I listen to my partner, we're getting married in NY next year, 2012. The summers are getting unbearable in OK. So far this year we've had more than a month of temps over 103.
Anyway, he is always telling how dysfunctional his family was. The mean old aunts, the drunks, or uncles he had. How the aunts, alway fought like they were still teenagers. I think about my family, and I didn't know my cousins. It seems that I remember meeting them when I was real little. The last time I saw them at their homes was when I was six. Mother took my sister and me to visit her mother in St. Louis. We traveled on a train from OKC to St Louis. It was great. The porter came in and madeup the births. My sister and I slept in the lower birth and mother slept in the top. I got to go forward with the Porter to visit the Engineer and brakeman. It was awesome. I guess I'm like a lot of little boys, all wanting to drive a train.
Anyway, this was the last time we went to visit mothers family. She was always mad at her sisters and she never seemed to like or talk much about her brothers. They were a large family. 13 brothers and sisters. The only sibling mother talked to and maintained a good relationship with was the youngest of them all, uncle Terry. He was in the US Navy as a career and he was my reason for going into the Navy myself.
Well, as the family stories go. [my family that is] was about how crazy my cousins where when they came to visit us. I was maybe 2 years old and my mothers sister, Harriet, came with her two kids, Nancy and Neil. The girl was six years older than my sister. Neil was the same age as her. I was almost (3months shy) four years younger. That means Neil was 8 almost 9, and as one of the stories goes, Becky (my sister) and Neil thought it was funny to make balls of bread and peanut butter and shove them in my mouth as they told me it was Poop, DODO, whatever they named it. Everyone LAUGHED and thought how funny that story was. Now it was only my mother, dad and sister at the table in the kitchen while this story was being retold. They, my family, my so called support group thought terrorizing this 2 year old was funny. I kinda remember that, I think. I do remember the time when that aunt came down and only had Neil with her. I later heard the story about how they had just divorced and the girl went with the father and Neil stayed with his mom.
I remember him exposing himself to me. Making me touch him. He had my shorts off and was playing with me. I think he was 10 at the time. I remember this very vividly. I found out, after I was in the Navy a few years, that my cousin Neil, had died of AIDS. He was a very big advocate for Gay Rights in Illinois, but he died young. I remember thinking to myself "GOOD" serves him right for molesting a little boy.
There was another story about how my sister was tired of helping mother take care of me. I found out much later, that mother was sick in bed because she'd had a still birth, and a miscarriage, two girls that would have been my older sisters. She relied on my sister to help with me. I guess I was teething, and they would soak a wash clothe in ice cold water and put an ice cube in the rag for me to suck on. To teeth on. Well as the story goes, Becky would slop the rag in the toilet and then give it to me.
Another story was told about how I was found coloring all of my sisters Golden Books. She learned to read by the age of four. And apparently she worshiped and really cared about those books. She is still mad at me for that, and we're in our 60s. Talk about holding a grudge.
Then there was the story about me grabbing a pair of my mothers sewing sissors and jumping on my sister and stabbing her in the back right shoulder blade. Not too deep, but she still carries the scar. Then there was the story about how I was coloring and it appeared I only had two colors. She refused to share them. I always broke them and pressed so hard I was making them flat on the pointed end. I jumped her again, this time my weapon was a sharpened pencil. She carries that scar also.
Now tell me, what could make a 2 or 3 year old so MAD, that he struck out with any weapon he could find to attack a sibling with. As I was growing up, I was always told that I had to learn to control my temper. I think my parent would have sent me to a psychologist if they had had the money. But as I remember things, I got over my bad temper as soon as I was sent to Military School and never lived with the two women in the house again. Any summer times I had off, I usually spent with a friend from school. My dad traveled for his work, so he was never home. Mother was whacked out on Valium and god only know what else, she barely remembered she had a son. I learned later from my dad that this was a particularly hard time for her and she was receiving electric shock treatments, almost bi-weekly.
The next family story was how my mother must have been molested when she was young. In fact, most of her sisters were molested. It seems that the brothers, having to sleep in the same beds with their sisters because they were so poor and had so many children. The brothers, just molested the closest sister in the bed. It was never said that the father molested any of them. But he was cruel. He beat all of his kids, but maybe the girls got alittle bit more of it than the boys did.
I don't know if I was every molested by her. But I do feel that something horrible happened between my sister and I. God only knows what could have made me so crazy mad at her that I felt I had to strike back at her with a scissors or pencil and STAB at her.
Whatever happened 57 to 58 years ago will remain a mystery. My sister and I have not talked to each other for years. The last time was just before my mother died. And since our father died last month I haven't heard a peep out of her. Funny, but I have a longing for the three sisters that didn't live more than I miss the one that tortured me. And the really sad thing is that she chose not to have anything todo with her nephews. I have four sons, and the three youngest never met her. Only the oldest ever saw her. He was 3 and it was a Christmas at our parents. She and her husband came up from Houston, TX to visit the family. Mother told me after they left, how much bitching and griping Becky and done about me having children so they would take money from them in the form of an inheritance.
After I had four children, Beck and Donald came to my parents and was asking them for whatever money they might be left when the parents died. So they could get it now, and my kids wouldn't divided it all up and leave them nothing. After mother died, she had her father all to herself. As he became more and more ravaged by Alzheimer's I'm sure she bilked thousands of dollars from him.
A very funny thing happened Friday. My oldest Paul called me and was so upset with himself that he mistakenly called her phone number and left a rather lengthy message for ME on her phone. I was given her address and phone number from a friend that was trying to contact them because of a school Donald and I attending together. That's another story. And he located them and gave me that information. I sent it along to the boys because they should have it. I guess. Not that she ever made an attempt to know them. She never ever sent them a Birthday Card, Christmas present or acknowledged them in any way. So Paul was looking for my new phone number and accidentally called hers.
I'm sure she was setting there watching the caller ID and didn't recognize the phone number but is freaked out now because one of the boys has her phone number. And know that I was the one that gave him the number. I sure she is freaked out trying to change her phone number and will have to go through hell changing that number and making all those that need that number know about the change.
I hope it drives her mad.
