So I have been gone for for a couple of weeks due to technical difficulties but my trusty personal IT guy (love you babe) fixed my broken site…thank goodness! As well as a variety of other reasons but I have returned.
Well, it’s Church day! It’s funny that I would choose this day to write about my family and start with my Gramps since he was sooo anti-church and always referred to himself as an atheist. Or, then again, maybe it’s completely perfect.
Following the death of his favorite middle child, Gramps became harder and harder to live with. If the son made a wrong move he was beaten. A particularly nasty beating came when the son broke a pane of glass. Oh yeah…uh huh…a beating offense if I ever heard one!
The youngest (my mother), though never beaten, heard with regularity how she didn’t measure up to her sister. She wasn’t outgoing enough. She wasn’t smart enough. She wasn’t entertaining enough. She simply just wasn’t enough!
My Grams, however, was the primary recipient of his verbal abuse. Every little thing that went wrong in his life was her fault. Her defense system caused her to shut down and her silence just made him more and more angry. I’m sure that an objective observer might say that it was his own shame and guilt that fed his anger but that really wouldn’t have made his victims feel any better. After all they were the people he was supposed to love. To care for.
I guess in their own dysfunctional way they went about the business of living their lives. The youngest attended school. Her shyness made any public speaking almost unbearable. During one school project, she chewed most of the collar off her dress. A dress that Grams had painstakingly sewn for her. She always sat in the back of the room and as a result it was months before anyone realized that her eyesight was so bad she couldn’t see the board. She became very successful at remaining unnoticed. No one knew how smart she was and how much potential she embodied.
The son just tried to stay out of Gramps’ way. There was no father/son relationship to worry about. Survival was the order of the day. He spent as much time away from the house as possible. He brewed rootbeer (I guess he shared more with his dad than he thought), hung out with his dog Fido, and kicked around town with his friends.
Grams went about her daily chores. Pushing a chair around in front of her like a walker while she cooked, cleaned, and did the laundry. She withstood the periodic rages from her husband and entertained her kids with stories of the family.
Once, while cooking, she spilled grease on her leg and although a scab formed, she developed a terrible itching. It turned out that the wound hadn’t been properly cleaned (remember no doctor visits for this family) and as a result, she had maggots living under the scab. Since she couldn’t really care for herself during this time, Gramps thought it would be appropriate to have the youngest (my mother) stay home from school to nurse her back to health. The school however took a slightly different view. They helped the family access one of the many social programs put in place under FDR. It is through this program that Josie, a wonderful woman, became a part of their extended family. She would prove to be Grams’ closest friend and beloved by subsequent generations…
Some People’s Kids: Are Lifesavers…