My (adopted) mother was born at the end of 1935, the last of 7 children as was my biological mother. Her parents, first cousins, married at 13 and 21, I believe. They left the destitute farmland of northeastern North Carolina to head to the urban squalor of Portsmouth, Virginia where my grandfather found work in the Naval Shipyard that builds warcraft to this day. They made their home on High Street, sent their children to the public schools, and my grandmother (all of 5 ft. tall) ruled the home with an iron fist and a relish for holding off punishment for misdeeds until a child wanted something particularly badly. It was then that she would deny some freedom, pleasure, or worldly good (there weren’t many of those) for a sin that may have been committed months prior. This style of childrearing was steeped in my mother’s bones and her methods of disciplining her children could only be described as abusive most of the time. But she was a devout Southern Baptist, never voted, never wore pants in her life, never took a drink, had one and only one man to her bed, and dipped snuff only rarely. These were the hallmarks of a Good Woman at the time.
My uncle was disabled at age 18 from a terrible ear infection that led to mastoiditis and on to brain damage. The hospital bills from Johns Hopkins would not be fully discharged in my grandparents’ lifetimes. My grandparents would eventually separate permanently, sometime around 1960, and my grandmother would care for my uncle until she moved to a nursing facility in the mid-1980’s.
I don’t think we missed many weekends traveling to Portsmouth in my childhood. Even when we live in Washington, DC, my mother would gather my brother and me onto a Greyhound bus and travel the 150 miles or so to my grandmother’s Medicaid subsidized housing that butted up to Bide-a-Wee golf course. The 4 room house was immaculate, but the yard was nothing but weeds and black dirt that I later learned was probably mostly coal residue. We would play outside, or run over to my Aunt Nina’s house to watch Roller Derby. We’d take my grandmother to the grocery store and to Arby’s for a roast beef sandwich. She kept 6 oz Cokes in the fridge and I now know that that was a luxury she could really not afford. She was gentler with me than she’d been with her own children, and that did not please my mother.
As I grew up and left home, I recall seeing her at holiday times. Once in particular I recall sitting with her as she lay on my aunt’s guest room bed, begging me to help her die. I know that my awareness of her depression (and my mother’s) at an early age led me directly into my first career path. But at the time, what I felt was helpless.
I felt helpless with my mother as well. Our relationship was one in which the negative overwhelmed almost everything else. I thought everyone’s mother would disappear for days at a time, to be brought home by the police having been found threatening to jump off a bridge or worse. That all mothers beat their kids or pulled their hair when they became angry. That all dads locked their daughters into their rooms at night and hid all the knives until morning. The moments of normalcy, though, were startling and just frequent enough to keep me from walking away entirely until I was in my 30’s. Her abuse shaped me, giving me sharp edges that I still need to file down from time to time. It made me eat to a point that I always had a buffer between me and the outside world.
But the abuse also gave me an incredibly empathy. The need to cope with and survive her unpredictability made me resiliant. I’ve been told by therapists that living with a mentally ill parent is a lot like living in an alcoholic family – there are a lot of secrets, lies, and coverups. Kids learn to do almost anything to avoid setting off an avalanche. They grow up codependent or so independent that they don’t have many really close relationships. All true.
I had little to no contact with her after the mid 1990’s for reasons that sound like they are a script from the Jerry Springer Show rather than real life. More to come on that. My mother outlived my father by almost 25 years to the day. I learned of her death on a Sunday morning while reading the obituaries. I was not mentioned in it and she died as if I had not existed. My first thought upon reading it was that she could not hurt me any more. I thought I had let go of her long before, but her death made that real.
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A brief note about today – a man named George Floyed was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, nearly a year ago. Chavin, in the course of arresting Floyd, kneeled on his neck for over 9 minutes while restraining him. The experts testified that this was over 3 minutes after Floyd had already suffocated and died – while bystanders pleaded for mercy and help to no avail. Racial tensions have run high in the United States during the Trump administration. But it seems that today we are finding our way back to sanity. Just now, Chauvin was found guilty on all counts. Anyone who has seen the tape can come to no other conclusion. RIP George Floyd. And God help Derek Chauvin – I hope prison makes you a better man.