Tag Archives: family relationships

 The Great Divider

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From a very young age I became aware of how very different our family was to other’s.

In terms of size, we were about the same: three kids plus two parents. The oldest child was a boy, something that should have pleased our dad. Then eighteen months later, along came me, then seven years later, my younger sister.

The gap between my brother and I seemed “normal” as many of my cousins had been born one right after the other. But the seven-year difference between myself and my sister felt weird. By that time, I was somewhat aware of how babies were created, so to think of my parents doing something creeped me out. Especially after one time opening their bedroom door without knocking and seeing my dad’s naked butt moving on top of my mom, I began putting things together. But not really.

My cousins’ parents didn’t always get along, so the yelling and cursing and throwing of things wasn’t all that unusual. However, their house’s always felt more peaceful, more relaxed than mine.

My mom had all kinds of rules that didn’t make sense to me. We weren’t allowed to close our bedroom doors, for example: until my brother began hurting me, and then my mother found him doing so many years later. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. He never hurt me sexually, but brutally, enacting what he called giant squeezes on my upper arm until they were covered with bruises or kicking me in the abdomen whenever he thought no one was looking.

In a way I understood his violence because our father was violent. I never saw him hurt my mom, but he did hurt my bother and I (never our younger sister).

My mom clearly played favorites, up until the day she lost the ability to speak, which was when her mind failed.

She protected my brother from my dad, hiding any graded papers with less than stellar marks, calling my brother inside whenever my dad got a little too loud in his condemnations. She hovered over my sister, surrounding her in a shield-like protective vise, afraid that if someone, notably me, upset her, that my sister would have another petit-mal seizure. (Those stopped around age nine, just like the doctor had predicted, but it didn’t remove the shield).

Mom wouldn’t let us enter other kids’ houses and refused entry to those very same kids. On her good days, we were allowed to play with them outside, but as soon as they wanted to go inside, we had to return home. This lasted until I went away to college.

The one aspect of her parenting that I understood, in some deep-seated way, was her ability to divide us against each other.

My brother was smarter than me. True, but she didn’t have to remind me. My sister was the smartest of us all. Also true, but considering how she was allowed to waste all that brilliance when my brother and I were punished, severely, if our grades didn’t meet mom’s expectations, hurt.

My brother and I played high school sports. I, as short as I am, was on the basketball team and for a brief time, on softball as well. I was great at stealing the basketball from rival teams, but was too short to score baskets. Softball scared me. It was much bigger than a hardball, which I could throw and catch and hit with ease.

When I stood at the plate, with a confident air, I expected to send the softball well into the outfield, but time after time, it never made it even to second base. I quit when I realized I’d never make the team.

My dad had taught my brother and I to bowl when we each turned twelve. By the time we were in high school, we were quite good. Both of us tried out for and made it on the same bowling team. We played against all the high schools in our area, and generally won, depending upon how well our other two teammates did.

My sister joined her elementary track team, for one season. I attended one of her meets, in an attempt to show interest. She did pretty well. She didn’t come in first, but she was always near the top.

One thing that was the same for all three of us: our parents never came to see any of us play.

Later on, when my brother and I both had kids, my parents went to see my brother’s girls swim for their respective teams, then would brag about how well they did.

My kids swam, played baseball, soccer and softball. We lived just a few miles away from my parents, yet they couldn’t be bothered to support our kids. (My brother, for a time, lived in southern California, then moved out to San Ramon.)

One year, when it was time to return to college, my brother had bought an old convertible which he intended to drive to Los Angeles. My dad felt my brother needed his support, so took turns driving. That was the only time one of our parents visited our college, not even for graduation. (One reason, among many, why I didn’t attend the ceremony, something I still regret many years later.)

It was once grandchildren arrived that my mom resumed her Great Divider role.

My brother’s daughters were smarter, more talented, better all around, than my kids. His potty-trained faster, walked earlier, talked in complete sentences sooner, and so on. Everything they did was bigger and better.

My sister never had any kids, but her dogs were cuter, better trained, sweeter, than any of our dogs.

My brother’s many houses were in better neighborhoods than ours. True, if better meant more hoity-toity than ours. They only lived in upscale neighborhoods, on hills in reclusive areas, while we live in the flatlands.

My brother’s furniture was better than ours. Also true, for we couldn’t afford brand new. Instead, we bought slightly used or relied on hand-me-downs.

 My sister-in-law was a better decorator. True. I had no sense of style and no money to coordinate colors and designs.

My sister, now, there was the decorator in the family! When you have neo kids, you can furnish your house with white everything complimented by off-white others.

When I was ushering kids off to school or sports or events, my sister was gardening. She even spent time chasing spiders back into her neighbor’s yards. When caught, she condemned the neighbor for secretly planting spiders on her side of the fence. (My mom believed my sister!)

My sister was the better cook, serving fancy things she’d learned from cookbooks. That’s true. I relied on the Campbell’s cookbook, in which all recipes were made from….Campbell’s soup! Basic, but edible.

My brother could BBQ better than my husband. I beg to differ on that one, for my husband is a darn good cook.

These comparisons made me dread seeing my siblings. I didn’t truly believe they were better in all ways, than I was, but deep in my soul, a part of me thought there might be a smidgin of truth. That they were, truly better than I in all the various ways in which we had been compared.

It made the requisite family gatherings painful. Because of my mom’s watchful eyes, I never got to truly know my nieces. Not when they were young, and still not today when they are in their forties.

I don’t really know my sister’s husband. The few times we were together, he seemed like a really good guy. He’s patient and forgiving. He stayed with my sister through drug and alcohol addiction and is supporting her obsession with cross training. He seems like the kind of person I’d like to know.

As my mom’s mind began to fail, she wrote things down. When I called and how long we talked. What we talked about. What I served when they came for dinner. How long they were in our house.

She never asked how our kids were doing, never attended a wedding, never gave gifts to them and never called them.

She attended all three of my brother’s daughter’s weddings, gave them gifts and called them regularly.

My sister was married three times. My mom attended all three.

When I spoke with my mom, she only spoke about my siblings. She didn’t want to hear what I was doing, what my kids were doing, what my husband was doing. I once tried telling her about what it was like to finally become a teacher, and she didn’t want to hear about it.

She told me all about my sibling’s different jobs, in great detail.

When my mom passed away, if felt as if the anchor had been removed from around my neck. I no longer had to hear about my inferiorities, my failures as wife and mother, my inability to decorate properly (when my mom was dirt poor most of her life, she learned “decorating” from women’s magazines.)

I no longer dreaded the ringing of the phone or the unexpected opening of the kitchen door.

My dad lived several years more. He married within two years of my mother’s passing to a sweet, caring woman. She was easy to be with. As an excellent listener, she was eager to hear about my family. She wasn’t a very good cook, so she loved coming to our house. She never criticized the food I put on the table.

In many ways, she was more of a mother to me than my real mom ever was.

When my dad died, all hell broke loose.

I never knew how much my siblings disliked my dad’s wife. It was way beyond dislike. They hated her, believed she had married my dad for his wealth (which was a joke as my dad only had the “mobile” home in which they lived and an old truck.)

My phone rang constantly, mostly my sister, condemning me for loving my dad’s wife. It was as if my mother had been resurrected, now in the body of my sister. All the old hates and envies and jealousies sprang forth anew, but more cutting, more vicious, more targeted toward me.

It reached a point when I refused to answer the phone.

Now the caller pops up on our television and on our phones.  If my sister’s number appeared, I wouldn’t answer.

She did post something on my daughter’s Fb, all cheery and wanting to reconnect. I disregarded the request.

My brother had gone out of his way to mend broken fences. He calls regularly. He’s been sharing photos of the ghetto in which we first lived and the houses we subsequently moved into.

He asks questions about my family and my health.

While he shares little, very private, like our mom had been, just hearing the tone of his voice feels good.

I’ve begun reminding him of things we did in our younger years. What seemed hurtful then, is now something we can chuckle over.

The Great Divider had been gone a good, long time, but the effects of her manipulations carry on.

No Regrets

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            When my mother slipped into the depths of dementia to never return to her former self, I didn’t cry. In fact, I struggled to control my glee, to hold it inside whenever I spoke to my siblings or was around my dad.

            Finally, after years and years of manipulation and emotional abuse, her voice was silent, her disapproving glare gone. Never again would I hear all the ways in which I had disappointed her, how I was not the daughter she wanted. How she never cried when I left for college or when I got my first apartment, never moving back into her house.

            I’d never be chastised for not cleaning my brother’s room, for not wiping down each leaf of every houseplant, for not standing by her side and learning how to cook. For not dressing in the girlie clothes she’d sewn for me. For looking and acting like a boy. For being uppity because I loved learning, reading books. Real books, not the household tips magazines she skimmed through and kept piled up next to her chair.

            She’d never be able to guilt me into calling, having her over for dinner, for taking her “shopping” which was really an excuse to pawn through discount racks while she lectured me about my faults.

            I didn’t cry at her funeral Mass. A friend, sitting near me, commented about that. I shrugged. How do you explain how wonderful it felt to have the black clouds not just lifted, but blown away? How do you tell someone how freeing it is to no longer have to listen to her tales of woe, of all the injustices done to her over the years, of course, by me. Not by my siblings.

            Never by them, for they were perfect and I was not.

            When the Mass ended, my sister yelled at me, accusing me, in front of the few who were in attendance of never loving our mother. I walked away.

            There was a time when I wanted to love my mother, when I yearned to feel her arms around me. A hug. A nice, warm hug to greet me in the morning and to put me to sleep at night.

            My sister knew that love. So did my brother.

            That’s why they cried.

            While my mother was disappearing, my father became a kinder man. He smiled more. Laughed more. Was easier to be around.

            One day as I was leaving after visiting my mother’s body, lying in a hospital bed in their front room, my dad opened his arms wide. I froze, not knowing whether it was some sort of trick.

            I couldn’t tell by his face what his intentions were. Was it a real invitation for a hug? Was it a trap? Since I became a teen and my body changed, he’d looked at me with what I later learned was lust.

            He’d touch me, inappropriately, when I got near. I’d learned to sidestep, to take roundabout ways, to hide in my room until he was somewhere, anywhere else.

            It creeped me out. And it only got worse after I married. By then he knew I had become a sexual being. His looks became more suggestive, his comments more lewd.

            So, when I didn’t want his hug, he asked why. I couldn’t say the words. My feet felt glued to the floor, my brain stopped functioning and my heart thumped so loudly I thought I was going to drop dead right there.

            Only when his arms dropped and a despondent look came on his face did I have room to scoot past and escape.

            I wish I could have told him why. But I’ve never been one to confront others. I was an emotionally and physically abused child. I’d worn the bruises of confrontation. Why would I want to do that to others?

            Not too many years after my mom died, my dad remarried. And then he had a stroke. I visited him in the hospital, out of duty, not of love. I never sat by his bedside. I never touched him. If he was awake, I’d talk to him from the other side of the hospital room. When I left, I’d simply walk out.

            This “new” dad was jovial. He laughed and smiled. He nodded a lot, as if he understood and agreed. His wife placed him in a home, then asked me to visit.

            Once a week I steeled myself and walk into the home, pretending that I really wanted to be there. I only went when I knew his wife would be there. My dad had his own room. Even though he couldn’t use his hands, I still feared his touch. Even though he couldn’t remember what he’d just eaten when the empty dishes sat in front of him, I still worried that he’d hurt me with words.

            His condition worsened. He had more strokes, leaving him more and more disabled. He still terrified me. I was in my fifties, but still impacted by how he’d treated me throughout my childhood and into my twenties.  

            At some point his wife called for a family meeting at the hospital. The Hospice contact was there. She explained that he was near death. Might go that day or in a few months.

            When the meeting ended, she told us to go to Dad’s room and say goodbye.

            I went into the room. I stood by his bed.

            My right hand rose. It neared his arm. It got close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin.

            And then I started trembling.

            I walked away.

            And I’ve never regretted not telling either of my parents that I loved them, for that would have been a lie.

            I’ve never regretted not crying, for having them truly gone, was such a tremendous relief that there are no words to adequately describe.

            Both have been gone for many years, but what they did to me has never left me. I still carry it in my heart. Writing about it helps.

            So it is with no regrets that I put into words, once more, why I am the way I am. A person who refuses to regret the feelings that I hold even though I’ve tried to excise them from my heart.

            There’s nothing wrong with having no regrets.

Grandma’s Gift

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            When I was a little girl, probably five or six years of age, someone gave me an old, cheap plastic doll. It’s arms and legs moved and I could rotate its head a bit to the right or left. Its hair was painted auburn and its lips a light shade of red. It was nothing fancy, but it was my first doll.

We were quite poor, so I appreciated the plastic doll most likely more than a rich kid would have. In fact, a rich girl would probably have tossed it in the trash.

But not me. I was proud of the doll and so carried it everywhere.

            At the time we lived in Dayton, Ohio, in a housing development that I later understood was projects reserved for the very poor. Our house was quite small. I seem to recall only two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a front room. There was a screened-in porch out back that held a wringer washing machine. That thing terrified me, because my mom repeatedly warned me of the dangers of getting my hand stuck in the rollers. Nevertheless, she made me feed the damp clothes into the noisily grinding machine.

            At that time my older brother was the bain of my existence. He teased me, pushed me around, took things from me and ridiculed my pudgy body. Despite my cries of protest, my parents did nothing to stop him.

As a small child, I already understood the power he held over me and the lack of stature I had within the family.

For some reason, my brother hated my doll. He frequently stole it from me, then would dangle it above my head until my cries grew so loud as to bring my mother into the scene. He was told to give it to me, which he did, but even though he repeated that same action daily, he was never told to stop.

            My mother’s parents were extremely poor. They lived in a tiny rented house in Galipolis, Ohio. Because it was such a long drive from our house, we visited them only once a year.

While we had little, they had even less. We had furnace for heat, while they had a huge coal-burning furnace in their front room. We had running water in the bathroom and kitchen, while they had an outhouse (which terrified me) and a pump in the kitchen that poured out the coldest, most refreshing water I’d ever tasted.

            After my grandmother gave me the doll, I brought it with me every time we returned for a visit. And, every time, during the car ride, my brother would take it away from me and hold it up against the window, out of my reach. I’d cry. He’d refuse to give it back, then I’d cry louder.

I never fought back physically as he was bigger and stronger.

            When we arrived at my grandparent’s house one time, after getting hugs from Grandma, I went outside on my own to play with my doll. This was not unusual. Even at home I played by myself. I enjoyed my own company, coloring, drawing, and once we lived somewhere with a swing set, swinging for hours.

My brother often followed me outside. He’d sneak up behind me, then do something to hurt me. It might be a violent push that sent me to the ground, scuffing knees and hands.

This time, he only chased me around my grandparent’s back yard. In a way, it was better than being pushed, but my legs were shorter than his and so I moved much slower. I knew I would lose eventually because I always did.

As soon he trapped me against the side of the house, he stole the doll, which I had expected. However, I didn’t think he’d ever really damage the doll as the risks to him would then become a possibility.

Well, with an evil glint, after throwing my doll on the ground, he raised his right foot and stomped on it. Over and over until the arms, legs and body were shattered pieces of plastic. I howled, long and loud.

My grandma came to investigate. She was normally so quiet that I was always surprised when I’d spot her in a room. When she did speak, it was in a whisper that only the person closest to her could hear.

So when she stormed out of her screened porch and marched up to where I stood wailing, I was shocked. And even more so when Grandma asked what had happened, then listened as I told her the tale.

Then, to my even greater surprise, she chastised my brother and told him to go sit on the porch. She took me by the hand, walked me inside and proceeded to wipe off my face. Gave me a cup of cold water. And held me close, brushing my hair off my reddened face.

When we left that night, of course there was no doll to take home. I cried all the way home.

Months passed. In time I forgot about my doll as I had moved on to other things. I colored obsessively, filling page after page of coloring books that relatives gave me, getting better at staying within the lines.

A full year passed with nothing changing in my life. My brother still teased, pushed, pulled, pinched and ridiculed. My parents still did little to stop the abuse.

When summer came, we returned to my grandparent’s house. As always, Grandma greeted me at the door with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. But then a most magical thing happened. Slowly, ever so slowly, she pulled something from behind her back.

Imagine my surprise to see my doll, fully restored.

To be precise, only the doll’s head was intact. My grandma had created a hand sewn body made of beige cloth. It had sewn lines to indicate fingers and toes. Better yet, it now had clothes where before it was naked!

She’d made underpants, a slip and a dress.

It was beautiful!

I hugged it, tears in my eyes. I whispered thanks, then sat in an old rocker, my doll cradled in my arms.

What happened next surprised me. Grandma turned to my brother and in a firm voice, told him that he had better, never take that doll from me or he’d have to answer to her, and she would not be gentle.

My grandma had given me a precious gift. It was more than doll and clothes.

She made me feel special. But most importantly, loved.

I still have that doll. It is now more than 68 years old. It occupies a place of honor in my house. Whenever I see it, it speaks to me of the first person who loved me as I am.