor for my Daddy to get to shake his hand.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Formations
I believe that everyone can make a choice in what they become, and that you make a lot of the choices based on what you learn from your parents. An example of this: Both of my parents smoked like chimneys, and I can remember sitting in the backseat of the car almost choking on the cigarette smoke that swirled around us like fog. When I was about 7 or 8 curiosity prodded me to pick up one of my dad's unfiltered Camel's that he had left in an ashtray and "give it a puff". COUGH! GAG! YUCK! I can still remember the taste of the unfiltered smoke and the way it made my throat feel to this day - and I have never picked up another cigarette again.
I feel that I take more after my father, who hardly ever spanked us, but could make us feel worse with his quietly spoken words than any belt ever could - but I was definitely more scared of my mother, who was the belt-wielder. Don't get me wrong - I firmly believe there is a difference between spanking a child and beating one, and my kids felt my hand across their bottoms more than once. Everyone I grew up with got spankings - and not one of us shot up our school, cut ourselves or committed a violent crime.
My mother wanted me to "marry rich". I couldn't have cared less. In my teenage years she even did her best to push me towards a boy in school who was a year or two older than me, whose dad had a very successful business - and who was obviously only after one thing that I am thankful I never gave to him. I am pretty sure that she would have encouraged me to give in to him if she had known if it might have secured that spot for me that she wanted, even though it probably would have meant being married to a man who would not have been faithful. To her it wouldn't have mattered. Once again, it was due largely to her ideas of what was important that I made the choices I did - I am not needy of expensive things, and the only flashy things I have any real desire to own are usually red, noisy and go very very fast. I was a puzzle to her, as her life was, and is, to me.
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