FAMILY RAMBLINGS

#1 The Young Me

I remember almost nothing about my parents when I was very young.  I have no memory of ever living with the two of them.  They separated several times and divorced by the time I was two years old.  I don't even remember seeing them together except for once when I was 14 years old, for part of a day.

My relationship with them was so distant that it is hard to describe.  I have images of them but vague and, surely, romanticized.

My father was a grocer and had the usual butcher's apron on most of the day.  But when he was not working, he dressed in a suit and hat – the style of the time.  He was always dressed nice and drove a new Chevy every couple of years.  In my small Indiana town, that was impressive to a lot of people.  He traveled to Chicago for the races and went to Cuba for at least one vacation.  I was always impressed that he had money to spend and nice clothes.  He would take my sister and me out to restaurants and to movies.  It was the good life.  It was many years before I realized that he spent money freely because he wasn't saving it.

My mother impressed me also. She visited rarely but, when she did, I always felt she was special.  She had pretty dark, curly hair and wore earrings and perfume.  Many women didn't look like her in our workaday world.  Other women wore house dresses and no makeup and usually didn't have styled hair.  Again, it was years before I could appreciate that the women who were dowdy and tired were busy taking care of their families.  My mother was a visitor and visitors usually “fixed up” before visits.

My earliest recollections are unclear enough for me to not be sure which came first.   Knowing that my sister and I were moved around a lot, most likely the memories came close to each other in the sequence of events.

One favorite memory was being the country, playing outside in my underpants, at about age 3.That memory would place me with my older, married brother and his wife -and their 4 kids.  They had a house in town, next to his grocery store, and a house in the country that she inherited from her parents.  We loved it out in the country.  In the early Fifties, we were so free and it was so inviting to small children, with little worry to the adults.  There was a field and a big hill between our house and the next one – my sister-in-law's brother - woods in the back with mushrooms and berries – and snakes; a creek off to one side of the woodsy area – a creek just shallow enough that even small children could go wading.  She had a gooseberry bush near the back door.  It was frequently bare, due to a greedy three-year-old.

I recall living a family named Linsnick.  Even though my sister and I lived there, I always called the mother “Mrs. Linsnick.”  I don't even know her first name.  They, too, had a rural home that was small and old-fashioned.  They had installed a toilet in their basement but also still used the outhouse. 

One of my earliest and most terrifying memories was in that home.

Everyone was in bed for the night and I had to use the bathroom.  That meant going down the stairs from the second floor to the first, through the kitchen, and then from the first floor to the basement.  There was a hall light but, as I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized the kitchen was completely dark and I was terrified.  I looked through the room, while staying on the landing at the bottom of the stairs.  As my eyes began to adjust, I was assessing each those dark blobs you see when it's pitch dark and assuring myself that they were nothing.  All of sudden, one of the blobs began to open the back door.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a most frightful feeling filled my whole, little body.  When I was sure that the door was really opening, I started screaming – loud and long.  The family came to the stop of the stairs and kept calling to me, asking me what was wrong.  I couldn't even speak. By then I was crying and could only point.  Not one of them came down stairs, which did not reassure me.  The next few minutes are not really clear in my memory, but someone turned on the light. The grandmother of the family was coming in from the outhouse.  She was very crabby with me the next morning because I had awakened the whole house. I was probably about 4 or 5 years old.

I'm not sure how long my sister and I stayed there but I do recall that I never could scream – even when I was grabbed in the street years later – until I was in my late thirties and someone saw a mouse in my office.  No one could understand why I was so pleased that I could scream.  I had found my voice after 30 years.

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#2  The Older, Surviving Young Me

I was almost always the gawky new kid.  I was awkward and self-conscious as a child.  My sister and I were frequently moved to different homes and were the “new” kids in school.  School was strange and home was frequently strange – sometimes we didn’t even know the family.  No matter what, we were not the life-long friend or siblings who had a history together.  My sister seemed to find it easier to fit in – I didn’t. I had learned to survive by closing off.

I remember going to a new public school, possibly in first grade.  It seemed to be bright, the desks were shiny and modern but I didn’t feel happy there.  We later went to a small Catholic school that was dark and had old-fashioned desks.  I loved it.  It was warm and friendly, though challenging. 

The family I remember the most was my older brother and his wife and their four – and later five – children.  Some were near my age and my sister’s age.  It was a loud, boisterous family and the kids ran free.  I liked it there but recall mostly being alone.  I was the skinny little girl who was an easy target for bullies.  It just became easier to play alone.

Indiana in the 1950s was safe and simple.  We could go around the neighborhood freely, ride our bikes, walk to St. Joseph’s church, and just generally do what we liked.  There were rules but very lax rules.  Some of my memories were with others:  softball games, where I tried to compete with the boys and failed miserably.  At 8 or 9 years old, I had a crush on a neighborhood boy and played softball only to be near him.  I did not make a good impression.  Other memories were going to Deming Park with my brother’s family.  We had picnics and went “exploring” in the woodsy areas.

Everything would change when I was with my father.  We had to be quieter and clean and well-dressed.  If we visited his girl friend’s house, there was very little play.  I found it oppressive to be corrected so much or hushed up. My father was fairly easy-going but his friend wasn’t.  I couldn’t wait to get back to my brother’s.

I have odd, broken bits of memories of those years.  For many years, it bothered me that it didn’t seem a “normal” upbringing.  In many ways, it was not typical.  Later in life, though, I thought being different – even odd – has helped me to see many different perspectives.  If I had had the narrow life that most people did back then, I may have been more close-minded or unable to cope with new situations.  The little girl was lonely and felt odd, but the woman is glad to be different.