Leaving, On a Jet Plane....

It's a song by Peter, Paul and Mary and if you're too young to know who they are, that's okay. They're folk singers and I actually really enjoy their music.

Anyway, my parents left this morning for Indiana to visit with my Aunt Jane and other extended family - mostly on my mom's side. My aunt is 3 years older than my mom but in much better health. Lately, though, in the last three years or so, she's had some health issues. She lost an eye when working in her garden and falling on some mud. A small branch from the berry bush she was weeding poked her in the eye and they couldn't save it. She overcame that obstacle and then recently fell again and is using a cane until her knee heals. She falls because she's so active. She's played in a band (banjo) for many, many years, gardens all the time with a huge veggie garden, helps every one out - She just stays very active. Thus, her health is pretty good. They will all love seeing each other, but my siblings called ahead and warned my aunt about my parents condition. They require quite a bit of help and they suggested she have someone come in every day to help out a bit. I have several cousins there and my aunt is well off enough that she may already have someone coming in to help her out, so I don't think it will be an issue.

When I think of my parents, I have many emotions, a large variety of memories and a lot of fear of what the future will bring with them. The range of emotions stem from the simple fact that I had a rough childhood. I would say I was the black sheep of the family - never smart enough, never good enough, never successful enough. When siblings hear these things about you from your parents, they believe them, too. So what was just something I heard from my parents at first became who I was in our family. I don't know - maybe they thought saying those things to me would help push me more. I don't know where I lacked, though. But I know now, despite what I thought growing up, that they love me.

My mother grew up in a very wealthy family. My grandfather owned a Ford dealership and was a friend of Henry Ford's. My mother sat on Henry Ford's lap as a child. My grandfather also had a restaurant and many, many other business dealings/companies. When he became sick with cancer and it spread to his brain, he started making very bad deals and decisions. Some people who lacked decency took advantage of his illness and him and he lost almost all he had. My grandmother was left to live on very little but my grandfather had asked a close family friend to take care of her and he did so until his death many years later. I was a year old when my grandfather died, so I don't remember him. I only know him through my mother's adoring eyes.

My father, on the other hand, grew up dirt poor. His father was a farmer and he worked his son to the bone along side himself. To this day, my dad doesn't like fried chicken because that was what they ate every Sunday his entire life - from their own stock of chickens. When he met my mother, he was 16 years old and she was 15. They were engaged soon after and married at 19 before my dad left for basic training in the Army. Being in the Army, he couldn't provide anything close to the way my mother had grown up, but her father slipped her money frequently. I would think all this - my mother's adoration for her father and the money that he continuously gave to her - would have been hard for my dad. He's never spoken of it, though it must be said that her adoring eyes are all his now. He spent 23 years in the Army. And when he got out, I was about six years old and we'd settled in Colorado. Things just got worse from there. My grandfather was long gone, so no more additional cash coming in. My dad ended up managing a 7-11 - back in the day when they were actually open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. He was held up 4 times when my parents decided it was time for a change. By this time, my older sister was in college (and may have been married by then, I don't remember), my oldest brother was in college and my other older brother had dropped out of high school and was working 3 jobs because he wanted the things we'd never had growing up. My older and younger sister's were straight A students. My oldest brother went to college on a full football scholarship. My other brother was not a worry or concern to my parents anymore because he fully supported himself, though he came home now and then, so we kept a bedroom for him until he got married. He became the person who slipped my mom cash and so he became the one she adored. And that's okay, too.

My dad was physically abusive with my oldest brother and I. I think it was partly because of being in the Army and possibly because he was raised in the same manner. My other brother got it sometimes just because he was with my oldest brother. I've always thought he saw something in my oldest brother and I that he didn't like in himself - but that's just part of what I've tried to work out in my own mind. When the boys were gone from home, it was just me. Where my oldest brother had often protected me, taking a beating for it, there was no one. My mother just grew hateful with me. I don't understand that, but she was bitter about a lot of things and always felt a jealousy of her sister when she was young as my aunt was very successful. She was in politics and had my grandfather's business sense (before the cancer reached his brain, of course). I remember not being more than seven when my mother and I were watching a movie where a man and a woman where taking a little girl from her home. The girl was crying and saying, "I'll be good, I promise I'll be good." My mother turned to me and said, "And that's what will happen to you if you don't behave." I remember that triggering nightmares I had well into my teens where my entire family just left me places, never to return. I don't think I was a particularly badly behaved child - that was pretty much beaten out of me. I just think they didn't like who I was. I do remember being emotional - crying when my brothers and older sister teased me (my dad took part in that, too), often running to my room and closing the door. There was so much contention in our house, fostered by my father pushing us all to compete against each other. He once tried to get my younger sister and I to have a fist fight in our yard. My sister was willing, I was not. I didn't want to hurt her. I was much taller and, I suspect, quite a bit stronger even though we were only 15 months apart in age. She was a tomboy. I was all girl. This.....lifestyle just wasn't who I was.

When my dad left 7-ll, we moved to the country. We lived in a trailer. Since we'd been poor our whole lives, we didn't really think much of having to live in a trailer, so we were happy to have new things (trailer's came cheaply furnished back then). I was told I would have to work so I could buy all my own school clothes, make-up, shampoo, etc. I was put to work on a farm and I was just 13 years old. My younger sister worked on the farm a couple of days a week. I worked there 5 days a week. At the end of summer, my sister never worked again until her third or fourth year in college. Sometime after this, our trailer burned to the ground and everything in it was lost - all my parents mementos from their travels when my dad was stationed overseas, all their wedding gifts, everything. A few things were saved, but most of it damaged. I moved from working on the farm when summer ended to working at a small cafe in town. The owner was a completely insane woman, but she paid us under the table and I worked every day after school (and on Saturdays) from the time I could walk there (about 10 minutes) until she closed at 8:30 p.m. I met my best friend there and we were in very much the same situation. After the cafe closed, I went home, did my homework and chores and waited for my dad to get home from work, sometimes as late as 10 p.m. It was my job to put his work clothes in the washer and then the dryer while my mom and sister went on to bed. I would get to bed around 11:00 or so and then be up again at 4:30 a.m. to get into the bathroom before my dad needed to. We only had one bathroom after the trailer was gone and we moved for a few months into a replacement trailer that let snow and rain in a bedroom closet. We quickly moved from there into a farmhouse about 2 miles outside of town. It was an absolute dump. When I first showed it to my then fiance, Jay, he couldn't believe we'd lived in such a place. And he understood why I was uncomfortable in his sister's house when we visited and it was a very old house that had had no improvements made to it. Well, it didn't exactly bring back good memories for me. In the end, when I was 17 years old having taken a night class so I could graduate a year early, my mother told me one day they were moving to the city and I couldn't come with them. I called my older sister who took me in for 2 months until I had a job, first months rent and a deposit for an apartment. I had to board my dog at a vet near the small town we'd lived in until I had my own apartment because of my sister's allergies. And for many years, there was a vast abyss between myself and my parents.

After a few years of off and on counseling, I understood that my father was probably abused as a child and likely suffered from depression all those years and that my mother probably heard many of the same emotionally abusive things she said to me from her own mother. I learned that they were human and had faults and that it wasn't me that was the problem, but they themselves. It took a lot of weight off my shoulders and I slowly began to see myself as worthy. I began to see I wasn't the things I'd been told I was - especially that I wasn't stupid as I'd so often been told I was. Seeing old report cards from my jr. and sr. high school years helped a lot. Despite living on little sleep and working when most kids were enjoying football games, hanging out with each other and sleeping, I pulled in A's and B's except in math. I'd say I wasn't so stupid afterall. I was just tired. I often wonder what those report cards would have looked like if I'd not had to work all those years.

Because of counseling, I also came to understand why I was easily victimized when I was younger, having endured two assaults almost 6 years apart. I was 16 or 17 years old the first time and in my early 20's the second time. Since then - and counseling - I have stood up for myself and never allowed myself to be abused in any way again. It's kept me strong through some tough times and I think every aspect of my life helped me to have the strong work ethic I have and all the success I have had in my careers.

I can say that despite all these things, I do have good memories. We had really wonderful family vacations. My parent's goal was to get us to all the states in the mainland and the 30 day vacations my dad had in the military helped us do a lot of driving vactions all over the U.S. We had trips to the mountains that we took almost every weekend and I remember hiking and having picnics around Red Feather Lake and other locations. I remember being taught how to spot wildlife, the feel of putting your barefeet in the roaring river waters (very cold and it hurt at first), chasing each other in a field or feeding chipmunks the peanuts we brought with us (back before they asked you not to feed the wildlife). I remember camping in a huge tent my parents had bought in Germany and my mother obsessivly bathing us all at the end of the day in two large plastic tubs. I remember the smell of breakfasts on those camping mornings which my dad always cooked. I remember the pets we had, the yards we played in, the Christmases we had with a tree overflowing with presents (there were 5 of us kids). I remember singing while my mother played piano or my older sister played her guitar. I remember performing at church almost every Sunday with my younger sister and two other boys that were members of our very small church. I remember playing in the graveyard we lived next to for almost a year. One night, we'd gone there to tell ghost stories and during one, the ground began to sink. We all screamed and ran home. Of course, it was just an old grave, not some hand reaching out from the dead. But we sure thought we were being chased. I remember chasing rabbits behind our house. I remember walking on the rocky shores in Maine, picking up interesting rocks for our collection. One looked like a canoe and one like the head of an indian with a headband on. I remember every time we moved, my mom would have a fit about how many rocks we had, but dad had helped us find them. I remember playing in the street on our block and shooting off firecrackers in our backyard every fourth of July. I remember being excited when my oldest brother came home from college at Christmas and for the summer and jumping into his arms and crying because I'd missed him so much.

A few years ago, before dementia became a part of who my parents are, my dad apologized to me for everything that happened while I was growing up. It made all the difference in the world. I've often wished my mother would do the same, but that's not her. She denies anything that makes her uncomfortable (I've found that several of my siblings are this way, too) and so she denies anything wrong ever happened. That's okay. I know she knows, even if only in her subconscious.

There were at least as many good times as bad. And if you focus on those good times most of all, it's easy to put the rest behind you. I've long since forgiven my parents for their mistakes and just made sure that I never allow those behaviors to be a part of my life again. I'd say I'm doing a darn good job of that.