I was very fortunate - I had a lot of pillars. Pillows, more like it. Cushions. My mother was fine when we were little, it's the control thing you mentioned that she's got problems with. But she went to work when we were little so my father could go to college, and dental school. My father's mother, we called her Gumba, moved to New Orleans so she could take care of us, and we had a succession of black maids, until Ceoly (I have no idea how to spell her name, pronounced See-oh-lee, accent on the oh, possibly a variant on Cecilia) became the regular one until we moved to Baton Rouge. She was nice, although I did make her mad when I asked her if she gave chocolate milk, since I knew when my mother nursed my brother, the milk was plain. And when my mother went to work in my father's office, we had Elnora, forever. She was nice, too.
Things didn't get really bad until I was about 11 or 12, I was 5'7", and taller than my mother, and very rational. And I knew my mother was irrational, so I did resist when she was unreasonable, but I was more afraid of my father.
The worst time was after my father left, until he got custody again. That was a tough time. When he decided to try for custody, he wanted to take us out on his boat for the weekend, and Lydia and I didn't go because my mother complained about being left alone. My father didn't bring Jean (younger sister) and Val (brother) back, and he got a court order giving him temporary custody of them, but somehow my mother got to keep me and Lydia for another couple of years. And Lydia and I took care of each other. Lydia was the "mother" of the family after my father left, and I was the "father." There were times when Lydia and I would have to return coke bottles to the grocery store to get money so we could have supper. Meantime, my father was driving Porsches and my mother was in her bedroom with the shades drawn, asleep all day and all night, for days.
My mother had a large succession of boyfriends, a couple of them had friends who tried to molest me when I was 12, well, did molest me but didn't get very far because I hid in the bathroom and locked the door. Stuff like that. The worst part about that was that my mother blamed me. And I did kiss them, but I didn't really know any better.
I don't usually talk about it, actually, nor think about it. It just all came up recently, Nick is being picked on at school by another new kid, James, who is calling him "gay." I had a talk with the school counsellor, who is going to take care of it, I hope. I was wondering why people do things like that, and I think he probably hears his parents talking about how awful gays are, and then he acts on what he learned. People do. Children do. Unless they are taught different, by someone else. As you put it, the pillars. Just good examples, that's what I would call them. You don't have to follow bad examples, that's what the good examples teach you. It's better to do the right thing, life is easier and nicer that way. |
