I had a completely different idea for today’s post… just follow along with telling my story… in some sort of order.
A phone call that came early this morning changed that. I feel like I am either going to lose my mind or explode if I don’t get this written down.
The phone call was from a long time family friend. We have kept in contact with each other off and on over the years. She is a spitfire of a woman, (now in her early 70’s) who I have adored my whole life. She is kind, gentle, strong, funny, generous…. oh, I could go on and on. Her oldest son and I were childhood friends, and often times our families had little get togethers.
My Dad and her met when they were just kids. Dad, having no brothers or sisters seemed to have taken her under his wing. Or so the stories were told when I was very young. She’s seen hard times. Married 3 times and two of them that I know of were alcoholics. She used to drink, but quit many, many, many years ago. I don’t know if she had a soft spot for “damaged men” or what it was… but I knew 2 of her husbands and the one thing they had in common besides their love of alcohol? They were unbelievably charming.
I had written a letter to her recently. She isn’t into the tech scene and I had lost her phone number. (I’m still convinced its around this damn house SOMEWHERE!) Though she’s been a family friend for years… hell, decades… I had never actually “come out” to her. It really isn’t something that I do. Or maybe it’s just been something that I avoid. Avoid, mainly because it’s not how I define myself, it’s just a small part of me and the only time it becomes a larger part of me is when I mention something about my home life, then I feel like I have to explain… “well, this is that, and that person is this person…” all of those things seem so unnecessary but to others it helps them put things in order so that THEY can understand better. I get that, I just avoid it. The fucked up thing is I know it’s wrong.
So, with “The Boy” my partner’s son and yes, that’s what we call him) graduating in just a couple of weeks, it’s a milestone, it’s a change in our home life, it’s emotional, and I wanted to share this with our family friend. (Ya know, to avoid anymore confusion, I will just call her….. BB. As this story goes on, you will understand where “BB” came from.)
OK, so I write BB a letter…. well, a TOME. I had a lot to say. I came out, I shared information about the kids, about my partner… all kinds of things. She called this morning to say that she loves me, she doesn’t judge…. all that stuff that really gets the water works going.
As usual with our conversations we started talking about my Dad. I have gone through years (0ff and on) of extensive therapy because of the bastard, but that’s for a later time. BB knows to some extent what went on in my home, she also knows that my Dad regretted how he treated me and my sister. Which makes me laugh, because when I was in my 30’s I confronted him about everything and he denied it and called me a crazy bitch and asked me what was wrong with me. Yeah, whatever, “Dad”.
In our conversation about Dad today, I told her that besides everything else, I always had a sneaking suspicion that Dad was seeing other women. Mom mom did too. I remember her going through his truck one day. She was frantically looking for something and she was obviously upset. She found some disposable razors under the seat of his truck and got livid…. wondering why he would need something like that? So he could shave before he went to the bar? Oh, she was steamed!
I told BB this story. She was silent, then said, “Hon, I need to tell you something. I don’t want to, but I need to.” She then proceeded to tell me that my Dad and her had gone out several times, not before my Mom and him were married…. WHILE they were married. I asked her when this was, all she would say was it was when I was very young. She said they never had sex or anything, but she said that before it did, she said she took a look around her and thought, “What the hell am I doing?” She said she immediately called my mom, confessed and apologized and said she was known as the Black Bitch for quite awhile. (Black because she was evil for doing such a thing.) She said after awhile, Mom and her became friends and as the years went by, they grew closer and closer. BB’s 3rd husband was very similar to my dad, in that he drank a lot and a mean bastard at times, but BB stood up to him and he eventually stopped drinking. So, my Mom and BB could share war stories of sorts, though Mom wasn’t telling her everything, I found out today.
BB had no idea that Dad beat my Mom too. When I told her about some of the things he used to do to my Mom, she got really quiet. I’m sure it was a mixture of a lot of thoughts and feelings for her. It would’ve been for me too. I conversation was cut short because her daughter dropped in to see her… but I don’t doubt we will get back to it soon.
So…. yeah. As I’ve always said, it’s one thing to have a sneaking suspicion about something, and it is quite another to know for sure. I have fluctuated between anger, rage, deep sadness, hate, pity and disgust. And none of it at BB. She stopped it, she fessed up to her mistake, she stood up. But Dad? HA! If Dad had only done this to my mother once or twice, I could even forgive that. But come to find out there were MANY, MANY. And Mom? Jesus….. my mom knew about a lot of them. AND SHE FUCKING STAYED WITH HIM! Stayed with him until his death. WTF? Knowing ALL AROUND what kind of a guy he was, SHE STAYED. She stayed while he fucked around on her, she stayed while he beat her, she stayed while he beat me and she DID NOTHING.
Yes, she is wandering aroound in life right now with alzheimer’s, her mental state sucks ass . I should have more sympathy for her. I should have forgiveness for my Dad. I am 51 years old, I should be handling this in a much more mature fashion, but you know what? I’m not. Nope, not one bit. It’s just one more thing. Do I wish that BB wouldn’t have told me? No. I’m glad I know. Bottom line, I’m glad because I have struggled for Y E A R S with my feelings about my “Dad”, but this pretty much puts the icing on the cake for me.
I guess now I have to go through all these feelings of grief, because really, that’s what they are. I get to rant, have a fit, cry, shout, grit my teeth, be pissed off, shake my fist in the air and scream, “YOU PATHETIC BASTARD”. And in the end of all of this……. I want to let go of it…….. once and for all. I’ve wasted too much time on this bullshit as it is.
Yikes! This might hurt! Making my brain stretch that far back. Actually, I do remember quite a few things when I was probably around the age in the picture up there. The only way that I know FOR SURE the above picture is me is because I remember it when I was a kid, plus I recognize those dimples. Somehow through the years I have managed to retain them. So many friends of the family called me “Dimp-”Dimps”. What the hell kind of a name is that? Well, I guess it is a skosh better than the one mom came up with years ago. For the life of me I can’t remember WHY, as in what prompted mom to start calling me this, I don’t know if it was because one of our neighbors called me Lynnard, and mom having this quick and sometimes “way out there” wit came up with Lyddia, then she stretched it to Lyddia-Oddia, and as if that wasn’t enough she HAD to add this…. Boddia. So it became, Lyddia-Oddia-Boddia. The thing is, now a days with the thyroid disease, I DO have an Oddia-Boddia. Great, I guess it was predestined. No wait, Mom put some kind of evil curse on me, yeah, that was it. Yeah, right… I don’t think so.
I think it was around the age of this picture that Mom went back to work. Before I was born, she worked as a secretary in some dudes law office. I don’t remember where she went to work at that time, if it was back to that law office or what. Hell, don’t expect me to remember EVERY damn detail!
Since both Mom and Dad were working, that meant that I went over to GT’s house and she took care of me during the day. I have absolutely no recollection of me being hauled back and forth from GT’s house to our own, which is kinda strange. For all I know, they just dropped me off there one day and left me there until they decided to move to Seattle when I was about 5 years old. I am kidding. Geesh! I can see Mom reading this now. A puzzled look on her face and then a look of horror and her saying, “Oh my, we didn’t do that did we?” LOL Of course I would have to say to Mom in an all serious tone, and put on this REALLY sad face and say, “Yeah you did. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong.” And then me, not being able to keep a straight face after I saw the look of shock and horror on my Mom’s own face…. she would notice and then say, “Oh geez, we did not!!!!!!” And be all embarassed cuz she fell for one of my bullshit stories…. AGAIN.
Nice aren’t I??? ;o]
So, there I was, at GT’s all day. Unfortunately she felt that the sun rose and set on me. As a small child, I suppose I didn’t mind it much, but as I grew into my “terrible teens” I found it EXTREMELY annoying because I KNEW I was no angel, that’s for sure. I was as most kids in their teens- an ass, and that was on my good days.
When I remember some specific thing from that time in my early little life, I honestly wonder how in the world my Grandmother put up with me. On rainy days I couldn’t go outside. (I’d probably melt or something. Grandma was the Queen of Oldwive’s Tales!) So…. what do you do with a kid that basically LIVED for playing outside and riding her cool red tricycle? Well, if you are my Grandma, you let her ride her trike in the house. Yes, you read that right. IN THE HOUSE. Now, naturally, as a kid, you are thinking, cool! Lots of room! Tear around, etc. Uh, no, not so. Grandma’s house wasn’t that big, but some how I managed. How did I not ruin every stick of furniture in her house? How did I manage to not knock Grandma on her rear? How could she stand that going around and around and around for God knows how long? And across her kitchen floor! She would mop that floor every morning after breakfast and dishes, then here I would come tearing along …. through the living room, hang a sharp left into the small entry way by the front door, into the kitchen, screech to the left again around the kitchen table, on into the dining room, trying hard not to hit the dining room table, through the living room again….. Holy Crap! Maybe Grandma was on some kind of tranquilizers or something… she had to have been!
I also had this strange fascination with bagging groceries. (Shaking my head, I have no idea what I was thinking.) But while Grandma was doing dishes or something else there on the counters, that is when I would decide to climb up on the stool that she had there by the phone and the kitchen counter, climb up so I could reach the cupboard, open the cupboard and one by one start taking stuff out of the cupboards, mainly canned goods, I would want Grandma to pretend that she was shopping and then I would “bag” her groceries. After I was done with that strangeness then I would put everything back in the cupboards. I wonder if Grandma ever would be in that cupboard looking for something, not be able to find it and let out a string of swear words, followed by my name??
The other thing I loved to do was go get into Grandma’s car. That bright red Studebaker stationwagon. I would sit on the driver’s side. Could not see out of the car, but I would pretend that I was driving. And speaking of driving…as I mentioned earllier, back in those days there was no such silly thing as seatbelts or car seats for kids. How Grandma would want me to “sit” in the car while she was driving around town… was to stand beside her on the bench seat and put my little arm around her neck. That is how I would hang on. I remember I told someone that story once and I will never forget the look of complete and total terror on their face. Naturally, I laughed my ass off. Hell, it wasn’t THAT bad. I managed to survive. And it is in that very spot, right next to Grandma, going God knows where – that I spewed forth my first words… yes, I had been listening to Grandma as she drove for awhile now, and it showed when someone pulled out in front of us, Grandma’s arm came flying across to protect me and I said in a rather loud tone, Son of a Bitch! Yes, that’s right. I remember this incident, well, I remember saying the words, I didn’t remember why, or that they were my first words, Grandma filled in the rest of the information years later. I think I remember it because it was the first time (of what was going to be many) that I could see Grandma stifling a giggle or trying her damndest not to smile. Through the choked giggles and the hand up to her face to try to hide the smile, she tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing for little girls to be saying. Knowing me, I no doubt thought.. “And why not? He did a bad thing!”
I wish I could have been a mouse in the corner when mom or dad or whoever came to get me (if they even did ~insert loud evil laughter here~) and Grandma, again trying to keep from cracking up, announces, “Your daughter said her first words today.” Mom I would imagine would have been a little sad that she didn’t get to hear them, that is until she learned what it was that I said. I wonder if at that moment Mom thought, “Oh dear God, help me, this one is going to be interesting.”
When I think about that story, I always chuckle. In a lot of ways, my memories seem like something that happened to someone else, or it was like I watched it on TV or something, but when I hear or I remember that story, I don’t doubt for one second that I did that. I haven’t changed a damn bit! No wonder I still feel like I am only 5!!!!
I just wanted to add…please bear with me as I “move in” here and get comfortable. I may go thru a few changes as I muddle through how to get the design of this blog to reflect a little of me. My experience is limited, but I am having fun learning and trying new things.
I guess for now, as you see things change, just think as it as a reflection of my current neurosis … it’ll soon pass.
Since I wrote that last post which was reprinted from May 4, 2006, my mom’s mental health has gone significantly downhill. She no longer knows who I am when I call, and her memories are even more scrambled than before. She thinks that her and dad lived in a trailer in some trailer park east of the city. They didn’t. My sister did many years ago. Mom would go visit her to see her grandkids, etc.
On the dining room wall hangs my 16″x20″ senior picture. Apparently Mom looks at it and wonders if my sister ever talks to me anymore. This can be a day after I have talked to mom. It breaks my heart and to be horribly honest, I’m not dealing with it very well. As a matter of fact, I’m not dealing with it at all. It scares me, it sends me into a terrible downward spiral and I berate myself for feeling this way.
I still send her cards on all those special occasions… even “just because” times. But I can’t bring myself to call her. I can’t bring myself to make the 300 mile trip to be in that house… that house where so much happened, and to see my mom, or the shell of a woman who used to be my mom.
I know that is going to sound absolutely terrible to anyone who reads this. But let me just say….however horrible of a person you think I am… trust me…. I think MUCH WORSE about myself. I know my facing the fears is inevitable, and I have been working with my doctor for the past year and a half to try to get me in a better place emotionally, physically and spiritually to actually be of some service over there, and not a hindrance. I do not posses a poker face. I am not good at hiding what I might be thinking or how might be feeling. My face and my eyes tell all…. and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, no matter what Mom’s mental state is in, she WILL know that I am upset and it will only further upset her and confuse her and yes, me too.
My mother put up with mental and physical abuse from my alcoholic (and I believe, mentally ill) father until his death 3 years ago. For the last 7-8 years of his life, though she knew it was awful to think this, she wished he would just die, she just couldn’t handle dealing with him anymore. Though for the most part, he no longer drank (because he couldn’t drive and my mother wouldn’t buy him any booze), he was still abusive to my mother. Towards the end of his life, he sat in his chair- where he always sat- with either a gun or a bow and arrow by his side. It scared my mother to death. She didn’t know what he was thinking, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. He fucked with her mentally, cussed at her and called her all kinds of names. He was dying of emphysema and God knows what else, Mom made sure he ate, but he refused to bath and sat in his own filth. She tried to get him committed somewhere, but he always passed the psych evals and was deemed mentally sound. His doctor had written him off many, many years ago, Dad never went back to see him, yet the doctor continued to prescribe for him his inhalers, and eventually oxygen tank.
My mother dealt with his pathetic ass for years, and it took it’s toll. Many years ago I was involved in Al-Anon. I was told that often times we, the loved ones of the alcoholic or the addict become sicker than them. I surmised that it was because we were living our life more reality based then they were. We could see BOTH sides of this nightmare, they could not.
Those words echo in my head nearly every day. Yes, the loved ones DO become sicker than them. No matter how hard we try to fight against them,sometimes they take everything from us. Everything that we were, and maybe even sometimes, everything that we could be.
My mother put up with it. She lived with it. She never left him for more than 24 hours in 48 years. A lot of my life I resented her for that. Resented her for not doing something about it. For putting up with it. But I see now, through my own life experiences, that she loved him, DEEP inside of him there was good, she saw that. She saw it definitely more than my sister and I saw it. She saw and had compassion for a broken man. But there was another side to her as well. She was fearful. She was afraid that she couldn’t cope without a man around. She didn’t think she could do whatever she needed to do without him.
I remember once… I was in Jr. High School. There had been a huge fight. Mom was all bruised and battered. Dad had loaded his truck up in the middle of the night and left. He went to his mother’s. He was only gone for about a week, but within that short amount of time, one of the kitchen cupboards had come loose. My mother broke down and started crying… slowly sinking to the floor, sobbing. I asked what was wrong, after some time I figured out what she was saying…. “I can’t do this, I don’t know how to fix this. We can’t do this without him here.” In my smartass, teenage brain I thought this was funny because Dad never did a damn thing around the house anyway. He didn’t mow the lawn- either I did, or Mom did. He didn’t make any repairs and if he did, he usually fucked it up that Mom had to call someone else, or it had to be replaced.
I don’t know how I knew what to do, but I went out into the garage, picked up a screwdriver, came into the house and tightened the screws that had come loose on the cupboard door. I said to mom…”Look, fixed… and besides mom, he never did a damn thing around here anyway. We’re going to be ok.” How the fuck did I know that? And who the hell was the god damn parent in that household?
Ya know… bottom line I think why I am so saddened by all of this is because Mom could have had a better life. Mom could have chosen something different, but for reasons known, and reasons unknown, she chose not to. I think fear made her decide that.
Those childhood memories. They hit you at odd times. Sometimes you don’t even need any kind of reminder,, it just shows up. They make you smile, giggle, chuckle and even roar. Sometimes tears form in your eyes, making it hard to see, making it hard to smile.The older we get, it seems those childhood memories visit us more. I don’t know if it because as we age, we see the coarseness of the world and something deep within us needs something “softer”. Is it a defense mechanism that God built into us? To be able to remember “softer” times; times that were innocent, times when we looking at all the world with wonder and most of the time delight. Is it these childhood memories that get us through our “golden years?”I remember as a child, old people were always talking about when they were kids. Did they feel as I am starting to now? That my body has defied me. I am stiff, every joint in my body aches, my memory of what I did yesterday is shot to hell, but by God, I can tell you what happened when I was 4 years old.I am an aging baby-boomer. 50 is just around the corner. (I have to tell you, as I type that, I felt a nausea in the pit of my stomach. As I look at the number…. 50, I am shocked, I blink my eyes a couple of times, jut to make sure. It is downright appalling… especially when emotionally I feel like I am still about 5 years old.)What has prompted me to write this stuff down, the memories that are stored in my little brain, is because the other day I was having one of those “reliving childhood moments” and within that memory I could hear my Mother’s voice, ‘Lyd, you should write about that stuff.” My Mother has been telling me to write a book or something for as long as I can remember. (You know what? That saying…’for as long as I can remember’ is kinda funny when you get older… cus, hell, most of the time you can’t remember a damn thing.)I digress…. (what’s new?) Mom, her telling me to write stuff down. This little lightbulb sputtered and popped and finally lit up over my head… ‘Mom’s right, I gotta get some of this stuff down.’You see, my Mom, the witty, intelligent, empathic, gentle woman that she is has been having some memory problems for a few years now. A lot of it is due to the fact that stress got the best of her when she was dealing with a husband that was going through life with a chip on his shoulder, angry at everything, confused, frustrated and mostly just plain afraid of his failing health. He didn’t make things easy for my Mom. After she retired, she was having to be home with him all day, and it really took its toll.And Mom, being the dedicated person that she is, stood by him, maybe she was gritting her teeth and cussing up a blue-streak under her breath the whole time, but she hung in there until his passing a couple months ago.So, Ma, this is for you. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane- you could use the laugh, I’m sure. And please don’t fall over from shock that I am actually doing something you suggested. I do listen, ok, well, some of the time.With all my love,“Lyddie”-original post on Blogger Thursday, May 04, 2006
In my previous post I alluded to something about my summer vacations with my grandparents being the best AND the some of the worst times of my childhood.
These summer adventures were taken yearly from the time I was 4-8 years old. It was pretty much all the traveling I ever did. I can remember only one trip I ever took with my parents. Don’t know why, really…. money? hassles? who knows. When I was young and traveling with my grandparents, for the most part it was fun and exciting. They liked staying in little cabins by the ocean, or small little “motor inns”. They were always quaint and run by very nice and hospitable people. The Washington and Oregon coastline was our yearly destination. Exploring little towns (pretty much all of them were little back then.), little shops, a little restaurant here and there and me spending hours exploring on the beaches.
As I grew older and became more aware of the world around me, I became aware that my grandparents had a “ritual” of sorts and that was drinking a fifth of whiskey every Saturday night. There were no exceptions during vacations. It was like clockwork, every Saturday after dinner they would start drinking. There would sometimes be a lot of yelling, coming mainly from my grandmother, and falling down, tripping over things, running into walls, mumbling and talking to himself coming from my grandfather with my grandmother yelling at him to shut up and stop talking to himself… which in turn would make him mumble all the more. (One of those sad, yet funny things in life, I guess).
I would lay in my bed, sweating with fear, holding myself as still as I could- so as not to draw attention to myself, trying to breathe as quietly as I could. It terrified me and I found it difficult to sleep on those nights. I was always glad to see the sun come up the next morning. I always welcomed the daylight.
Perhaps these little incidences of our vacations were difficult for me because at home I had to deal with a drunk Dad a lot of the time. And he was a very violent and abusive drunk.Come to think of it, he didn’t have to be drunk to be abusive. He was just an extremely angry individual who could be extremely violent.
I saw my time with my grandparents as a time of “safety”, if you will. Though there still was the drinking to the point of not being able to stand up and voices sometimes raised, it wasn’t anything like what I was dealing with at home, and my grandparents actually interacted with me…. something I rarely got at home- especially from my Dad.
Nonetheless, there are images in my head of some vacations of my grandfather who couldn’t keep his ass planted on a large piece of driftwood while we sat around a huge bonfire. He just kept falling off. Over and over again. My grandma was getting more and more irritated with him. She finally got so damn fed up with him she took his drunk ass back to the cabin and put him to bed. But even today… many, many, many years later when those moments pop into my head, seemingly from nowhere…. I get a very sick feeling in my stomach, like I want to throw up, and I can feel my heart start to pick up its pace closely followed by the start of the feelings of panic… just as it happened then.
It is at those moments I either force myself to try to think of something cool that happened on one of those trips, or I purposely focus on something in the here and now.
I guess I’m an impressionable individual….. and it started a very long time ago.
I remember when I was a wee one, my grandparents would take me on trips with them in the summer. They had a comfy stationwagon and I had the entire back-end all to myself. LONG before seatbelts and kiddie car seats were mandatory. Back when a kid would wander all over the inside of a vehicle while Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Grandpa was screaming down the highway at 80-90 miles an hour.
Grandma would fix up the entire back area for me. I had blankets and pillows, all my favorite reading books, crayons, coloring books… things that would entertain me for hours. A lot of the time just having those things around me was a comfort, I would spend most of the trip just gazing out the window at everything that was passing by. Farm houses nestled between trees, surrounded by acres upon acres of land. Deep gorges cut out of the earth to carry rivers to the sea. Little towns that were not in a hurry, where everyone smiled and stopped to talk to the new faces on the street.Shaded, cool forest roads where I would hop up to the seat in front of me and roll down my window so I could breathe in the musty smells of the forest. Coastlines,I would do the same, roll down the window and inhale the salt air. It was as if these things caressed my soul. When I close my eyes, I see myself then, tiny, sitting in a huge car with lots of room to roam around in, face half out the window, smile on my face, breathing in all the wonderful smells and fresh air, a peaceful and content feeling. No worries, not a care. I was also fascinated by other travelers on the highways. Passing us in their big cars. (EVERYONE had big cars back then. Big- heavy- slabs of steel on wheels.) Other kids crammed in the backseat, faces pressed against the glass, staring at me, as if to say… “how come you have all that room? Or, “where are you going?” Funny how kids will look at each other when out and about, but for adults to make eye contact, well, hell, that is just unheard of! Maybe we feel as though we would invade the other’s personal space or something. Kids, they just stare at each other. It’s like there’s some kind of telekenesis going on.
I live in Washington state and the trips I would take with my grandparents were to the coasts of Washington and Oregon. Some of my best memories are of those times. Also, some of my most disturbing and saddest- but not right now. I am relishing these happier memories.To get from one side of the state to the other we had to go through a desert area, dry, unbelievably hot and just plain nasty. My grandma did most of the driving back then and she liked to leave on our trips at a time where we would hit that area in a cooler part of the day, but life being as it’s always has been- inconvenient…it didn’t happen that way sometimes. Grandma was prepared though. She would bring a bottle of water and some washcloths or dishtowels, once the heat got too unbearable, she would soak the washcloths or dishtowels and then hang them out the window as we blazed down the highway. It would cool off the towels and we could press the coolness up to our faces and necks. I was always amazed at how quickly it would cool me off. We must’ve looked like we were in some kind of distress. White cloths whipping through the air. I wonder if anyone thought momentarily that our car was racing madly down the highway, completely out of control and we were trying to flag someone down. I never thought about that until just now… that is damn hilarious!
