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Feeling Quiet
My Mother's Childhood
In the early 1930s things were very difficult enough for families just trying to survive. My grandparents on my mother's side had four little boys to feed and one cold December night my Mother was born one month early. Two days later, her mother died from complications of pneumonia. My grandfather sent word to his big sister and asked her if she wanted a baby girl. Immediately she said 'yes' for she too had only boys who were by then high school age so she said would love to have a baby girl. She made the eight hour trip then with a cousin to come and get my mother. Traveling in those days were just as hard as surviving from day to day. She was so small they wrapped her in a blanket and placed her in a shoe box. They stopped at houses along the way to reheat bricks to go alongside the box to keep her warm so she wouldn't die and to warm the milk.
When she got home with my Mother is when her husband found out that they had another child to raise. He wasn't asked. It was just what you did back then if family needed you.
My grandfather passed his four boys along to his mother in law to raise, the mother of the woman who'd just died, and he headed wherever he could to look for work. Years later he would settle back in the same town and marry another lady, have three more boys and a daughter, but never go back for his first set of boys or his daughter. He only lived four blocks away from my mother and his sister who was raising her, the lady who I called my grandmother my entire life. I share her first name. I was never called by that at home nor at school and grew to hate it.
For reasons I don't understand to this day, my mother was not legally adopted until she was in high school, almost legal age. I think that they used it against her and made her 'pay' to live there but much was never said and some things were. Sometimes what isn't spoken speaks louder than words screamed.
When my grandfather would come by to visit and he did ever so often, his new wife would fly into a jealous rage and lock him out of the house, throw his clothes onto the lawn, and he'd end up sleeping on the porch. His visits became fewer and fewer until they became non-existent. I did meet him when I was a little girl several times but barely remember him now.
My adopted Grandmother spoiled my mother beyond belief with classes, trips, tailor made clothes that she personally designed and made for her. She worked and retired from a mill in southern Alabama and needed child care during the day. Right next door lived a family who took my mother in to their hearts and in their lives. Two single women and their parents. These women were never allowed to marry. Ever. One had a boyfriend once but her father ran him off.
He was preported to be a falling down alcoholic who would beat his wife and in front of the daughters many times. The mother got her revenge when she put him to bed after passing out. She would take his sock by the toe, when undressing him, and let his foot drop out of it hard, bruising his heel. When he'd complain the next morning about his heesl hurting everytime he'd get drunk, it was an inside joke between those two ladies and their mother. Once she even sewed him up in his bedsheets while he was passed out and beat him with a frying pan. These legends have been passed down to me by my mother. The fact that he didn't beat her anymore after coming home drunk was mentioned as well and it the reason was clear. There were a few times when syrup of ipecac (clickable) was slipped into his alcohol and after a few bouts of vomiting, he'd sober up for awhile.
My mother spent extensive amounts of time with them, practically growing up at their house and staying sometimes for weeks at a time. These two ladies spoiled her rotten too, pretending that she was their child. She was blessed with trips across the United States with them, and elaborate Christmases. Sometimes things weren't so nice with them but I'll get to that part later. I remember them throughout my childhood and loved them very much. I never knew the parents as they were long passed by the time I was born. The eldest of the two daughters was tender and sweet while the younger was bossy and spoke sharply. Eventually the parents died and they inherited the property, being the only heirs. They lived there the rest of their lives, getting rid of nothing, becoming pack rats and eccentric. Things once bought new were by the time I was born, vintage and priceless antiques. They both slept in the same bed as long as they lived. They finished each other's sentences or spoke at the same time. Fussed and fought sometimes. They drove one old car back and forth to work and to church, a 1950 something Chrysler, and both retired fat the same time from working at the local mill.
All their lives they lived in the same place on a farm in Alabama, collecting animals of all sorts. They had three donkeys, the kind with the cross on their backs, and we three children loved them, even though they never let us get really close enough to pet when twe were there. They had tons of chickens, lots of dogs and cats to play with so when we did get to go there it was like going to a park with a petting zoo.
Eventually they made a religious retreat out there, little stops along a trail to sit and meditate at places like Jacob's Well or the Garden of Gesthemane. Sunday School classes would come for field trips and tour the property. They could really cook too and would fill a table with food, waking up early in the morning and cooking all day. There would be no where on the table for a place setting and one of them would always apologize for not having enough.
When my mother was only six months old, she was entered into a baby contest and won for the fattest baby there. She had come along way back from being born premature.
My new grandparent's marriage was never a close one and they always slept in separate rooms. My grandmother practically hated him and never grieved when he died and acted very releaved. She told me often beginning when it was inappropriate too young for me to hear it that the only man I knew as my grandfather had raped her on their wedding night so badly that she had to be surgically repaired. He never showed her any kindness or love. It was a cold situation to bring a new baby into.
In the days of ration coupons and a war going on, my mother was diagnosed with polio and spent a good portion of her childhood in braces, having surgeries, a year in the hospital and a lot of time in a wheelchair. That might have been extremely hard on the family but it wasn't her fault. She eventually recovered and walked again, but it was hard on her and the family as for a time, she required specially built shoes and rations were hard to get for them. In the end,she became a spoiled sort of whiny person after going through all that she did, even as a grown up, pitiful, and a hysterical hyperchondriac and manipulative, going to any extreme no matter what the cost to get what she wanted and making the people closest to her pay dearly if she didn't get it. She grew up with an attitude of entitlement from always getting what she wanted whenever she demanded it. If she stomped and pouted and threatened she was allowed to get her own way and whatever she wanted she got.
What she wanted most was time with my Grandmother in those early years. She was awayfrom her most of the time, either at work or at weekend Holiness Revivals. She's be gone for weekends at a time sometimes with a Southern Gospel singing group she'd started and she toured with some very famous names of that genre. She'd trained with the Speer Family and was close friends with most of those who were famous in the 50s. There are stories passed down to me through her of them that I'll share sometimes if it adds to the value of the story in any way. Many came home with her back then.
During this time, my mother would be dropped off at a very young age with a grandmother she didn't know. Her birth mother's mother, her maternal grandmother, wanted to see her only daughter's only daughter, but when my Mom would go there, she'd get so depressed and cry and cry and wouldn't eat until my new grandmother wouldcome back from touring. Eventually, she stayed with the Lynn sisters everytime her mother would need to leave town. And they took care of her like she was their own baby.
After she was older, the younger sister would show open hostility toward my mother. She'd throw it up to her about what my grandmother would buy her and she'd feel guilty about it. She'd even pinch her and say, "You're my baby aren't you? Say it! Say it! You belong to me!"
One year instead of buying her anything for Christmas they thought it would be funny and actually did make a bag of switches for her.
Because she fell far behind in school before she recovered from the polio, she was twenty years old before she graduated from high school By that time, her and her mother were very close. She didn't get along with many people as she felt that they were all 'jealous' of her clothes and her looks, so her mother was her only friend. They chatted like girlfriends all their life. I'm not saying that having a close relationship with your mother is a bad thing. It's a gift in some cases. In this case, it smothered my mother's emotional development and she just never evolved. She had a paranoid dependency on my grandmother and my grandmother on her; like two clinging orphans. She wouldn't make one move or one decision on her own without running it by her mother. My grandmother went out on her dates with her and even attempted to go on her honeymoon with her and my father, and cried when she couldn't. My mom came home from her trip only to find her mother sitting on their doorstep, waiting. They were that close. John Bradford, Ph.d of psychiatry called it 'enmeshment'. (clickable)
Eventually they took big trips together and craft classes together, particularly ceramics. My grandmother came back home and bought a kiln and began to teach classes of their own. They created some fantastic pieces. They were inseparable and my mother was 25 years old before she wanted to branch out to have her own apartment. My grandmother became so upset by that she moved in with her to help her 'set up'. And my mother permitted it. She was afraid she'd drink beer she told me once. That was laughable for my mother was a teetotaler without having to be coerced.
She would develop problems in her early twenties that would never be checked nor diagnosed even to this day. She is still living and is almost 80, therefore I will not disclose my identity until she passes.
I have chosen to make this a public journal so that others who have been abused may know that they are/were not the only ones and this is not their fault. I had much trouble growing up with a lost childhood. And it carried over into my adult life to my detrement. I have healed much over the decades and am not as fragile as it sounds. I am became neither a perpetrator nor do I live like a victim.For awhile I was a perpetual victim but by my late 30s and early 40s, I stood strong. I consider myself a survivor. Today I have a good life and you wouldn't recognize me in a crowd. That is unless you have had a life like mine, for abused people seem to recognize one another easily without a word needing to be spoken. If you see me, just a smile would let me know that you know.
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Your mom sure went thru alot huh? my mom had polio too. You should be a writer of books because you have quite a talent. i am going to tell my friends about you soon...but right now i have a bit of an issue.
thank you for writing.
lj -
very powerfully written like your other entries; I bet it was a hard decision to write about this and then write it in a public forum, but I'm sure your words will make an impact on those that need to hear they weren't/aren't alone in the lives they live of abuse
betty -
This was an interesting entry (I read the links also) you have come from a very dark place, however letting others see that there is light, is a positive thing, as they say you can't choose you family, and there are time when some don't relise that abuse can sometimes start long before you are born.
An interesting journal I have you on alerts now.
Yasmin
xx
http://journals.aol.co.uk/cayasm/isntshegreat/ -
I see you have had time to write another. I would have thought that your mother was very deprived considering how she attacked you, so I will be curious to see what her transformation was like on marrying. Instead it sounds like she was quite indulged by some around her from birth. So often the second famly takes precedence over the first children, should there be a death or divorce. Then the children suffer doubly. Gerry
7/4/08 10:30 AM
Your writing is eloquent. I write too, but so many of the stories remain hidden and I just can put them down. I think you will be an inspiration to me to get me started writing again. I hope you know just how much this journal will help so many people, myself included.
Thank you for sharing your pain in order that others might heal.
safe hugs,
Gwynn