Mother's Little Helper

Freudian Slip: "Tell me About your Mother? -- Oops, I meant Tell me What's the Matter?"

“I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.” 

~Jennette McCurdy~

I dreamt that my mother took a flight all by herself and that she was so scared when she left but that after she had taken a few more flights she was no longer afraid; so she came out in her running clothes so that she could go for her first jog.

My mother was raised by an alcoholic father and a fierce mother. My mother doesn’t talk to me about her childhood and she never really has. She is fiercely loyal to her parents and five siblings. One story I have heard though from my mother about her family is that she smarted off to her dad one night at dinner when he was drunk because she didn’t want to sit on his lap and give him a kiss; because the only time she was ever told I Love You was when he was drunk. But this time she refused him at dinner and he chased her around the table and around the house with a cast iron frying pan to hit her with. She was still in middle school when she met my Uncle Joe and my dad. She was fifteen years old. I list my Uncle Joe’s name first because she originally had a date with him, he was 23 years old. But he stood her up. So then my dad, at the age of 22, started showing up at the burger place that she worked at and asked her out. My Dad and Joe also spent time at the playground checking out girls and had seen my mother there. Of course she said yes to a date with my Dad. They lied to her parents and told them that he was 18 but one day my dad was talking about his little sister and my grandma asked him how old she was and he said 21. Caught. But at that point no one cared. He was already living in the basement. When my mother was 16 years old they loaded up the car and drove from Astoria Oregon to Reno Nevada. In Oregon, even with your parents permission, you could not legally get married at the age of 16 so they had drive 12 hours to Nevada, a state that prostitution was legal in, to get married. My dad jokes that my grandparents only did it so that they would have one less mouth to feed. I’ve never thought that was funny. They came home and one year later they had me. I was born three days before there one year wedding anniversary. In my opinion my birthday is the only proof that it was not a shotgun wedding. Just a 16 year old girl, who had dropped out of school in the 9th grade, to marry a 23 year old divorcee’.  All of this with the blessing of her parents. We lived in Astoria until I was three years old. We lived in what we called “the white house”. A big house that was divided into rental apartments. My dad worked at the fisheries and from the stories he told about reading The Exorcist in the middle of the night and getting scared to death my assumption is that he worked the graveyard shift. Which left me and my mom home alone all night by ourselves. During the day she babysat for money and watched me. I wonder how hard that adjustment was for her. Going from a big house full of people, two parents, three brothers and two sisters to living in a little apartment with just a husband who was gone nights and a baby to take care of. No school during the day and burger shop in the evening. She talks about her friend coming over at night. I imagine them putting me to bed early so that they can get stoned and drink. My mother has told me that she always let me cry myself to sleep. She did not breast feed me. I imagine that I was a terrifying little thing to her. Crying all the time, hungry all the time, and needing her all the time. She was a child with a baby. Even my birth was traumatic for her and most likely for me as well. They didn’t allow anyone in the room with her, not even her mother. It was just her alone in the room with a doctor and a nurse. She said they even strapped her arms down to the table so that she wouldn’t flail. How painful that must have been for her. I have few memories of living in Astoria. I had an imaginary friend named Liz that lived in the garbage can. I remember my dad would walk me down the street to get candies. And once I saw a picture of myself from that house. My mom had taken it from outside the house. I was looking out after them through the dog door and my face was hot red from all of the tears that I had been crying. I can hear my mom laughing. Because she thought it was funny that I thought I was being left behind.

My mother is one of six children.

My mother’s oldest sibling is Gary. He married young and I believe his wife was only 13 when they married. They had two children. I don’t really remember my Uncle at all during my before my teenage years, he had moved to Oklahoma with his family then divorced. He became, or already was, one of the most grandiose over-the-top extreme alcoholics that I have ever known. I remember him when I was a teenager coming "home" to Bend. He was handsome and fun. He left again and did not come back until I was in my late 20’s. All of the siblings and parents chipped in money to get him home. But they failed to realize that Bend was not his home. Oklahoma was his home and once he got to Bend he became trapped both physically and mentally. He was a real old fashioned alcoholic and had Grand Mal Seizures when he tried to quit. I was told that my other Uncle, Brian, had to perform CPR on him once after a seizure and that when the ambulance arrived they had to paddle his chest to resuscitate him. I believe my Uncle Gary was only in his 50's when this happened. Gary slept in a trailer on Brian's property and the trailer inside and out looked like it should have been in a scary movie. Gary told me that he slept with a full bottle of whiskey by the bed so that he could take a drink every time he woke up and that by morning the bottle would be gone.  Everyone begged him to quit drinking but he had no desire. He said to me once, "why would I want to live if I quit drinking and smoking?" He had so many DUIs and he spent so much time in jail. Multiple times when he was in the jail he would go into delirium tremors and wind up in the hospital before he was sent back to the  jail. He had a girlfriend for a few years and they would get drunk and beat each other.  He went to jail once for that but my mom and the rest of the family blamed the girlfriend since she always hit him first. I remember her and she could not have weighed more than 100 pounds. In my Uncle's late 50’s everything just continued to spiral downward as I believe that he started doing meth with his friends. He was diagnosed with throat and liver cancer. They would not put him on the transplant list unless he stopped smoking and drinking otherwise the transplant would be for nothing. He told me he just couldn’t give up the only things that made him happy. So he never stopped smoking or drinking. He didn’t want to live without those vices. He was only 57 when he died. He had been living in a nursing home and had been on hospice for a few years. I had driven home to see him multiple times after being told that he would not make it through the night. The time he did die was the first time that I had decided not to drive home. I didn’t believe he would die and I also felt as though I had already said good-bye. I wish I had said it one more time. My happiest memory of my Uncle Gary was when we were at a country bar that my Uncle Brian owned. I was sad as I had just broken up with a boyfriend. Gary bought me a drink and then took me out on the dance floor. I had no idea how to country dance but my Uncle was such a great dancer that he just spun me around the dance floor until we literally fell down laughing.

Next born was David.  I will start this story by saying that I have been told that all three of the boys were sexually assaulted as children by the family barber and that seems relevant. David was in my life when I was young, my memory says ages five to ten. I have very few memories of him from this time; except one.  David was married to Mary and Mary had a daughter from a previous marriage named Brea. Brea was one grade ahead of me in school. David and Mary also had a son together named Davey. Davey was seven years younger than me. When I was about seven or eight years old my parents left me with David and Mary. Brea and I were playing outside with a ball. The cute neighbor boy came out and started talking to us. Brea started pushing me around and making fun of me and laughing at me. I was embarrassed. So I kicked her in the knee to impress the boy. Brea ran into the house crying. And a few seconds later David came flying out of the house and wrapped both hands around my throat and picked me up off the ground and choked me. He carried me into the house this way and when he got inside he threw me against the wall in a bedroom and slammed the door shut. I could hear Mary crying outside the door but no one ever came in to check on me. I don’t know if I slept or if I passed out. My parents came and I think that they were upset. They never talked to me about what had happened. My only memory of Brea after that is being in Grandma's garage and I have no idea what I said but Brea slapped me across the face and told me that she was told just to slap me if I got sassy with her from now on. Within about a year David and Mary were divorced and I didn’t see any of them again for many-many years. My next memory of David is in my teenage years, my brother must have been about seven years old. Davey would come and stay with us during the summers. He wasn’t allowed to stay with David but David would come over to visit him and have dinners with us or to take the boys fishing. I later found out that the years David had been gone were because he was in prison for molesting Brea and her friend. He was drunk when he did it and refused to take responsibility for his actions and instead blamed the alcohol. I was told he served a longer prison sentence because he wouldn't take responsibility for his actions. Either way the damage was done. Brea has been a drug addict for most of her life. Unfortunately the turn of events did not fair well for my sweet cousin Davey either. He was an alcoholic throughout his 20’s and until the end of his life a few years ago. There had been talk of getting him help but he had a daughter and a girlfriend and appeared to be living a calmer life but at the age of 35 he died of alcohol poisoning after a night of heavy drinking with his girlfriend. I called David to tell him how sorry I was. I had thought that I would never speak with him again as I have moved away from Bend and no longer go home. Despite the abuse that I suffered at David's hands; I felt compelled to reach out. Davey was like a younger brother to me. He spent so many summers at our home. In Davey's memorial notice they mentioned my Mom, Dad, and Brother's home as being like a second home for him; they left me out. It hurt deeply. My only other stand out memories of David are both when I was about 14 years old. I had rented a movie and came home to watch it, I cannot remember the name but it was about the abduction of Patti Hearst and it had a really over the top nasty rape scene. It was late afternoon and I was watching it by myself in the living room but David had stopped by and came out to sit and watch the movie with me. We made eye contact during the scene and I felt nauseous. The other memory was a BBQ that summer and I have no idea what I had smarted off to David about but he literally stood up and came after me and I had to get up and run away from him. Right then my Dad was walking out of the house and I stood behind him while David acted like he was going to reach around him and grab me, but my Dad said “I don’t think so” and stepped right in the way. Other than them making angry faces that was the end of it. One more memory is when I was 13 and the Desert Storm War had just started. I had just gotten suspended for starting a sit-in against the war at my school and David and my Aunt Pam were over at the house that night. The two of them and my mom were picking on me and making fun of me at the dinner table for being “anti-american”. It was really hurting my feelings and I went to my room. They followed me and stood in my room blowing cigarette smoke at me and singing Proud to be an American while I sat on the floor and cried. My Dad later told me that he had felt terrible for me but of course he had just stayed at the dinner table and did nothing to stop them.

Brian is the youngest brother and I have nothing but good memories of him. He was kind and funny and always had something nice to say. He smiled more than he talked. He has been married six times. Him and his first wife Lucy had my cousin Carrie, Carrie and I never got along. She strongly disliked me. Her mom remarried someone with money so she always felt and acted as though she were better than me. In high school we went to different schools but attended a dance together once. I dirty danced with my boyfriend and she had sex with hers behind the tables. But she told my mother how nasty I was at the dance which of course prompted my mother to tell me what I slut I was and that she knew people and knew everything I did. Next Brian married Carrie. Carrie was much younger than him and I really liked her. We all went cross country skiing together. Next was Jane. Jane and Brian moved to Hollywood together to break into the acting and country music business. That didn’t work out for them but I enjoyed hearing them sing.  Next was Daisy, who as it turned out was the mother of my 6th grade boyfriend. He hated her because he had to live with his grandparents because she was an alcoholic and had lost custody of him. Later, after they were divorced, her and I worked at a market together and became friends. After Daisy was Kris, who happened to be best friends with Daisy. Kris and Brian adopted their friends daughter’s baby. The friends daughter was a teenager and a drunk when she had the baby. Kris and Brian were actually together for many years and raised my cousin Lucy together. But around the time Lucy was in middle school Brian left Kris for her best friend Destiny. Then the all of them lived on the same property for many years because they couldn’t afford not to. Brian and Destiny are still together. I heard that they almost divorced once. I think he loves falling in love.

My mother also has two sisters, Chloe and Pam. I really don't have much to say about them. My Aunt Chloe has a daughter who is my age that has cerebral palsy. I love my cousin very much and miss her. When I was young I always swore that she would come and live with me so that I could take care of her.  Chloe moved away to California and did not come home often. She had a good life for herself in California. She was becoming a nurse when she found out that she had breast cancer. Her husband was an alcoholic and cheated on her while she getting her cancer treatments so she moved back to Bend. I think that it is the worst decision that she ever made. She doesn't like it there and she became stuck, like Gary. I've tried to feel close to her but I just don't think she was ever interested in having a relationship with me.

I was very close to Pam though. She was the youngest and felt more like an older sister to me. I would spend weekends at her house and we would stay up all night playing backgammon. I remember that she would cruise us around in her car with the windows down and Fleetwood Mac blaring, her cute little puppy, Foxy, sitting on my lap. I felt so cool when I was with her. I stayed with her after the birth of her children to help out. I loved that. They were like siblings to me. I also stayed with her for several weeks when I was a teenager. She made me do a lot of laundry but I liked living in her house. It wasn't quiet but it was a reprieve from living with my mom. Pam slapped me across the face once when I was seven years old, I had said "oh my god" and she said that was taking the lord's name in vain. My parents didn't care when I said it. I don't know how hard she slapped me, I think it hurt my feelings more than my face. I always thought her and I would stay close but we didn't. When my grandfather was dying she brought up the slap. It was out of the blue. She said that she just wanted me to know that she never slapped me and that I was liar. I didn't agree or argue with her, what the point? She also screams and yells a lot. And she spanked her kids way too much. Her oldest has gone No Contact with her. And she is the aunt online who posts all of the inappropriate political stuff. I was on facebook for about six months and quit because of her, it seemed easier to just delete my account than unfriend her. I only hear from her now on my birthday.