THE DAY THE PREACHER MET MY AUNT AND UNCLE

THEN:


    When my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Leslie argued the world stood still. At least for them and anyone smart enough to keep their noses out of other people's business. They argued with all the passion within them. Their arguments were as strong as their hearts and their love.

    When I was about fourteen they showed up for a visit while our pastor, Brother Frank, was sitting around having a cup of coffee with my dad. We had not seen these wonderful relatives in months. Dad and I heard our surprise visitor's voices and the slamming of the car doors. We knew right away that the argument would be in the forefront of this particular visit. I was glad to hear them, glad to see them as I peeped out the window. And I didn't mind the argument. I thought maybe it was best to get it over with and get on to the laughter and stories. My wise daddy must have had the same idea, because he too just sat back to let the argument and the visit begin to roll right over us.

    The preacher was in the middle of expressing a thought when Aunt Nancy and Uncle Leslie made it up our steps and through the front door in record time. I went out on the porch, harboring the foolish notion that I might get a moment to bid them a bright hello and distract them from their disagreement. I did not. I stepped back in before I was run over by the arguers. Daddy had not even had the time to say to the preacher, "Well, here comes my brother and his wife." Aunt and Uncle came through the front door arguing loudly, and oblivious to any occupants of the living room, they headed for the back bedroom where they always bedded down when they stayed with us.

    The preacher watched them stride through the room; his eyes were big and he stretched his neck to see them clear the kitchen, still fussin' all the way. He then turned his wide eyes toward my daddy. The preacher's brows were raised and he had a questioning look on his face. I saw Daddy hide a smile behind his coffee cup. When he lowered the cup, he chuckled in spite of himself, cleared his throat and said, by way of belated introduction, "That's my brother and his wife." His voice was calm and mundane.

    I had to leave the room, else I would've exploded with rude laughter right in the preacher's presence, besides as long as you held your tongue and stepped back a pace or to it was quite safe to go to the back room, and that's where all the excitement was anyway!

KYRIE ELEISON

Skitch and Greg

    Greg had told me that we would marry when he got back from basic training. Because I was paranoid about him finding another lover while he was gone, I told him I'd prefer to get married before he went away to basic. He said nothing. Time passed and I decided he did not care about my preference, but a few weeks later, out of the blue, he said, What about June?" That was my big proposal, and I was delighted with it! I'd never given a thought to a fancy ring and a man on his knees anyway. What was that all about?

    We set the date for June 8th.

    When we broke the news to Nina, we told her we wanted to have a church ceremony in the church I had grown up in and my pastor, Brother Frank, would marry us. We told Nina that we wanted a small and almost informal ceremony, that we were going to invite only our immediate families, his grandmothers, and a handful of close friends. Nina was beside herself with disappointment. It was very important to her that her brother and sister and all her nieces and nephews come. She wanted to invite Truman's mom and siblings and all their children as well. I explained that I was not against that, but it simply was not feasible. My family did not have the funds for a big wedding and I, foolishly, had not saved my own money up for the event. She begged us to allow her to invite whomever she wanted and she told us, "I promise they won't go away hungry. I'll help pay for all the food." We felt that she had taken away the only firm excuse to have a small ceremony and, though it made me nervous to think of all those near strangers there, people that I was not sure were "on my side", we agreed that she could invite whomever she wanted if it meant that much to her.

    Greg made it clear he was not interested in the cake, food, or decorations, so I decided our wedding colors would be blue and yellow because one of my favorite things in the world was daisies on a blue background. I did not have the money to supply any type of bride's maids dresses, so I told all my bride's maids and Lila, my matron of honor, that my colors were yellow, and blue. I asked them to wear those colors if they could, but if not anything pretty would work. Several of the girls that I'd asked to be bride's maids declined. Cindy, Michell, Jutannia, and Ramona all said they had other obligations that day. They did not even show at my wedding and I tried to not be hurt over it, but I was. Nancy accepted and she found a pretty white dress to wear. She lamented that only the bride was supposed to wear white, but I told her not to worry about that. I was just so grateful she would come and be there beside me! Tanya was definitely included and she was now big enough to wear one of my dresses, also white, though it was just a tad too large on her. Sandi found a very pretty blue floral dress, and I assured her that it did not matter that the dress was not floor length. It was much more important to me that she be there and walk with me than it was that her dress be perfect. Lila could not find a dress and also had to wear one of mine. The only formal I had left was the lavender gown that I'd worn to Greg's junior prom, so Lila, in that color, had to stick out just a bit. I told her that she was so pretty she stuck out all the time anyway, but I'm not convinced that she was consoled. Still, she walked with me and that was all I really wanted.

    Greg asked his best friend and distant cousin, Pokey (Darrel) to be his best man. Pokey tried to say there was no way he could do that because he did not have a suit and could not buy one. Greg and I convinced him to come and wear whatever he had. It was important to both of us that our families and friends show up and take places of honor beside us, no matter if they had to do it wearing trash bags.

    When she found out that I planned to pick wild daisies for my wedding bouquet (which seemed perfectly reasonable to me) Nina said that would not work. She took me to a florist and ordered a daisy bouquet, "bride" and "groom" wine glasses, though we told her the church would never allow wine at the reception. "You can drink punch in them!" She said. She also bought a pretty cake knife and server. I was very grateful if a little overwhelmed.

    She was also there when we picked out our wedding rings because Greg had not worked in ages and she was supplying those for him. I nervously chose the smallest and cheapest gold band I could find and the clerk found the matching men's ring for Greg. The total was under fifty dollars. Even in those days, that was cheap for wedding rings.

    When the big day arrived, my mother announced, "Happy is the bride the sun shines on!" She then started crying and she and my niece Shana cried most of the remainder of the day.

    I was in the church bathroom getting dressed when one of Greg's little cousins came in. She had never been very nice to me and was one of the people I had been nervous about having around on my wedding day, though I liked her siblings very much. She made small talk and contributed to my rising nervousness for a bit and then popped out with, "I hear your family is so poor that Aunt Nina had to pay for the whole wedding?"

    I looked at her in shock, swallowed, and thought about how odd it would be to go to jail for assault on your wedding day. "They did not pay for the whole wedding. Aunt Nina bought some things she thought we just had to have and she invited a lot of people we were not going to invite so she helped pay for the food."

    "Oh." She said with a smile and then sauntered out.

    I had a hard time getting my head back into the romantic game after that.

    When Dad and I walked down the isle, he was all business. My little nieces, Shana and Amanda were my flower girls. They were the most adorable people at the wedding, in the world probably! They wanted to be sure they dropped flower petals at each and ever row, on both sides, and about the same amount of petals each time. They discussed softly about whether or not there were enough flower petals in this spot and who should drop them where. They never really argued, so they were simply reaching an agreement. My father wound up shoving them up the isle and I was too amused to try to look romantically at Greg and notice if he was wowed by my simple but pretty dress.

    Dad passed me over to Greg and when we joined hands, his were sweaty and shaking. He could barely get the ring on my finger when the time came, and I wondered why anyone would be so nervous about being in front of people. It had never bothered me to be in front of a group of people. I had done dozens of talent shows and plays. The only thing that made me nervous (in regard to the wedding) were mean people, and it's hard for people to be mean to you when you are in the actual act of saying your vows. Besides, I was hoping I had already weathered the worst of that.

    The rest of the day was a whirlwind. We said vows, took photos, ate finger foods, cut cake, drank punch from wine glasses, and opened presents. I kept wiping Mom and Shana's tears and telling them it would be okay. Somehow it soothed me to sooth them.

    Greg and I got in my dad's station wagon and drove off. We didn't even have a car of our own at that point. We honeymooned for two nights at The Breaks International Park. The place was lovely, as we already knew. But Greg did not really want to go swimming very long and I blistered on the paddle boats. Mostly we sat in the room and watched television. He did buy me a stuffed toy, a replica of Gizmo from the movie Gremlins. We had some nice food in the restaurant, and I reveled in the fact that I could stay up and watch Johnny Carson and David Letterman and not worry about anyone hearing anything that would wake or offend them.

    We lived with his mom, Truman, Greg's two brothers and Truman's son for the next two months. It was an adventure in itself, figuring out how to reside in a mobile home with all those people.

    After Greg went away to basic, his mom and I had several long conversations and became so much closer than we had ever been. I spent a lot of time with my parents and Lila while waiting on the day that I could go start my home with Greg. He sent me a portion of his pay, and I foolishly spent almost every dime of it as soon as it came in. I had never had money, and now suddenly I did. I had no clue how to resist the desire to provide my family with a nice meal or go see that movie I was interested in.

    For the first time ever, I received letters from Greg. I cherished every one and carried them around with me everywhere I went. He also sent me a stuffed unicorn, a decorative gold throw pillow case. I made him care packages and sent him foodstuffs and random items I thought he might need to survive basic training. I always included the chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips that he loved so much.

    Greg called and told me he had stress fractures in both legs and was going to have to use crutches for several weeks and finish training after a hospital stay. He was not in pain now, he said, but this would delay his training significantly.

    He was off the crutches by the time he came in for Christmas and he had gained a lot of muscle, but was still trim. He looked like a million bucks in his uniform, and I sat right on top of him all the way home from the airport. I'd never used a seat belt in my life and I was not going to start now. (They were not required by law and were not even to be found in some cars.) He sang our song, "Lady" by Kenny Rogers my ear and it was the first time I had ever heard him sing. When I remarked on that, he told me the army had opened him up, that he was much less shy now. I thought, "Maybe he needed this." For the first time ever, I/we had wonderful Christmas presents to give out. I had spent a great deal of the money on gifts. Greg had bought me a stuffed white baby seal for my Christmas gift. I don't remember what I gave him.

    After he was back in Texas and almost through with his training, Greg called and told me he was going to be sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana after basic. He said it was called the armpit of the army and that the G.I's jokingly nicknamed it "Fort Puke". The town nearest the base was Leesville but it was called Sleezeville by the soldiers. I was disappointed that the place had a bad reputation. I checked out books on Louisiana and hoped we would be in a swampy, Spanish moss area, though I despaired that we could not avoid the heat. I was also upset that we would be stationed so far from home, but told myself it could have been much worse. Lots of his military friends were sent to Korea and Germany.

    In February 1986, I was sitting in the room I had shared with Sandi for the last six years. I had packed up my clothing in a couple suitcases and boxed up the contents of my hope chest for shipping. Only a few days earlier, I had been sitting on my bed, in the exact same spot as I watched, on my 13 inch black and white television, with shock and utter dismay, as the Challenger space shuttle exploded and seven of my heroes were obliterated before my very eyes. Life was precious, precarious.

    Now, I starred at the same television as John Cougar sang about pain, and I wondered about the pain I would face in my life. This was a very important crossroads for me. Would I some day look back and wish that I had never gotten off this bed and onto that plane? Should I back out and refuse to leave my safe little town, my family, everything and everyone I had ever known? I prayed silently, "Show me God. Show me what I should do." And at that moment "Kerie" by Mr. Mr. began to blast on MTV.


Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie

The wind blows hard against this mountain side
Across the sea into my soul
It reaches into where I cannot hide
Setting my feet upon the road

My heart is old, it holds my memories
My body burns a gemlike flame
Somewhere between the soul and soft machine
Is where I find myself again

Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison, through the darkness of the night
Kyrie eleison, where I'm going, will you follow?
Kyrie eleison, on a highway in the light

When I was young I thought of growing old
Of what my life would mean to me
Would I have followed down my chosen road
Or only wished what I could be

Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison, through the darkness of the night
Kyrie eleison, where I'm going, will you follow?
Kyrie eleison, on a highway in the light

    The lyrics spoke to me, calmed me, and set "my feet upon the road". To this day I don't think I could have gotten off that bed if that one song hadn't played when it did. At the time, I thought the lyrics said "Kyrie a laser" and meant "Carry a laser". I had no idea why I needed a laser in Louisiana, but the message was clear. "Brace yourself, but GO!" And go, I did.

    Only recently I have learned that Kýrie eléison is Greek for "Lord, have mercy". That makes even more sense. I needed the Lord to have mercy. The road ahead of me was full of pitfalls and pain, but I needed to travel it, and I needed help and mercy along the way. Looking back, I am so glad I found the courage to get up and go on my own great adventure, my own life. If I had let fear win and I had stayed, I would have missed out on the two people that have shaped me most, and for the best, and saved me repeatedly over the last two decades. I would have missed out on what I needed to get me where I am today, with the husband I have today, and those sons of mine! Yes, I walked right into a fire, but that was my fire. It had my name all over it. I was meant to survive it, to learn from it, to carry out a dragon and a wizard, and a whole lot of knowledge. When I was forced to leave Greg I called myself Lady Phoenix for a long time. I had survived a fire and emerged a new creature.

    If you are struggling through a hard time in your life, own your fire. Claim it, survive it, learn from it, carry out any good thing you can even if that's only you. Put it behind you as soon as you realize that it is fire. Then do your best to turn the pain it gave you into knowledge. Keep the lessons and the blessings and move beyond the things that pull you down. You can do it. I bet on me, and I'd surely bet on you.

GREG

Greg and Skitch at the Prom
1984

  When I was fifteen I despaired that I was an old maid. There were many reasons for this odd notion. Probably the main one was because I had been reading adult romance novels since I was a bored nine year old that had ran out of age appropriate reading material. I read both contemporary and the historical romances, and they instilled in me a longing for love before I clearly understood the meaning of romance, and not only for love, but for one that began as early as possible. My favorite romances by far were the historical romances in which the females were often as young as fourteen years old. I had been told repeatedly that I was very mature for my age. That notion coupled with books about child brides left me thinking that I was quite late in finding my true love. A few of the stories I liked best had lovers that met when they were even younger than fourteen. They grew up as childhood friends and later became more. Since I wanted, possibly more than anything, to have one love and one lover all my life, I made up my mind that a childhood love was the kind of love for me. I longed for a gentle friendship sort of love that grew into romance. This all made plenty of sense to me. After all, my sister Lila had married at fifteen and my mother at sixteen. (We later found out she was fifteen too. She had been misinformed about her own age.) My dear friend Jutannia had married at thirteen and several other acquaintances and friends were married before they were sixteen. The combination of my environment and my reading materials were a recipe for disaster.

    I had been praying for years, literally praying, on an intense and daily basis, for God to please send me my soul mate. I had named a tree in the grove near my home. I called him Tenison, and I spilled out my heart to him about how lonely I was and how much I wanted to find my soul mate. I often prayed beneath that tree. If someone had wandered by (I would have heard them tromping through the woods before they heard my whispering prayers) they might have thought I was praying to the tree, but I was not. The tree was only my confidante, my friend. I addressed my prayers, "Dear Father in Heaven" and ended them with, "In Jesus name I pray, Amen."

    I had dated this wild guy named Matthew off and on for just a bit. (He was too wild to endure long, in my opinion.) Matthew came by to see me one day and surprised me by asking my parents if I could ride to the gas station with him. They rather reluctantly allowed it. Once I walked to Matt's truck, I was surprised and annoyed to find another guy in it, and I almost went back home. I had made it a habit to never be outnumbered on any outings with a guy. Two guys and one girl spelled trouble in my book. But Matthew said it was a friend of his, Greg, and, "Come on! What are you, chicken shit to even ride to the gas station and back? This isn't going to take even fifteen minutes. How much trouble could any of us get into in fifteen minutes?"

    I made up my mind to kill both of them if they tried anything and I climbed into the truck.

    When I slid into the cab, I could smell beer very strongly and wasn't too surprised to see a beer bottle in Greg's hand. Again, I threatened to get out, but Matthew assured me that, though his friend was indeed pretty wasted, that he (the driver) had not been drinking a drop.

    I rode miserably to the gas station, promising myself that I would help my parents nix the idea if Matt ever showed up and asked them to let me go somewhere with him again.

    Every time Matthew went over a bump or hit a pothole, Greg would roll his beer bottle with the motions of the vehicle, and then congratulate himself by saying confidently, "Didn't spill a drop!" It was evident that he was truly very intoxicated, but I liked something about him that I could not quite put my finger on. He was soft spoken without being invisible. He was nice to me, and he had the most beautiful blue eyes I'd ever seen, and a great smile.

    During that short ride, I figured out that Matthew's friend Greg was my cousin DeanO's older brother, whom I had only heard of but did not remember ever meeting. Perhaps he had come once to our home when we lived up on the mountain, but I was not sure. So, that meant that Greg was my cousin too! DeanO and I were barely related. We called each other cousins due more to a great affection. By country standards we were third cousins and by legal standards we were second cousins once removed.

    Something about Greg's voice and his sense of humor drew me to him, and by the time we got back to my house, I knew that I was much more interested in seeing him again than I had ever been in seeing Matthew.

    The very next night, I ran into Matthew and Greg at the skating rink. It was not unusual for me to see Matthew there, but I had never noticed Greg before, though he swore that he went to the skating rink a lot and I was there almost every weekend. Maybe he was the invisible type, but I was certainly seeing him now.

    Greg and I spent a lot of time talking. I discovered that sober Greg was much more delightful than drunk Greg, and I hadn't really minded drunk Greg all that much. We couple skated when the lights went off and the disco ball went on. We spent most of the evening talking about music, and movies, and other things from pop culture. I felt that we had a lot in common.

    When I got home, I asked my mother if there was any reason third cousins should not date. She told me that after first or second cousins she figured we were all about as related as we were going to get. After all, we all came from the same couple, Adam and Eve, so everyone was cousins in the grand scheme of things. She even pointed out that she and my dad were distant cousin, fifth cousins they believed. I took that as a much better sign than I should have.

    Greg and I spent a lot of time on the phone after that and I grew to really love the sound of his laugh and his sweet husky voice. I wanted to be in love so much that I exaggerated every accomplishment that he had ever had. Every act of kindness or compassion that I saw or that he mentioned was blown out of proportion. I placed him so high on a pedestal that he could have won out against Mother Teresa and Gandhi and walked away with the Nobel Peace Prize if I had been the judge. I loved the idea of love so much that I ignored any red flag that flew up, red flags that had stopped me with other guys. I did not worry about the fact that we were distantly related, though this had kept me from ever considering DeanO as date material, or my favorite cousin Ramona's brothers, who were related to me on the same level. When he talked about how much he disliked his mom's boyfriend, Truman, and Truman's kids, I shrugged it off, though Greg's reasoning seemed petty. The same kind of disdain had thrown me off with other guys, even my most sought after boyfriend, Buddy. But not this guy and not now. I ignored the fact that he had been known to drink a lot and to smoke a lot of pot. I told myself Greg wasn't doing it now, and that was what really mattered. I had never knowingly dated a guy that used drugs or drank more than infrequently. My mother had teased me so many times when I was washing dishes. Ever time I got my shirt wet she would tell me, "You got your belly wet! That means you're going to marry a drunk!" I was sure she was off her rocker, and I never would marry a drunk! I was not fond of people that used pot, or booze, or any drug. I ignored the fact that Greg was very broken over his father's death. His dad Jimmy had died of a massive heart attack when Greg was only twelve and it left Greg very angry and scared. I felt only sympathy. I could imagine losing my dad would do the same to me. I ignored the fact that he resented his mother, Nina and was not very kind to her. I ignored the fact that he swore he would die before he reached the age of thirty-two, since his dad had died at forty-two and his dad's dad had died at fifty-two, both from heart attacks so massive their hearts exploded. I told myself Greg would grow out of his morose prophecy, he was still so young! And besides, thirty-two?! That was a lifetime away! Maybe he was even correct, but we would be completely different people by the time we were in our thirties. We would be old people by then! I ignored the fact that Greg had severe acne and that I hated the way he walked. To me, there was something feminine about the way his hips swayed, and yet, he did not have a girlish butt. In fact, he had no butt to speak of. He had the sunken butt that many men seemed to suffer from, the one that had dissuaded me often enough before. I told myself that I had been being too picky, too uppity, that now that I was older (and in my book more desperate) I should learn to look at people's insides not their outsides, that I would never get married if I just kept pointing out every guy's flaws. Everyone had flaws, right? I just needed to focus on the good parts of this guy and not the bad. I resolved not to look at his rear when he walked away from me and to stare into his bright blue eyes as much as possible.

    One thing that I really loved about him was the way he was with my niece Tanya. Not being good to Tanya would have been a real deal breaker, no matter how much I wanted to be in love. Tanya was seven years younger than me and she was my heart. She was my niece/sister/daughter/best friend, and I was convinced that no one would ever hurt her or be mean to her as long as I had breath in my body. Greg seemed to love Tanya, and she took to him like she had no other. He became her second best friend, right after me. My nephew and my younger nieces seemed to love Greg as well. Tanya teased us that I was Miss Piggy and he was Kermit the Frog and that one day we were going to get married and have little frogglets. I found her word combination of frogs and pigglets to be delightful. I thought about the fact that Tanya had never liked any of my other boyfriends enough to laugh and play with them, let alone to predict my upcoming marriage with them. Though I should have realized that lots of little kids make strange little predictions of the future, I did not. Her words became almost prophetic in my mind.

    On my birthday in 1983, not long after we met, Greg asked me to go steady. He joked, telling me that he had waited until it was quite late on my birthday to ask me to go steady so that he did not have to buy me a birthday present. I thought it was supposed to be funny, so I laughed it off. I wasn't very materialistic enough to care about a ring anyway.


    Greg and I spent the next two years vacillating between euphoria and fury. I shrugged this off as something that all couples went through. Greg once confessed telling me, "When I am with you no one else in the world seems to matter, but when I am at school I think about being with other girls." I did not take this as a red flag or a bad sign. I did not see it as a normal part of being a sixteen year old boy. I saw it as a cry for help, a call to arms, a demand for action. It inspired me to go back to school, to try even harder to be in his face twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. I told everyone that I was going back to school for me, but really I was doing it because I was afraid I would lose this soul mate that I had worked so hard for if I did not stay in his face.

    Despite all my best efforts there was a lot of time apart in those dating years. I took a summer job with the Manpower program the first year we were dating. I spent a lot of time hauling rocks in a wheelbarrow, cleaning out a field for the little league, and building two outdoor toilets for the crowds that would come watch their games. One day, Greg and my dad came to pick me up and I was nearly covered in green paint. I had been told to paint a group of standing aluminum bleachers but, being unfamiliar with the process, I did not paint things in the correct order. I painted myself into a corner, so to speak, and paint dripped all over me and got on my legs when I tried to extradite myself from the green mess I had just made. Dad drove home with the windows down and stopped at a gas station and bought two gallons of gas. I had to nearly bathe in it, and my sensitive skin turned bright red. Daddy was annoyed with them for not instructing me about the process, but he and Greg were also slightly amused. Greg told me I was the cutest green lady he'd ever seen. Despite my lack of common sense, they liked me on the ball field. I mixed concrete and hauled rock with the best of them. Still, I was transferred out of that job when I fell prey to a gang of bullies. They did not beat me up but, after cracking heads with them over some frogs they were torturing to death, I went to the "boss" and told him not to be surprised if I beat those three boys up. The Manpower program then sent me to work with the adult custodians at the high school. They probably marked my file, "Does not work well with others," and I spent the rest of the summer scrubbing chewing tobacco out of the corners in the high school walls. I resolved to keep my mouth shut next time and just beat people up.

    That same year, Greg was hit by a truck as he was biking to town to see me. We lived about six miles apart and when his mother refused to let him use her truck he sometimes biked to my house. A truck was speeding and it came barreling around a corner and knocked Greg and his bike for a loop. He had cuts all over his forehead and upper lip. He lost three teeth in the long term, one and a half immediately, and he broke his arm. I was acutely aware that it could have been much worse. I was in the tub when my daddy told me through the bathroom door, "Baby, he's okay, but Greg's been in an accident and Nina is on her way to pick you up and take you to the hospital to see him, so hurry up in there." Before I left my dad warned me, "Now, don't get up there and upset that boy. If he looks bad you keep your strength, you hear? No tears." I promised I would, and I probably needed that warning. Greg did look pretty scary. To try to lighten the mood, I showed him a necklace around my neck. It was an arrowhead necklace he had given me and I wore it always. I cherished it though it had been lying around in a drawer at his house, something he never wore anymore. It was like wearing his jacket or a prelude to his class ring.

    This was a game we had played before. He glanced at the necklace, smiled a bit and said, "Where'd you get that?"

    I teased him saying,"My wonderful boyfriend gave it to me."

    "Oh, he did, did he?" Greg said. "I'll have to kick his ass."
  
    I giggled and held tightly to his good hand.

    That exchange was overheard by Greg's cousin Regina, who told her mom and Greg's mom that I was lording some ex boyfriend's gifts over Greg while the poor boy was on his deathbed. They were in an uproar! The shame! The nerve! Greg set them straight on that one pretty quickly. The one thing he was best at was taking my part against his family. I was on my own with my own family, and with our friends, and pretty much anyone else, but anytime any of his relatives set themselves against me I did not have to wonder. Greg had my back. It was as though he felt he was responsible for shielding me from his family and from other men, but no one else. At first, his mother, Nina, was very sweet to me, but when she decided that Greg and I were too serious, she began to give him grief about our relationship. He told me that she had started trying to get him to break up with me. He said that she told him my family was a bunch of lazy no goods that lived off of government money, and that I would probably be a lazy no good as well once I grew up. She took him to Angie's, his ex girlfriends house, to give Angie a chance to seduce him and hopefully end his relationship with me. Greg assured me that he pushed away from Angie, though she was wearing a see-through nighty and begging him to stay the night with her, which he said his mother would have allowed. He told me that he went and waited in the car and that his mom pretty quickly got the message that Angie wasn't going to win and so Nina joined him in the truck and took him home. (Greg said his mother and Angie's mother were having coffee in the kitchen while all this drama was going down.) Many years later in life, I would find out about multiple infidelities that started when Greg and I were dating, and I would doubt his version of this story very much, but Greg never confessed to anything different, though he confessed to many other deceptions. He never told me any other version of this story. By the time Greg and I married, I had won Nina over. She adored me and she still does to this day. I have not officially been her daughter in law for decades and yet she still introduces me as one. It's certainly fine with me. I love her very much and we will always be connected for the sake of my sons.

    Greg and I dated until one month after I turned eighteen and two months after he did. Then On June the 8th, 1985, just two months before he was supposed to ship off for basic training in Texas, we were married.

    I had begged him to not sign up for the military. He had been taking carpentry at the vocational school. He was good at it, and he enjoyed it. I had been taking food service and winning many awards. I enjoyed the creativity of the process, and eating. I really enjoyed eating. I was convinced that Greg and I could find jobs in our little town and happily settle down together and raise frogletts. He had never proposed formally, and I was never given an engagement ring, but he made statements all the time about "when we get married," so I knew it was  his plan as well as mine. I wanted to travel and vacation and see the entire world, but I had absolutely no desire to ever live anywhere other than my small Appalachian town. Before he left to talk to the various military recruiters, I told him all that. I told him I did not want to leave my town, that I did not want to be a military wife, but he came back telling me he was all signed up for four years in the Army. He said that he had to sign up then or miss out on a huge bonus that they agreed to give him. I was so hurt and so disappointed that I argued with him and went to bed angry, which was against my own personal policy. I truly and seriously considered, probably for the first and last time before my marriage, breaking up with Greg. What really stopped me from doing that was the fact that I had already had sex with him. That dream of always having one lover my entire life came to the front of my mind and made the decision for me. I was deeply a 'make your bed and lie in it' type of girl.

    For the first year that we dated, all Greg and I did sexually were first and second base things. When his junior prom rolled around, l decided that it was now or never. We had dated a year and I either needed to commit totally or move on to another guy. I did not want to move on to another guy when I  felt sure I loved this one. I told Greg that we would go all the way on prom night. I chose prom night because I wanted the event to be a memory that he and I could both cherish forever. It is a memory. I remember discomfort, blood, pain, and embarrassment. I remember shame. If you gave it up for the first time in the back seat of someone's dad's Escort, you're probably doing just as well as I did with the prom and a nice bed.

    We did not make it to his senior prom at all. I had a food service competition and Greg actually talked my overly protective parents into allowing me to go to Richmond to compete. I had won a blue ribbon, a blue rosette for best in class, and a trophy for best in show at the regional contest. Greg talked about how proud he was of my accomplishments and how he was willing to miss his senior prom in order to let me see what I could do at the state level. I told him later that I did not want him to miss his senior prom, that I did not want to miss his senior prom, that it was more important to me than the food service competition. But Greg said junior prom had been a joke anyway, and he had no desire to go to his senior prom. I thought about pain and embarrassment and looked away. So much for making a memory we would both cherish forever. I'm pretty sure Greg was drunk on the river bank with a group of teenagers and had his hands all over another girl while I took second place at state.

YIN YANG LOVE

    

"Yin Yang Love"
By: Skitch

    Usually in life I save the best, the easiest, the most fun things for last, but as I stare at the subject for my last (planned) chapter on my childhood, I realize I've set myself up for a hard ending. Writing about the guy I married and had two wonderful sons with wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't so complicated. How do I explain to others why I was in such a hurry to settle down? Better yet, how do I explain to others the blessing and the curse that was and is my first husband, Greg?

    Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in a room with high hopes that something or someone fabulous will be coming through the door at any moment. In walks a nice looking guy carrying four very intricate and detailed boxes. He comes over to you and is very sweet to you, giving you compliments, making you laugh. telling you that you matter, that you are special. Then, just when you relax and begin to think that things are going to be wonderful all over, he raises his voice, he yells insults and obscenities, he slaps you, he punches you, he pulls your hair, he chokes you and it seems to never end. For a crazy moment or twenty, you think, "This is it. I'm going to die." But he loosens his hold just as you are on the verge of giving up. You catch your breath and order him out of the room, out of your sight, out of your life. He says, "If you want to go, you go." And you make for the door. Just before you leave though, he says, "Here. Take this." And he hands you the four boxes that he carried in with him. You are too rattled to think of arguing, so you take the boxes and you leave. You are free! But still shook up, still petrified. For a while you look behind you almost constantly. You look backward more than forward. It takes a long time for you to believe that you are truly free, that you can be happy again, that you are not going to die at that man's hands. Then you begin to look ahead and you remember the boxes you are still holding. You open them one at a time and you cannot believe your eyes! Inside the first two are treasures so priceless and beautiful that you never even imagined such grand things existed, let alone that you would be able to see, to touch, to enjoy such blessings. These treasures will change your life, they will make your life, they will save your life again and again and you know it. You open the third and it is a treasure too, but as soon as you go to lift it from the box, it disappears. Your heart is broken by the loss, it was unique and wondrous, but you look back at the other two treasures, equally unique and wondrous, and you remember that you will be okay. You open the fourth box and inside it is a small book. It is bound in silk and handwritten with a delicate stroke, easy to read and stunning to look at. It too is a treasure, only a different kind. You read the book and inside you find lessons, ideas, hope, experience, and words that shape you into a better person, words that will help you take care of yourself and your treasures. words to help you overcome the pain of the past and to live your life to the fullest.

    That is the blessing and the curse that is my first husband.

    I have my sons, Co and Liam. Great and priceless treasures that I could not even imagine before. They have changed my life, made my life, saved my life again and again. And if not for Greg they would not be in my life.

    I have the memories of the mere idea of my lost babe and the hope that I may someday know if my dear Jamie is a boy or girl, if he or she knew and knows how much I loved them before they were even fully formed, and if my love is returned.

    I have lessons upon lessons, thoughts upon thoughts. I have been toughened, and softened, and shaped by the experiences I shared with Greg. They have played no small role in making me who I am, brought me where I am today. And with all my heart I love my life and I love me. This is not an endorsement for abuse. If you are being abused, please seek help. Please get out! If you are abusing someone, please do the same. Believe me, you've experienced enough pain. Life will give you all the pain you ever need, even if you take the best care of yourself. Pain is inevitable. This is simply a couple of questions: How could I hate the pain that shaped me and still love the person I have become? How could I curse the road of heartache that brought me through to joy, to my own little Paradise?

FRIENDS FOREVER

    

Friends Forever

THEN:


    My very first friend was a cousin named Becky. She was a year or so older than me, and was very sweet and pretty, perhaps too sweet and pretty, because I could not talk her into playing in the sand under my porch or riding her tricycle like a wild thing. She was much more interested in boring ol' baby dolls. I carried a couple of dolls around sometimes, but my dollies rode horses, or went to sea, or went on adventures with fairies. Her dollies laid there until she declared they were crying for a bottle. Becky would then "feed" them delightedly while I sat there wanting to chuck her dollies out the window. I was more into dirt and speed. She had a little sister named Ramona, but Ramona was like Becky's dolls; She laid there until she wanted a bottle and then she cried. I did not want to chuck Ramona out the window. She was fascinatingly alive and I had an intrinsic and deep respect for Life. Sometimes they let me hold my baby cousin on my lap while I sat very still. Ramona felt nice. She was warm, she smelled like milk, and was much too heavy to throw out a window anyway.

    Years later, my family moved to a mobile home. Our next door neighbors, Ruth and Dennis, had a son named Randal that was two years younger than me. Ran loved animals, dirt, and speed. It was a match made in Heaven and soon we were like the proverbial peas and carrots. He was the same age as Becky's little sister Ramona, whom I had not seen in a few years. When they came back to visit, I was delighted to find out that Ramona was a precocious kid now instead of a crying, heavy baby. When her family visited, we left Becky with the grown ups and her dolls while we climbed tress and waded in the creek. Becky left when their parents did, but Ramona often stayed and played with me. She liked to run and jump and was no stranger to dirt. My sister Lila was pregnant and was suffering from pica, though we did not know the name of her condition at the time. What we knew was that Lila craved ice and gave into those cravings. She ate it all day long. Lila and I were largely anemic and craving ice is a symptom of an iron deficiency. I did not crave it like she did, but I wanted to be like Lila so much that I insisted on eating it with her whenever she was around. While Ramona was there, she ate the ice too. Once, she was holding a cube of ice tight in her chubby little hand and water was dripping furiously from her fist.

    "Ramona?" I asked, "Why aren't you eating your ice? Don't you like it?"

    "I like it just fine," She told me in her little kid voice, "But it's too cold. I'm waiting for it to warm up."

    Ramona taught me to sing a jaunty little song that said, "Here comes (insert any name) floating down the Delaware, chewing on her underwear. Must have been a dirty pair. Ten days later, bitten by a polar bear, and that was the end of it!" We tormented everyone we could with that song and with "He's got the whole world in His hands," because we would sing that one using ever item we could see or think of, "He's got all the hound dogs/old trucks/rainbows/merry go 'rounds/etc in His hands." He really did have the whole world in His hands when we were through singing that song!

    Lila gave birth to my niece Tanya when I was seven and Ramona was five. Now a trio was born. It seemed like I turned around a few times and Tanya was up from infancy and following Ramona and me everywhere. Tanya and Ramona were my best and most constant childhood friends. Their faces were woven into so many of my favorite memories. Their best interest so quickly become more important to me than my own, along with Tanya's brother and two other sisters that were all younger than her. I adored them all, but only Tanya tagged after me, insisting that she be a deep part of the fabric in my quilt of my friendships. My sisters were ten and twelve years older than me, more like extra mothers in many ways. Becky preferred to play with other little girls that loved crying dollies and ruffled dresses. I moved away from Ran and hardly saw him afterwards. But Ramona and Tanya became my pseudo siblings. They filled so many of my days with joy and drove away the lonesome feelings I sometimes dealt with.

    In first grade, I became friends with Camillia Michelle Rose. She was a quite little dark haired child, as sweet as sugar. I loved her pretty name and her calm ways. At different times in our kidhood, she went by Michelle and by Camillia. I thought she could not lose as both the names were as sweet and pretty as she was.

    In second grade, Camillia was in another room, but we still played together at recess. I also played with Annette and Tauna (pronounced Tonya, just like my niece's name was pronounced.) And I played a lot with a distant cousin named Earl. Annette loved that she had the same name as my mother. She found a way to talk to my mom almost every time my parents came to pick me up. Tauna was quiet and willowy. Both girls were blond and very pretty. I remember running across the playground holding each of their hands and wondering why boys did not like each other well enough to hold hands. In second grade it was already frowned upon for males to show physical affection. Earl was not affectionate and he was far from quiet. He was obnoxious and loud, but I loved him very much.

    In the third grade, I met Jutannia and Angie and we became a common trio around the school. I played mostly with them but sometimes also with Rosalee and Betty. That year I learned the trick of keeping out of a fight that I should not be part of. Jutannia and Angie would get angry with each other and, for a while, they would both come to me and ask me to take their side. I don't know where I got the idea to refuse. Maybe I simply and honestly could not tell who was in the right, but I quickly made a habit of refusing to take sides. If they got obsessed with the argument, I would withdraw from both of them and hang out with Rosalee and Betty, or Camillia Michelle. If they were not being too crazy with their feud and they were nice to me I would play with whichever one asked me first, usually this was Jutannia as she seemed to value a friendship with me more than Angie did. But I loved it best when all three of us were friendly. Many times my insistence that I would not take a side and my encouragement that they get along brought about their happy reconciliation. And so it was that, quickly and at a very young age, I became a peacemaker.

    In fourth grade, I was all about Paul S. He was a farm boy and I was a farm girl. We lived too far apart to play together, but I watched him get off and on the bus every day and we often sat together. Our teacher seemed to hate both of us, but made the mistake of assigning our seats alphabetically. This put us together and near the back of the room. Paul and I huddled over comics and magazines and whispered about things we found more fascinating than our spelling words.

    In fifth grade I was back with Jutannia and Angie. We spent a lot of time trading white elephants, though we did not know then to call our trinkets that. To us, it was a game where we took anything we did not want anymore, or our family did not want anymore, and traded those items at school for something we wanted or imagined someone else might want. Or game became pretty serious to us. The trinkets were used as serious currency that might buy you extra french fries at lunch or an awesome new pencil. A few kids brought things their family most assuredly was not willing to trade away, and that became the end of the game. I would never have stolen anything from my family. If they wanted something, did not give me permission to trade it, I would not have dreamed of carting that something off. I was largely about gifts. Much of what I traded for was to make my family happy. I would not steal from them and make them unhappy. That was the opposite of what I hoped to do. Most notably I "bought" my mother a Christmas tree broach for Christmas. It was simple costume jewelry, silver, and had different colored faux jewels in it. One of them was missing, and I had this big idea that I could find another jewel to fit in the slot and glue it in there. That never happened, but my mother wore that costume jewelry with much pride and delight through several Christmas seasons anyway.

    In the second year of fifth grade (I failed that grade twice) I hung out with Jill, who was a very pretty curly haired girl with a lot of attitude. I loved how spunky she was. I also hung out just a little with Rose, a very poor girl that spoke with a deep country accent, and I made friends with a girl named Andrea. Andrea was also spunky and she had a great sense of humor. This is probably when I began to value friends that could make me laugh. My family finally had a telephone and Andrea was the first friend I spent time talking with on the phone. I knew where she lived. She and another nice girl named Debbie got off the bus near the second sharp bend coming up the Camp Creek road, about four or five miles from our home. I had watched her get on and off the bus many times. The fact that I could sit in my home and she could sit in her home and we could talk to each other and hear each other instantly fascinated me. I tried many times to get my sister Sandi, who I thought knew everything, to explain this magic to me, but either she did not understand it well herself or I could not follow her explanation. My home had no running water, but we had electricity and a telephone. We were almost normal in my book. We had a party line and Andrea and I used to drop silent whenever anyone picked up the phone and, without listening for a dial tone, began to dial. When they stopped dialing, Andrea would say, "Hello?" and try to pretend to be "Aunt Alice" or whomever the caller was asking for. She didn't get by with it for very long but it did not take much to greatly amuse us.

    The electric range in our kitchen, like most everything else, had been purchased second hand. It had a timer that no one could figure out how to turn off or reset. At random times during the day that timer would go off. It was much louder than you would ever expect an oven timer to be and, the only way to get it to stop buzzing, that we had chanced upon, was to jar it -- hard. This meant a lot of vibration. So, the timer would go off and everyone in the house would stand up, race to the kitchen, and begin jumping up and down. Being on the phone did not render you exempt from your stove jarring duties, so Andrea became accustomed to these interruptions. I don't know if it was due to frustration or simply because it was fun, but most of us would begin not only to jump but to yell. We turned into the Looney Tunes characters every time that timer buzzed.

    My mother would raise her voice to a higher pitch and start screaming something akin to, "Come on, you dad blamed stove! Shut the heck up! I'm trying to cook around here!" She often resorted to baby talk and that, coupled with the high pitch and her penchant for yellow, left me seeing her favorite Looney Tunes character, Tweety Bird hopping lightfootedly around the kitchen.

    Sandi would hop too, chiming in simultaneously with, "Pipe down you crazy hunk of metal before we take you to the junk yard and sell you for scrap iron!" She seemed more genuinely angry than Mother did and my mind's eye likened her to a frustrated Sylvester or sometimes Daffy Duck.

    Daddy would sometimes jump quietly and sometimes shout out a random song that had been hanging around in his head. He'd sing loudly, "Hey, good lookin'! Whatcha' got cookin' How's about cookin' something up with me?!"  His jumping was always joyful! 'Foghorn Leghorn, at your service' it seemed to say.

    My adopted uncle, Crit and my Uncle Junior would use mild swear words in their declarations of stove timer resistance. My mother would usually let the mild curse words slide without a dressing down. They would yell, "You *+^%#@ stove! Shut the *&&^$# up," while jumping mightily all over the kitchen. Crit with his shaggy hair and fierce but lovable scowl might as well be yelling, "Bracken Fracken!" He was Yosemite Sam in my eyes. Uncle Junior, thin, and lanky, and full of hard luck tales, could be Wile E. Coyote on a good day.

    I usually helped my daddy sing while I bounced, imagining myself as Witch Hazel or the Tazmanian Devil. Sometimes I was Speedy Gonzales yelling to the top of my lungs, "Arriba! Arriba! Andale! Andale!" Sometimes I was laughing too hard to shout anything at all.

    Usually the stove stopped buzzing and no one noticed because of the immense racket we were making. After the commotion calmed down, I would breathlessly pick the phone back up and Andrea would say, "Can I please trade families with you?"

    The other common interruption to our phone calls was when someone sneezed. My mother and both my sisters have always sneezed very loudly, unbelievably loudly. I grew up around them and was soon immune, but those sneezes startled other people a lot! Andrea made a game out of trying to guess who she heard sneezing in the background at my home. She was rarely ever correct, but she was dogged in her determination to identify my mother and sisters by their sneezes. I thought it was funny when she guessed wrong, and extra funny when she got the dogs and the humans mixed up. We had two Chihuahuas, Feisty and Pumpkin, that had barks much bigger than their bites. Sometimes one of them would yip a single sound or perhaps two in succession and Andrea would say, "Was that your mom sneezing that time?"

    On the road that traveled directly above our road we had some very good friends and fellow church members. Brother Manny Wayne and Sister Bea had two kids named David and Robin. I did not get to see them often, but I loved playing with them when I could. Robin was a pretty big tomboy, like me, and David loved motorcycles. I loved watching David love his motorcycles, but I never admitted that I had a crush on him. I was still very shy about boys at that time. On my twelfth birthday, Robin told me that my parents were buying me a rabbit from her mother. We were on the bus and the noise was drowning out part of what she was saying. "Don't tell them I told you though," She yelled my way, "It's supposed to be a secret." I got my hopes up for a beautiful rabbit for my birthday when in reality it was a rabbit cake. I had missed a crucial word in the secret. I had a large and beautiful Bugs Bunny cake that Sister Bea baked and decorated. I loved Bugs Bunny and that remains the prettiest cake I have ever had for any birthday.

    Once I switched schools Nancy and Michelle became my best school friends and I had found a new trio. One or the other of them was in my homeroom every year while I was at that school and we all three hung out together before and after classes, on the playground, at lunch, music, library, and gym. We were together at sock hops and any school functions that allowed just a little mingling. We mingled toward one another like magnets. Once high school reared its head, Nancy and I struggled to arrange our schedules to be together as much as possible. Pitifully, it turned out that Home Economics would be our only class together and I had no classes with Michelle. It helped that Nancy and I shared lockers, but I still missed her most of the rest of the day and this added to my high school blues. There were other friends that moved into and out of our happenings. I thought of them as our bigger group or "gang". They were Tammy, Rhonda, Shan, Stephanie, Jill, Brenda, Rita, Sherry, and April. All of us were friends but Nancy and Michelle were the ones I hung out with most often. As far as the guys went, Jimmy was my most constant guy friend, but I also loved to hang out with Buddy, with my cousin DeanO. In class, I spent a lot of time fighting the urge to whisper with the wonderfully sweet Stuart. Shane H. was the only guy I knew that I thought was as good, as kind, as loyal as Stuart. And there were two tough little guys named Joey B. and Clint R. that never failed to defend me if a bully was around. Possibly that was because I would tolerate no lip about either of them, but who knows which is the chicken and which is the egg? Though we did not hang out much, Joey, Clint and I shared a mutual respect that ran very deep.

    When I was in the sixth grade, I found Cindy D. and we spent many a fun hour together rocking the 80s. We had a lot in common and had similar tough spirits, though I did not know any of that when I first saw her on the bus, wearing a fancy rabbit coat and sporting perfect blond hair, her eyes sparkling like blue diamonds. It would have been easy to simply be envious. I am very glad I took the time to get to know the sweet, tough girl beneath the facade I saw as weak and spoiled.

    In eight grade, which was held in the high school, since I was not in as many classes with Nancy as I would have liked, I fell into a friendship with a girl named Dreama. I loved her name and she seemed so much older than most of the girls in my classes. She had a serious boyfriend that worked in the local garage, and she was about as disillusioned with school as I was. Dreama taught me the best and easiest ways to skip classes and how to shoplift much more, and much bigger items, than I had ever imagined. Once I realized I had to stop shoplifting, I found a way to hang out more with Nancy and less with people that encouraged the wild child under my skin. I had discovered that maybe you aren't what you eat, but if you aren't vigilant, you sure lean toward being a lot like whomever you hang out with. To this day though, I wish Dreama, and all my wonderful friends many blessings and fine things. I am grateful for all they taught me and all the fond memories they helped me make.

ON QUITTING SCHOOL

"A Tree Grows in Moonlight"
By: Skitch

THEN:

WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
SCHOOL WAS PAINFUL:

Though I have long considered myself an autodidact, the foundation for my education came from public school. It was there that I learned to read and there that I discovered my fierce love for literature, my penchant for science, and my weakness toward mathematics. Letters have always been my friends. Numbers were, until fourth grade and then they seemed suddenly to desert me. Whatever the reason, numbers scare me. Perhaps, as a psychiatrist once told me, this was due to some malformation in my decidedly odd little brain. Perhaps it was more akin to what my husband Olin claims. He says I have a deficiency in the foundation of my mathematics learning, and that the blame for this lies solely on the shoulders of one or more of my earliest math teachers.

I was disliked by several teachers, though I wanted to be loved by them, and I did as I was told. I was unpopular in the first elementary school that I attended, and I was disallowed any extra curricular activities by my parents. Thus, the only sport I participated in was bully dodging. I gave my formal education very little effort for several years in order to be more like my parents and less like a person that might abandon them by "getting above my raising." This was an idea so deeply planted in my head that I could not have put it into words for you then or even years later. It was almost thirty years after it began to rear it's ugly head that I finally saw it for what it was.

I did enjoy three years at a different, far better elementary school. I'm not sure how the school got that way, but I can tell you what made it so superior: simply put, it was a sense of togetherness. Yes, this school had it's cliques. The jocks hung out largely with other jocks. The nerds hung out mostly with other nerds. But the groups did not prey on each other and they looked at each other as simply different branches of the same tree. They shared a loyalty to their school and to their classmates that I'd never seen before or after. I remember sitting between a "nerd" and a "jock" in one particular classroom. I proudly called both of them my friends. They were nice to me and to each other. The three of us talked quietly when given permission and passed notes when silence was called for. When the recess bell rang Stuart went to play football with his friends and Scott sat on the sidelines with his, going over plans for the upcoming science fair or talking about some other cerebral pursuit. Most of us had a good idea which kids came from privilege and which ones did not, but no one ever made a big deal about money. It was an afterthought. In fact, when I once mentioned food stamps to Stuart he was surprised. "I thought you were one of the rich kids," He told me. This prompted me to wonder about my new found contentment. Were the kids in this school being kind to me because they thought I was rich? Did all rich kids enjoy this sort of sweet acceptance from other students? The questions pouring through my head encouraged me to pay more attention, and I soon realized that I need not be concerned. Not only did Stuart's kindness never waiver, even now that he knew I certainly was not a rich kid, but it seemed to work across the board. The jocks and the kids who came from money were largely nice to the kids that, without one doubt, did not come from privilege. I don't mean to make this school sound like a utopia. It was not. We had kids that leaned toward being bullies, just not entire groups of bullies as I'd confronted before. The incidents with bullying were rare and most often the other kids would defend whomever the bully was set against. This was usually one of more of the guys in my grade. Stuart helped me put a few bullies in their place over the years. So did Clint, and Joey. This warmed my heart because none of these guys were big or tall and the bullies often were. It was like being threatened by a wolf and watching while a fox ran it off. Of course my friends Nancy and Michelle stuck by me when bullies tried to establish dominance, and my classmate, April spoke up and took my part many times when a high school girl on our bus tried to push me around. I returned the favor and suddenly neither of us had to worry about any of the bullies on the bus, though the high school was much more peppered with them than our elementary school was. I was not as close to April as I was to Nancy or Michelle. April and I were something between acquaintances and friends. We rarely sat together on the bus, often we were yards apart, but as soon as one of us heard the other begin to raise her voice in agitation, we were on the move. Suddenly, the bully that thought they could push our friend around found that he or she would have to push much harder than they had anticipated. They were staring at two little spitfires instead of one. Always, it became more trouble than it was worth for the bully. There really was safety in numbers. 

When I entered the eighth grade, I was shuffled out of my pleasant elementary school to the high school. Neither of the elementary schools were big enough to house the eighth graders but the high school, with it's significant drop out rate, had plenty of room. So, though we weren't formally high school students, the eighth grade kids were sent to the high school. There they would merge my friends and the kids from the elementary school that I had gone to previously, the one that was rank with cliques that did prey on each other and bullies that went largely unchallenged. My group still stuck together as much as possible, but we were outnumbered. Not only were we only half of the eighth graders, but we were in an high school that was populated with many, many kids that had come from my first elementary school, and we were suddenly on the bottom of the rank, guppies and goldfish in an ocean rank with sharks and barracudas. Eighth graders were the runts and the butt of most of the jokes, often cruel ones. I was pushed into lockers, threatened, and sexually assaulted. With the advent of sexuality in the mix (the previous bullying had be rather asexual) I soon found myself more frustrated with school than I had ever been. I was miserable.


WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
WESLEY:

My cousin, Wesley had moved in with my family, telling me he would be the brother I'd never had! This was exciting and wonderful for me because I had always wanted a brother. He was nine years older than me and had been honorable discharged after a full term in the U.S. Army. I admired him very much. Wes had a job as an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant and he told me, "If you'll quit school, I can get you a job with me!" He wrote out on paper approximately what I would make each paycheck and budgeted it out for me. He showed me that I could give a certain amount to my parents (to improve the lives of everyone in the family) put some back for my own future, and still have a considerable amount of money to spend on whatever I wanted right now! I'd never imagined I might someday have a steady stream of money for whatever struck my fancy and suddenly an entire world of dreams was opened up in my head. What if I could afford to get my learners permit? Maybe even a used car in a few years? Might I be able to take home a piece of "real" jewelry now and then, something silver or even gold? And get my hair cut often enough that it did not look like a crazy cat lady's head? And buy Nike shoes? I'd had one pair that my family caught on clearance and I loved Nike shoes! My feet had never felt more comfortable in any pair of shoes and my soul had felt so normal looking down at them. I was maybe as good as anyone else, right? Wesley seemed to have thought of everything as he figured in lunches and gas money and said I could car pool with him, that his boss would match our schedules. I was thoroughly beguiled by the idea.

"You can get your GED in a few years and go on to college. No sense wasting the next four years in high school when you could be making money! Sure, a high school degree is better than a GED but if you go on to college no one will ever care that you have a GED instead." He was very convincing and I was so unhappy with high school.


WHY I QUIT SCHOOL:
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN:

A dear friend of the family, Liz Rose, told me that I very much reminded her of "Francie", a character from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which was one of her favorite novels.

"Have you ever read that book?" She asked.

She knew I was an avid reader and when she found out I had not read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", she somehow found me a copy. This was before the internet and before the large chain book stores. In fact, I'd never been in a book store of any sort in my entire life, so I have no idea where or how Liz found that book. Likely, she gave me a copy she'd had on her bookshelf for decades. I gratefully accepted it. Books were my favorite gifts. I was intrigued by almost every novel and more so by this one, since I had been compared to the main character. I loved the girl's name. It reminded me of my grandmother's: Frankie. I had never met my dad's mother and had long felt that loss. Maybe this girl would be spunky like everyone told me my grandmother had been.

I sucked the contents of the book down in hours and it became my favorite novel, my favorite book (other than the Bible) and it still is. 

Francie was spunky, and she was a lot like me. She had a love of books and learning that ran deep to her soul. She adored her daddy and struggled to understand her mother. She suffered from poverty and dreamed of overcoming it. She wanted to help her family improve their lot. At her mother's insistence, Francie quit school to get a job. I could see me being the salvation of my family, so "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" was the final straw in the high school camel's back. I wanted to drop out. This would essentially mean skipping high school, as eight graders were not even freshmen yet.


THE ACTUAL FACTS OF THE MATTER:

I told my parents I was quitting school, and I braced myself to drown out my oldest sister's plaintive objections. I talked my dad into taking me to see the superintendent and telling him that I was not coming back after Christmas break. Talking him into this course of action was not only disappointingly easy (though I'm not sure why I expected more resistance from my parents who had quit school in the fifth grade (Dad) and the sixth (Mom) but it turned out to also be quite a blow to my ego. My pop told the superintendent, "She's never really done well in school anyway. She's slow." I had been told by so many teachers that I was plenty smart enough, even as cleaver as any kid they had ever taught, so this was a shocking revelation! Were they all lying to me? Did they say that to all the kids? Surely my pop would know if I was below average intellect! I never knew if my dad truly believed I was mentally deficient or if he said it to get the paper signed. I know he would not tell an outright lie, but he has always had this way of beating around a bush and of finishing sentences under his breath. He might have said, "She's a bit slow," and then breathed, "Getting out of bed in the morning." I will simply say, I would not put either idea past him!

I quit school that day and I wondered about my mental ability for many years.

Wesley moved out of our house soon afterward, and no job was handed to me. I turned out to have a big case of "Teenager" and was too lazy to pursue one very well on my own. I found a babysitting job for a few months, I worked in a gift shop for a short time, and I wrote an advice column for the local paper. I made one dollar an hour in the gift shop and she paid me in merchandise, going by the full marked up price. I came home with some nick knack every two or three days. I made no cash there and so little money at the other two jobs, that my dad refused to take a penny of it to help with the family expenses. Jobs were extremely hard to find in my little town unless you "knew someone who knew someone" and we did not know anyone with the power or authority to find me a job. I know now that I should have tried harder, should have found something more substantial or, better yet, endured the misery and the bullies and kept my butt in school while finding an after school job.

What I largely did was read fiction and watch MTV. In my defense, I must point out that this was back in the day when MTV was truly music videos and was worth watching, unlike the sludge they show today. I also learned more from the fiction than one might imagine. Without planning to, I put my life on a nocturnal shift. Most of the time I was "between jobs" and I stayed up all night reading Kathleene E. Woodiwiss, and Johanna Lindsey, and Lavyrle Spencer. I found the silence and the night beguiling and fell under it's dark spell. I had never been allowed to stay all night away from home, to participate in after school activities, to be left alone without either my parents or my sister to "watch me". Other than going on walks, I had never been entirely alone and yet I knew this truth: My soul loves solitude and craves silence. My mother listened to the Christian radio station every hour she was awake, which was usually five to eight hours a day. My dad watched one television and my sister (if I wasn't watching MTV) watched the other one. When Wesley was living there, he was often listening to music in the kitchen or the living room on his portable boom box. We lived in a shotgun house with only one interior door, which was on the bathroom, a bathroom that did not have a commode. We used an outhouse for those functions. The bathroom was simply for bathing. When my mother was sleeping the house was forcefully, oppressively silent. Even whispering was often frowned upon. It was a study in extremes, but I preferred the silence. The cacophony felt like torture. The silence was merely strained. For a while I kept my cot in the walk in closet. After the bed was moved back into the bedroom I shared with Sandi, I put an old couch in the closet and turned it's back away from the wall. This was even better than the cot because it created a box for me to hide in to try to escape some of the noise. I slept there sometimes. Once I had reversed my days and nights, I imagined it was a coffin and that I was a vampire.

Often my home felt like a prison that trapped me with sound and nervousness. The doctor had put me on several nerve pills due to mouth ulcers, sever stomach aches that woke me in the middle of the night, and a bad case of Shingles at the age of fourteen. I found peace in my sleeping home. I absorbed my sister's even breaths, the sound of the crickets outside, and the lulling of the box fan. I sighed deep, happy sighs, and I swore there was more oxygen in the night air. I rarely fell asleep before the sun rose, and before I went to sleep I would often position the box fan near my head. That way I could sleep through all the household goings on during the day. I would wake up around 3pm and soon after that eat supper, instead of breakfast, with my family. They had fallen into the habit of eating at 3:30 because I had always arrived home from school saying I was starving. Suppertime had been moved up for my convenience. My family loved me very much and I loved them just as heartily. We simply had trouble understanding each other sometimes.

These days I spend a lot of time listening to the gentle hum of my computer or the rain outside my window, while contemplating nearly everything, including my past, future, and present. I truly bless the broken road that got me right where I am today. I need and love my sons. I adore my husband. I'm happy with my own quirky blend of knowledge and the hard earned wisdom I've managed to acquire. But if I knew then what I know now, I would have done my best to plow through with high school and so much more. I would have given a formal education my all from day one to, at least, a master's degree, and I would not have continued to do what I've always done, never stopped teaching myself. I did learn a lot about myself and life from those years of bad jobs and late nights. It is possible that knowing yourself is even more important than having a good formal education, but I have confidence that I could have handled both. In fact, fighting for a formal education while being a troubled teen, while married to my first husband, while raising my boys might have taught me even more about myself and life, might have given me a higher degree from the school of hard knocks. I am not at all discontent with where I am today, but wouldn't I love to have a rewarding career to go along with my awesome husband and cool progeny!

My advice to all: Stay in school! Learn to teach yourself as well, and never stop learning. You will be amazed to find that you can be your favorite teacher if you only give yourself a chance.

THE ONLY VACATION

Party Goers and Me
Summer 1976

THEN:



    The only vacation our family took while I was living at home was to White Pine Tennessee. What was in White Pine? Aunt Nancy and Uncle Leslie. They were so often part of our lives that my cousins are more like siblings. I was nine years old and I knew it would be great to go to the Smoky Mountains or to the beach like most families did, but this was still a vacation! I adored my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I was very excited about White Pine.

    On the morning we were supposed to leave, my internal alarm kicked in for the first time in my life. I had struggled even more than usual with sleep the night before, such was my excitement, but I woke up at four am and Dad was still sleeping. Usually he was "up with the chickens". When I woke him and told him it was time for our vacation, he said we might not go because, "Your mommy ain't feeling too good." My mother suffered so much from nervous conditions that she hated leaving the bed, let alone home, but I begged to go and fought back tears of disappointment. Mom looked at me, sighed, pulled herself from the bed, and we piled in the truck. She was weak and weary. Yes, she smothered me, but I knew she loved me. Only for her husband or daughters would she drag herself up and out like this.

    In White Pine we mostly sat around talking to relatives, but I really enjoyed playing with my cousin Wanda's children Wendy, Wade, and P.T. as well as my niece Tanya and nephew Little Johnny. My cousin Marcia's kids, Kristina and Kristal, were too little to play with but were fun and cute babies. I enjoyed helping with them whenever I was allowed. Still more cousins came in and out visiting, but the aforementioned were there most of the time. 

    One of my older cousins, Buzz, decided to throw a party to celebrate our visit. He bought several watermelon and lots of picnic food. He had an above ground pool and I'd never even seen a pool before. I had only been in the river a handful of times and then never anything deeper than what my family called "the shallows" of the Pound River. My mother was petrified of water, but hand in hand, she and I would wade across the rocks, and find a spot that was not likely to have a crawdaddy guarding it, due to the quickly moving water, and we would sit down. In that position the water would be about waist high on me, never high enough to drown in, never high enough to learn to swim. Still, it was refreshing on a hot summer day, and I cherish the memories of those trips to sit in the shallows. The water was white with movement and often the rocks were moss covered. Sometimes I would lie back and let the icy water rush over my shoulders to cool me off completely. I loved and love that river to this day.

    A pool was such a foreign and fascinating idea. The families were bustling with excitement over this party! My parents opted out, as I anticipated, and so did my aunt and uncle. But Lila and Sandi (both past the age of 18) went without a word of objection from my mother. Lila pleaded to be allowed to take me but Mother refused. She said she was afraid I would drown. When Lila promised to stay right by my side, mother said someone might get drunk. She did not want me around drunks, I might hear foul language. I now know that her most present fear was always that some man would hurt me sexually, as she had been hurt, but I did not know that then. Looking back, I truly believe that my mother trusted my male cousins not to do such a thing, but some of the female cousins were married to men my mother barely knew, and the hosts of the party had invited some of their friends. These also included men my mother did not know, and she was not taking any chances with her frail blond daughter. She did not want me going through any of the horrors she had survived. She did not insist that Sandi and Lila stay there, though I think she could have gotten by with even that. Lila was married and had two kids of her own and Sandi was even older than Lila was. Mother cautioned them both repeatedly but seemed to reckon that her older daughters were big enough and savvy enough to defend themselves. She did not trust that I was.

    I think if my niece and nephew had not gone I would not have taken the loss so hard. I was used to disappointment and used to not attending most events, but with my nieces and nephews going and all my cousin's little children going, I felt a bit like the pariah of the family. I did not want the little kids to miss out on the pool, and the watermelon, and the cold Coca Colas, and all the fun. But somehow the fact that they were allowed those pleasures and I was denied them cut me to the core. I shrugged off my sisters getting to do things that I could not. They were adults after all, and I was only nine years old. But this time the people older than me were going and the people younger than me were going. It seemed so unfair that I should be the only person that wanted to go to the party but was not allowed. I sat out under a shrub and cried almost the entire time they were gone. I had never felt more alone.

    A night or two later, Auntie and Uncle took my parents out for a steak dinner. I had never had steak and had never been to a "sit down" restaurant. At first, I was very excited, thinking that I might be allowed to go along on that outing since I had missed the other one. After all, I had stayed home with those four people when everyone else went to the pool party. Shouldn't this be "our" turn? Shouldn't this be "our" outing? But Auntie told me it was a grown-up date, and that I must stay home. I swallowed my disappointment. I would never argue with her or hurt my dear aunt's feelings if I could help it. I went to the bedroom I'd been sharing with my parents so that Auntie might not notice my disappointment. Mother knew me better than most. She found me and told me if she had the money to feed me herself at that restaurant she would insist on taking me, but the only reason she and dad were able to go was because my aunt and uncle were paying for the food. I told her it was "okay." I told her to go and have a good time. I could see she was on the brink of putting her foot down and nixing the outing entirely and, though I did not say so, I did not want her and dad to miss out on the experience just because I could not go. I tried to appear nonchalant about the whole thing and must have been somewhat successful because the four of them went out for steak. I stayed with my cousins and sisters and watched television. I ate seven hot dogs for supper that night along with nearly a bag of potato chips. But I was sure the hot dogs did not taste like steak, and all the excess did not fill the emptiness inside me. It just made my tummy ache, and I sat up with heart burn late into that night.    

    On the way home to Virginia, Momma rode in the back of the truck with me. I couldn't stop being amazed that she was back there. It was the highlight of the vacation and the only time I remember her ever riding in the back of the truck with me. She pointed out some dark clouds and told me it was going to rain. She also told me how miserable the vacation had been for her and how she didn't want to ever go on another. I felt my heart fall because I had really hoped this was the first of many and that next time I might be allowed the party or the dinner out. After a moment of utter disappointment, my mind consoled me, "It wasn't much fun anyway. It's more fun when Auntie and Uncle come to visit us." But I did not say a word. I looked at her face haloed by the stormy sky and thought, "She is so pretty, so sweet, and so smart. She is always going to be enough." It started to rain and my mother smiled at the biting raindrops before huddling with me under a piece of clear plastic. I was impressed that she had so assuredly seen the rain coming. The memory of being in the back of the truck with her on that sunny, rainy summer day is one of my favorites. I loved and love my mother so much! She was extra beautiful that day with the wind in her hair and the sky in her eyes. I knew then and I know now: My heart was tied to this woman as surely as the Earth is tied to the sun. I'd do without a thousand vacations and after school activities for her, to make her content, to be her daughter... And I guess I did.