THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER

Photo: Daddy and his mules
(Believe me, the stubborn one is in the middle!)

 


THEN:



The Farmer's Daughter


    My daddy was a farmer, not the kind of farmer that sat on a tractor and fed America, but the kind that walked behind a plow horse and fed his family. When I was a little, my mother was often ill, so Daddy would take me with him as he worked around our home. There we would go, a hard working man and his small blond shadow.The day might find us out in the forests or fields cutting down tall green trees, at the saw mill coated in saw dust, driving down the road together on some errand, loading wood or coal into the back of his beat up pick up, or with our hands deep in the rich dirt of the garden. He would work all day with me close by his side. Often he amused me by giving me "important" chores to do. One of those chores was to walk along behind him and step on the quartered potatoes that he dropped in the furrow. Then Crit, my adopted uncle, would use his foot to cover those spuds up with the black Virginia soil that they taught me to love nearly as a family member. We walked along in a line. Daddy dropping, me stepping on every potato piece with my bare feet, and Crit raking the dirt over the top.

    Many years passed before I questioned the necessity of my part in this chore. Did my stepping on those taters really help them grow? I gave it some thought, but in the end I supposed it was irrelevant. I participated. I stayed busy and out of trouble. I felt like I had a purpose in the potato planting world and in my family. I made memories I can share today, and to this day I can proudly tell you that I am the best potato-stepper in the county!

    Before those gardening days, when I was yet too little for such important work, I was usually carried from one spot to another and told to "play right there" and I minded my Daddy. I played right there,wherever there was. My favorite activity when I was that small was when Pop sat me on the back of s mule or plow horse and I rode along while they and my dad worked in sweet unison to rip arrow straight rows in the earth.

    At that age, I didn't quite understand gardening. I had not yet made the important connection between spring seeds and the juicy vegetables of summer and the long days of canning in the fall. But even then, I had a feeling that this was the beginning of something wonderful, something that I couldn't quite put my two year old finger on.

    The image of the dirt tumbling up around the plow looked so beguiling that it inspired me to twist on the horses back to watch the dark earth tumble up and over the plow share. The garden smell was fresh, like an earthen ambrosia. It permeated the morning air around us and spoke of new beginnings and a million magical things that I did not yet understand. The horses grew to love me. I think they knew that it was either tolerate this squirmy two year old or be sold to the glue factory. But I loved them honestly. I can still remember sitting on their gentle backs, swaying with their motions, taking in the bright new world.

    This was an enchanting time in my life. In perfect safety, I was guarded by my pop, whom I knew to be a fellow that could never be bested by man nor beast. I sat atop steeds of magnificence and I watched wonder popping up all around me, seemingly of it's own accord, or being coaxed and drawn up to the light of day by my daddy. Still, no matter how magical an act seems, sooner or later a young lady will begin to look for new ways to entertain herself. I remember thinking one spring morning, just before I turned three years old, that I needed something more to do. I wondered if the horse I rode might be tired from carrying my weight. (I was not quite aware of how very little I was.) I also thought that perhaps the other horse would decide that I didn't like riding on his back. I worried that maybe his horsey feelings would be hurt. So, I devised a very democratic plan to make them share the burden or honor of carrying me and to give myself a bit more to do. At the end of each row I would switch from one horse to the other! This I planned to do without pestering my father who was so busy he was perspiring even more heavily than the horses were. It should be easy enough to accomplish. I had already mastered riding the plow horses and my very own blind-as-a-bat pony. (No small feat that!) I decided it was time I learned a new trick.

    When Daddy reached the end of one furrow he would always look down and reposition the blade of the plow in the dark earth before heading back in the other direction. This pause in his concentration from the back of my head was all it took for me to switch from one horse to the other. I traded horses several times before my dad called out his familiar "Whoa!" The horses obediently stopped and Pop came over to stand beside me. He swiped his ragged hat off his head and mopped his face with his kerchief. He was scowling in my direction, not an angry scowl, more of a "What the heck is going on here," scowl.

    He spat in the dirt beside the horse before asking me, "Dee Dee, weren't you riding on Goliath just a minute ago?"

    I nodded, "Yep."

    "Then how come you're on Gideon now?" He shook his head. "How'd you do that?"

    "Like this," I leaned on the harness that dangled between both horses, grabbed Goliath's mane and slipped over to the other horse. I was a pro at it by that point.

    It was years later before I understood why Dad broke into laughter like he did. He started the horses moving once more and asked me to do it again. Several times I went from Goliath to Gideon and back again at his urging. This was great fun, and daddy seemed to be enjoying it as much as I was. He called Crit from some other chore and made him watch. Then he brought my mother out of the house and started plowing again and told me to show her what I could do. I did, but being more of a worrisome sort, she didn't delight in this trick quite as much as he did. She was afraid I would fall and get stepped on by the horses, but I did not think my horses would ever step on me, and I felt sure I could be careful enough not to fall and take the chance.

    From that day on I spent many a happy hour learning new "tricks" on the backs of our horses. I rode bareback. I rode backwards. I stood in the saddle. I hung from the side like the cowboys and Indians did on television. "Like a wild Indian," my dad said proudly. When I decided to try to ride sitting cross legged on a horse's rump, however, the horse did not appreciate that trick and he told me so with a high bucking motion! I went sailing through the air and knocked my own front tooth out with my knee when I landed on the ground with a bone rattling jar. Craziest way to lose your first baby tooth, but I was six years old by then and, as Pop often put it, "tough as a corncob!" In true farm girl style, I was back on the horse in a matter of minutes. I took a break long enough to complain to my dad, "That horse has lost his blamed mind!" and to spit out the tooth and the blood while my father laughed at my indignation. I was not angry or sad long. I loved every horse on the planet, and I practically lived on horseback for as long as I could. Eventually we didn't have many horses around, and then we moved to town, not much of a town, but a town nevertheless. It has been many years since I sat on the back of a horse, and I've resigned myself that I'll never stop missing it, but the memory of those days that I trailed my daddy are mine to keep. I remember the garden, the woods, the rattle and hum of the pick up with both windows down, and I remember being on horseback. As long as this ol' brain of mine functions normally I'll be able to close my eyes and feel those horses swaying beneath me, smell the fresh turned earth, and hear my daddy laughing.

1998, A STORY OF ABUSE & REGRET

Photo: me, five months pregnant with my first child & reacting to something hurtful the husband did...

THEN:

1998, A Story of Abuse and Regret


In 1998, I experienced a breaking away. Actually, I suppose it was more like a rending away. I tore myself away from many of the values that I had based my life on. I tore myself away from so many of the things that I cherished, from my home, my idea of family, from my life, from myself, even from my god.

I left my husband of thirteen years, the father of my two young and innocent sons, aged ten and seven. I moved from South Carolina where we had enjoyed a lovely home with a deep garden tub, a nice yard, and many of the pleasures that I'd longed for all of my life. I moved in with my mommy and daddy and I slept, with my two kids, on my parents' pull out sofa bed. I missed my husband. I missed my home. It felt like self mutilation. The pain was deep. I hurt to the very core of my soul. It was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do or that I have done since. I hated myself for what I was doing to my family, but at the same time, I knew that it had to be done, and that I had to be the one to do it.

My husband had an addiction to alcohol. Over the years, that addiction had waxed and waned but overall it was worsening and I knew it. Things would sometimes get violent between us, but I made excuses for the violence, and I minimized what I could not excuse away. I blamed myself for "starting it" and I did start it because, deep down, I'd rather suffer the physical abuse than the mental and verbal abuse. I started the fights, and I made excuses for him afterward. I did this for several reasons, foremost because I was just as sick as he was, co-dependency is a very real, very sad thing. But religion also played a very big factor in my acceptance of the unacceptable. I had been taught many things by my fundamentalist Christian parents. Some of it I rejected, but the things I felt common sense and the bible backed up I supported with a tenaciousness that almost killed me. I believed in "soul mates" and thought that God Himself had put me in the marriage I had. I believed that divorce was wrong, a tool of the devil used to destroy families and to tear down values. I believed that faith could move mountains, that God could work miracles and change lives. I believed that God could save me, save my family, from alcoholism, from the vileness of a divorce. I believed that I should "put it all in God's hands" and that if I only "had the faith" He would repair my broken world and heal my sick husband. If He wasn't doing so, then surely it was my fault. I wouldn't "let go and let God". I did not have enough faith!

By 1998, I'd lived for years on memories. I fortified my heart by concentrating on how sweet my husband had once been, and I watched for signs that might prove that his sweetness was still there, lying dormant under all the anger and the pain. I'd learned to ration myself. I could feed on a tidbit of kindness for months. I liked being a wife and I loved my husband very much, but more than anything, I wanted to be a "good mother" and being a good mother meant fixing the family my children needed. I wanted to keep their family together. I didn't want my sons to have a "broken home". I didn't want to be a "single mother". It all sounded so nasty and so frightening that I did not want that for my sons. And I feared it, and because of that fear I made mistake after mistake. I forgave, and I prayed, and I berated myself for not having "enough faith." It was all my fault and I knew it!


By 1998, I knew about several infidelities and other various lies my husband had fed me for years. I knew about the woman of low standards (that would sleep with not only A married man but many married men.) I knew that she, whom we'd met when she'd married my husband's cousin, now fancied herself in love with my husband and moved into and out of his life as often as she could sweet talk or seduce her way under his skin. She left my husband's cousin in order to be on standby for my husband. I was extremely annoyed at her; she was a betrayer of the sisterhood. I would never have interfered in her marriage, hurt her heart, let alone damaged the family that her little boys belonged to and depended on. I was hurt by her unfaithfulness to the common good and the common female good. I was more than annoyed with my husband; he was a betrayer of our family, of my sons. He was helping this woman of low standards destroy the wife and sons he claimed to love; he was helping her destroy the family he had vowed before God and man to protect. He and she even started their own little sub family when she finally managed to get herself pregnant. I had told him that was exactly what she was after, in order to pull him into her life more, but he had not believed me. He said, "Right. She makes me wear TWO rubbers!" Then she told him she was having his baby. He said, "Maybe you were right. Maybe she was cutting holes in those rubbers, but now it's too late." Neither he nor I believed in abortion. She bragged to me that she would be able to give my husband the daughter I had never given him. She did not, but when her child was born a male she named it after my own sons. She gave the child both of my son's middle names. I had held out hope that the baby might belong to one of her other lovers, my husband's cousin even?! But, once arrived, the child looked more like my husband than my own sons did. My heart was shattered. I told my husband it was "spaghetti", so shredded was my very soul.

Looking back I know I should have left many years earlier than I did. I just kept believing in and waiting on that miracle that would save... everything. My faith, contrary to what I thought at the time, was just too strong. If I had my life to live over I would still meet and marry this man. I can't imagine a world without those two boys that knowing him gave me. But the entire time I was married to him I would be preparing to live on my own, raise my boys without him. Education would have been paramount. I would protect the hearts and lives of my original family, isolate them from him as much as possible, and I would leave the day I knew I was pregnant with my second son. That is what I would do differently if I could live my life over knowing what I now know... Educate more, leave with my boys asap, and be kinder to the people I meet along the way.

By 1998, I'd been through a lot physically as well. I'd been slapped until my jaw ached so much that I could eat nothing but mashed potatoes and pudding for two days. I'd been hit with beer bottles, car doors, house doors, and knocked flat by the front fender of my own car. I'd been pummeled in my kidneys until they were bruised for literally months. I'd spent hours cleaning up vile messes, piles of broken dishes, sentimental mementos, and my own art from pottery class, while holding my bruises and rubbing my sore muscles. I'd been through a frightening wreck when my drunken husband grabbed the steering wheel and yanked the car out of the lane I was driving in. I'd sat in shock as he, when the car stopped skidding all over the road, got out and busted the windshield with a lug wrench. I'd been dragged through a gravel parking lot when my hand got stuck in the door handle of the car. My drunken husband had ignored my cries for help and laughed when I pulled gravel out of my skin. I'd been choked until I blacked out. I'd had a gun held to my head and the trigger pulled. He thought it was very funny that I didn't know the gun wasn't loaded. He thought it was even funnier that I had urinated on myself. Amazingly, I'd never had to go to a doctor or the hospital and I'd rarely had any bruises or lacerations that anyone could see. I'd been through what I learned to think of as co-hell. My husband was in his own hell and I was in mine. We'd been through a lot but I realized too late that my boys, my beautiful and innocent little sons, had been through so much more! They were in the car when it skidded and slid and wound up totaled. The glass from the windshield had scattered over their heads. They listened as their mommy and daddy screamed, made foul accusations, and hit one another. My sons were the true sufferers, but I was in so much pain I didn't understand that. I had a big dose of the "beaten wife" mindset. I could fix this. Everything would go back to the way it had been before he started drinking. If I left I was giving up on my family, worse - giving up on God. If I left maybe he would kill me and my boys as one of my best friends and her baby had been killed by the man she left.

In 1998 it became apparent that staying was just as dangerous, maybe moreso. My husband tried to burn his home down, with his wife and children peacefully sleeping inside it. He came inside not long after dawn and woke me. He was still very intoxicated. He actually laughed when he told me that he'd tried to burn the home down. Because it was unthinkable, because he had laughed, I didn't believe him, so he proved it. He took me outside and showed me the ashes against our cedar deck. He showed me the black steaks left where the tongues of flames had licked up the side of the wood. If the wood had not been treated the entire home would have went up. My heart stopped beating and I couldn't breathe. All I could think of was that my children had been sleeping in that home when fire had tried to eat it down. When I regained my faculties, I told him that I was leaving, and I finally meant it. It was over. He chuckled and went inside and passed out. Yes, I considered putting the boys in the car and torching the place, but the spirit of my sons would not hear of it. Since they'd been born and made a mommy out of someone like me I'd wanted them to be proud of me, just half as proud of me as I was of them. I couldn't expect them to ever be proud of me if I killed their dad. From that moment on, the only time I slept was while he was at work and my sons were in school. It took me three weeks to arrange the move. Looking back, maybe I should have put the boys in the car and quietly left that very moment, but at least I went, and it afforded a measure of peace to my children to have their familiar beds and playthings after we moved out of my parents home. At last, we were safer than we had been in years.

I felt so much guilt for allowing my children to suffer through what they'd seen and heard, for failing to save them years earlier, for choosing such a man to be their father. All my life I'd given my mother great credit for the man she had picked out, so it naturally followed that I blamed myself for the un-fatherlyness of the man they called "Dad". That guilt almost crippled me emotionally. It took me years to understand that my husband was a very sick man. It took me years more to accept that I had been as sick as he was. I finally forgave him for losing control of his life, and when I did it opened the door for me to forgive myself for not taking action before my sons had been exposed to violence. It took years, but I was finally able to forgive us both for the injustice and pain we had spoon fed our kids, but forgiveness does not erase the past, and I will never stop wishing that I'd protected them as I now know God would have wanted me to do. I was an adult. I knew what I was in for when I stayed in that relationship, but they were helpless children. They were stuck. They were counting on their mother and father to see them safely through this sometimes frightening world, and we both let them down. How wonderful it would have been if the very first time he'd crossed the line I'd walked out and not returned unless and until he'd went through months of professional help! He might have actually found a way to heal himself, if I had known to demand it of him, if I had been strong enough to say, "Fix your problem or we're not coming back," and if I'd found the strength to follow through! It took me years to realize that there is a world of truth in the old adage, "God helps those who help themselves." I now understand that our loving Creator would no more want me to stay in such an unsafe environment than I would want either of my sons to endure it when they marry! If I had things to do over again I'd walk out the door the day I found out I was pregnant with my second son. I'd walk out with a smile on my face, and I'd never look back. It's one of only four changes I'm certain I'd make if I had my life to live over. I'd make sure I stayed better connected with my parents, sisters, and nieces and nephew. I'd refrain from being mean to that girl I insulted so greatly in high school. I'd work as hard on getting a formal education as I did on being an autodidact, and I'd rescue my sons from the violence as soon as I had my sons. I don't want to try to go through life without their smiles.

Twelve years later, I had to face the fact that a much beloved family member was trapped in the same sort of nightmare that I once lived inside. She is still in that marriage today. She also has two sons. I'm sure she's praying every night for the salvation of her family. She is probably berating herself for not having enough faith, for not putting her problems firmly in God's hands, for not praying hard enough, or often enough, or long enough. Maybe she's spending days fasting and praying. I'm sure she's remembering how wonderful he is when he's sober. She is probably feeding on every tidbit of kindness for months, and concentrating on how much God supports family, and how nature shows us that sons need fathers. Maybe she is thinking she starts those fights. She's counting on God to help her fix things. How, oh how, do I break the news to her that God is counting on HER to protect his daughter (herself) and his sons (her sons)? How do I tell her that if she doesn't find, doesn't somehow create, the strength to get out of danger and take her boys with her NOW that she will regret it the rest of her life? How do I make her understand that it will leave a black stain in her past and a heaviness in her heart that will never go away, not even after she finally manages to forgive herself? How do I tell her that she must rend her own heart out? How do I make her see that she must tear herself away from many of the things that she cherishes, from her home, her family, her life, herself, even from her god, or her idea of Him anyway? How do I tell her that God helps those who help themselves? How do I tell her that I understand how she feels, and that I love her to the ends of the earth and back? And when I tell her, will she listen? Will she understand? Will she let me help her? Will she take the action that I should have taken so many years earlier than 1989?

"I'VE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS." (Journal Entry)

Beautiful, Blanchey Mary
Photo by Skitch

NOW:

  

I've Always Depended on the Kindness of Strangers


I have this fabulous friend named Mary. She's my best gal friend. (The spousal unit gets the title of best guy friend.) She's such a good friend that I (and my parents and sisters) have adopted her forever! Mary is my chosen sister, my sister from another mister, as the kids used to say. And she's cooperated with the unofficial adoption. She's all for it. She told me recently that she was stolen away from us when she was a baby. That's her story and she's sticking to it. It's a great story!


She and I were born the same year. Twins! We were born in 1967, The Summer of Love. She in August and me in May. After being the "Baby" all my life, I'm okay with being the oldest for a change. We sometimes joke that we were twins born late in June or early in July and separated at birth. Mary was stolen away to Mississippi. She was raised to be what my people call a "flatlander", and I'm a mountain girl, a hillbilly. Other than being Southern American, the same age, and female you might expect us to be pretty different, but you'd be wrong. We are sometimes amazed at how much we have in common. And our differences are just the sort that mix things up and make conversations interesting.


Mary and I met while working in a retirement community. I saw in her a kindred soul. Too many of our co-workers fussed at the seniors or treated them as though they had, or should have, no dignity, and I hated it. Mary treated the seniors like people, like adults with sometimes different needs. She didn't treat them like dreaded responsibilities or like little children that needed to be bullied. She allowed them their dose of humanity, their measure of pride. And she made them laugh, and dance, and sing. And wow, can she sing! She's got a set of pipes that make the angels a bit envious. I tell her those pipes are her super power.


It would have been hard not to hope for friendship with this wild woman, and impossible to ignore her spirit. So, I didn't. I told her we should be friends and  she went along with the crazy idea. We eventually agreed that even our sons should be friends. Unbeknownst to us the two boys were forming their own alliance as we spoke, and they too are best friends forever.


Mary is like sunshine with brown eyes. She brings laughter and love with her everywhere she goes. She's intelligent, creative, funny, beautiful, and most importantly, she's honorable. She's the type of person that won't betray you. Your husband and your wallet are safe alone in a room with her. Your secrets might go in her ears but they will not cross her lips. By now, you may be wondering if I'm lying. No one is that great, right? Wrong. She's pretty awesome, and I'm very blessed to know her, to be her adopted sister and her best gal friend. But I do agree that no one is perfect and if you want I'll tell you her secret weakness. (It's not Kryptonite.) You're never going to meet her in person, so the secret is safe with you... Right?

So the secret weakness is this: Mary doesn't quite know she's awesome. She doesn't love herself, at least not enough. She's un-good to herself in many little and not-so-little ways. For years after we met she didn't even wear her seat belt. Which honestly kind of freaked me out! She eats stuff that isn't very good for her, and she doesn't eat much of the stuff that is. She only recently began going to the doctor and the dentist with any sort of regularity. She doesn't keep up with her things and seems to think it's funny when she misplaces them, until she misplaces something really important and her world goes for a loop. The crazy thing is, I know exactly how she feels and where she's coming from. I used to do the same things, and for (I believe) the same reasons. Mary's childhood was traumatizing on more than a couple of levels. I know we never outgrow that kid inside us, but I do hope that someday Mary will outgrow the pain that kid (and that adult) went through. I think part of life's struggle is keeping the happy kid in you and making peace with the unhappy kid, letting that one go. I think that she, like a lot of us, feels angry at the world, her family, even at herself for not giving the little kid she used to be a fair shake. And I don't blame her, but, if you think about it, who really gets those fair shakes? I know I didn't get one, and I'm not sure I've ever met anyone that did. And the more pain you go through the stronger you can become, because you've got two options when that pain hits: You let it teach you and strengthen you or you let it break you. So the pain can actually be an opportunity, an opportunity to get stronger and smarter. Mary is not a breaker. She's going to come through all of the pain and walk out on the other side with her head held high. I'm not certain of when but I am certain she will. Why am I so certain? Because not so long ago I was just like her in that respect. I was on the same self esteem path that she is walking now. It is exactly like watching her cross the same stream or mountain that I crossed not so long ago. It's only a matter of time before she arrives at "Mount Face It - You're Beautiful". It's right around the bend!


For right now, Mary is in touch with the Blanche inside her. I used to be a Blanche, but now I'm more of a Stella. Remember Blanche in Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire"? She said, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers." Well, that's because strangers were kinder to Blanche than she was to herself. And once strangers were kinder to me than I was to myself. If I didn't take care of myself they often stepped in and did that job for me. Mary is sometimes a Blanch in that respect, just like I used to be. When it comes to trustworthiness, she's a Stella. We've both been trustworthy around your man and your money pretty much all our days. But, like Blanche, we've both leaned on the kindness of strangers when we could and should have been being kind to ourselves. Think about what a difference it would have made in Blanche's life if she had learned to be a lot more self reliant. She wouldn't have been at the mercy of strangers and people that probably should have been strangers. She would have probably been able to keep her sanity. Sure the play might have sucked but that's a small price to pay for a happy wild woman.


Back in... probably 1992.. I stopped laughing at my own forgetfulness. I lost the money I'd been planning to feed my family with and my parents and my sisters had to rescue me once again. I swore enough was enough. I came up with strategies to keep up with my appointments and my various important thingies, including dollars. I started keeping most of my money in the bank. If I took any out it was for a purpose and I didn't carry it around with me any more than I had to. I'm not saying I never misplace any thing these days (as those relatives that helped me look for my eyeglasses for 45 minutes not too long ago can surely attest) but I did learn to be less of a Blanche and more of a Stella. I am convinced that Mary can and will do the same thing in her own time. Someday. In the meantime, it's a bit uncomfortable to watch her be "mean" to my best friend. It really puts you between a rock and a hard place. It's like when your kids fight. "Will you stop hitting him?" "Will you stop teasing him until he hits you?" You get so angry at them for being mean to each other that you almost want to be mean to them, but how much sense does that make? None. And Mary is not my child, she's not anyone's child. Both her parents are dead, but even they wouldn't be justified if they hit her for hitting her, even if that ridiculous logic was logical... Which it isn't. So, all I can do is watch, and reach out, and be patient, and hope that someday soon she will love herself as much as I love her.


Why am I thinking about all this tonight? Good question.


Mary has a guy. This great tall drink of water that is her equal in so many ways. He's super smart, creative, funny, handsome, and (I think, though I've not know him as long) honorable. He is her peanut butter and she is his jelly. His name is Aric. Lately he's decided he may not be able to watch Mary be un-good to herself any longer. He sent her out of the home they shared and he's waiting, watching, hoping it will be the wake up call she needs. Maybe it will, but in a way his actions frustrate me because I'm thinking, "She made no secret of who she was when you two met, fell in love, and (not too much later) committed to being together." She's a beautiful hot mess but she never tried to pretend that she was anything else. At least, not as far as I have ever been able to tell. But on that infamous other hand, I understand where he's coming from. I feel for him. It truly is hard to watch her not love someone you love. And then we even have that third hand that we don't have, but maybe we should, I feel kind of sorry for him because I'm thinking that he may be making a huge mistake. He may wind up alone and really regret pushing her out of his life. In my humble opinion, Mary is worth the wait. Heck, she's worth the wait even if she isn't going to figure out how to be good to herself until she's 102 and she's destined to die at 101. In other words, she's lovable and worthy - just the way she is! Howard Jones told us, "Maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be" and I'm thinking, maybe Howard Jones is right. And if he isn't, the quote from the film "The Mexican" surely is: "If two people love each other, but they just can't seem to get it together, when do you get to that point of enough is enough?" ...And the answer? "Never."


I wanted to share this story because writing about things helps me think and deal with the events in my life. I wanted to share this story because there are people out there that can relate. I know a lot of you may be struggling with change. Maybe you're ready to love yourself more, ready to start being kinder to yourself, to work on being more of a Stella and less of a Blanche... Do it!


Or maybe you're about to give up on someone that's Blancheing you to death... Try to be patient. Try to find a way to make it work. Even if they don't know they are lovable, YOU know they are lovable. Try to let people be just what they want to be. Sure you don't stop encouraging them, but you can encourage Blanche without helping her be mean to herself. Otherwise, you may just be hitting her for hitting her.

(Disclaimer: If someone is being mean to you as well as themselves, we all have to admit that is a different situation. If they are being mean to your children (or setting a horrible example for those children) that is a VERY different situation. In either case, my advice would be something more like:seek help and seek sanctuary.)


And to all of you:, my general advice is: Don't give up on love, every Blanche deserves it. Oh, and go watch "The Mexican" and listen to "What is Love" by Howard Jones. And for crying out Pete's sake go watch "A Streetcar Named Desire" - again. It's always been too long since you've seen that one!


PS: Happy Easter 2013!

LITTLE RED HOWLING HOOD (artwork)

Photo: Little Red Howling Hood
By Skitch's spousal unit

THEN...

This is "Little Red Howling Hood". She was designed in 2011 and sold in 2012. Inspired, obviously, by a favored fairy tale. Hey! No one ever said Little Red was a person, and if she and the Big Bad Wolf had conversations, maybe she was a wolf cub? Here she is, in the midst of her troubles with BBW, howling for assistance! Let's hope the woodsman hears her soon!

NOW:
 
I love that fairy tale, but there are some that I like even better than "Little Red Riding Hood". They are "The Brementown Musicians" "Beauty and the Beast" "Molly Whoopie" "Like Meat Loves Salt" "The Tinderbox" "The Three Sillies" all the Jack stories my Pop tells, and one story that I haven't seen in so long that I'm not sure I remember the name... "The Gypsy Queen"? Maybe? I love fairy tales, always have, but especially since my sister Sandi used up years of her life reading them to me. We went through every fairy tale book at the local library and then sent off for more. She's worth King Kong's weight in gold!
Do you have a favorite... or several favorite, fairy tales?

GENTLE MOTHER (poem)

Mom and Dad
Thanks for making my childhood
so much better than either of yours!

THEN:

I find it rather appropriate that one of the poems I published this year was inspired by my dad and one by my mother, and both by my struggle to become comfortable in the female skin they gave me. My relationship with my father has always been smooth and strong. He would die for me. I would die for him. We both were aware of both of those facts. That relationship can be likened to a rock. With Mom things were not so simple. She suffered from the after effects of horrific child abuse. Both her parents were alcoholics and one of them was a sex abuser. My mother, when I was a child, a teen, and a young adult, seemed an enigma to me. I could not understand her or feel certain of her love no matter how hard I tried. And believe me I tried! I remember having a dream that she was a witch and was trying to kill me. I was three years old. My relationship with Mom was something more akin to a storm, beautiful, powerful, and both frightening and something you can learn to be comfortable with. It was only in the last dozen years or so that it has tapered into the gentle rain that often follows a storm. The rain that lulls us into loving it. I've come to appreciate how very much better my childhood was than hers. I ate every day, my parents were not out of their mind with booze and allowing every sot in the neighborhood to bed down in the same home with their little daughters. And she picked my dad... I don't have to tell you how much better my dad was than hers! I bet you can imagine. She's told me all my life that she very deliberately chose a good father for me, that she very deliberately made my childhood safer than hers was. And it was. So, when it came to mapping out her children's future, my mother tapped into a strength and a wisdom that I didn't respect or even see. She created for me a life that was infinitely easier and safer than the one she had struggled through. In fact, my life was much safer and better than Dad's had been too. And looking back I can see and feel her love, the love that I missed all those years. How did I not see it then? I have always know that I was madly protective of her, that I would face a firing squad to save her, but I thought that adoration could only be explained through genetics. I concluded that children were doomed to love their mother even if that love is not returned. And maybe that is true as well. I thought that my affection for her was completely one sided and hence, a little unhealthy. It is not. I now realize that my mother would kill or die for me, just as I would her. And furthermore, that she is AMAZING! She is the bravest, truest, kindest, wisest and most beautiful woman I have ever known. I'm just so sorry it took me over 30 years to figure that out. I pray I can some day be half the woman she is today.

There was some correlation between learning to love my mom and learning to love being born a female. Both evolved at the same pace. One day,when the heavy chip of being a girl was resting on my shoulder, I was pondering how God and Jesus are men, and thinking about how inferior the Bible always left me feeling because almost all of the key players were men. I used to complain of this to my mom who would point out that Mary, the one given the supreme joy of being the mother of Christ, was a woman. I would look at Momma in disbelief and say something like, "Yeah, 'cause He should have made JOSEPH carry the baby in his womb." 

Mother would reply with, "Well, he certainly could have if he wanted to!"

At that time, I had not experienced the "supreme joy" of being anyone's mother, and I could not really relate to what my mother was saying. I remained unconvinced that women were cherished by God just because He let them carry the children. I thought he was kind of restricted by His own design on that one. But after carrying and giving birth to two sons and watching my boys grow, inside of me and outside of me, after losing a third son or first daughter from my womb, I know that being a mother is the greatest miracle I have witnessed, in a lifetime filled with miracles. It is the greatest gift I was ever given. Motherhood saved and shaped my life in miraculous ways, again and again. I tell my sons that they saved my life over and over, and I mean it very literally. Motherhood saved my life repeatedly. Fatherhood is great, I am sure. But if reincarnation exists and we are allowed any say over our future lives, I know I will come back in the female form much more often than the male form. I am sure there are a few lessons you can learn only in the male form, a few experiences that females don't have. But I am now convinced that there is nothing like motherhood. I can imagine nothing except, perhaps God's love, that can compare to the joy of feeling your child stir safely inside you. I would kill or die for my parents, my sisters, my spouse. But if any of them were drowning at the same time as my sons they can say their prayers and hang it up. If I only had the time to rescue one of them, we'd likely bury my parent, my sister, or my spouse very shortly. And of them all, I think my mother would understand that reasoning best of all. When you give birth to children, or become a mother by adopting with your whole heart, then the best of you and the entire world is forever walking around in that other person. I am a peace loving hippie to my core. I step over ants on the sidewalk and rescue spiders from people that want to squash them. But it was always with a deep, satisfied glee that I swatted any mosquito trying to bite one of my children! And I don't think I would lose a night's sleep over it if I ever had to treat some human killer in a like manner. I'd squash him or her and then go, "YES!" I wouldn't feel a bit of guilt over it because that is the way God/Nature designed me. The human race is perpetuated because the older family members will usually die for the younger ones. I wouldn't kill a human for biting my sons... probably... but they wouldn't get by with much more. So, word to the wise: They are grown-assed men, but don't mess with my boys, unless you want to mess with me. It's a sure fire way to turn this hippy into a redneck. You've heard about hell and scorned women? Well, I've been a scorned woman and it did incite some fury, that's true. But in fact, Hell hath no fury like a mother running defense.

And on that reflective-heavy-chip-on-shoulder day, as I was studying maleness and femaleness, the nature of motherhood, and of God. I concluded that the closest I had ever come to loving like God does is probably in motherhood. If God is a spirit and there is no marriage in Heaven, maybe sexes don't exist there. Maybe God isn't male or female but something much better than either. That might make God both Father and Mother. And that thought led to, "Maybe it would be cool to look at the maternal side of God for a change." So, I sat down and merged my views of God, and my mother, and motherhood itself in the poem below.


             Gentle Mother

Gentle Mother, wise and true,
Doth not the soft winds blow for you?
Doth not the cradle rock by will,
When day is done and night is still?
If not, dear mother, they truly ought,
Be in your web of pleasing caught,
And there like freedom in a cage,
All your battles fiercely wage.
For your soft hands hold all our dreams,
And in your eyes such passion gleams,
And all your thoughts rest wild and strong,
On how to teach us right from wrong.
Still we, your children, look away,
And with vile demons, wrongly play,
And yet you love us anyway,
So, that is why my heart must say...
Gentle Mother, wise and true,
May all the soft winds blow for you.
May every cradle rock at will,
When day is done and night is still.