thoughts for today

If you read my previous blog then, you know a little about where I am today. I would like to tell you now, where I have been. My oldest memory is one of my brother who is one year, one week and one day younger than me. He was chasing me through the house with the fly swat. We were in a single wide mobile home and our parents were in their bedroom with the door shut. As we busted through the closed door I remember my mother saying "don't come in here, don't come in here". They were busy, and naked in the bed, I was only around three, but I knew we were not suppose to go in the room when they were doing that. It was okay, nothing traumatic, nothing new. We just turned around and chased each other back up the hall.

My parents had five children, I was the oldest. My brother Junior as I said was a little over a year behind me and then came Margo less than 11 months after Junior and then the twins. The twins were born in 1965 to my abused mother and only one of the little baby girls lived. The oldest twin came and the second one was a surprise. Her heart gave out from hours of working to be born unassisted. The story is that the doctor didn't learn of the second baby until it was too late and she was too weak to survive. She is buried in an unmarked grave in Kershaw County, SC. My mom spent a few months too devastated to acknowledge us or herself. To hear her tell it those first few months after she lost the twin, she doesn't remember anything at all. Then one day while she was watching her soap opera "Days of our Lives" she remembered that she had just given birth. The twins were born 2 years and 10 months after me. From October 1962 to August 1965, my momma had 5 babies from 4 pregnancies. The twins were not the last though. The twin that lived we will call Lucy. On the day Lucy started kindergarten, my youngest brother was born. He is eight years younger than me. We will call him Bruno. Colleen (that's me), Jr., Margo, Lucy and Bruno all with blond hair and fair skin, like their momma. Margo takes a little after daddy's family. More than the rest of us, she had some Indian characteristics. We just told her she was adopted, truth is she had the prettiest skin and hair. We all had the square Indian jaws and not much else from that side of the family.

I remember when Lucy was an infant. I remember because our trailer caught on fire. Margo and I were playing with dolls on the couch and momma was cooking behind us. Jr was burned because the stove caught on fire. Margo and I were rushed outside to a neighbors car who drove us to the hospital. I am not sure if I remember this or if it just seems familiar from hearing about it in my childhood. We had to stop the car and go back, because momma forgot the baby was asleep in the bedroom next to the kitchen. We all are fine so I suppose it was a slow burning fire, or maybe it only damaged the kitchen. Either way, we moved. We moved a lot. We never stayed in the same place for a whole year. I can keep up with my childhood by what school I went to in what grade, because until I moved out, I never went to the same school more than one grade. Once I went to five schools in one grade. I was always the new kid in school and I never had a best friend in my class. Not until I quit moving with them. Daddy always beat up momma and then we would leave him for awhile. She always went back to him though. Whether we liked it or not, without our approval, she always let him come back. Sometimes he moved into where we were, sometimes he took us all to rent a new house or trailer. We didn't mind mostly, daddy wasn't that mean to us, only her. We were small kids, he was bad when he drank and if she didn't mind, we didn't. We just went in the room and waited for the screaming to stop. Sometimes he made us watch. Sometimes he used us as entertainment.

Margo was a passer outer. If she got excited she would just faint. It didn't take much, playing too hard, a scary carnival ride or getting yelled at would make her turn white and flop to the ground. Daddy use to make her do it for company. Momma called it seizures, lung seizures. I don't know if a doctor was ever told about Margo's lung seizures or not. Sometimes Daddy would make Jr. hit her and pick a fight with her until she fainted. He had them do it for company just because he thought it was talent I guess. Momma didn't like it, but she let him do it, why not, she always woke up right after. No harm done. I guess it was better than taking a beating if she made daddy mad. (I wonder why we are all so screwed up now?)

Dear Mom

Now that Bobby is a senior in high school and most likely going to graduate a semester early, it makes me think of you and the problems we have. Quite often I think of you, ya know. Probably much more often than you realize. You already know all the things I am about to say, but I’m pretty sure you don’t see them the way I do. Let me help you to see things through my eyes in hopes of putting some of the pain behind us once and for all. Since you so kindly asked in your last hysterical phone call to me.

Here in the beginning I need to say that I am not writing to hurt you or make you feel bad, although that’s how it may seem, it is truly not my intention. Please know that I want to make things better and this is how I have decided to do it. I am not good at confrontations, so much of what you will read, you may have never heard before now. It always seems that when someone I love hurts me, I think about telling them, but I don't because I don't want to fight. I wait until later to tell them and then, after some time has passed it doesnt seem quite as devastating, so I typically end up suffering through it alone. It works best this way for me because I have found that no one has ever cared enough to say I’m sorry anyway and you never even admit you were wrong or that your actions may have hurt me, much less get me the help I needed to heal my wounds in a healthy way. I always just have to ponder it in my mind for awhile, figure out how to deal with my disappointment and then wait for it to fade away. Wait for the pain to sink into myself somewhere deep in my soul where all that dark stuff hides. For other readers though, I need to explain where I am today so that they can somewhat understand where I am going. First they need to know where I have been. I say “I” because I can only explain how I feel, because I don’t know how you feel. You seldom tell me unless you feel like exploding and I am the closest one around for you to relieve yourself on. You are my mother, but honestly you make me feel like a urinal.

It is almost Christmas, 2009 and yet my uncertainties are not focused on the gifts I cannot buy or the boxes of holiday decorations still packed away in my attic, but on next May and graduation.

Bobby my youngest is 17 and graduating in May. Bobby is my 4^th child to graduate from High School. My oldest Marsha graduated ten years ago, Greg earned his GED a few years later and then Pete graduated year before last. My last baby is about to leave the nest and I haven’t been taking my anti-depressants the way I should, so pardon me if I seem a bit spiritless. It is times like this that I don’t remember to pretend to be happy or sad. Pre-menopausal is what I am, I guess. I have also been a widow since my early 40’s.

My children...First of all there is Marsha. She got married, produced two children and then divorced her husband soon after the second baby was born. A few years later she moved in with another woman. My oldest son is Greg. He is currently holding down a good job and in a promising relationship with a nice young lady who sees, like I do, that Greg has the makings of a great husband and father. He just needs a good woman to guide him in the right direction and hit him with the rolling pin occasionally if he gets off track (just kidding). Pete is quite a character just like his father, he is an outdoors man, a true southern redneck, a good ole boy if you will. He is as independent as they come, always trying not to burden Aunt Colleen, almost to a fault. They are each one my favorite and I tell them that all the time. They are always trying to corner me into saying which one of them is my real favorite. I always say it is whoever is absent when they ask, or I simply say “you are”. Each one is truly my favorite, although sometimes one or two of them can be on my “you are not my favorite today” list.