Mom
My mother is the oldest of five children. She along with three of her siblings were all born in the Independence MO Sanitarium. It was the closest hospital to where they were living. My sister and cousins and I have long teased our parents for being born in the sanitarium. We always joke with my grandmother that while her children may have each been born in the sanitarium, they were only there one time but she was there four times. Grandma rolls her eyes and kind of laughs it off. She is a good sport about all the teasing we do. Most of the time.
It was 1958 and Grandpa had finished his time in the Army (he had been drafted twice!) and they had been living in a small house next door to his parents on their farm in Missouri. Mom has told me that she remembers from those first few years that they didn’t have indoor plumbing and used an outhouse and when it was cold grandma and grandpa would heat up rocks to put in the beds to keep warm at night. I’ve been spoiled by the luxerys of a very modern life and can’t even imagine having to heat rocks to keep warm. In October, my grandparents felt a call to leave Missouri and head to Colorado with their four small children. Grandma says they needed to get away from family and be able to live their own lives. Grandpa had spent his childhood in New Mexico and loved the desert. He was raised in the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints. A small detail right now but it does play a part in my history. Grandma grew up in Arkansas in a Assembly of God home.
They moved to a small farm in brighton, Colorado and by 1962 the last of mom’s siblings had arrived. The only one not born in the Sanitarium. It’s funny for me to think of my mother and her siblings and there is an obvious distance between the older four and the youngest. I often wonder if that is because of the location of their births or because of the age difference.
By the time I was seven, mom wasn’t there emotionally and by my eighth Christmas she wasn’t there physically either. I spent many summers in Denver with her parents and siblings listening to my aunt Bobbie tell stories of my mother. Mom used to think she was a princess and was going to marry Prince Charles. She would practice her fairy tale walks and would try to be the peace keeper of the house when her siblings were fighting. Mom would stand at the top of the stairs singing “When There’s Love At Home” trying to calm the angry children in the basement.
There is beauty all around,
When there’s love at home;
There is joy in ev’ry sound,
When there’s love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide,
Smiling sweet on ev’ry side;
Time doth softly, sweetly glide,
When there’s love at home;
Love at home, love at home,
Time doth softly, sweetly glide,
When there’s love at home.
I’ve never actually heard mom sing this song. It seems to be a staple hymn to sing in church on Mother’s day. I usually have to leave the room as I loose all control of my tears. I imagine what life would have been like with her around. Would there really have been love at home? Would my sister and I have been able to have a normal childhood?
*******************************
Before we had moved out of the four story building, Heidi had moved out not long before. Her mother was a friend of mom’s. Heidi had divorced parents and a baby brother. I remember sirens all around one night and mom picking me up later then normal form Laura’s house. Heidi’s mom had been stabbed 19 times by her boyfriend. The baby in his crib and Heidi missing. Heidi was found later with her father. I never saw Heidi again. I have had an irrational fear of serial killers ever since then. I was never afraid of the boogeyman or monsters under my bed. They were my imaginary friends, but the thought of a serial killer under my bed would cause me to leave the lights on all night and run and jump on my bed and hide under the covers hoping I’d be alive in the morning. Even now at thirty two years old I still find that if I wake up in the middle of the night for a drink of water or a trip to the bathroom that I will have to turn each light on to get where I am going and I always have to check the shower for intruders.
It was about that time that I started being very aware of dad’s snoring. He snores like a bear. I always knew that no harm would come to me as long as dad was there. His snoring became a security blanket for me. As long as I heard his snoring I was fine. That has carried with me through out my entire life. I know that I am safe if I hear snoring.
*************************
I was about 7 years old. Nita was 2. Someone had given us one of those black felt pictures that you color in the white parts with crappy markers. Mom and dad were yelling at each other in the front room. Nita and I wanted to color. I walked out and asked for help and both parents yelled at me to get back to my room. Nita and I cuddled close to each other that night. I heard sounds from the other side of my bedroom door. By morning Dad was gone. The sounds I heard were from Dad packing things and he went to stay with his sister and her family. Nita came out of our room in the morning and asked where daddy was and mom said he was gone. Dad got an apartment on the other side of the city and mom got a roomate and a boyfriend that is as old as her mother. Nita soon went to live with Dad and I stayed with mom. She was rarely around and we moved to several different places during the next year. Her roommate was lazy and would make me go walk to the store for her and buy her oozy filled snake cakes and never once give me money to buy something for myself. Her boyfriend was emotionally and physically abusive. I watched him hit her one night. It scared me to death. I did my best to be on good behavior around him. I got time with Dad and Aimee but not enough.
Dad didn’t know about this boyfriend. Mom had told Dad that the boyfriend was an uncle to the Roommate. One night we were in a new apartment and I was woken up in the middle of the night by my uncle yelling at my mom. Dad needed to go to the hospital as he thought he was having a heart attack and needed someone to go get Nita. He had been calling the apartment but there was no answer. He finally called mom’s parents to do something and my uncle came to the house banging on the door. No answer so he broke in and found mom in bed with the old man and totally freaked out on her for not answering the phone or the door and that she needed to go get Nita right away. They got me out of bed and we drove in the old mans car across the city to dad’s apartments. Mom went inside to get Nita and I was told to lay down in the backseat of the car. Dad walked right by me and didn’t know I was there. I tried to sit up and get out and hug him but the old man pushed me down and told me stay where I was. I remember dad sitting in his car in the middle of the night with the lights on until mom brought Nita out of the apartment and then he drove off. We drove home in silence. Dad didn’t have a heart attack it ended up being an anxiety attack. I’m pretty sure Nita stayed with us for a few days.
The old man was a drunk who liked things his way. He wanted me home after school every day when he got home from work. He was a crane operator. Mom worked in real estate at the time. I didn’t like being home alone after school until someone arrived. I was only seven and shouldn’t have been alone. One day I was sick and called mom from school to see if I could go over to a friends house after school so I wouldn’t be sick and alone. She told me I could. After a few hours when I was pretty sure that someone would be home I walked slowly, body aching from the sickness. The old man was the only one home and he started yelling at me. I tried to tell him that mom gave me permission but he was drunk and not listening. He sent me to my room until mom got there and then when she arrived home from work he called me into their bedroom. He started with his and and eventually his belt and ‘spanked’ me. Mom stood in the door way and watched. She never did anything to stop him. He eventually stopped. Sent me to my room for the rest of the night without dinner. I was sick and hungry and crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I had welts on my bum and legs and back. I don’t know how long it took before mom finally came to see me. I wasn’t crying so hard anymore. He was most likely passed out in the other room. She came in and sat with me apologizing over and over and hugging me.
Not long after that we moved again. This time they got a one bedroom apartment that just happened to have a walk in storage space in the apartment. That storage space became my room. I had a twin size bed a small bookshelf and a small dresser with a radio alarm clock and a lamp. No windows. Concrete walls. It was living here that my fear of serial killers really took over. I was so afraid of someone under my bed. It was also in this apartment at seven years old that I had my first taste of wine and beer. Mom and the old man thought it was pretty funny to give a child alcohol.
In June of 1984 I turned eight years old. The old man was from Oregon and convinced mom to move there with him. I don’t know the reason she told dad she was moving but it wasn’t the old man. Dad still had not been told about him. The custody agreement between my parents stated joint custody as long as Nita and I were together. Nita couldn’t be pried away from dad as I couldn’t be pried away from mom. So I left with her.
Oregon was beautiful! Green and rainy. I loved the colors and smells of someplace new. I saw the ocean for the first time. The sea was my first true love. I would build sand castles and get my feet wet. I’d look for shells and pick up jellyfish off the sand. They never stung me. I was definatly a loner child. I didn’t have friends and found ways to keep myself entertained and as far away from the old man as I could. We lived in two different places while I was there. The first was a house with a plum tree in the front yard. I could mostly be found high up in the branches of the plum tree hiding from the world. Mom would have to beg me to come down. She did her best to keep the old man from me. At the same time she tried to make me accept him as more then just her boyfriend. She came out to the tree not long after we moved in and asked me if she could give him a fathers day card from me that sad ‘dad’ on it. I told her she could do what she wanted but I wouldn’t sign it. That night I walked into the living room and mom was sitting on his lap and they were looking at a playgirl magazine like it was just any other magazine to have laying around the house with a young child living there. We didn’t live there for very long before we moved into a townhouse. Mom and the old man would leave me home alone most nights so they could go out drinking and what not. I was eight years old home until closing time alone watching Benny Hill on tv just to have something on to keep me focused on something other then being home alone. On the nights they were home mom would send me to bed as early as 6pm. After she fed me something from some fast food place and they would sit outside on the back patio underneath my room with friends laughing and carrying on. Strange smells drifting into my room.
The old man had a motorcycle and they loved to go for long rides up the coast or to mount hood. They found a small helmet for me and found out that three people could legally ride on a bike together in oregon. We tried once with me in the very back but it was too scary for me. For a while they would put me in between them but after a while I would sit in front of the old man and lay my head on the engine cover and just pray for when we would stop. I hated being on that motorcycle more then just about anything.
I finally got up the courage to tell mom that I wanted to go back to colorado with dad. She didn’t protest and called dad and told him I wanted to come for christmas. On december 19, 1984 I got on the plane to colorado. Mom then called dad and told him she bought me a one way ticket and that I would be staying with him.
Mom was extremly loving and sharing during those last few weeks. She spent more time with me then she probably had the entire time I had lived in Oregon. On my last night with her she took me to the mall to watch ice skaters and told me it was too bad I wasn’t staying because I could take ice skating lessons there. She took me to see santa claus, I have a picture of both of us with him, I’m sitting next to him on the sleigh and mom is sitting on his lap. She bought me a little baby doll and took me to have a child safety kit made. I was wearing a wooley scratchy blue sweater and tan corderoys. Just a plain eight year old kid. Mom was wearing her fancy boots and tight tight jeans and a leather and fur coat. Hair frosted with dark dark roots and more makeup then I wear on Halloween. I don’t remember much of the old man during those last days. We celebrated christmas there early and then mom took me to the airport and did a great job of convincing me that she was really sad to see me go. I was flying from Oregon to Colorado alone.
*****************
For months after I got there I would fall asleep holding a picture of mom and crying because I missed her so much. I didn’t think dad knew until the night he came in my room and told me it had been long enough and took the picture from me. I cried the hardest that night. But the tears slowed down over time and I realized that I didn’t miss her as much as I thought that I did.
A few weeks later I started school. Middle of the school year in third grade. My teacher was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was so kind to me. She gave out awards to all of the kids in the class over the year so we all got our own special week. I was so proud of my award. It was a white printed piece of paper mounted on a piece of purple card stock. I got the sweet smile award. Regardless of everything I had gone through I was and still am a smiler. The kids were mostly nice to me. I was the new kid. And I was incredibly shy. But I did alright. I was the only one in my class with divorced parents. The school thought that the kids with divorced parents should have some counseling. So two other students and myself met once a week for therapy sessions. We all told of our parents. I was the only one living with my dad. The other two were with their moms. Which is how most of the children back then lived after divorce. We did a lot of talking and drawing. I still have one of my drawings where I had to make a picture of my family. So I drew mom, dad, Nita and myself and I added a house with a garage and in the garage I put motorcycle helmets. One for the old man. I felt that I had to include him somehow but I knew I would be showing the picture to dad and I had been trained to not mention the old man around him. I still don’t know why I felt that I had to add something of him there.