Tag Archives: Revisting the Past

An Unexpected Surprise

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            When you grow up in a dysfunctional family, happy memories are few and far between. It’s easy to dredge up the pain and sorrow, to recall the angry words and the punishments that followed, but difficult to find just one that didn’t hurt.

            Today my husband and I went out for ice cream. After enjoying my delicious treat, as we were driving home, a sudden flash appeared: my sitting on a stool at a Walgreen’s counter.

            We seldom ate out. When you’re low income, money is tight and not spent on restaurant meals.

            When I was in fourth grade, we lived in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. My mom had just learned to drive, which really made life better when all our doctor appointments were in the city.

            I don’t remember why I was the only one with my mother. That rarely happened. My mother must have left my brother with someone, a relative probably, as she had no friends in the neighborhood. I don’t recall taking him somewhere, but we must have.

            I’m not sure why we were in town. It was around the time the principal of my elementary school told my father that I could not return without glasses. That’s the most logical reason for our outing.

            I knew, even then, that when my mother left home at thirteen, she moved to Cincinnati to live with an older sister. She helped my mom get a job at a Woolworth’s Department Store. I don’t know what she did there as she was so young.

            Anyway, here we were, sitting on stools in a Woolworth’s in downtown Dayton. A bunch of colorful balloons floated above our heads, all tied to a long string so as not to float away.

            Like any kid, I loved balloons. The colors, the way they flew about my head, the feeling of owning something that was just mine. Until my brother popped mine. Every last balloon I possessed he popped. Probably out of meanness. Maybe out of jealousy.

            Anyway, here was a bright, colorful, happy-looking array of balloons. I wanted one so badly that all thoughts were erased from my head except for the one of owning a balloon.

            The person behind the ice cream counter told me I could have any balloon I wanted. I recall looking at my mother to see if this were true. Possible. I remember holding my breath as I waited for her response.

            When the clerk said the balloons held surprises, that each one had a slip of paper inside that would reveal what ice cream treat I could have. I think she said that a few balloons awarded a free treat. A completely free ice cream treat!

            Even at that young age I understood that nothing was free. If something good came my way it would be immediately followed by something bad. But I was a kid and kids hope.

            When my mother nodded that I cold pick a balloon, I was shocked. I. Got. To. Pick.

            I am sure my eyes were wide in disbelief. I am positive that I knew I’d never win. But, like any kid, I imagined that my balloon would give me something free. Maybe an ice cream soda, or if I was really lucky, a banana split.

            But there was a really good chance that all I’d get was a cheap sucker. One of those wrapped in cheap plastic that doctor’s give after a shot. There was a glass jar of suckers on the counter right in front of the clerk.

            I liked suckers. Any color, any flavor. We seldom had them, so winning a sucker wouldn’t be a bad thing. Just not the thing I wanted most of all: a banana split.

            My mother grew impatient as I stared up at the balloons, trying to see through, to read the slip so as to ensure that I got that banana split.

            The clerk asked what I was hoping to win. I looked first to my mother, then when she nodded, I said, loud and clear (something unusual for me), that I wanted a banana split.

            My mother laughed. Not a happy laugh, but a mocking laugh. You’ll never win that, she said. Or I seem to recall her saying.

            It seems as if my shoulders must have slumped. I bet my whole body slumped.

            I think the clerk told me to take a chance. That she thought I’d be a winner. Just point and tell her which one I wanted.

            Back then, as now, blue was my favorite color. Except for the years when my Catholic school uniform was blue. But I loved blue t-shirts, blue socks, blue shorts and really, really wanted a pair of blue tennis shoes I’d seen in the bargain store where we shopped. I’d never gotten the shoes.

            There were several blue balloons. One way up high, one to the right, one to the left, and one right on front of me, so close I could have touched it. I thought about that one. It was so close, so it must be the lucky one, right? But that would have been too easy.

            I nodded. The only balloon that might be lucky was the blue one so close to the ceiling that it brushed the tiles when the fan’s blades came near. I pointed with my right hand, my middle finger extended.

            Are you sure the clerk asked. It’s pretty far away.

            She made me question my choice. Did she know something that I didn’t? Did she know that one held a worthless slip of paper? Or was she trying to steer me away from a sure winner? The one with the biggest prize?

            It made sense that she’d trick me into making a poor choice. After all, my life had been one poor choice after another. Why should this be any different?

            By now my mother was getting impatient. I could tell by the way her eyebrows scrunched up and wrinkles formed around her eyes. If I didn’t make a choice soon, there’d be trouble later on.

            I changed my mind and went for the blue balloon right in front of me.

            The clerk popped it, a noise that always made me cringe.

            She handed me the slip of paper. My reading skills weren’t so good back then, so my mom had to read it to me.

            I’d gotten a discount on a cone of ice cream. Unsure what a discount was, I’d asked. All it meant was that it would be a bit cheaper.

            The clerk must have been clever at reading faces, for mine registered intense disappointment. My eyes filled with tears.

            Don’t you want an ice cream cone she asked.

            I shook my head.

            My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me off the stool. Sorry, she said, we don’t have enough money even with the discount.

            Choose another balloon, the clerk said.

            I turned to my mother and saw frustration and anger. She wanted to leave. I knew then that she had never intended to buy me an ice cream. She took me there for the free sucker in cheap plastic.

            The clerk repeated that I got to choose another balloon.

            I decided to take a risk and go for a red balloon. Red was not my color. I’d never liked it. But I had nothing to lose. So I pointed to a red balloon off to the right.

            The clerk pulled it out of the bunch and popped it. She didn’t give the slip of paper to my mom. She read it aloud. I had won a free banana split!

            I didn’t know what that was, but based upon the happy look on the clerk’s face, I understood that it was special. A rare treat.

            My mom said I could have it.

            The clerk peeled a banana and then split if down the middle. She placed the pieces on either sides of a glass bowl. She added scoops of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Not the tiny scoops I’d get whenever we were lucky enough to have ice cream at home, but huge, huge scoops.

            She added toppings. Pineapple, Strawberries. Marshmallows. The tiny kind.

            Over that she poured chocolate sauce. Not my favorite, but glorious in its brown gooiness. On top went huge fluffy swirls of whipped cream with a bright red cherry on each mound.

            When she placed it before me, I was in shock. It was more ice cream than I’d ever had in my whole life if you added up all the tiny bowls I’d eaten before. And this was all for me.

            Or so I thought.

            The clerk handed me a spoon. Then gave one to my mother.

            I really didn’t want her to have any. This was mine. I’d won it fair and square. I understood fairness at that point. Fair things seldom happened to me. To my brother, yes, if my mom was the one in charge. But never to me.

            My mother told me to get started eating before the ice cream melted. That we had to hurry because I’d taken so long to choose. That if we didn’t get home soon my dad would be angry.

            My dad’s anger was terrifying. He shouted words I didn’t know but felt that they registered disapproval. He hit hard, so hard it left bruises. He shook me until it felt like my head was going to topple off. And his spankings left belt marks on my backside.

            I picked up my spoon and got to work, shoveling in the gooey combination so fast that my nose froze. I scooped faster and faster, taking very little time to relish and enjoy.

            My mother worked from the other side, eating slower, but still chipping away at my treat.

            I didn’t get to finish it.

            When there was still more than half left, my mother announced that we had to leave. She stood, buttoned her jacket, then lifted me off the stool.

            I bet my eyes filled with tears. I am pretty sure that my body registered my disappointed anger, something I had perfected.

            It’s funny how some memories stay hidden for a gazillion years while others stay fresh year after year.

            I can remember the punishments my dad dished out as if they happened yesterday. But this one happy moment, this one time when I got a very special treat has remained hidden for well over sixty years.

Crimes of Passion

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            When I was a child, my family was poor. We always had food, clothes and a place to live, so we weren’t destitute. Much of what we did have came from relatives. This included everything from furniture to food.

            I don’t recall ever being extremely hungry, but I was never full. Apply this to not just the physical sense of lacking food, but to the emotional. I missed something that was wholly mine. Yearned for something that had never been owned, worn, felt by someone before coming to me.

            At the time I lacked the words to describe the feeling. There was an emptiness that was never filled. As a consequence, my eyes sought objects that were small, so insignificant that they would not be missed.

            My mom frequented the Five and Dime, a general merchandise store that catered to people like us. My mom loved to roam the aisles, feeling this, holding that, occasionally buying the things she came there for: a spool of thread, buttons, a swath of fabric.

            Perhaps I learned from her that it was okay to pick up and hold things that you weren’t going to buy. Maybe I was taught to slip things in your purse when the owner wasn’t looking. In later years I learned that my mom often left stores with hidden items. If that was true, then I was an observant understudy.

            My sister’s birthday was approaching and on this trip to the Five and Dime my mom needed candles for the cake. In that section there were tiny pink dolls, plastic cribs to match, and paper umbrellas on thin sticks. I wanted them all. One of each size, shape and color.

            Something inside of me must have known that it was not okay to pocket too many items, at least not on one trip. My hand reached for a plastic baby on its own accord. It felt smooth and easy to touch. It weighed nothing. It fit perfectly in my small hand and even better in the pocket of my jacket.

            I wanted more. The crib, the umbrellas. I trembled and sweat broke out on my forehead. I couldn’t talk. When we approached the register I knew I was going to get caught. My eyes looked down. I feared that the owner could see guilt, could see the inside of my pocket. He said nothing.

            On the way home my fingers held that baby, still inside the pocket. At home I buried it in the backyard, hiding the evidence.

            One plastic baby didn’t satisfy the want inside me.

            The next visit to the store I pocketed a box of six crayons. The problem, I realized once home, was that I couldn’t use them without my mm knowing that she had not paid for them. The crayons joined the plastic baby in the backyard.

            By now I was a seasoned thief. I planned my outfit, making sure I had at least one pocket. I knew I had to roam the aisles like my mother did, feeling this, picking up that, examining something else. When mom led us to the trinket aisle I knew what I was going to take: an umbrella. The problem was, which one. I chose the blue. It slid into my pocket just as the other things had done.

            By now I wasn’t afraid of looking at the owner. After all, I had stolen before and not gotten caught. With the umbrella secure, I accompanied my mom to the register, stood complacently while she paid, then walked out. Except something different happened.

            The owner asked my mom to wait, but not until after I was outside. I don’t know what was said, but when my mom stormed outside and grabbed me by the sleeve, I knew I was in trouble. She dug in my pocket and produced the umbrella. With it held aloft, she pulled me back inside the store. She handed over the umbrella which was now broken thanks to her tight grip.

            I was told to apologize. I refused. I had done nothing wrong in my mind. I had seen my mom slip things in her purse over and over. If I had to apologize, then so should she. I didn’t say it, thankfully.

            After much prodding I mumbled an apology. The owner then forbade me from ever entering his store again. I thought his punishment was excessive considering it was only a tiny umbrella.

            My parents decided I need moral guidance so they enrolled me in a Brownie troop that was being formed at the Catholic School I attended. I didn’t know anyone and had no intentions of making friends with them.

            I don’t know how I knew, but I understood that the girls and mothers who ran the troop came from wealthier families. It might have been the newness of the girls’ uniforms versus my faded one from a thrift store. Perhaps it was because the mothers wore necklaces and earrings, something my mother didn’t have. Maybe it was the way they treated me: like an idiot who didn’t understand English.

            It wasn’t on the first meeting, but maybe the third, that the mothers had planned a craft activity. It involved the use of colorful rubber bands. I don’t remember what I made, if I made anything at all. What I do recall in vivid clarity was the desire to own the bag of rubber bands.

            My palms began to sweat. My heart beat wildly. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bag. Whenever a girl took a rubber band from the bag I cringed inside. I wanted that bag so badly that my stomach hurt.

            I had to have it. I had to take it home. But how? How could I sneak it home without being caught?

            The solution came when it was time to clean up. The bag still sat on the table, all alone. It called my name. I moved closer to it. The desire intensified. I checked to see where the others were. The girls were giggling off to the side. The mothers were in a circle, talking. No one was near me. No one was watching.

            The entire bag of rubber bands slid into my school bag. I latched it shut then hurriedly left without saying goodbye.

            My mom was waiting outside. We drove the long way home in silence. At home I took my school bag into my bedroom as I always did. I removed the rubber bands and hid them in my underwear drawer. Moved them to under my mattress. Stuffed them in a shoe. Found a hole in the back of my closet and stuck them in there.

            When my mom finally asked how the Brownie meeting went, I told her it was dumb and I never wanted to go back. That was a lie. I had had fun. The mothers were kind. I felt safe there, at a time when I needed safety. I feared that the girls and mothers knew I had taken the rubber bands. That was the reason I couldn’t return.

            My crime of passion ruined what might have been a good thing.

Thinking Back

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I’ve been asked what I would do differently if I could go back in time. First of all, I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t enjoy my early years, hated middle school and despised high school. I didn’t start to truly enjoy life until I met and married my husband. The years we have had together have been the best ones of my life.

As a child I was sulky and miserable. I was born eighteen months after my brother and walked in his shadow even beyond college. I knew that my mom worshipped and protected my brother, and so I wanted to be exactly like him. I played sports of all kinds as a kid, which meant endless hours of kickball with the neighborhood kids, whiffle ball in our backyard, along with badminton, sledding,  and snowball throwing. While I was a decent athlete, I could not throw as hard as my brother did and so found myself with reddened palms time after time.

I was one year behind my brother in school, which meant being held up to his academic standards by teacher after teacher. I don’t know how much time my brother spent studying. For me, reading, writing, science and history did not come easy. I didn’t learn to read independently until fourth grade, but once I mastered the skill, you couldn’t keep a book out of my hands. Spelling didn’t make sense. How can cow, how, now and show have the same root, but sound differently? Science and history required memorization, something which did not come easy to me. I spent hour after hour on homework every night, rereading the same passages time after time. There were two subjects in which I excelled: math and languages.

We were as close as kids could be. Partly because we spent many hours together inside the house during the winter, during which we played board games, that I always lost, built castles with Lincoln Logs and had epic battles with armies of plastic men. We built igloos and had epic sledding hills that crossed three backyards. We explored the woods behind our house, jumped off boulders and climbed trees.

Neither of us had any mechanical skills, so while my brother was a disappointment to our father, I equally disappointed my mom. My brother had no interest in changing oil or tires. I had no desire to learn how to cook. Both of us spent time watching and getting yelled at when we didn’t pay attention.

I did not play with dolls. In fact, the only dolls I ever owned were several of the fancily dressed kind that simply rested against my pillow and a mechanical one that rolled about on skates. I was not allowed to play with the first because my mother feared that I would mess them up. She was probably right. The skater required batteries, which were expensive, and so not available. Barbie came out when I was a young teen, but I could only afford a cheap plastic cut-off whose arms fell off and whose “skin” was translucent.

My sister was born when I was seven. There was enough distance between us that we had little in common, and so we did not spend time together other than the sharing of a bedroom. It was probably my fault, as I put no effort into befriending her, finding her unable to do and uninterested in the things that I enjoyed.

That is one thing that I would change. I would find a way to embrace her, to search out those activities that we could have done together. She was into playing with dolls, walking them through pretend worlds and relationships that I could not understand or relate to. But what if I had tried? Would that have erased some of the years between us? Would it have brought us closer together? Part of me wants to believe that it would, but another part of me remembers how much my mother cared for my sister. How much she protected her and fussed over her, and then I’m not so sure.

School was one of many places where I felt most alone. I did not have playground friends, so spent much of my primary years sitting on a bench against the wall, watching others laugh and giggle and run around like nuts. I remember hating Valentine’s Day. While I had cards for everyone in my class, I seldom received cards in return. I was never invited to birthday parties and only once went to a sleepover when I was in middle school. My mom bought me new pajamas for that affair, as mine were old and faded. But I had been sheltered from the world of teen magazines and gossip television shows, so when the girls talked about kissing and hair and clothes, I had nothing to contribute. I felt even more isolated after that.

In eighth grade I transferred to public school and fell in love with my teacher. Mr. Bennington was kind and patient, two qualities that I desperately yearned to be the receiver of. When asked to do a research project on a college that we might like to attend, guess what I did? I found Bennington College in Vermont. I was proud of myself until I turned it in, and then I was too embarrassed to talk about it in front of the class. That is something else that I would change. I’d find a college closer to home as my target and report on it.

I went on my first date in eighth grade. Our school had a prom-like affair in mid-year. A dorky boy asked me out and I accepted. (Of course, I was also a dork!) I did not know how to dance and was uncomfortable with his touch. The evening was long and painful.

I was a shy child, not just in Kindergarten, but all the way through most of my college years. I was the kid in the class that no one knew. I did not raise my hand to answer questions, did not seek help from my teachers, and did not go up to the front of the room for group activities. In fact, I remember scooting down in my desk when my reading group was called and sitting there while all the others had the teacher’s attention. Yes, it held me back. As I sat in my chair, I yearned for the teacher to notice that I was not in the circle and call me forward, but she never did.

If I could have chosen my desk in middle and high school, I would have sat at the back of the room, I so feared attention from the teachers. Unfortunately teachers generally assign seats by alphabetical order of last name, so I ended up somewhere down the second row. That is something I did change when I returned to college as an adult. I always sat in the first row so as to better hear and be seen. It helped me build confidence and so I succeeded. It is also something that I did not do as a teacher. I let my students pick out their seats and then left them alone unless they were being disrespectful of the right of others to learn.

One thing that I would change, if I could go back in time, is to make a better effort at finding and keeping friends. Because I was shy, I was not one of those kids who was sought after to be part of a group. On occasion, someone did approach me and initiate conversation, but I never was the initiator. Imagine how different my life would have been if I had had the courage to walk up to someone and simply say, “Hi.” Wow! Even now this is hard for me.

As a college student I had more success in building relationships. I did not get to attend the college of my choice because my parents would only let me follow my brother to the one he had chosen, which, it turned out, was a good thing. He joined a fraternity, which had a support group called Little Sisters, and they took me in. Because of being a Little Sister, I had invitations to parties, actual dates to events on campus, and a place to spend Friday and Saturday nights.

Unfortunately I chose an impractical major. I entered as a math major, thinking I’d study statistics and find a job working with data. I pictured me sitting in a room with charts of information before me and knew that this was something I could do. The problem is that when I went to college, the women’s liberation movement had not yet evolved into a force, so it was no surprise when the math department chair called me into his office and told me that no company would ever hire a woman because all we wanted was to find a man and get married. I left his office and changed majors.

If I could repeat that day, I would defy him, earn my degree in math, get hired, and work long, happy hours doing something wonderful with numbers.

Instead I took a serious look at how many credits I had in each subject area, keeping in mind that I had to graduate in four years as that was how long my scholarship lasted, saw that only in Russian could I do that, so chose that as my new major. I told myself that I could get a job as a translator, without taking into consideration that I was too shy to ever speak Russian outside of the classroom. And that there were no jobs for Russian translators.

What I should have done was stuck with math and defied the chair, but women didn’t do that back then. We were raised to be compliant and to think of being wife and mother, not employee.

After college I returned home and joined the real work force. The one in which the only work experience I had was sitting behind the desk in a college dorm was meaningless. I had a hard time getting a job because I had no office skills. I was a poor typist and could not operate any of the machines in use at that time. When I did finally find work, it was at a furniture store, unfortunately as a customer service operator. I had to answer phones and had to pacify upset callers. I hated the job!

I’m not sure what I could have changed about that except for going way back in high school and sticking with my one and only typing course, honed my craft, and then I would have had marketable skills years later.

After that I was hired by the IRS as a tax collector. Not a job for a shy person, but I will credit the experience as helping me move past my fear of meeting and interacting with unfamiliar people. I had to knock on doors, walk into businesses and drive around San Francisco, up and down those hills and in and out of all types of neighborhoods. I learned to sit in my car and practice what I was going to say before walking into those situations. It was valuable experience for later on when I became a teacher.

There were two great things about that job. First, I made enough money to buy a car and then rent an apartment. That gave me freedom to simply be. I was in charge of my own life, had the ability to get myself places, and made decisions about where and how to spend my money. I learned to cook rudimentary things, just enough to survive. The second most wonderful thing was meeting Mike, who later became my best friend and husband.

Being married to Mike is one thing I would never change. He brings light to my life. He has been my strongest supporter in everything I have set out to tackle. He has been a role model for how to be as a person, wife and parent. Without him, my life would have been unrecognizable. He has never once held me back, never discouraged me from trying something new, never stopped me from tackling college courses or conferences or workshops.

There are things I did as a parent for which I am proud. For one, I always prepared breakfast for my kids. Most days it was a hot meal, but there were times when they preferred cold cereal, and I let them eat it even though, nutritionally, it was not the best choice. I packed their lunches except for once a week when they were able to buy lunch at school. I drove them to swim lessons, soccer, baseball and softball, all of which I supported as team mom, scorekeeper, coach, and referee. I attended parent-teacher meetings when needed, and even though I was working, took off to go on some field trips. During the summer months, when they were younger, I worked with them on academic skills in between swim lessons and soccer practice.

On the other hand, there were things I wish I could take back. I was not the most patient of parents. When my kids got angry, I didn’t know how to handle it. In my growing up years, anger was met with anger, tantrums with spankings, yelling with hurtful, cruel yelling. That was the only model I knew and so, despite what I read in parenting magazines, when my patience ran thin, I resorted to the poor models of behavior that I had benefited from. I wish I could replay those events and this time, instead of reacting poorly, simply walk away. Calm down. Allow my kids to calm down. And then later on, talk about what caused the anger and seek out appropriate solutions. If I could have done this, I would have been a better parent.

I am glad that we cannot revisit the past just to do it all over again. There is no way that I would choose to repeat any of my previous years of life. It would be terrifying to be a child today, faced with all the terrors that today’s kids deal with. Drugs, alcohol and tobacco were not the temptations back then. Kidnappings probably happened, but the news was not filled with story after sad story. I feel sorry that today’s children do not have the freedoms that I had to ride my bike through neighborhood after neighborhood, going miles from home, without worry.

I would not want to be a teenager who wants nothing more than to be a mechanic, being forced into college prep classes because that’s all that is offered. To want to be a nurse’s assistant, but having no opportunity to learn those skills. To want to be a doctor but unable to take advanced placement classes because my school does not offer them.

So, to answer the question, would I want to go back and redo my life, the response is a resounding no. I have worked through the issues that burdened me as a child, teen, and older adult, am happy with who I am at this point in time. I love my husband and my grown up children. I love my grandchildren. I love being able to write, to having enough savings to travel, and spending time with my husband doing things that we both love. I have a good life, filled with things to do and people to see. What more could a person want?