Month: January 2019

This was one of my favorite books when I was a girl. This too is a story about 4 sisters.  A loosely biographical account by Louisa May Alcott. Each one unique and different. Trauma and disappointment because life is complicated

But this is a different story. It is about the influence that domestic violence has on a four little girls. It is not something that is easy to talk about let alone write about.

So to pick up from last time. My mom tried to leave two times in my first 15 months of life. And then she would become pregnant with my sister and she would never try to leave again.

I learned much later in life that my dad called me the “miracle” baby because mom my had at least 3 miscarriages before she had me and multiple surgeries. My mom had lots of “women” problems which probably means endometriosis and fibroids. The story goes that she only had half an ovary left when she finally conceived me. And then she would have 3 more daughters, perfectly spaced 2.5- 2.75 years apart. All with rhyming names. I don’t know if the half an ovary part is folklore or truth. I might be able to ask my two remaining aunts but I doubt they would know the intimate details.

I do know this. After my mom passed, we were cleaning out the perfectly organized, jam packed closets and I found all the paper prescriptions and the vials of DES that she took so she could conceive me. I told you she had perfectly manicured collections. It was her testament to her difficulty to have a child. It was weird being that child. Aha, so this is how I got here….

Therefore, to have three more girls after so much of a struggle seemed like a true blessing. I do know we were wanted. We were loved. But we were not protected. We should have never been witness to the things we saw and the toll it took on our relationships is irreversible.

Isolation is one of the trademarks of Domestic Violence. My grandparents lived less than a mile from my home. They lived three blocks from my school. While I have fond memories of stopping by my grandma’s home on the way home from school, when she would have a pie in the oven and made me scraps of the crust filled with cinnamon and sugar, they never came to our home.

Sometimes my grandpa would be in our neighborhood because he did some handyman work for a lady down the street and he would drop off a box a Dunkin’ Donuts.

I can’t imagine living so close to Stella or Sam and their families and not feeling welcome there.

Domestic Violence shatters relationships.

I already wrote a post about what is was like to be that little girl in the bedroom, sheets pulled up over your head, listening, praying to God. But it is too hard to post yet.

Next time, Marie. My amazing grandmother. One of my anchors.

My teens were my toughest. I was so angry with my mom, I could not understand why she had stayed. My sisters and I had begged her to leave for as long as we had understood, that what was happening, was not normal.  We also begged her to stop smoking cigarettes. She was a nervous wreck. Always damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Silently suffering and waiting for the next time.  Because as much as he promised, there was always a next time. You just never knew when that would be.  So of course she smoked cigarettes, it was her crutch, her coping mechanism.

The other thing about my mom is that she always kept busy. Always immersing herself into projects. She preserved everything. This is different than “kept” everything. I think she was deeply sentimental. All the things she kept were perfectly organized. They were a snapshot of her life. All these things that she could go back to and look at and recapture a feeling from that moment in time.  There were a million, different, little collections that she worked on. I think these were also a part of her coping mechanism. Her collections represented “Moments of Happiness”.

For example; she became an usher at the Fisher Theater in her early twenties.  She kept every single program from every single show she ever went to. Organized in a box by date, sometimes with notes. So every time she had to add a new program, over the 40 years plus that she was an usher, she would look back and relive a memory.

I keep lots of things but they are scattered everywhere, they are in a sort of, semi, quasi organized manner. Instead I stumble upon them. Which is what works for me.

So I have kept all of the programs from the nine years of going to see the Nutcracker, a Christmas tradition for Stella and me but I have no idea where they are. She may not have inspired in me the fastidious need to organize my memories, but she did instill in me the love of the theater. Starting at the age of 9 or 10, she would take me as a  sub to the Fischer if one of her friends couldn’t go.  I would wear a white, silk blouse, black skirt,  black hose and heels. We would walk in to this grand, beautiful, art deco building. It was magnificent. After everyone was seated, we could sit in any of the seats not taken. I would see amazing musicals; West Side Story, Oklahoma, South Pacific and the King and I, up front in some of the best seats in the house. It was so magical .

Because of her fastidious need to preserve memories, one of my prized possessions are the photo albums of my childhood. There is so much thought and love poured into them. Despite all the pain, we were still this little family that had all the happy moments too; Birthdays, Easter, Christmas, summers in the backyard pool, jumping off the tire swing into a pile of leaves in the fall and winters on the sleds in the street or ice skating on the pond dad would build in the back yard.  Pictures of a normal childhood.

Over the many years looking over and over again at this album there were would be times I would see a picture and not have the memory so I would ask my mom about it.

The first series of pictures that stood out was when I was 15 months old. It was my first trip on a plane, we were headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is just me and my mom the whole trip. Beautiful candid snapshots; we are on the plane, on the beach and at her friend’s home. She had left him. He convinced her to come back, I don’t know the details of the story. I do know the very next pictures in the album feature this adorable full breed, French Standard Poodle that I lovingly called Bobo.

After years of occasionally going through the album I stumbled upon another picture, I must have been 3 to 4 months old. She is beautiful carrying me in one arm and a suitcase in the other. My grandma took this picture as we were walking into her home. I asked my mom about it. It was the first time she left him, to seek refuge at her parents.

Domestic Violence is so tricky. In the 60’s with a little baby girl, if he tells you he is sorry and he will change… you believe him. She also loved him. This flawed human being of a man. My dad. I loved him too.  This beautifully preserved album of my childhood holds a testament to one woman’s struggle. She did try to leave.

I did not realize blog posts had tag lines. The one from the theme I chose was Random Thoughts. These are anything but random thoughts. These are things I have been thinking about daily, forever.So I stole my tagline from a podcast I listened to on January 1st. From Roseann Cash no less. Thick skin and an Open Heart. Her entire podcast spoke to me. She validated in me my desire to write this blog. She spoke about being believed. About childhood trauma, about how it takes a toll on your life. To be very clear I was not sexually assaulted when I was a child. But I did grow up with a father who was devastatingly violent to my mom. I was a witness to countless acts of utter brutality and it is the unspoken truth inside of me that has made me want to start this blog.

And then a friend of mine posted on FB about being a teacher and how some kids cannot wait to get back to school. The break was an unsafe place to be. I was that kid once.

I was in 8th grade. It was our first Christmas in our new home. I finally got up the courage to call the cops on my dad. He was beating the shit out of my mom and I could not take it anymore. They came to the door. No one believed me. My dad closed the door. He did not touch me. But he threw out every single Christmas present onto the lawn to be ruined in the snow. I had come from a Catholic school to a suburban school and clothes were everything. I could not go back to school without new clothes. So I tried to fake a temperature. He caught me. He made me go back to school with nothing new to show. As if I was not worthy. Thick skin was starting to grow.

I was the oldest of 4 girls. It was the first time I went up against him. I don’t think he expected it. It would set the stage. I would still pretend everything was okay but I was determined to get the hell out. The devastation that domestic violence puts upon a family is for a lifetime.

So this is what I really started this blog for. To bear my soul. About my childhood.

I always liked that song. It’s pretty catchy. But never, ever in a million years did I think I would live in the south. NEVER. Especially Alabama.

I have collard greens with Conecuh sausage and black eyed peas on the stove for New Year’s day. I say Y’all and I yell Roll Tide. February 2nd will be 16th anniversary of the drive from Dallas to, the neighborhood of Forest Park, Birmingham, Alabama. I have lived in three houses in the same neighborhood. And you will never, ever get me to leave. Unless I can buy a home on the coast of Northern California. But unfortunately, I don’t think that will ever be a reality.

I have never lived in any one city longer, I have never had roots deeper. I love it here, my soul feels happy and well nourished. This is where I have raised my kids, pushed them on the swings at Triangle Park, taken them to tot time at the library, watched my son play little league baseball for ten years at Avondale Park and my daughter be in the same Girl Scout troop since she was five.  This is where you run into old neighbors at Duckpin bowling or go to coffee with a mom you started tot time with. Where friends you made when your kids were in preschool still come over to watch the game. Only now,  you are just as avid an Alabama fan.   

When I turned 30 I wrote in my diary, (I have always had one), my top ten goals for my life. One of them was that I wanted to live in a place that either was a small town or felt like a small town, a place where you knew people, where you belonged. I had been living in Los Angles for 9 years and had  just moved to Houston. It would take another 8 years to get me to Birmingham.

 I did not methodically plan out my next 5 or ten years, I just put a mental wish out into the world. I wrote out loud what my heart was yearning for. I didn’t think I would ever have kids, let alone meet a husband within that first year.

At 38 years old, on January 22nd, just shy of my one year anniversary, I would met Dave. We worked in the same building. I had just bought and opened a franchise of a dating service after leaving HealthSouth within 4 months, the reason I was transferred here. But I owned a house. I had no where else to go. So I decided to do something crazy. And it transformed my life forever.

 I was dating guys ten years younger, drinking too much wine; a lost soul trying to find her place and Alabama rescued me.  She claimed me for one of her own. Northern roots and all. She gracefully provided me the fertile soil. A place to call home.