1. Appetizers

We begin life with an appetite. We begin as hungry, little, mole people blindly searching for our mother’s milk.  If our needs are met and we are nourished by an abundant breast, we learn to trust in the world.  If we encounter a timid breast that fails to nurture us and we’re unable to suckle, we learn to be anxious. These first lessons shape both mother and child.  My first child, a son named Michael, was born too early and lived only five days.  We both suffered from a blow to my belly by a jealous boyfriend and the resulting hemorrhage and malnutrition.  I saw Michael only through glass and never held him in my arms. After his death, I left that boyfriend in an alley and moved away.  Later I met a Hungarian Carpenter at a hippie commune near Berkeley California.  He was a gentle-man who played Joni Mitchell songs on his guitar and so I married him. My second pregnancy was a leap of faith.  Our daughter, Lillie Beth was also born early but she was healthy.  Seconds after her birth she was cradled in her Papa’s arms and cooing at him. But my milk was slow to arrive and she slept through the feedings.  I felt her tiny body slipping away in my arms and I was filled with guilt.  Then a friend smuggled a can of beer into my hospital room and insisted that I drink it as she stood guard.  The Carpenter Husband instructed the nurses to stop feeding his daughter formula before they brought her to me. At the next feeding my milk began flowing and my hungry girl was fed. My youngest, another boy, Maxx the Wunderkind, was also an early arrival but this time with no anxiety and no timid breast.  He always knew there would be plenty of milk and has never doubted my love. Lille Beth never felt nourished by me and has always searched for more love than I can provide. We teach what we learn.

     The meal begins with the appetizers.  This is the food you eat before you eat the meal. This whole concept defies logic. If the appetizers are good the dinner guests might fill up on them and not stay for dinner. On the other hand, if the appetizers are bad the guests may believe that the meal won’t be any good either and they’ll make excuses to leave. The appetizer concept is not rational yet it seems to work. I suppose it’s because a tiny bit of food wets the appetite and creates a sense of anticipation. Just a hint of the culinary delights to come and the dinner guest wonders, “Is this all there is? Will there be other dishes? Will there be enough for me?” The suspense keeps them glued to the chair while the aromas from the kitchen bring out Pavlovian drools. 

     We train our children the same way. We teach with cruelty. We teach with fear. Bad parents keep their children hungry and devoted by occasionally serving up appetizers. It’s not enough to feed a growing child but it is enough to keep them coming back to the table. When a child is never sure where the next meal is coming from they learn to be patient.  They wait like the dogs under the royal table for scraps of affection tossed their way. This is the worst kind of cruelty. If the child was never loved, never given a morsel of affection, they would simply leave and find the nourishment elsewhere. But the family cook gives an occasional crumb and teaches the growing child to live with the hunger. Worst of all, they are taught they don’t deserve more, they haven’t earned their keep. The promise of acceptance and a full belly is dangled as elusive bait. The good parent only dangles desert. Nourishment is taken for granted. A child has a right to expect dinner.

     I raised Lillie Beth and Maxx on fresh air and square meals.  I fed them recipes I found in an old leather-bound Watkins cookbook and the Vegetarian Epicure that was a gift from a good cook. The Carpenter Husband was a disciple of the natural foods diet and was strict about avoiding artificial food and white sugar.  He taught me how bad it was for the children and insisted I make everything from scratch. He was so strict that I was not permitted to buy vanilla yogurt, I had to buy plain yogurt and add honey and vanilla extract. Lillie Beth and Maxx were never given sugar cereal or sugar snacks.  Instead they had fresh fruits and homemade bread. After few years the Carpenter Husband changed his tune when he tired of Joni Mitchell.  After he left I found a garbage can full of candy wrappers under the seat of his truck. It was then I started using recipes I found on the backs of soup cans because I believed Campbell’s when they said, “Soup is good food”. I started buying vanilla yogurt and paper towels but I never bought sugar cereals. 

     Lillie Beth and Maxx grew beyond my menus.  They started eating strange exotic things I couldn’t find on soup cans.  They took over my kitchen and eventually found kitchens of their own.  They left the mountains and found homes near the sea.  Hating the silence they left behind and not knowing how to make soup for one, I followed them. Maxx turned gaming into a livelihood and Lillie Beth got tangled up with the wrong man.  She was not quite twenty when she gave birth to his son. 

     The night that my beloved grandson was born, I was looking at apartments.  I got a call that my daughter was in distress and I took two buses to the hospital.  The doctors decided to do a C-section because Lilly Beth’s preeclampsia.  Knowing that I would sit white knuckled on the waiting room chair like I do on airplane flights, she sent a message.  “Hold the plane up for me, Mom” she said.  And I did.   Tater Tot was born healthy and Lillie Beth recovered quickly.  I resumed my apartment search until a few days later when I got another call.  This time she wasn’t able to breast feed.  I arrived an hour later with a six pack of beer and a stack of fashion magazines.  The milk began to flow.  I didn’t leave again for five years. I was there for Tater Tot’s first smile, tooth, steps, words and his first day of school.  I survived the colic, eczema, diaper rash and projectile vomiting with pleasure because this child was the light of my life.  Then one day my daughter moved to Atlanta cutting off all communication.  A few years later she reappeared again broke and needing a place to live. They moved in with me.  My precious Tater Tot who was a joyous, precious toddler when he left, returned a timid and withdrawn.  It broke my heart.

His mother quickly made herself at home in my kitchen and fixed herself a plate of apple slices and peanut butter. My grandson looked at her and his eyes got big. He walked up next to her and said, “Oh me too!’ and reached for one of the apple slices. My daughter back-handed him and he fell backwards. From his reaction this was not the first time she had done this. I was speechless for a second. I didn’t want to believe what I saw. Calmly I told her that I thought what she did was wrong and took my grandson into the kitchen.  I made a apples and peanut butter snack for him and then I gave him a tour of the kitchen.  Together we picked out a shelf in the refrigerator and one in the cupboard and designated them as “Tater Tot’s Food”.  I let him help decide what to keep on his shelves and picked things I know he could prepare and eat independently.  We filled his shelves with fresh fruits, juice boxes, fishy crackers and other treats.  From then on I kept those shelves stocked with his favorites and whenever he came to my house, he’d check his cupboard. I wanted him to know, what his mother knew growing up, that at my house they were always welcome to food.

I made it my mission to teach him how to feed himself. He started spending the weekends with me while his mother partied with her friends. She became a world traveler while I taught him to make easy foods that would fill a hungry belly; peanut butter and jelly, cereal, cheese and fruit and toast. Over the phone I taught him how to wash out a glass and get some milk when his mother was passed out drunk. I taught him to survive my daughter, or at least that’s what I told myself.  Maybe I should have been more forceful in my condemnation. Maybe I should have turned her in to Child Protective Services.  I was afraid she’d disappear again and I would be cut out of his life again. I was afraid of the shape he’d be in next time I saw him and so I kept the cupboards full and said nothing.

Of course my daughter disappeared again; it became her weapon of choice. Whenever I would try to contact my grandson, I would be treated like a stalking pervert. Then when she has run out of money and alienated all her friends, she returns. I ask no questions, I just try to keep her busy while I try to find the little boy inside my grandson. But those walls grow higher with each year.

One year his principal called me to tell me that my grandson was threatening suicide and had pleaded with them to call me.  When they put Tater Tot on the phone he begged me to make things right with his mom so that he could spend weekends with me again. I promised that I would do whatever it took.  Not wanting to risk rejection, I called and left a simple message explaining the call from the school when they couldn’t reach her.  I made no accusations, simply asked if I could see Tater Tot. When I didn’t hear back, I called again only this time I begged and I groveled. Two days later when I still had no answer I called the school. They said that if they allowed my grandson any contact with me Lillie Beth was threatening legal action. But they had recommended a therapist for Tater Tot.

I contacted Grandparents groups, Child Protective Services anyone who could help me contact Tater Tot.  I hit a brick wall.  I called the school again and pleaded for help. The principle told me that the state mandated the counseling because of the suicide threat.  They told me he seemed less anxious.  I kept trying; I made a nuisance of myself.  But whenever I gave up I remembered his voice on the phone.

This time she arrived after an eight year absence. My worst fears were confirmed. My little grandson was now a handsome young man. He is tall with unruly hair and the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen.  But there is a solitary shadow   just below his well natured mask.  He had learned to survive his mother’s moods but he has also learned that life is a cruel place and you should never expect it to be any different.

When he arrived he would sit for days without eating until his mother offered him food and would never ask himself. When we would have a meal, he would never ask for seconds, he would wait and ask for the scraps from the plates. This horrified me.  I bought food especially for him but it sat uneaten until his mother gave the OK. At night, instead of sleeping, he quietly searches the kitchen for food. I gave him his cupboard, though I doubt he remembered. Finally I told him, “This is your Grandmother’s house. All the food is YOUR food.” It seemed to work, after a few weeks he was making sandwiches as though he had a right to.

This time it is worse. She’s taken him out of school to “home school” him. That means no school lunch, no friends and no teachers or counselors to check up on Tater Tot. He hides in a world of Japanese comic book heroes and softens her anger with his wit. He is kind courageous and he is my hero. For a moment, the curtain dropped and he allowed me to see him. It made her furious. Then whoosh…gone again, dragging my grandson behind her like a toy on a string. Hateful words on her way out the door.

My daughter is a “hunger tourist.” She complains her own appetites but doesn’t see that she is raising a starving child. He has been hungry all his life even when there was food in abundance. It makes me wonder what lesson I taught when I pushed my plate across the table and let her eat my dinner even though I was still hungry. I wanted to save her from the starvation that has plagued my life. Instead I taught her to be selfish.

I know what it’s like to be in my grandson’s shoes. Every crumb that ever entered my mouth was because of my mother’s broken back and aching feet. Feeding me was killing her and she never let me forget it.  The nausea set in early as the food felt like homicide in my mouth. It sat on top of my stomach like human flesh. The step-fathers, the boyfriends and the foster fathers, offered me praise, acceptance and bits of something I thought was nutritious. But it was actually deadly poison. It made me sick and I would spit it out and push the plate away. I’d settle for coffee with lots of milk and sugar and vomit even that.

Most of the stories in this book are about being hungry. About life filled with too many appetizers and no real nourishment. It’s also about the family secrets. Even now, past sixty, I open my mouth to speak and the family doors slam shut and the phone calls go to a full voice mail. My emails bounce back across the universe and I am the orphan again. In unsent letters I cry to them, “When will I be allowed to speak? How much longer do I keep the secrets? When will I ever be good enough to sit at the table with you? When will you stop punishing me for being hurt?” Cowards, they are cowards. Afraid of the truth they sentence me to a lifetime of anguish and hunger while they feed me appetizers and tell me it’s all I deserve. It’s not all I deserve. It never was.

So here it is. I offer myself up on this paper platter. My life, my story for all of you to munch at will. I become bite sized mushrooms stuffed full of the anger that I cannot speak. I am zucchini sticks, or potato skins. I am the wings of a chicken, a bird that cannot fly, covered in spice and ready to be devoured. I offer myself up, not for them or him or even me. I offer myself to all those who have also been silenced. Those who find they are forever tarnished by shame they did not deserve, paying for sins they never committed. For those who hunger to speak the truth, I’ll dish it out. Not merely appetizers, but full hearty meals and even seconds, served with love and understanding hot off the griddle. For the little boy, now young man who left weighted down by his mother’s erratic mental health – I’m here. I’ll always be here. You’ll always have that cupboard and more.

 

 

 

13. Possum Stew and Road Kill

It was the summer of John Denver and the bicentennial.  It was a time for back to the land, Rodale’s Guide to Organic Gardening, Diet for a Small Planet and the Foxfire books.  It was all about self-reliance and living off the grid.  The Carpenter Husband, Lilly Beth and I loaded the ‘54 International Panel Truck with all our worldly possessions and our high hopes.   We put the wooden Amstel Holland Beer box between the seats and filled it with cloth diapers and an old Aladdin thermos full of coffee.  The portacrib was lashed to the floor behind the seats and filled with soft blankets and stuffed animals.  Then with the Rand McNally in hand, we headed out to the hills of West Virginia to join some city friends from Detroit.  Our destination was a plot of land on the road to Harrisville, population 347. The entire town consisted of a gas station/post office combo and a five and dime store.  Our friends bought a farm in West Virginia to build a life for themselves and their two kids.  A life away from the apocalypse that we all knew was sure to come.  It was post Watergate and pre-Iran Contra but our faith in all things government was strongly shaken.  No longer the starry eyed hippies that danced at Woodstock, now we were the hard eyed pragmatist who spoke of alternative energy and the price of canning jars. We no longer believed that we could change the world, we were afraid the world was changing us.  So we ran away.  

Our house was three miles in off the hard road, down a winding path to the bottom of the holler.  The road was lined with ferns and waterfalls and wild blackberries.  At the bottom sat John and Judy’s little house and down the road nearly a mile further was our place.  The sprawling two story house had been a stop for the teamsters back when teamsters drove horses.   It was built with of sturdy oak, had a wrap around porch on both levels, a pump next to the kitchen, gas lamps, gas heaters and a natural gas well on the property.  It was almost heaven, West Virginia, except for the skeeters and the snakes.   

At times it was “almost heaven” – at times it seemed that the Carpenter Husband and I had enough love for each other and our girl child that we could conquer the world – or at least that little plot of West Virginia.

There were other times too.  Like just before a rain and the air was hot and heavy.  The pressure rises and you’re waiting for the rain. The humidity is so high that you feel like you’re breathing under water and you’re waiting for the rain.  And you’re waiting for the rain.  Lightening flashes across the meadow and finally it rains in buckets.  The rain washes out the road and the creek becomes a raging river and you’re waiting for the sun.  Everything you own is wet and damp and muddy and you’re waiting for the sun. 

Some days, when the bucket that I kept under the sink (instead of indoor plumbing) overflowed again, I’d think of my sisters and their dishwashers and wonder why I had to do it the hard way every time. 

Then Lillie Beth would come to the door with her tennis shoe full of blackberries and her face berry blue.  She offers you up her tennis shoe and you just have to laugh.  You take her down to the creek, find that little spot that seems custom made to fit her little bottom.  The water flows gently over her and she splashes until her face is clean again.  It’s those times you feel that God is in his heaven and what a wonderful creator to have this place, this wonderful place just for you.  Then the Carpenter Husband, who hasn’t a single romantic bone in his body, brings you home wildflowers he picked along the road.  You set them in a milk jug on the window ledge and feel blessed by God. 

Then he goes off to work in town.  It’s the bi-centennial and he’s helping to restore a 200 year old cabin with 200 year old lumber.  This seems to require that he spend hours at the local hardware store taking with the menfolk and incidentally using the indoor toilet.  You are out in the wilderness alone with a young child for most of the day.  Then the time stretches out and he misses dinner.  It grows dark and shadows dance across the walls.  Strange noises fill the silence.  You hold Lillie Beth on your lap and try to rock her to sleep.  Suddenly, trash cans bang and clatter on the back porch.  Out the uncurtained window you see a big black bear.  You heart stops.  You grab your rifle – you own personal “I can kill a pop bottle at 20 paces” 22 caliber.  You sit back in the rocking chair with Lillie Beth and the rifle in your arms. You just keep rocking.  In your head you realize that you must look like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies but you are too scared to move.  You just keep rocking.  After an hour the bear moves on.  Shortly after the headlights flash across the windows and he’s home again.  Each day as it takes him longer and longer to find his way home, you realize that heaven is only in your mind.  You wonder how long you can just keep rocking.

One day I was inside washing up the dishes while Lilly Beth took her nap. I’d filled a big washtub with water from the pump outside the kitchen.  I was watching the Carpenter Husband mow the weeds in the front yard while I waited for the water to heat on the stove.  We’d purchased a beautiful antique gas stove at one of those great West Virginia Estate Auctions that was more like a tent revival than an auction.  The stove was bright yellow enamel over cast iron, burner grates shaped like little flowers and a handy warming tray on top.  We also got a gas refrigerator and some pretty radiant elements for the gas heaters.  Then we used a heavy duty garden hose to connect to the gas well on the property.  We had a deal with the big time energy company – they got the gas from the well and we got an allowance for the house.  It was a good deal all round.  It matched our new “self sufficient” image. 

Suddenly the Carpenter Husband came running in the house shouting, “Where’s that c-clamp?  Lilly Beth was playing with it yesterday!”  I looked up startled and then I heard it, the hissing sound that was filling the meadow with gas.  “Hurry!  Help me Look!” he shouted frantically.  We both began to tear the house apart looking in all her little hidey places.  Under the table, behind the stairs, we looked everywhere.  Then the Carpenter Husband lifted our mattress, which lacked a proper bed and was lying on the bare floor.  Suddenly a ten foot long black snake slithered out. 

The old wives tale says that it’s good if you have black snakes because then you won’t have copperheads.  Another tale says that Copperheads and Black snakes mate and make “blackheads”.  A friend from Michigan told me to keep a sharp hoe by the bed to chop off the head of snakes under the bed.  I didn’t believe him and I had no hoe.  In a blind panic, I grabbed the sleeping Lilly Beth and ran for my life.  I was a full mile down the road before I realized what I’d done.  I had abandoned the Carpenter Husband while he battled the black snake and the gas leak alone.  When I reached John and Judy, they both ran to rescue him.  I alone was absent in his time of need.  I thought only of Lilly Beth.  Later, when all was safe and I made my way back down the road, the Carpenter Husband just looked at me.  I knew he knew that in times of trouble, the child came first.  Not him.  Not any more.

When much of the rural world despised us dirty Callie-fornie hippies, the West Virginia natives welcomed us like we were long lost kinfolk.  Most of their own kids had no interest in the family farms.  As soon as they came of age, they left home and headed for the city.  When we arrived with a truck full of noisy youngins and a million questions, it was like an answer to a prayer for some of them. Our arrival gave them a second wind.  They went out of their way to teach us the ropes, check in and see how we were doing and drop by to sit a spell and offer canning jars full of possum stew. 

One day our neighbors Elmer and Mabel showed up on our porch. They had a basket full of biscuits and a mason jar full of possum stew.  We sat a spell with them.  They had six kids, lost two sons to Vietnam and two to the city.  The girls stayed close to home but neither of them had any kids yet. They took to Lillie Beth real quick.  Mabel offered to come down and help me can some of the blackberries. Then in the fall she could help me put up some vegetables for winter.  I was delighted and quickly accepted. I enjoyed being with Mabel.  She had a very loving nature and was full of helpful information. 

Elmer offered to take the Carpenter Husband hunting.  I kind of grinned at the thought.  You see we were determined to be self-sufficient.  To have our own power source, make our own clothes, grow our own vegetables and even hunt our own meat.  That last part was a hard one.  Carpenter Husband was a great fisherman.  He even owned a bow and arrow.  But I’d never ever seen him kill anything that didn’t have fins.  Nevertheless, he agreed to go with Elmer early the next morning.    

It was nearly noon when they got back from possum hunting.  Elmer insisted that Carpenter Husband show me his trophy.  He did but from the look on his face I knew that this was not an activity he enjoyed.  But he was the breadwinner of the family, the hunter.  It was his job and he’d done it. 

The men hung the possum in a tree and Elmer instructed Carpenter Husband on how to dress and cook it.  After Elmer left, Carpenter Husband decided to have a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey just to smooth out the raw edges.  Hours past and finally as the sun started to go down he went out to finish the job.

We looked at the freshly killed creature hanging in the tree.  We both lost our appetite.  The Carpenter Husband said, “I think it’s diseased, that’s why it was so slow to run.”  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and pulled the hamburger out of the fridge.  We dug the dead thing a grave and buried the sick possum along with Mabel’s the possum stew. 

We could no more have eaten that possum than we could eat road kill.  I’m not sure why.  It’s as if the only good meat is what we kill intentionally.  If it’s accidentally killed or worse yet, maimed – we find it offensive.  It’s the same with the runt of the litter and the deformed.  Sometimes the mother kills it.  Sometimes it’s left to die without nourishment.  Sometimes the siblings kill it. 

Sometimes I think my family feels about me the same way that the Carpenter Husband and I felt about that possum hanging in the tree.  They just want to bury their mistakes. Like the dog that you hit with the station wagon, they just want to keep driving and pretend it never happened. 

Summer in the wilderness lingered as we tried to prepare for winter.  Then I felt a strange stirring inside.  It was Max the Wunderkind making his presence known.  At an early age, he attached himself to my ribcage and auditioned for a job as a trapeze artist.  This was joyful news for all of us but it meant moving back to the city.  After nearly losing Lillie Beth, I was not brave enough to risk a wilderness birth.  We loaded the ‘54 International Panel Truck with all our worldly possessions and our high hopes.   We put the wooden Amstel Holland Beer box between the seats and filled it with cloth diapers and an old Aladdin thermos full of coffee.  The portacrib was lashed to the floor behind the seats and filled with soft blankets and stuffed animals.  Then with the Rand McNally in hand, we headed home to a little house on Third Street in Wyandotte. 

The possum stew lesson was not the only revelation we would witness in the land of traveling preachers and revival tents. We learned that he would always stay out too late and I would always run away.

 

8. Fresh Game

Some men (and women too) are hunters. They love to venture out in the early morning, feel the brisk autumn winds against their face and stomp through the woods in search of food for their family. It is a ritual that has been passed down, father to son, since long before the second amendment. From time of the hunter-gatherers to the days when the king owned all the land and only a desperate peasant would dare to take bow and arrow to feed a starving family, it has been the most elemental way for a man to provide for his family. We no longer hunt our food. We get some super-marketed, manufactured, drugged, wretched creature that is kept in animal concentration camps till the price is right. For some reason we seem to think this is civilized.

Those who confuse these men (and women) with the gangster in the street or the wild eyed terrorist have missed a vital truth about the American spirit. It’s more than food; it’s about self-reliance, a healthy respect for nature and instilling the values of self determination and responsibility. It is also about securing the people against the tyranny of the government. To reserve the right to own a firearm is not an obsolete quirk of the Bill of Rights. It is essential.

My first mother in law taught me all about guns. It’s not normally a subject women teach, but she had five sons and they had to learn. They were never given toy guns to play with. She said it was foolish to allow them to think that a weapon was a toy in any way. When they were old enough she took them out into the woods and taught them to shoot. She also taught them how to clean the gun, store it and maintain it safely. She taught me too. I was such a hit with tin cans and pop bottles that she called me “Hawkeye”. I don’t know if I could ever kill a living thing, but I know that because of what she taught me, I wound not do so by accident.

 The NRA always says ‘Guns don’t kill people, people do.” That fact was made painfully clear recently. In Chicago a group of school kids used a board to beat another student to death. In California a young girl was raped over and over again for hours outside the homecoming dance. There were lots of cell phones (taking pictures) but not a single gun. Not a single gun. Getting rid of all the guns will not end violence. Nevertheless, I am a progressive and I worked enthusiastically on the Obama campaign.

I made calls to Kentucky while the NRA had their convention there. It was interesting. One fellow in particular, was actually civil and patient enough to discuss why he hates Obama. We talked a long, long time. He mentioned the second amendment a lot. I told him that I agreed with him about some of his concerns. Obama is the first Democrat in a long time to acknowledge that the second amendment means the “right to bear arms” not some nonsense about a “well regulated militia.” I said, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have some restrictions on guns. That’s the well regulated part. You wouldn’t want school kids with guns.” Then he said, “Why not?” I had a vision of his grandson, a first grader, packin’ heat on the jungle gym. I had to stifle a giggle. Then I told him, “The first amendment says ‘free speech’ but it still has limits about slander and pornography. You’re free to speak your mind but you can’t go in a football stadium and yell “NUKE!” Then he said, “That may be true but freedom of speech was not as important as the Second Amendment!” So I said, “You suppose that’s why they made it the First Amendment?” He suddenly hung up. I hope a light bulb just went on.

Like I said, there are hunters and then there are predators. Do not confuse the two. Predators seldom use a firearm. Their weapons are dominance, charm and shame. There is a certain class of men who consider anything female – fair game. They prepare, groom, stalk, hunt, wound, capture and domesticate girls for pleasure only. Do not eat what they hunt. They only maim it.

I had a foster father who was an avid hunter. Later I came to understand that he was also a sexual predator. He stalked me, groomed me, wounded me and then kept me caged till I escaped.

When I was 15 my mother was institutionalized with what was called a nervous breakdown. My half-a-sister, Rayleen, had spread the rumor that I had “gone wild and driven my mother crazy”. Most of my family believed her and blamed me for my Mother’s breakdown. The truth was that the half-a-sister was feeding Mama Diet pills which led to the breakdown. Later when I came to understand the symptoms of a speed freak, I knew that the summer I was fifteen, my mother was a speed freak. She and my half-a-sister, Rayleen were doctor shopping for diet pills. My mother would go for days without sleep. She was obsessed with the idea of sewing all our school clothes. I started tenth grade with four copies of the exact same shift – same pattern, same fabric. I had no underwear, no bras, no shoes but I had a closet of clones of the same dress. Mama would also go on buying binges at the second hand store. She would come home with arms full of “treasure” she discovered. Most of it was junk. Some of it was pretty junk. None of it paid the light bill or bought shoes. Then Mama would crash and sleep for days till Rayleen showed up at the door again.

It all exploded one night when I came home from a date with my high school boyfriend. Mama had discovered my diary. Fueled by the half-a-sisters lurid imagination she read into it a life more exciting than I could have imagined. In truth, I was too scared to be anything but good. I wanted no drama. But thanks to Rayleen, I had a drugged out mother who let her imagination run wild. By the time the night was over, Mama had been stopped just short of killing me and was being dragged away in a straight jacket. “They’re coming to take me away” was playing on the AM radio as they left. I left and walked the three miles to the high school basketball game. I came home later to a dark house.

I spent a month alone in the house, maybe more. Then the school insisted that I “find parents.” Because of Rayleen, I had no place to go and no family willing to take me. A friend of a friend had a sister. It was then I met the hunter and his wife and they became my foster parents. I lived in a corner of their unfinished basement. The hunter had a padlocked room for his music and other toys that was finished with tile floor and wood paneling. The room with the washer and dryer was finished with a tile floor and wood paneling. I lived in a door-less concrete corner behind the furnace. I had no closet so I used the pipes on the ceiling to hang my clothes. I worked as an A&W car hop to pay my room and board and after school and on weekends I helped Mrs. Hunter take care of the kids. Although Hunter had a very good job, his family lived like paupers. The extra money I paid helped with the cost of feeding me. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hunter were very kind to me and I grew to love them and their daughters as though they were my family. I know now, that Mr. Hunter was not my friend, my protector. He was simply grooming me, as most sexual predators do. And Mrs. Hunter just looked the other way as most abused women do.

I spent a year and a half in that basement. I finished high school and was ready to move on. Hunter called me back for one last visit. How could I say no? When I arrived there was a case of beer and a bet as to how much I could drink. I was no drinker, it was no real bet. But I played along and we drank beer and chatted and joked. Mrs. Hunter went off to bed and I fell asleep on the living room sofa.

I woke up with Hunters hand over my mouth telling me not to wake his sleeping daughters. He raped me. Then he got up said, “Thank you” and went to bed. For years after that he dominated my life with threats. If I tried to get away he said he would tell his wife or his daughters that I was some kind of Lolita who had seduced him. I tried to leave many times but ended back in his basement again and again. He controlled my friends, my work and even my car. If I got too close to anyone, he would call them and say that he was acting as foster father and looking out for me. Then he would cross examine them and question their fitness to influence me. No one ever passed his test and he would send them away. Again I would find myself in his debt and in his basement. It has taken a lifetime to realize that this “respectable church going man” was a villain and I was no Lolita. I was his prey.

I’ve never really told this story. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to give my tormentor the satisfaction of knowing the damage he did. I know that he will enjoy my pain. I know that he keeps pieces of my youth like a serial rapist keeps the underwear. I wanted to deny him that pleasure.

I hadn’t been around avid hunters for decades when my friend Loren asked me to help her with her housekeeping business. She paid cash and it was only a few hours on the weekend and I really needed the money. So Monday through Friday I would carry my briefcase into meetings with the local business people and on the weekend I would be the invisible person cleaning their toilet. I admit it felt a bit like espionage. All of the houses were so different. Some were filled with antiques, some were ultra modern and some had an Indian theme. One in particular I remember great detail even today.

Loren and I entered the back door into a pink kitchen. The walls were pink, the table and chairs were pink and even the appliances were pink. There were pink gingham checked curtains and tablecloth and a pink tile floor. It was like a step back into the fifties. Loren gave the instructions and I followed behind as we headed into the main part of the house. We entered the living room and I stopped dead in my tracks. Every square inch of the walls were covered with animal heads. There were typical moose, deer, bear and then exotic lion, tiger and cheetah. I was overcome by the death in the room and was backing out when I bumped into a table. I looked behind me and saw an upright baby kangaroo, its front paws being used as an ashtray. Without thinking I said, “I’m sorry.” Then the legs of an elephant were used as the base for a coffee table, the rugs were bears, the chandelier had monkeys hanging off the sides, Everywhere, everywhere were dead animals. I just kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’ m sorry.” The spiritual stench was nauseating.

The man who owned this house was a “recreational hunter”. His wife was stuck in the fifties. Their trophies were no different than the soiled underwear a rapist keeps. It’s evidence of a flawed spirit, one that thrives on the suffering of others and keeps trophies of the kill.

 

6. The Famous Flying Wedding Cake

I know little girls are supposed to daydream about their wedding.  They’re supposed to love Barbie dolls and frilly dresses and pink. Little girls are really supposed to love pink.  I was not that kind of little girl. I was not pink. I was not frilly.  I was a tomboy, an explorer of alleys and creek beds, a catcher of crawdads, a softball team captain and a part-time garage vaudeville act.  My daydreams were about living in a tree house, visiting the pyramids or inventing a new fangled contraption. I loved gadgets and inventors.  I loved Betty Boop because her Grandpa invented elaborate contraptions.  I loved Clutch Cargo because he went on adventures and I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle because of Fractured Fairy Tales and the Wayback Machine.  I thought Olive Oyle was stupid and Betty and Veronica were lame. 

My first real experience with weddings was when my half-a-sister Rayleen got married.  When I think of weddings, it’s her fancy church wedding I think about.  I think of rows and rows of embroidered virgin white tulle ruffles over a hoop skirt hiding the very pregnant bride. When I think of wedding cake, I think tiered rows of stale white cake covered in stiff, sickeningly sweet, white frosting.  I think of the Tom Petty video slicing up the girl cake and naked girls popping out of a cake.  But most of all I think of my half-a-sister’s wedding and my mother’s pitching arm.  I think of the Famous Flying Wedding Cake 

Considering the soap opera that is my family, it may seem odd that my earliest memories are good ones.  We may have been poor but we didn’t know it.  I didn’t know we lived in the ghetto because I’d never lived anywhere else. I thought all three of us sharing a single bed just made it easier to tell ghost stories. One thing for sure, we knew we had each other.  My mother had hammered that lesson into our little brains.  In the middle of reenacting the latest three stooges’ fight, she would scold us for hurting each other. We didn’t really hurt each other in our play acting but to her, even the pretense was wrong.  “You better be good to each other!” she’d warn, “because no one’s closer than family.”  Once Kitty and I ganged up on Eddie and accidentally gave him a bloody nose.  Eddie tickled me till I threw up.  Kitty hid in corners and scared the tar out of both of us.  We fought, we laughed and we made up. But at the end of the day we loved each other and took care of each other. My mother insisted on that. That is until the half-a-sister came to our house to stay.     

The year I turned six Rayleen came up from down south to spend the summer. She was my mother’s first child and lived with her father’s parents in North Carolina. I always thought that she was the lucky one.  I imagined her life was safe and happy.  She not only had grandparents, and probably a father too, but in the summertime she got us as well.  She had two families to choose from.  We didn’t have choices, we only had each other.  No grandparents, no father, no extended family. The truth is no one else wanted us.  My Mother was right; it was just the three of us against the world.
 
When Rayleen came to visit, it was like the bonus sibling.  Kitty and I were fascinated with Rayleen.  She was seven years older and seemed to know a little something about everything. She was a teenager!  She wore lipstick and knew all about American Bandstand and Elvis.  She kept copies of True Confessions under her mattress and knew how to pop her fingers and her gum.  She was the coolest girl I ever met and I was amazed that she could be related to me. Once when I asked what a “half-sister” was, my brother quickly informed me that there was no such thing as half a person.  She was just a sister with a different father.  He was very stern with me and I never forgot the lesson.  I never ever called her “half” or even thought of her in those terms. I embraced her without question.  We all did. She was one of us.

I realized much later that she didn’t feel the same way about us. To her we were just her mothers’ “other children”.  We were the children of that half-breed Cherokee and no relation to her. No kin to her.  Too late I realized that no matter what my brother said Rayleen was really only half-a-sister and half-a-sister is worse than none at all. 

After she graduated from high school Rayleen came to live with us year round.  My mother had remarried and we moved to the suburbs with my brand new step-father.  We lived in a little house on a cul-de-sac with copy cat houses all around and a park on every corner.  My mother was discovering the joys of homemaking.  Kitty and I were discovering the joys of suburbia in the 1960’s and my brother was busily becoming a teenage heartbreaker.  It almost felt like “Father Knows Best” with Kitty, Bud and me playing our respective roles posing on the stairway for the cameras. 

Then Rayleen came.  The house had always been small – only three bedrooms to fit two adults and three kids.  But with Rayleen it seems unbearably small.   Not long ago the three of us happily shared one bed and now we complained about having to share a room.  My brother was moving quickly into puberty and needed his privacy.  Kitty and I fought constantly about clothes and chores.  Our house was crowded but it was about more than square footage. People started getting in each other’s way.  Bruised feelings and injured pride became a daily event.  We all became a bit more defensive.  I guess we all thought it was just a matter of time until we got accustomed to each other.  Now I’m not so sure that’s what happened.  Now, I think the arguments had an instigator.  I think that someone was telling tales.

It wasn’t until Rayleen came that I knew that my baby sister was the favorite. Until then, I didn’t even know she was spoiled.  I never thought that I did all the work.  Rayleen told me these things.  She said that she was on my side and that she was my true sister.  I began to feel that she was the only one I could trust. I believed her when she told me that everyone else took advantage of me.  I believed that I was her favorite.  I believed other things too as the years went by.  I never once doubted her. I never questioned her honesty or her motives.  When she told me things about my brother and sister that made me my skin crawl, I never questioned her truthfulness.  No never, not even once.  I didn’t love my brother and sister any less, but I always looked at them differently.

About a year after Rayleen moved in, the real trouble started.  My step father had been injured in an explosion and hospitalized for a month. He suffered brain damage and his recovery was slow. He never did get back the vibrant, good-natured man that he was.  At the same time, my mother had a baby sized tumor removed along with her uterus in a complete hysterectomy. Since neither one of them had health insurance, the medical bills were forcing us into bankruptcy.  We had to make a lot of adjustments to survive. 

We had to move from the little copy cat house on the cul-de-sac with all the parks.  We moved to the other side of the tracks in a place called “CorkTown”.  We moved with my French step-father to the only few blocks where the Irish lived in a town full of French descendants. We sold the fancy new car and my mother went back to working nights.

Money wasn’t the only problem but the lack of it made everything worse.  Instead of facing the problems together, they both lashed out in well worn bad habits.  My step-father drank to dull the pain of failure.  My mother went through early menopause without hormone therapy.  She became prone to fits of temper and hysterics.  I started cooking dinner and breakfast.  My brother went in the Army.   

My brother, who had always been a grounding force, was gone.  He was caught stealing a leather jacket from a dry cleaner with his best friend.  The best friend’s parents talked to the police chief, my mother and step-father got in an argument at the police station.  The best friend went on to graduate and go to college.  My brother went to the Army and was sent to Vietnam. 

Add to this toxic mix, my half-a-sister’s drunken Polish boyfriend who would appear in the middle of the night calling out to Rayleen like a character in some Tennessee Williams’s novel. On a regular basis, he woke up the entire neighborhood and would beg and cry until Rayleen let him in.  This happened every weekend until he married the pregnant Rayleen. 

The cost of this wedding was the topic of constant conflict between my mother and step-father. My mother could not do enough for the daughter she had abandoned and Rayleen did not hesitate to collect her due.  My mother, in her hormone starved state, was competing with the drunken boyfriend’s own mother in an early version of the Bridezilla wars.  We all made due in order to get Rayleen everything she needed for her Catholic Church wedding.  Rayleen needed three bridesmaids and a maid of honor, a flower girl and a ring bearer.  We sold my mother’s car and she drove on old clunker without a heater.  In the middle of the night she’d arrive home from work with legs so frozen she could barely walk.  Rayleen needed to invite all the drunken Polish boyfriend's drinking buddies and his entire extended family.  And they all needed a sit down meal.  That year, Kitty needed a new bike but she made due (not without a great deal of foot stomping) with a used bike for her birthday.  

Funny thing is that after all this making due and sacrificing, all Kitty and I saw of the wedding was the back of Rayleen’s underpants as the hoop skirt flipped up getting in the car. Not only weren’t we invited to be part of the wedding – not flower girls, or bridesmaids – nothing.  We didn't even get to go to the wedding.  We weren't invited to the reception either.  On that day we were not related to Rayleen, we were just her mother's "other children". We sat at home watching television while my mother and step-father played the parents of the bride.  We had no idea what happened so it was long after the wedding that I heard the stories of my mother's strong right arm and the Famous Flying Wedding Cake that nearly hit the drunken boyfriend's mother.   

After that Rayleen remembered us or me at least.  I was her favorite babysitter.  I’d spend weekends at her house cleaning and taking care of the babies.  My mother gave her our washer and dryer and so I spent school nights in the basement of our house with a wringer washer and a clothes line.  Did you know that clothes will freeze on a clothes line?  It was a cold winter.

No matter how cruel she was, I always remembered what my brother had taught me and never treated Rayleen like she was not a real sister. I never doubted her honesty or her motives.  At least not until my brother died many years later.  When he died, I finally understood the real damage the half-a –sister had done. 

 He was not even cold in the ground yet when she started telling me lies about him.  I called her about placing an obituary for him.  I was trying to remember important things in his life, to word them properly and remember the best in him.  She couldn’t bear it.  She hated when people got too high and mighty.  She loved to bring him down a notch.  She said, “You remember when he took Mom’s car and killed that old man?  Mom could have been sued and lost everything.” I was in shock. The story made me heartsick. I didn’t know my brother had killed someone with my mother’s car.  I didn’t remember it and for half a second, I heard myself say, “It must be true, why would Rayleen lie”?

The sound of the click as I hung up the phone was like the click of a key opening a Chinese puzzle box.  A little drawer opened and I heard Rayleen tell me that my step-father had raped my cousin.  A secret compartment opened and she told my brother caught my sister cheating on her husband.  Another opening and I heard her warn of my sister’s lying, my mother’s favoritism, my brother’s stealing.  At different times, she had accused us all of horrible crimes and perversions.  She claimed her stories were told to her by somebody else, somebody above reproach.  All lies so horrid you dare not question their truthfulness. 

I could hardly breathe, all these years of mistrust, all these doubts and fears, all planted by this snake of a woman.  In a flash of family photos, I saw her, year after year, smug and self-satisfied, a kind of Dick Cheney grin.  At every family crisis - she was in the center, standing back, popping her chewing gum and listening.  I never knew why she was there, she never offered to help, never felt the need to involve herself.  Now I know she’s like an arsonist - admiring her handiwork. 

I finally understand why my brother believed such awful lies about me.  I know now that the stories half-a sister said came from my brother about Kitty were lies too. The accusations about my step-father and my own father – lies, lies lies.   I saw the way her lies ripped the heart from our family. She was the teller of stories, the unquestioned expert labeling everyone else - liar, lazy, selfish, slut, and whore.

I tried to put myself in Rayleen’s shoes.  She was the bastard child abandoned in North Carolina, unwanted by both parents.  She hated the three of us because my mother took us with her.  We envied her. She always had a place to sleep and food on the table.  We didn't.  My mother kept us because no one else would take us.  She left us with foster parents a couple of times.  But Rayleen didn’t see that.  She only saw her own pain and probably spent years dreaming of "getting even" with us.  Taking from us the things we loved the way we took her mother. 

Then I think of that little girl - left behind in North Carolina.  I remember when she was a senior in High School; she needed a dress for her prom.  My mother had promised her a pretty dress for her prom.  It became her mission.  A prom dress is not in the budget of a waitress with three other children. So my mother took on extra shifts and saved every nickel she could.  Buying a dress for Rayleen became a family goal and we all pitched in.  Finally Mom found just the right dress, a beautiful dress with spaghetti straps and cascading rows of taffeta in a soft powder blue.  It cost more than she planned but she managed it.  Then she had to get it packed and mailed in time for the prom. I remember how happy my mother was that she had managed to keep her promise. 

Years later I heard from the half-a-sister the rest of the story.  It was a two-mile walk from her grandmother’s house up to the mailbox.  She made that walk every day waiting for the dress in the mail.  But she waited for something more.  The dress would be proof that she was loved. That she was not an abandoned bastard child.  Someone loved her enough to send her a fancy dress all the way from Detroit.  She could dance around the prom with pride and show them all. 

When the dress arrived, all those layers of taffeta that looked so good in the store looked horrible after being crammed into a box for a week.  It seemed permanently wrinkled.   Unwearable. 

When I think of it now, it’s not anger – its sorrow.  I think of Rayleen left behind and alone.  I think of her spending years planning her revenge and living on hatred.  I think of us – the three of us other kids – who envied Rayleen her safe home never knowing the price she paid for it.  I think of how different it all could have been.  We made room for her in our home but mostly in our hearts.  We cared for her and her babies, loved them, and sacrificed for them.  But when we expected the loyalty and love of a sister – she treated us like beggars looking for a handout and turned us away. 

So sometimes now, in the middle of the night, I think of all that we've lost because of her.  I remember all the unnecessary heartache. I lie awake and the mind goes over a hurt like a tongue on a broken tooth. You know you should leave it be but you just can’t.   Then you begin to plan a way to get even.  Only there is no such place as “Even” because time does not stand still.  Each action creates new victims, the wrong person gets hurt and the cycle starts again. Instead we have to learn to adjust to the ebb and flow of life.  In the end the evil you do will come back to you.  The goodness will find your heart.  I do believe this.  But most of all I believe in the power of forgiveness.

 

 

7. Christmas Cookies

Cookies are what you leave on the plate for Santa Claus so he can find your Christmas tree and leave your presents. Cookies are what the website leaves on your computer so it can get back into your computer. It may leave a Barbie dream house or it may leave a Trojan or a worm. Either way, cookies are the bits of memory that can warm your heart or crash your internal hard drive. Some people leave unwelcome presents.


Holidays, especially Christmas, have always been a difficult time for me. I can never live up to the Hallmark card moments that the advertising industry thinks I should. I am always a day late and a dollar short. The turkey is still frozen, the Christmas lights don’t work and I’ve run out of scotch tape. No matter how much time and money I invest in these “festive events” they are anything but festive.

I’m not sure why on some particular day, at some designated hour, you MUST be happy. You must celebrate. It’s like the New Year’s Eve scam. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been scoring a ten on the happiness scale all year long, if at midnight on New Year’s Eve – you’re caught in a traffic jam, fighting with your lover or in the Emergency Room with a ruptured appendix – you are a failure and your year is doomed.

Starting before long before the infamous Penny Play Pal incident the holiday season was never really a time for celebration at our house. Christmas for any single parent is a struggle but especially for one who lives on tips. For them, it’s always a nail biter finish. In the effort to do the Santa magic, many of the frills are left out. No Christmas tree, no fireplace, no stockings on the mantle,

When we were kids, we didn’t have our own Christmas tree. Instead we would pile in the car and drive downtown to look at the lights. We’d sit huddled in the backseat trying to keep warm. Our tender legs would be frozen to the vinyl seats and our heads would try to crawl inside coat collars like turtles. We’d make the drive up to see the fancy decorations on the mansions of the Fords or Dodge’s in Grosse Pointe. The streets were lined with tiny lights that made it seem like you were driving into a magic fairy land. We’d sit bundled up in the backseat gushing with delight at each new house.

We always made a trip downtown to see Hudson’s department store. It was always the center point of Christmas celebration. The window displays had mechanical dolls dressed like elves. One window filled Santa’s bag and loaded his sleigh. Other windows had Mrs. Clause making cookies, and elves making Christmas stockings. The 13 floor was the North Pole where Santa Clause took requests and photographers took pictures for a fee. A weekend shopping trip to Hudson’s was a kind of rite of passage for young girls. It was the place to shop for perfume and scarves and stop for lunch on the mezzanine or get coney island hot dogs at Lafayette Coney Island.

Years after I was grown with kids of my own, I went home to Michigan for Christmas. On a lark I took the bus downtown and thought I’d stop in Hudson’s for some shopping and sightseeing. The bus trip was longer than I remembered but it was fine. I got off at the regular stop and walked towards Hudson’s. I walked past the building with the Coney Island hot dogs, the place where I worked when I was only eighteen and then found the Hudson building. The first door I tried was locked and the windows were empty. I tried another door, another door, turned the corner and tried again. I kept walking, round and round the building. No matter how many times I walked around it remained empty and bolted shut.

I finally gave up and took the bus home. On the way home I actually looked out the window. The city really is a wheel. Neighborhoods circle the city – with the low rent districts closest to the center. The farther out you go, the higher the rent and the whiter the tenants. Now, it looked like the city was ground zero from some atomic bomb. Concentric circles of empty boarded up buildings and tenement slums, invading even the white suburbs. That day was a rude awakening for me. I had no idea my city was so broken, that it had been left for dead.

Back the story. Shortly after my mother and stepfather married, we moved out of the inner-city. We moved from the upper and lower flat, Ma and Pop corner store, to the rows of single family houses and manicured lawns that were the reward for the WWII soldiers and their families. We moved to the city where all of my step-father’s family lived. He had a really big family – three brothers and two sisters and all of their kids. Suddenly, we were part of a big family.

That first year in the suburbs, I discovered the family Christmas party. My mother was home all the time because she no longer needed to work. She loved being at home and became the happy homemaker. She sewed and cooked and planted tomatoes in the back yard. She’d visit with the neighbors for coffee and bowl on the weekends with the Ladies League.

That first Christmas she was in her prime. She loved to sew and she made Christmas table linens and all the decorations. But her crowing glory was the baking. She made three kinds of fudge, sugar cookies that she decorated with sprinkles and icing, and those Swedish nut balls that kind of melt in your mouth. Oh yea, she made fruitcake too. I think someone is still using them as doorstops. But aside from the fruitcakes, the baking was great.

The week of Christmas was a week of parties. One night we’d all pile in the car and drive to a cousin or uncle’s house. My step-father would warm the car up first so it was nice and toasty. We’d pile in with stacks of presents and baked goods. When we got there, we’d walk up together and ring the door bell. When they answered we’d all say “Merry Christmas!” The next night it was a different relative, different food, different presents. One night it was our house. My mother was in heaven. So was I. I loved it all, the noise the family, the piles of coats on the bed. I loved feeling like I belonged somewhere.

Until that Christmas, I never really expected much. Santa came some years and some years it was a sock full of coal. But once those Christmas cookies got in my brain, once I knew the glow of lights from our own Christmas tree and the chatter of family feasts – I could not go back to the austerity of my early childhood. I would be forever yearning to repeat that Christmas and to know that feeling of being part of a family; the inclusiveness and security.

The first Christmas after the divorce, after my mother had been taken away to the mental institution, I stayed alone in the house. My half-a-sister Rayleen took baby sister Kitty to live with relatives. None of the relatives wanted me. They had been told that I drove my mother crazy. Who would want a girl who drove her mother crazy? So I walked home from the basketball game and went to bed. The next morning I dressed and went to school. I kept doing that until it was Christmas break. Days passed alone in the house.

They turned off the gas heat and water. Then they turned off the electricity. Some nights I stood at the picture window in the living room and looked at the houses that lined the street. They all had their trees sitting in front of their picture windows. Like the girls in the windows on the street in Amsterdam – each shouting “pick me! I’m the prettiest!’

The glow from the houses was a golden yellow. I could see people walking in and out of the rooms; wrapping gifts, greeting guests and sharing the holiday. A group of carolers came by and I stood in the dark and silent room trying not to let the frost from my breath escape. After they left, I leaned against the window and felt the icy cold on my forehead.

The giant walnut tree in the front yard was naked now. Its branches covered in ice. Last summer, when life seemed to hold so much promise, the tree was alive. Its leaves covered the yard and kept us cool during the Indian summer. That’s when I would lay on the cement porch, listen to the radio and daydream. I took a mental picture of those moments – as though I knew I’d need them later. Now the tree was stripped bare gleaming in the moonlight, all sparkly and strangely beautiful. It was as though all the buds and leaves, all the heat of that summer, all the promise of that beginning was locked inside the ice, never to age, never to fade, but never to grow beyond those early first buds. Like the tree I felt like I was encased in ice. Standing in that window that Christmas, is the last memory I have from that time. There are weeks after this that are blank space. The next thing I know Christmas vacation is over, I’m standing in the principal’s office and he says to me “you can’t come back to school until you have parents.”


This image, this event, is why Cheney calls me the “poor little match girl.” He says that this feeling of isolation and abandonment is as much a part of me as my eye color. I admit the girl in the window is dear to me.

Whenever anyone gets too close I am frozen in the window again waiting to be abandoned. I know that I have to let go of that image if I am to move forward. But I am tied to it until I can fill in the missing pieces of time.

A few years ago, the half-a-sister told me that she sent the step father over to visit me during that blank time. She and the rest of my family had abandoned. No one came to check on me. No one took me home with them for Christmas. But she told me that she sent my step father over to “visit me”. The idea tormented me. Then I realized that was just what she wanted. I began to remember all the mysterious lies that cluttered my life and as I searched my way through, she was always there, standing on the sidelines, popping her chewing gum.


Cookies. She left me poison cookies.

Warning label

 

I should come with a warning label:

 

Open in a well ventilated room.

Contents under pressure.

 This is a story about sexual abuse.  It’s about pedophiles and sexual predators.  It is not pretty.  If the subject makes you squeamish, then please read on. You need to hear this.  As long as we continue to look away, the wounds will fester and the villains will walk free. This is not the story of one person but the story of how the sexual abuse of children is the “gift that keeps on giving”.  It destroys the lives of all it touches.  The person who’s abused is crippled and unable to sustain a healthy intimate relationship.  As parents, they are either insanely protective or they blind themselves to the problem and make their own children perfect targets.  When the girls are abused, the brothers are damaged by the events too.  The predator either alienates the boy from his family,  making him feel impotent or he pulls him into the act making him a co-conspirator.

 I reject the word “molested” – it minimizes the crime and makes it seem like a small thing, an accidental jostle in the hallway, a molestation, no harm intended.  In order not to offend delicate sensibilities, we call it molestation.  It’s actually rape and we should call it rape.  In this country, we allow grown men to rape children and treat it like it’s a misdemeanor.  Treat it like it’s a matter of reimbursement for property damage.  It’s more like homicide.  It’s a soul killer, not just for one person, but for the whole family.  Not just for one lifetime but for generations, as people struggle in silence to heal a broken spirit.

3. Setting The Table

       

A hostess who sets an elegant table provides her guests an experience they will long remember. The meal flows gracefully from one course to the next when familiar placement gives your guests a certain comfort level.  Then a bit of creativity with the centerpiece can add that extra touch of charm that makes a meal memorable.  A vase of fresh flowers is always a delight, but don’t let that limit your imagination. You can create a theme, celebrate a family event or just show off you personal style.  The table setting will tell your guests as much about you as the menu selections.     

Me, I do buffet.  I simply can not set a proper table. Since my Mother was a waitress at four star restaurants, I should know how. But I don’t.  No matter how many times she tried to teach me I just never remember.  Hand me the water glasses and I fumble.  Hand me the silverware and I am frozen in place.  I imagine my mother standing behind me, her frustration mounting as I am   unable to figure out where to put the salad fork.  To this day, I have no idea about the forks or bread knifes or soup spoons and I can not discuss any of it without developing a headache.  I think it’s a learning disorder of some sort.  So, I do buffet.  I wrap the silverware in pretty napkins and place them in pretty baskets next to the stack of plates.  I say to my guests, “Here it is, this is what I have to offer, take what you like.”

It is a failing that I regret because I have come to understand the value of a good table setting and I don’t mean dishes and silverware.  We live in a world obsessed with appearance.  The food at the neighborhood diner may be a scrumptious but folks will pay much higher costs for the ambience of the five star restaurant. Setting a good table means not rushing the meal, no desert first and no eating at the kitchen sink.  It means insisting on time and attention to what you have to share.  It’s a slower pace, a deeper hunger to satiate.  The meal will long be remembered, along with the hostess.

The same way we imagine the dinner party and create the event in our minds before it actually happens, we are always setting the table for our lives.  We create a mood or show our style.  By doing so we are designing our own destiny. 

All my life I have imagined the future.  When I fall asleep instead of dwelling on a past I can’t correct or a present I can’t escape, I imagine a future.  The way some girls plan a wedding – I have planned entire wardrobes.  I have the school clothes, wife clothes, mother clothes, working woman clothes. But it’s not about the clothes.  It’s about the person.  I imagined the kind of student I wanted to be.  When tragedy took my childhood, I had already imagined a happy one.  I saw report cards and smiling teachers, prom dates and graduation.

Again and again in my life, when tragedy struck I was able to go on auto pilot. I would fall asleep imagining a world that was fair and just, a husband who was loving and children who were healthy and strong.  I saw my home as a place comfy and filled with whimsy.  I drew floor plans and wrote the script.  The image was like a beacon in the dark night.  I steered for it without thinking.  Sometimes I think that was a blessing and other times I see it as a curse.  Reality was never quite like my dreams. 

I imagined a husband and marriage that could not exist in reality.  I created children to fulfill my imagined role as mother.  When things went wrong, when the Carpenter Husband was unfaithful or the children were troubled, I found myself trying to rewrite the script. Trying to make it fit with the images I had. 

I think everyone has done this at least once in their life.  You’ve been stupid in public. You are humiliated and embarrassed.  You know you mucked it up and you walk around for days reenacting the scene in your mind.  You may be walking down the street, mumbling and shaking your head.   Or in the midst of dinner, you blurt out the "correct answer" to a bewildered dinner partner.  The event is on a continuous loop and you seem unable to stop yourself.  Your brain seems to think you can reprogram memory and forget what an idiot you were. But it doesn’t work like that. You can not edit your life and leave out the bruised and rotten parts.  You cannot rewrite the story and give yourself a better part. 

In a positive way, we program ourselves for success.  If you imagine happy marriage enough times, it will be easier to have one.  But living in daydreams can just be a way to set yourself up for failure.  Say you have to have the “talk” with someone.  It doesn’t matter what it’s about - bad grades, pregnant, car accident, break up or marry me.  You rehearse it over and over.  You set the table and program yourself for the response.

Maybe it’s your anniversary and he insists on dinner at a certain restaurant.  You let your thoughts wander.  You see him hide a ring in a glass of champagne.  Maybe you imagine he’s down on one knee with trembling hands telling you that you are his one and only love.  What if you’re wrong?  What if what if he’s telling you that he’s met the love of his life and it’s not you.  It is always best to live in the moment and not in your imagination.

We can imagine for ourselves a life that does not exist filled with unreal expectations or overblown fears.  We can create failures where none existed. We can live on hope when none exists.  We can pretend someone loves us and miss those who do. We rehearse emotions.  We set the table with our expectations and fears.  Always, we must live in this moment, this reality.  Not past tragedy or future dreams. 

Setting the table?  This helpful hint comes from the Washington Post:

 Article date:   July 11, 2000 Copyright

One of the easiest ways to impress grown-ups is to say, "Don't worry, Mom. I'll set the table." And one of the easiest ways to steam a grown-up is to make the table look as if a tornado has hit is. Raienne South, 12, from Rockville, has a way to remember how to set the table.

Raienne writes: "When setting the table, how can you remember which side of the plate the knife, fork and spoon go on? How about the glass? Well, 'fork' has four letters and so does 'left,' so the fork goes on the left side of the plate. 'Knife,' 'spoon' and 'glass' all have five letters and so does right, so they go on the right."

 Or like me, you can just do it buffet style. But set a table that suits you.