I've spent a lot of my time thinking about my childhood.
Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that there must be something back there lurking in the shadows of my childhood that I can finally point at and say "Aha! THAT is why I am the way I am!" And with that discovery, all the faults I've been nitpicking will fade like healing blemishes and I will be left with a flawless spirit and thicker skin.
I've been slipping Merlot into your glass and taking you dumpster diving into my past.
I've selfishly lead our conversations to all things me. I told you I broke things to get cut so you'd have to take me to the hospital and give me attention. You told me we had no car, so we had to walk to the hospital. I told you I felt you'd ignored me. You told me you'd not had a real childhood and had no idea how to give me one.
You'd not had a childhood?
And in a blink, I was dumpster diving into your past.
Your family had a grocery in the depression and you lived above it. You and your mom got polio when you were 3. Your mother was pregnant. You had to raise your baby brother. Your mother was crippled, with one leg paralyzed. Your back was deformed. The grocery went bankrupt and your family had to move in with grandparents. No one had jobs. There was no money. If you sold chickens, there would be no eggs. Your family traded milk for food. One day you spilled the milk. No one got to eat that day, or the next. Your guilt was overwhelming. You were maybe 6? Your family found a place to live - it was an asylum for the criminally insane. Your father was the caretaker while you and your brothers had to stay locked inside. The patients roamed free. They were all men. A little girl of 7 or 8 was not safe there. You attended a one room school house and back every day. You had to do all the cooking and cleaning and ironing. Your family moved to a house. You said it was strange and would not explain. You went to school in Great Bend, Kansas. You had to walk. There was no family car. With helping at home, there was little time for anything else. Eventually you went to college at Purdue, but got too homesick. So you joined the army, because you knew then you could NOT go home. You met my father there. He'd had to take care of his parents when he was a kid too. You got married and moved to a small town in Arkansas. You had no job, no car, no dryer an a baby, me. You were beyond lonely and my dad brought you a puppy. You moved with us back to Great Bend. We lived with your parents. We moved to a very small town where again, you had no car and now another new baby. You had to do all the cooking and the cleaning and the washing. You'd had to do this all your life. You were 27. And I broke things to cut myself to get your attention. I drank your alcohol when your back was turned. I tore up your cigarettes. I locked you out of your house and destroyed for kitchen. I took firecrackers and blew up your screen door.
As a child, I did not see your life as you saw it.
Perhaps that is what is lurking in my childhood.
I was selfish and unappreciative of what I had.
I always wanted more.
I did not realize then, I had you.
And in comparison, I had everything.
And now in Ohio, I have you.
We spent hours playing together at a puzzle in my sun room.
You were telling be about "you kids" having to live in that little dark shack in the insane asylum. I touched your hand and said, "Mom, that was your childhood, not mine"
