So, my challenge, should I choose to accept it, is to write about my mother. Tall order. My mother has loomed large in my life. Father figures may have breezed through the formative years of my life but my mom was always there. My life was not made for T.V., it was a struggle over adversity.
In the earliest years, I can only piece together a sense of things through old photographs on Kodachrome. I had a typical family unit of my mother and father and I looked well-loved. I mean, I smiled with my whole heart in those earliest photos. I held fast to my mother's hand and played up to my maternal grandparents. They also played a large role but this is a.bout my mom.
My mom was very pretty and fell for a sailorman early in her life. She had me at 20 and I don't think there
was much of a plan. I think she was "with child" before she got married. No big thing nowadays but a bigger deal back then. I suspect they married quickly and don't recall any big wedding photos except those of my aunt and uncle. My mother never mentioned her own situation back then, Not to me. What I do know is their union did not last. (No judgement here.)
Life got hard for my mom. Later in life she revealed alcoholism, domestic violence and philandering as the impetus of divorce. By her own admission, she took menial jobs to make ends meet. She leaned on her parents to help her out when she had to. This couldn't have been easy, her parents were critical of her, not approving of her lifestyle of Navy men, tending bar, and raising kids in poverty. I didn't know the particulars as a kid, but I saw the aftermath of their visits...Drama!
Unknowingly, I'm afraid I helped to fuel that fire. Grandma would ask me questions that I'd innocently answer. It never occurred to me to hide parts of my life from my beloved grandmother. It never occurred to me that we lived anything but a normal life. Didn't everyone have parents who threw drinking parties? Didn't everyone live battling cockroaches? Didn't everyone's mother smoke cigarettes, drink Pepsi, watch soaps,and snap her fingers to get you to do her bidding? Didn't everyone's mother prepare steak for the parents and deny it to the kids at the same table (not every day but often enough to instill unworthiness and want in me.)
My mother chose a rough road and took us, her children, her property, along with her. I saw things I shouldn't have seen. I was molested by a male babysitter. But, I don't blame my mother. Oh, I did! But, I learned, through experience, we are only human, we do our best with what we have at the time. I also made mistakes raising my daughter. Because I was raised like I was, I made different choices (and some of the same ones). Such is life.
I did enjoy her love of puzzles and took delight in those times when she'd clear off a table or set up a card table and bust out a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. There was a method we were expected adhere to. Spread the pieces out, turn them over (reserving the straight edges to give to Mom), then after all pieces are face-up, you are allowed to work on it. No pocketing pieces to work later. If you knocked pieces off the table too much, you were ordered away...Immediately. I still adhere to the rules. I also grew partial to crossword puzzles, word searches, and logic problems by picking up her magazines when she took a break from them.
My mom loved laying in the California sunshine. She'd bake for hours, drinking her Pepsi, smoking her menthols. I share her love of basking in the sun. When it was discovered that too much sun was bad for you, I scoffed. We lived in the sun as much as possible. We were tan when we lived in Cali. But I never made
it up to my Mother's epic basking sessions. I remember how sunburned we'd get and the sharp stench of vinager to cool the burn. We never went to the hospital for sun stroke nor poisoning though we probably should have.
I also have some memories of Mom furiously clicking Boye aluminum knitting needles. She'd make some wondrous creation from a ball of yarn. I recall my sister and I being pressed into service as human yarn swifts, holding onto hunks of yarn, just so, while our Mom detangled and wound the fiber into perfect round balls. I always hoped she was making something for me. It was usually an afghan but I'd hope all the same. Mom loved having her hair brushed. As kids, she'd have us stand behind her chair and slowly brush her hair. It seemed like hours but went much more pleasantly when she was knitting and purling. I was interested.
Eventually, I would ask how she did it. She would slowly wrap the yarn and poke the tips of the needles into the creation to make a thing called a stitch.I would pick up the hobby to knit a scarf in school colors. An amatuerish affair, rebelliously curling edges mock my intent. But, I would knit again and again. Hoping to discover why my reality doesn't match my mind's eye. Mastery would elude me until I reached my thirties. .Thankfully, I had time to knit with my mother. Hours spent getting to know her as a whole person who's come into her own.
My mother evolved. Reinvented herself, hit the books, and became a real estate agent. She was driven, ambitious. She showed me how one changes their circumstance. She showed me Perserverance. Although money never ceased to be a worry, she grew to be a successful real estate agent, then a broker. She grew to value me as a person. She grew to value my opinion and even, my advice. We damn near became friends. I became the offspring she didn't have to worry about.
She is my mother and I deeply love her.
In the earliest years, I can only piece together a sense of things through old photographs on Kodachrome. I had a typical family unit of my mother and father and I looked well-loved. I mean, I smiled with my whole heart in those earliest photos. I held fast to my mother's hand and played up to my maternal grandparents. They also played a large role but this is a.bout my mom.
My mom was very pretty and fell for a sailorman early in her life. She had me at 20 and I don't think there
was much of a plan. I think she was "with child" before she got married. No big thing nowadays but a bigger deal back then. I suspect they married quickly and don't recall any big wedding photos except those of my aunt and uncle. My mother never mentioned her own situation back then, Not to me. What I do know is their union did not last. (No judgement here.)
Life got hard for my mom. Later in life she revealed alcoholism, domestic violence and philandering as the impetus of divorce. By her own admission, she took menial jobs to make ends meet. She leaned on her parents to help her out when she had to. This couldn't have been easy, her parents were critical of her, not approving of her lifestyle of Navy men, tending bar, and raising kids in poverty. I didn't know the particulars as a kid, but I saw the aftermath of their visits...Drama!
Unknowingly, I'm afraid I helped to fuel that fire. Grandma would ask me questions that I'd innocently answer. It never occurred to me to hide parts of my life from my beloved grandmother. It never occurred to me that we lived anything but a normal life. Didn't everyone have parents who threw drinking parties? Didn't everyone live battling cockroaches? Didn't everyone's mother smoke cigarettes, drink Pepsi, watch soaps,and snap her fingers to get you to do her bidding? Didn't everyone's mother prepare steak for the parents and deny it to the kids at the same table (not every day but often enough to instill unworthiness and want in me.)
My mother chose a rough road and took us, her children, her property, along with her. I saw things I shouldn't have seen. I was molested by a male babysitter. But, I don't blame my mother. Oh, I did! But, I learned, through experience, we are only human, we do our best with what we have at the time. I also made mistakes raising my daughter. Because I was raised like I was, I made different choices (and some of the same ones). Such is life.
I did enjoy her love of puzzles and took delight in those times when she'd clear off a table or set up a card table and bust out a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. There was a method we were expected adhere to. Spread the pieces out, turn them over (reserving the straight edges to give to Mom), then after all pieces are face-up, you are allowed to work on it. No pocketing pieces to work later. If you knocked pieces off the table too much, you were ordered away...Immediately. I still adhere to the rules. I also grew partial to crossword puzzles, word searches, and logic problems by picking up her magazines when she took a break from them.
My mom loved laying in the California sunshine. She'd bake for hours, drinking her Pepsi, smoking her menthols. I share her love of basking in the sun. When it was discovered that too much sun was bad for you, I scoffed. We lived in the sun as much as possible. We were tan when we lived in Cali. But I never made
it up to my Mother's epic basking sessions. I remember how sunburned we'd get and the sharp stench of vinager to cool the burn. We never went to the hospital for sun stroke nor poisoning though we probably should have.
I also have some memories of Mom furiously clicking Boye aluminum knitting needles. She'd make some wondrous creation from a ball of yarn. I recall my sister and I being pressed into service as human yarn swifts, holding onto hunks of yarn, just so, while our Mom detangled and wound the fiber into perfect round balls. I always hoped she was making something for me. It was usually an afghan but I'd hope all the same. Mom loved having her hair brushed. As kids, she'd have us stand behind her chair and slowly brush her hair. It seemed like hours but went much more pleasantly when she was knitting and purling. I was interested.
Eventually, I would ask how she did it. She would slowly wrap the yarn and poke the tips of the needles into the creation to make a thing called a stitch.I would pick up the hobby to knit a scarf in school colors. An amatuerish affair, rebelliously curling edges mock my intent. But, I would knit again and again. Hoping to discover why my reality doesn't match my mind's eye. Mastery would elude me until I reached my thirties. .Thankfully, I had time to knit with my mother. Hours spent getting to know her as a whole person who's come into her own.
My mother evolved. Reinvented herself, hit the books, and became a real estate agent. She was driven, ambitious. She showed me how one changes their circumstance. She showed me Perserverance. Although money never ceased to be a worry, she grew to be a successful real estate agent, then a broker. She grew to value me as a person. She grew to value my opinion and even, my advice. We damn near became friends. I became the offspring she didn't have to worry about.
She is my mother and I deeply love her.
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