1. Home to Contradictions, 2. Six Degrees from Home, 3. Welcome Back to My Therapy,
4. Lying, Cheating, Stealing and Intent, 5. Power of You, 6. One Split Second,
7. Marvelous Mistakes, 8. I made a choice to make a change, 9. Connections to the Farm,
10. Back to the Farm, 11. It's a small world after all, 12 Fair Weather Friends,
13. Ghost of Roommates Past, 14. You can never go to far, 15. Glamorous Life,
16. Double Standards, 17. Lazy? No Exhausted, 18. Crossroads of Life and Death, 19. One Last Time, 20. When Worlds Collide I, 21. When Worlds Collide II, 22. When Worlds Collide III 23. The Unwanted New World, 24. Means the Old World Must Go, 25. So Where was God in all this?, 26. Where did you get that from?, 27. The Reason for My Season, 28. Was Always a Little Rascal, 29. Pictures and Quotes of the Little Rascal and final chapter 30. Closing in Contradictions. ~Use these links to read in order (some chapters have songs, new added content, pictures or all:) Volume 2 >>>>>
5 Questions You Need to Ask (To Avoid Ruining Your Life)
Read this article first because I would loved to have had this growing up and it would have been some handy information right there! I probably would have printed thousands of copies and passed them out like Halloween candy for anyone brave enough to ask... or even if they weren't. Through out this exercise of writing as a therapy or a warning to others on what not to do with ones life, I have only touched on the subject of parents. Whether it be my own parents or my role as a parent it was hard to separate the two. It was also a way of telling you about my life in a way that shows I take responsibility for it without blaming others for everything that happened most especially my parents. I may never understand why they did some of the things they did but I am sure the same could be said about me for them too. I can only reveal some things here because it really isn't my place to tell you how they felt but I can give you some overview... at times. I'd like to tell you mom would write her own blog but that is not her cup of tea. She recently asked me why I didn't write like this at school and I told her... I had no time, experience, understanding, desire or even a handy computer so that about sums it up. So I will start with this, both of my parents have a dark but different sense of humor. And then look at me and wonder why mine is even more twisted than either one of theirs. Hummm let me think...
Our family tree has a few kinks and knots in it and my moms real mother died when she was about 2 and then she went to live with her 2nd cousin who we call grandma today. Grandma's mom was MawMaw and she's my mothers, moms, sister... one of about 11, I think. Got it? Her real dad died later when she was 12 but she had 2 older brothers which she didn't see too often then. Later came along her step brother but she had left home shortly after he was born so she didn't see him too much either. By then she was in business school, then working and later met and married my dad. On a bet. After a few weeks of dating. Yeah she did! But that handy piece of info was not offered until much later in life. Mom also worked right after I was born up until I was about 3 years old and then she stayed home. With nothing to do... but me. You wouldn't know it now but that side of the family was pretty big with all the branches and the old reunions were held in places that could hold large amounts of people. I would ask are you sure we are kin to all these people because we didn't see them too often and I wondered where they were the rest of the time?
Dad had a brutal childhood of fighting for food for his 7 younger brothers and sisters at the time. Poverty and circumstance left little else. Later he lived in orphanages and with a few relatives but went into the army at 18. After Vietnam he dated a bit but started working at the company which he met mom. How they decided to move to the mobile estates is anybodies guess. Dad had always drank to my knowledge but had it under control for a while in the beginning. While I understand why he drank, I'll never understand why he used it as an answer to all the problems. I know the 4 DUI's he had over the years didn't help matters in the least because I was there and saw it with my own two eyes. Most of my memories of dad are him walking in the front door with a sack of beer to say hello as he walked out the back toward his room and later his shed outside. Hi dad... Bye dad was pretty much our conversations for 30 years. I also remember him offering a beer to a Jehovah Witness one weekend morning and we never saw them again. Dad worked at a refrigerated trucking companies parts department but he loved guns, old tools and fishing from time to time. He loved going to flea markets to find anything and he would also refinish old furniture too. For years though I would hear him talking to himself or catch him in mid sentence when I walked out to the shed. He did quit drinking for a while later and I remember that he had a big garden and a lot of plants going on at that time but it was not to last.
Both of my parents were weird but together their combined weirdness was a study in the extremes. An addict struggles to control life with the addiction and the ones that loves them struggle for control over their life with an addict. And the cycle continues. Their decision to have me was planned and were genuinely surprised that I became a very weird kid. Dad wanted a boy and mom wanted a girl and because I was both or neither, closest being a tom boy girl, at best I could only make them happy half the time. When I was older I could look into my parents eyes and see the hurt, suffering and hopeless in there but I could not understand why they kept at it after so long. For me there had to be something better than suffering just for the sake of it and I decided even further back that just wasn't for me. I didn't understand the quiet desperation under the pretense or the anger. I sure didn't understand the mounting regrets the folks accumulated with each passing year especially as a young child. The only thing I understood was I could make mom really mad at times without much effort on my part. I'm talking veins bulging, hair raising, venting for hours, steam coming from her ears, kind of mad. If writing lines however many times or being grounded didn't work then a whoopin' would be in order for what ever offense that transpired. And whoopin's would be with a belt usually while she held onto one arm and I tried to evade for dear life, resulting in us going in a circle. I wasn't kidding about her scaring the hell out of me as a small child. Until I got over it :)
I was a bored kid and if left to my own devises I could entertain myself. But often not the way my mom wanted and this one day I took some vaseline jelly and used it to slick back my hair. A lot of it. When mom came in the room and saw what was happening... she was not pleased. In fact when she took me in the bathroom to wash my hair it felt like she was playing basket ball with my head under the tap water all the while venting her displeasure in a very clear and loud manner while keeping rhythm between the two. Once when I was even younger I let a girl on the bus draw on my arms with magic marker along with my report card and when I got home it was back to the tub. Top Job... scrubbing clothes and little girls since... I was born. My mother really didn't like dirt and I was all about it... most of the time. In fact my mother cleaned the house often using me as slave labor and she was borderline OCD. I never understood why I had to waste so many perfectly good Saturday's cleaning the fridge with a tooth brush and opening every condiment jar to clean around it and the lids too. And you could forget about sleeping in most of the time because sleep was for sissies at our house and the Master Drill Sargent said there was stuff to do... you know like make the bed!
I wrote in an earlier post about Christmas presents and how I would have liked things like skates, bikes, motors bikes, go carts and a lot of other fun for boys toys. At this point in time I had demonstrated that I had zero aptitude or desire for sports of any kind and I don't think dad was too upset about it. About all he watched was boxing. But as an only child I got a lot those little green army men and a lot of board games that take more than one person to play. And they didn't want to play or do the math 1 + 1 = 2 players and then wonder where I got my skills in math from. They were tired which I can understand now... but not so much then. I know I got on mom nerves because she told me but when I'd ask to go outside or over to my friends, she'd say no a lot. I must have not been getting on her nerves that much. Once I got older mom had my tonsils out because she was tired of taking me to the doctor every other Friday. But most Friday's we were either going to see movies at the dollar theater or going to grandma's and granddads house. Oh and the dance lessons that were entertainment. Well entertainment for them anyway :) I can say my mom did everything in her power to make me a refined young lady but you can not make a Corvette out of a Chevette no matter how you reconfigure the parts. Here is a good explanation from the SOTT team of why that may be. Females fetuses exposed to testosterone like steroids aberrantly produced by their pregnant mothers adrenal gland are more likely to become tomboys. Conversely, excessive estrogen can orient a male fetus to more feminine pursuits in later life.
I rescued my pink high top tennis shoes out of the trash many times because she hated them. And she was thrifty to say the least, so I don't understand why she wanted to throw away a perfectly good pair of shoes. If it wasn't on sale, half price or in the discontinued bins then I didn't see it, wear it or even know about it. I was wearing 70's bell bottoms in the 80's in middle school and style was something only other people had. In fact things always seemed to disappear when I was at school and now I know that she was routinely throwing things away that she felt I didn't need any longer. Whether I wanted them, liked them or not. I had braces put on some where around here and despite my best efforts to pop the damn things off with popsicle sticks because they hurt... I would keep them for a good long while. Mom made sure I did my homework first as I came home from school and I became really good at dictation. I was much better at drawing though and would doodle over everything but I did turn those homework papers in... most of the time. Once my dad spent weeks making this log house out of tooth picks for a project in school. I was impressed and got an A. Well both of my parents got better grades in my school than I did because I just couldn't care about it. It was boring, hard for me to make friends and I felt there was not much to learn from it... at least at the time.
I was also riding the bus everyday and had to deal with 3 different bullies as I have spoke about several times all ready but the details have a lot to do with my parents as well. One was a very fat obnoxious older boy, one an older girl who was even trashier than the rest and then the last one was just a year or two older than me. For years I had to ride the bus with these loud, mean and often times combative kids that used the weak ones as a verbal or real punching bag on a bad day. On an afternoon ride home I had had enough of the youngest of the 3 pulling my bandana around my neck and got up to finally get in her face. It took everything I had to face her but in my mind they were not as bad as mom so I had a prayer. When we started to fight she grabbed my bandana again like she was going to choke me and then I bum rushed her to the back of the bus where I slammed her against the back wall. I made the decision that if I was going to get hurt then so was she and after that people weren't so quick to give me trouble. I got suspended from the bus for 3 days and mom was not pleased. Dad told me that I shouldn't fight back and I just looked at him as if he lost his mind. Not fight back? Stand there and take it? Really? Not a chance... not any more... not ever again. Bill Cosby said it best though that parents weren't looking for justice, they were looking for QUIET!
At some point in time I think around 12 or so things in my mind begin to change towards mom and dad and I started pushing more and more. I spent a lot of time in ISS and then OSS which was a mini vacation for a bit and mom was not pleased. I was tired of hearing no for almost everything and had decided that a whoopin was quicker than being grounded and worth the risk of getting caught to do something... anything fun. Mom asked me one time would I jump off a bridge if my friends asked me to and I told her no. But after thinking about it I told her... well it depends on how high it is and how deep the water was because that looks like it could be fun. I stopped being scared of mom to a certain degree and started to explore the out side world on my own. Many highlights have been sprinkled through out this blog and things got very hairy from there on out. Looking back I think I figured that if mom was not going to be pleased I might as well as her give her a reason. We fought a lot and I no longer sat on the couch and just listened to the never ending rants that would sometime last for DAYS. People outside and at the school were living a life and I wanted one. Because it had been denied often I did what ever it took to experience it when ever I could and when mom finally had enough and put me out, I was relieved. My mother taught me many lessons even some that she didn't mean for me to know and after a while I begin to use them against her. She taught me better than she thought possible and again seemed floored where this came from.
We didn't talk very much after I left until I got pregnant with Trey and then things seemed to get better. She did try and talk me into not marrying my ex but at that time I had already made up my mind and that was that. And to be honest I think her disapproval of it made me want to do it all the more. But in the end I really did it for Trey because I wanted him to have every opportunity to see his dad and for my ex to be a dad. Even if it wasn't that important to him at that time or any other. When mom asked why I was having a baby I told her I wanted someone to love and meant it with all my heart. And at some point in time she said I better hope that I didn't have a kid like me. You know almost every parent curses the next generation and she was no different. But she was there in the hospital with me and actually found a doctor to medicate me after a very long labor and a clueless husband standing by doing nothing... and by then it was too late so he was born naturally. Also apparently dad started drinking again around this time and it was all down hill from there.
Right after Trey was born we went to TN to see one of her brothers and were so very tired after a long day of traveling and when we were alone in our room that night, I heard mom poot. I had never heard the woman break wind before in my life and started laughing so hard I farted. Then we had a contest on who's was the loudest and longest and she won! Who knew? When I moved back home after leaving my husband I really thought things would be different because it had almost been 3 years and now I had Trey but it was almost like I never left in the first place. Mom and her schedules would drive even the most regimented of persons insane and it was hard for her to understand that you didn't have to raise kids staying at home all the time. Stability is one thing but you shouldn't have to be a prisoner to it. I know I didn't have all the answers back then but I did try to understand things. Like why is she still here with dad if she was so unhappy? Have it out, work it out or get out I don't care, just pick an out! Why does she care so much about where and how I live as long as Trey was happy and healthy? And most importantly why does she have to have her way all the time? When I had that big wreck in 91 and totaled the car I was stuck at home more and that made it all the more difficult between us so mom was not pleased.
And the one and only confrontation I had with my dad happened around this time. One night I was going to the store for a pack of smokes but had a problem with the lights in my RX-7. I walked in to ask dad if he would look at it and for some reason I will never understand, other than the alcohol, he just went off and started chasing me while screaming a lot of crazy stuff. We ran outside, down the driveway, up the driveway and by that time mom had came out to see what all the noise was about. Instead of following me, he ran up the stairs, past mom, into the trailer like he was going to lock us out. I rammed the front door stopping him from closing it and we started to fight and ended up in the kitchen. Somehow, someway we were on the floor with my leg above his head and I started to slam his head into the floor. He finally let go of my hands and got up, then walked away. We never spoke about it again and I bet he was wondering where that came from too. I don't know how he explained the marks on his face the next day but I think that mom might have been pleased.
Once I started working in the bar, I think that was again the last straw with mom because that's when she threw me out again. I don't know if mom thought she could do a better job at raising Trey than I could or what, but to me she missed the opportunity to get out of the situation she was in and in doing so denied me something I wanted with all my heart. I believe that Trey was an excuse to not change her life and still have some control over me. If you've been wondering why I was so angry through out most of my life that would be the reason. I wanted to be free and she wanted control. It was a never ending struggle that would take a while for me to let go of. But once I stopped struggling and went my own way then things slowly started to change. I couldn't control the situation with mom so I didn't even bother to try but I did get my life together and tried to make the most of it with what I had available. Over the years I've heard many of my parents regrets so often that I can almost recite them verbatim. I knew in my heart that I didn't want to live with all the what if's and whatever happened... at least I tried. I can't say if anyone in my family ever had any faith in me and both made it way more difficult than was needed to learn and grow. I now understand that it was their way of trying to keep me in their life but those methods usually backfired. Certain guilt's have a shelf life and do expire after a while.
When Trey got older, mom had him on a script for ADHD and then would send him over to my house... drug free for the weekend. So I would then buy him the most obnoxious toy I could find and send it home with him. If they would've had red bull he would've had some of that too! She would call and complain about Trey and I would tell her that she shouldn't have put that curse on me since she was now raising him. Funny how things like that work out sometimes. In fact I gave my mom many different books to read about difficulties with kids and I don't think she ever cracked the cover on one of them. That's when I learned she wasn't looking for solutions she just wanted to vent and so she did. Now that I understood the process there was no need to get bent out of shape because of it. Just go on with life. But mom still has this bad habit of dropping bomb shells about the past from time to time and of course it is too late to do anything about it. Example being our trip to visit family in Florida when on the long drive down we had a nice long conversation about things that she had thought was wrong with my life and tried to fix them without my knowledge. She is very lucky I am not dropping a few more of my own here in this lovely little chapter and I sure hope she knows where this came from. :D At some point my mother became a cafeteria lunch lady and I was absolutely floored. She didn't even like kids so how was she going to do this job? And I swear she spent more time at the child support office over the years than she she did looking for me at school. In fact she would tell the case workers she'd be seeing them every week until my ex paid. And for the record I do understand the need for the money and I hoped that my ex would have been a little more forthcoming in the beginning, but after a while I weighed the time, energy and aggravation factor in and decided it would just be a waste. Another thing with mom is lately she has had several wrecks and speeding tickets in the turbo powered car of hers. Lead foot Lucy even has the nerve to talk about my driving skills, when she drives like a New York taxi driver with 7 kids to feed!
You know growing up in the house of contradictions has given me so very much to think about over the years. I remember hearing my grandmother ask me many times over the years... Why can't you be more like your cousin? Especially when I'd get caught doing things I wasn't supposed to be doing and I would always say... I don't know. After a while that question faded and I later found out that my cousin had married a black man and in a very small southern town, it is still a little difficult for the older generation to accept. While I never considered myself a black sheep growing up I did feel invisible at times because their generation felt that children should be seen and not heard. I on the other hand didn't like that philosophy so much and felt they should have thought about that before having kids or me in particular. While down there in later years and then something about the cousin coming up in conversation is where I had one of my many moments of mouth engaging before the brain. I asked my grandmother... aren't you glad I didn't turn out like my cousin? Well she just said oh hush but I could clearly feel I hit a nerve. I must say I am pretty good at doing that even if I don't mean to and please don't miss understand the comment as anything other than to bring a few points home to my family. Another distant cousin had married a black man too and her mother had pretty much disowned her. I don't think that's right but that ain't my life and it ain't like many people listen to me anyway. Mom had many friends of color over the years and many of them were the kindest people I had ever met. The only time Trey ever commented on a pretty black girl he saw at the store one day caused me to laugh wondering how that was going to work out because I don't think my dad was going to be in favor of it... not one bit.
I think I finally made mom proud when I bought my house and kept it for so long. But I still couldn't get her to understand that if she was going to buy me something for any holiday's... can it be something I could use and not just what she wanted me to have. I had a thing for plastic storage tubs and shelving to put everything on and she just wasn't going to buy it. I now have enough tennis shoes to last me a life time... no kidding. I once told my dad jokingly, I'd like a cordless drill for Christmas and he bought it! Mom had bought me a bracelet, which was nice but I needed the drill and the look on my face was priceless never mind the fact that I kept playing with it with glee! I was floored he bought it and she was floored I liked it so much. After that it became the tradition to have Christmas dinners at my house and mom was always around to see the characters that were in and out of my life. Sometimes I'd even bring people over for shock value :) This one time one of Marvelous's friends came over and he was debating sexual reassignment surgery and he was dressed in a cheap blond wig, full makeup, nails painted hot pink, mini skirt, knee high go go boots and sucking on a penis shaped lolly pop. He said hi to mom who could barely manage to speak then asked if he could move in and be our new roommate. Buy this time I was about done with Marvelous and told him no because done means done with all that. When the remodel of the bathroom was completed mom was floored at how good it looked and between micro managing Marvelous I had stained the cabinets with my own blend of colors to resemble a dark copper. Seems mom was pleased that I had skills to get the bathroom done and pick the right colors too.
If you have read this far then you must know I do love mom and dad dearly. They are human and have made as many bad decisions as I have and forgiveness came but only after I let go of the past. I just wish they both could do the same and let go of their past... but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. I know I make my whole family nervous because I like to yank the rug off the floor to expose all that is underneath. Not only do they prefer to just live with the mound under the rug like an old family friend, they wanted me to and that was something I just couldn't do. I tried to have a relationship with dad while mom was gone but he could never see what was right in front of him and that is his loss. But then again I felt the same way myself about Trey but this time I could do nothing about it while here on God's green earth. The shelf life on that guilt has a long time before expiration. I am not God however and just don't have an infinite supply of forgiveness on hand and had to draw a line in the sand, no matter how difficult it was. Every so often my roommate will drive by and let me know if the lights are still burning. Dad still leaves the light on in Trey's room every night and no matter our differences it is still kind of comforting. I don't worry to much about him because I know if anyone would try to break in down there he would probably blow them away without a moments hesitation. And again they wonder where I get it from...
Mom would speculate what life would've been like if I had raised Trey and my answer was always we'll never know. I know life would have been even harder but I'm sure I would have found a way. Later she would remind me of my words from time to time about wanting to have someone to love when I had Trey. Finally after 20 years I said mom, I know you might not know this, but there are some people in the world that have children because they want to love them and not because they are looking for cheap labor... while that may come as a big surprise it is still a very true concept. Yes I call my mother out because she never let me get away with anything so I don't know why she thinks it should be any different now. LOL! Even though mom gained a lot of help from the kids at the house after Trey died it was so very hard for me to deal with all of this at one time. I had been waiting for so long, for so many things to resolve themselves and ran out of patience which is why I crowbarred her out of the house when and how I did. It just wasn't going to happen any other way and you know mom was not pleased. Mom also used to say I was like a bull in a China shop and she was so very right about that one. But after having some time and distance with everything that has happened I believe that she is feeling and getting better. I can make her laugh and have really tried to understand where she is coming from, even if I can't, with a telescope and a map. But I try and for that reason mom is pleased.
Other Handy Quotes I try to live by.
27. The Reason for My Season >>>>>
4. Lying, Cheating, Stealing and Intent, 5. Power of You, 6. One Split Second,
7. Marvelous Mistakes, 8. I made a choice to make a change, 9. Connections to the Farm,
10. Back to the Farm, 11. It's a small world after all, 12 Fair Weather Friends,
13. Ghost of Roommates Past, 14. You can never go to far, 15. Glamorous Life,
16. Double Standards, 17. Lazy? No Exhausted, 18. Crossroads of Life and Death, 19. One Last Time, 20. When Worlds Collide I, 21. When Worlds Collide II, 22. When Worlds Collide III 23. The Unwanted New World, 24. Means the Old World Must Go, 25. So Where was God in all this?, 26. Where did you get that from?, 27. The Reason for My Season, 28. Was Always a Little Rascal, 29. Pictures and Quotes of the Little Rascal and final chapter 30. Closing in Contradictions. ~Use these links to read in order (some chapters have songs, new added content, pictures or all:) Volume 2 >>>>>
5 Questions You Need to Ask (To Avoid Ruining Your Life)
Read this article first because I would loved to have had this growing up and it would have been some handy information right there! I probably would have printed thousands of copies and passed them out like Halloween candy for anyone brave enough to ask... or even if they weren't. Through out this exercise of writing as a therapy or a warning to others on what not to do with ones life, I have only touched on the subject of parents. Whether it be my own parents or my role as a parent it was hard to separate the two. It was also a way of telling you about my life in a way that shows I take responsibility for it without blaming others for everything that happened most especially my parents. I may never understand why they did some of the things they did but I am sure the same could be said about me for them too. I can only reveal some things here because it really isn't my place to tell you how they felt but I can give you some overview... at times. I'd like to tell you mom would write her own blog but that is not her cup of tea. She recently asked me why I didn't write like this at school and I told her... I had no time, experience, understanding, desire or even a handy computer so that about sums it up. So I will start with this, both of my parents have a dark but different sense of humor. And then look at me and wonder why mine is even more twisted than either one of theirs. Hummm let me think...
Our family tree has a few kinks and knots in it and my moms real mother died when she was about 2 and then she went to live with her 2nd cousin who we call grandma today. Grandma's mom was MawMaw and she's my mothers, moms, sister... one of about 11, I think. Got it? Her real dad died later when she was 12 but she had 2 older brothers which she didn't see too often then. Later came along her step brother but she had left home shortly after he was born so she didn't see him too much either. By then she was in business school, then working and later met and married my dad. On a bet. After a few weeks of dating. Yeah she did! But that handy piece of info was not offered until much later in life. Mom also worked right after I was born up until I was about 3 years old and then she stayed home. With nothing to do... but me. You wouldn't know it now but that side of the family was pretty big with all the branches and the old reunions were held in places that could hold large amounts of people. I would ask are you sure we are kin to all these people because we didn't see them too often and I wondered where they were the rest of the time?
Dad had a brutal childhood of fighting for food for his 7 younger brothers and sisters at the time. Poverty and circumstance left little else. Later he lived in orphanages and with a few relatives but went into the army at 18. After Vietnam he dated a bit but started working at the company which he met mom. How they decided to move to the mobile estates is anybodies guess. Dad had always drank to my knowledge but had it under control for a while in the beginning. While I understand why he drank, I'll never understand why he used it as an answer to all the problems. I know the 4 DUI's he had over the years didn't help matters in the least because I was there and saw it with my own two eyes. Most of my memories of dad are him walking in the front door with a sack of beer to say hello as he walked out the back toward his room and later his shed outside. Hi dad... Bye dad was pretty much our conversations for 30 years. I also remember him offering a beer to a Jehovah Witness one weekend morning and we never saw them again. Dad worked at a refrigerated trucking companies parts department but he loved guns, old tools and fishing from time to time. He loved going to flea markets to find anything and he would also refinish old furniture too. For years though I would hear him talking to himself or catch him in mid sentence when I walked out to the shed. He did quit drinking for a while later and I remember that he had a big garden and a lot of plants going on at that time but it was not to last.
Both of my parents were weird but together their combined weirdness was a study in the extremes. An addict struggles to control life with the addiction and the ones that loves them struggle for control over their life with an addict. And the cycle continues. Their decision to have me was planned and were genuinely surprised that I became a very weird kid. Dad wanted a boy and mom wanted a girl and because I was both or neither, closest being a tom boy girl, at best I could only make them happy half the time. When I was older I could look into my parents eyes and see the hurt, suffering and hopeless in there but I could not understand why they kept at it after so long. For me there had to be something better than suffering just for the sake of it and I decided even further back that just wasn't for me. I didn't understand the quiet desperation under the pretense or the anger. I sure didn't understand the mounting regrets the folks accumulated with each passing year especially as a young child. The only thing I understood was I could make mom really mad at times without much effort on my part. I'm talking veins bulging, hair raising, venting for hours, steam coming from her ears, kind of mad. If writing lines however many times or being grounded didn't work then a whoopin' would be in order for what ever offense that transpired. And whoopin's would be with a belt usually while she held onto one arm and I tried to evade for dear life, resulting in us going in a circle. I wasn't kidding about her scaring the hell out of me as a small child. Until I got over it :)
I was a bored kid and if left to my own devises I could entertain myself. But often not the way my mom wanted and this one day I took some vaseline jelly and used it to slick back my hair. A lot of it. When mom came in the room and saw what was happening... she was not pleased. In fact when she took me in the bathroom to wash my hair it felt like she was playing basket ball with my head under the tap water all the while venting her displeasure in a very clear and loud manner while keeping rhythm between the two. Once when I was even younger I let a girl on the bus draw on my arms with magic marker along with my report card and when I got home it was back to the tub. Top Job... scrubbing clothes and little girls since... I was born. My mother really didn't like dirt and I was all about it... most of the time. In fact my mother cleaned the house often using me as slave labor and she was borderline OCD. I never understood why I had to waste so many perfectly good Saturday's cleaning the fridge with a tooth brush and opening every condiment jar to clean around it and the lids too. And you could forget about sleeping in most of the time because sleep was for sissies at our house and the Master Drill Sargent said there was stuff to do... you know like make the bed!
I wrote in an earlier post about Christmas presents and how I would have liked things like skates, bikes, motors bikes, go carts and a lot of other fun for boys toys. At this point in time I had demonstrated that I had zero aptitude or desire for sports of any kind and I don't think dad was too upset about it. About all he watched was boxing. But as an only child I got a lot those little green army men and a lot of board games that take more than one person to play. And they didn't want to play or do the math 1 + 1 = 2 players and then wonder where I got my skills in math from. They were tired which I can understand now... but not so much then. I know I got on mom nerves because she told me but when I'd ask to go outside or over to my friends, she'd say no a lot. I must have not been getting on her nerves that much. Once I got older mom had my tonsils out because she was tired of taking me to the doctor every other Friday. But most Friday's we were either going to see movies at the dollar theater or going to grandma's and granddads house. Oh and the dance lessons that were entertainment. Well entertainment for them anyway :) I can say my mom did everything in her power to make me a refined young lady but you can not make a Corvette out of a Chevette no matter how you reconfigure the parts. Here is a good explanation from the SOTT team of why that may be. Females fetuses exposed to testosterone like steroids aberrantly produced by their pregnant mothers adrenal gland are more likely to become tomboys. Conversely, excessive estrogen can orient a male fetus to more feminine pursuits in later life.
I rescued my pink high top tennis shoes out of the trash many times because she hated them. And she was thrifty to say the least, so I don't understand why she wanted to throw away a perfectly good pair of shoes. If it wasn't on sale, half price or in the discontinued bins then I didn't see it, wear it or even know about it. I was wearing 70's bell bottoms in the 80's in middle school and style was something only other people had. In fact things always seemed to disappear when I was at school and now I know that she was routinely throwing things away that she felt I didn't need any longer. Whether I wanted them, liked them or not. I had braces put on some where around here and despite my best efforts to pop the damn things off with popsicle sticks because they hurt... I would keep them for a good long while. Mom made sure I did my homework first as I came home from school and I became really good at dictation. I was much better at drawing though and would doodle over everything but I did turn those homework papers in... most of the time. Once my dad spent weeks making this log house out of tooth picks for a project in school. I was impressed and got an A. Well both of my parents got better grades in my school than I did because I just couldn't care about it. It was boring, hard for me to make friends and I felt there was not much to learn from it... at least at the time.
I was also riding the bus everyday and had to deal with 3 different bullies as I have spoke about several times all ready but the details have a lot to do with my parents as well. One was a very fat obnoxious older boy, one an older girl who was even trashier than the rest and then the last one was just a year or two older than me. For years I had to ride the bus with these loud, mean and often times combative kids that used the weak ones as a verbal or real punching bag on a bad day. On an afternoon ride home I had had enough of the youngest of the 3 pulling my bandana around my neck and got up to finally get in her face. It took everything I had to face her but in my mind they were not as bad as mom so I had a prayer. When we started to fight she grabbed my bandana again like she was going to choke me and then I bum rushed her to the back of the bus where I slammed her against the back wall. I made the decision that if I was going to get hurt then so was she and after that people weren't so quick to give me trouble. I got suspended from the bus for 3 days and mom was not pleased. Dad told me that I shouldn't fight back and I just looked at him as if he lost his mind. Not fight back? Stand there and take it? Really? Not a chance... not any more... not ever again. Bill Cosby said it best though that parents weren't looking for justice, they were looking for QUIET!
At some point in time I think around 12 or so things in my mind begin to change towards mom and dad and I started pushing more and more. I spent a lot of time in ISS and then OSS which was a mini vacation for a bit and mom was not pleased. I was tired of hearing no for almost everything and had decided that a whoopin was quicker than being grounded and worth the risk of getting caught to do something... anything fun. Mom asked me one time would I jump off a bridge if my friends asked me to and I told her no. But after thinking about it I told her... well it depends on how high it is and how deep the water was because that looks like it could be fun. I stopped being scared of mom to a certain degree and started to explore the out side world on my own. Many highlights have been sprinkled through out this blog and things got very hairy from there on out. Looking back I think I figured that if mom was not going to be pleased I might as well as her give her a reason. We fought a lot and I no longer sat on the couch and just listened to the never ending rants that would sometime last for DAYS. People outside and at the school were living a life and I wanted one. Because it had been denied often I did what ever it took to experience it when ever I could and when mom finally had enough and put me out, I was relieved. My mother taught me many lessons even some that she didn't mean for me to know and after a while I begin to use them against her. She taught me better than she thought possible and again seemed floored where this came from.
The only family picture I have of us together.
We didn't talk very much after I left until I got pregnant with Trey and then things seemed to get better. She did try and talk me into not marrying my ex but at that time I had already made up my mind and that was that. And to be honest I think her disapproval of it made me want to do it all the more. But in the end I really did it for Trey because I wanted him to have every opportunity to see his dad and for my ex to be a dad. Even if it wasn't that important to him at that time or any other. When mom asked why I was having a baby I told her I wanted someone to love and meant it with all my heart. And at some point in time she said I better hope that I didn't have a kid like me. You know almost every parent curses the next generation and she was no different. But she was there in the hospital with me and actually found a doctor to medicate me after a very long labor and a clueless husband standing by doing nothing... and by then it was too late so he was born naturally. Also apparently dad started drinking again around this time and it was all down hill from there.
Right after Trey was born we went to TN to see one of her brothers and were so very tired after a long day of traveling and when we were alone in our room that night, I heard mom poot. I had never heard the woman break wind before in my life and started laughing so hard I farted. Then we had a contest on who's was the loudest and longest and she won! Who knew? When I moved back home after leaving my husband I really thought things would be different because it had almost been 3 years and now I had Trey but it was almost like I never left in the first place. Mom and her schedules would drive even the most regimented of persons insane and it was hard for her to understand that you didn't have to raise kids staying at home all the time. Stability is one thing but you shouldn't have to be a prisoner to it. I know I didn't have all the answers back then but I did try to understand things. Like why is she still here with dad if she was so unhappy? Have it out, work it out or get out I don't care, just pick an out! Why does she care so much about where and how I live as long as Trey was happy and healthy? And most importantly why does she have to have her way all the time? When I had that big wreck in 91 and totaled the car I was stuck at home more and that made it all the more difficult between us so mom was not pleased.
And the one and only confrontation I had with my dad happened around this time. One night I was going to the store for a pack of smokes but had a problem with the lights in my RX-7. I walked in to ask dad if he would look at it and for some reason I will never understand, other than the alcohol, he just went off and started chasing me while screaming a lot of crazy stuff. We ran outside, down the driveway, up the driveway and by that time mom had came out to see what all the noise was about. Instead of following me, he ran up the stairs, past mom, into the trailer like he was going to lock us out. I rammed the front door stopping him from closing it and we started to fight and ended up in the kitchen. Somehow, someway we were on the floor with my leg above his head and I started to slam his head into the floor. He finally let go of my hands and got up, then walked away. We never spoke about it again and I bet he was wondering where that came from too. I don't know how he explained the marks on his face the next day but I think that mom might have been pleased.
Once I started working in the bar, I think that was again the last straw with mom because that's when she threw me out again. I don't know if mom thought she could do a better job at raising Trey than I could or what, but to me she missed the opportunity to get out of the situation she was in and in doing so denied me something I wanted with all my heart. I believe that Trey was an excuse to not change her life and still have some control over me. If you've been wondering why I was so angry through out most of my life that would be the reason. I wanted to be free and she wanted control. It was a never ending struggle that would take a while for me to let go of. But once I stopped struggling and went my own way then things slowly started to change. I couldn't control the situation with mom so I didn't even bother to try but I did get my life together and tried to make the most of it with what I had available. Over the years I've heard many of my parents regrets so often that I can almost recite them verbatim. I knew in my heart that I didn't want to live with all the what if's and whatever happened... at least I tried. I can't say if anyone in my family ever had any faith in me and both made it way more difficult than was needed to learn and grow. I now understand that it was their way of trying to keep me in their life but those methods usually backfired. Certain guilt's have a shelf life and do expire after a while.
When Trey got older, mom had him on a script for ADHD and then would send him over to my house... drug free for the weekend. So I would then buy him the most obnoxious toy I could find and send it home with him. If they would've had red bull he would've had some of that too! She would call and complain about Trey and I would tell her that she shouldn't have put that curse on me since she was now raising him. Funny how things like that work out sometimes. In fact I gave my mom many different books to read about difficulties with kids and I don't think she ever cracked the cover on one of them. That's when I learned she wasn't looking for solutions she just wanted to vent and so she did. Now that I understood the process there was no need to get bent out of shape because of it. Just go on with life. But mom still has this bad habit of dropping bomb shells about the past from time to time and of course it is too late to do anything about it. Example being our trip to visit family in Florida when on the long drive down we had a nice long conversation about things that she had thought was wrong with my life and tried to fix them without my knowledge. She is very lucky I am not dropping a few more of my own here in this lovely little chapter and I sure hope she knows where this came from. :D At some point my mother became a cafeteria lunch lady and I was absolutely floored. She didn't even like kids so how was she going to do this job? And I swear she spent more time at the child support office over the years than she she did looking for me at school. In fact she would tell the case workers she'd be seeing them every week until my ex paid. And for the record I do understand the need for the money and I hoped that my ex would have been a little more forthcoming in the beginning, but after a while I weighed the time, energy and aggravation factor in and decided it would just be a waste. Another thing with mom is lately she has had several wrecks and speeding tickets in the turbo powered car of hers. Lead foot Lucy even has the nerve to talk about my driving skills, when she drives like a New York taxi driver with 7 kids to feed!
You know growing up in the house of contradictions has given me so very much to think about over the years. I remember hearing my grandmother ask me many times over the years... Why can't you be more like your cousin? Especially when I'd get caught doing things I wasn't supposed to be doing and I would always say... I don't know. After a while that question faded and I later found out that my cousin had married a black man and in a very small southern town, it is still a little difficult for the older generation to accept. While I never considered myself a black sheep growing up I did feel invisible at times because their generation felt that children should be seen and not heard. I on the other hand didn't like that philosophy so much and felt they should have thought about that before having kids or me in particular. While down there in later years and then something about the cousin coming up in conversation is where I had one of my many moments of mouth engaging before the brain. I asked my grandmother... aren't you glad I didn't turn out like my cousin? Well she just said oh hush but I could clearly feel I hit a nerve. I must say I am pretty good at doing that even if I don't mean to and please don't miss understand the comment as anything other than to bring a few points home to my family. Another distant cousin had married a black man too and her mother had pretty much disowned her. I don't think that's right but that ain't my life and it ain't like many people listen to me anyway. Mom had many friends of color over the years and many of them were the kindest people I had ever met. The only time Trey ever commented on a pretty black girl he saw at the store one day caused me to laugh wondering how that was going to work out because I don't think my dad was going to be in favor of it... not one bit.
I think I finally made mom proud when I bought my house and kept it for so long. But I still couldn't get her to understand that if she was going to buy me something for any holiday's... can it be something I could use and not just what she wanted me to have. I had a thing for plastic storage tubs and shelving to put everything on and she just wasn't going to buy it. I now have enough tennis shoes to last me a life time... no kidding. I once told my dad jokingly, I'd like a cordless drill for Christmas and he bought it! Mom had bought me a bracelet, which was nice but I needed the drill and the look on my face was priceless never mind the fact that I kept playing with it with glee! I was floored he bought it and she was floored I liked it so much. After that it became the tradition to have Christmas dinners at my house and mom was always around to see the characters that were in and out of my life. Sometimes I'd even bring people over for shock value :) This one time one of Marvelous's friends came over and he was debating sexual reassignment surgery and he was dressed in a cheap blond wig, full makeup, nails painted hot pink, mini skirt, knee high go go boots and sucking on a penis shaped lolly pop. He said hi to mom who could barely manage to speak then asked if he could move in and be our new roommate. Buy this time I was about done with Marvelous and told him no because done means done with all that. When the remodel of the bathroom was completed mom was floored at how good it looked and between micro managing Marvelous I had stained the cabinets with my own blend of colors to resemble a dark copper. Seems mom was pleased that I had skills to get the bathroom done and pick the right colors too.
If you have read this far then you must know I do love mom and dad dearly. They are human and have made as many bad decisions as I have and forgiveness came but only after I let go of the past. I just wish they both could do the same and let go of their past... but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. I know I make my whole family nervous because I like to yank the rug off the floor to expose all that is underneath. Not only do they prefer to just live with the mound under the rug like an old family friend, they wanted me to and that was something I just couldn't do. I tried to have a relationship with dad while mom was gone but he could never see what was right in front of him and that is his loss. But then again I felt the same way myself about Trey but this time I could do nothing about it while here on God's green earth. The shelf life on that guilt has a long time before expiration. I am not God however and just don't have an infinite supply of forgiveness on hand and had to draw a line in the sand, no matter how difficult it was. Every so often my roommate will drive by and let me know if the lights are still burning. Dad still leaves the light on in Trey's room every night and no matter our differences it is still kind of comforting. I don't worry to much about him because I know if anyone would try to break in down there he would probably blow them away without a moments hesitation. And again they wonder where I get it from...
Mom would speculate what life would've been like if I had raised Trey and my answer was always we'll never know. I know life would have been even harder but I'm sure I would have found a way. Later she would remind me of my words from time to time about wanting to have someone to love when I had Trey. Finally after 20 years I said mom, I know you might not know this, but there are some people in the world that have children because they want to love them and not because they are looking for cheap labor... while that may come as a big surprise it is still a very true concept. Yes I call my mother out because she never let me get away with anything so I don't know why she thinks it should be any different now. LOL! Even though mom gained a lot of help from the kids at the house after Trey died it was so very hard for me to deal with all of this at one time. I had been waiting for so long, for so many things to resolve themselves and ran out of patience which is why I crowbarred her out of the house when and how I did. It just wasn't going to happen any other way and you know mom was not pleased. Mom also used to say I was like a bull in a China shop and she was so very right about that one. But after having some time and distance with everything that has happened I believe that she is feeling and getting better. I can make her laugh and have really tried to understand where she is coming from, even if I can't, with a telescope and a map. But I try and for that reason mom is pleased.
27. The Reason for My Season >>>>>
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