Graduation and the Generations

My son graduated from high school last weekend. I didn’t feel a thing. There is some truth to that. I grew up hiding my feelings and pushing them aside. Now it is so automatic that sometimes I don’t feel when I want to feel. That is how it was the night before his graduation. I found myself being confused, thinking I needed to be productive and ‘get ready’ but going in circles, not sure how to be most effective. I felt the importance of the event and I didn’t want to mess up by being late or forgetting something. But I also thought, “Shouldn’t I be feeling something?” I searched and all I found was that confusion. I went to bed.

In the morning, I got up earlier than I thought I needed to because I am always running late. My plan was to leave for the school to wait in line half an hour before I thought I should. Emotion hit me while in the shower as it often does. In that most private of places with warm water running over my face, first there was the thought, “I wish my parents were here for this,” and then the surge of emotion. A multitude arose together: my loneliness, my loss, my grief, my desire to share an important moment with people who loved me, my pride for my son, my own accomplishment as a single parent, again grief over a failed marriage, some of the anger for my ex, sadness, my own insecurity, and back to the desire to have my parents there to tell me I had done a good job and to be that extended presence of support for my son. Then I cut it off to continue getting ready.

My thirteen-year-old son stood in line with me. We had half-an-hour to wait until the doors opened and two hours to wait until the ceremony began. With surprise, he realized I was wearing nylons. “I didn’t even notice,” he said. “Good. They are supposed to look natural,” I educated him. “Then why wear them at all,” he asked? The woman in front of us laughed and commented, “And so begins the educating of men!” 

Sitting in the bleachers, he joined me in observations of the band, people walking by, looking through the program flier, pointing out names we recognized from my graduate talking about them, pointing out people in the crowd that he knew, playing with the camera. We decided to text his brother every few minutes to annoyingly ensure he was up and making it to the school in time. My young son said, “If he doesn’t show, I will go up and accept his diploma for him!” The graduate sent a text, “I am here.” I informed him of his brother’s offer. The return text was, “Nice.” I was impressed by the consideration just exchanged between the boys when much of the time they complain of each other’s lack of consideration.

Their father sent a text saying he and his wife were sitting up above if I wanted to join them. I declined. While waiting, I felt that loneliness again. And again when the presenter had all grandparents rise and next all parents rise. If we were still married, we would have been sharing that moment with joy and pride and the knowledge of all we had been through to get to that point. In the back of my mind, I noted another loss. I also noted that too much had been revealed in our relationship for that congenial image to exist in reality. Again, I wanted someone to share the moment with me. I became aware of my son sitting next to me being a very enjoyable companion. I found myself thinking, “It is different than it is supposed to be, but it is still good.” I regained my balance as a single, independent, capable mom.

Young son and I arrived at their dad’s house for the after graduation reception party. I carried meat and cheese trays and was sans nylons. I appeared pleasant, relaxed, and casual. For the most part, this was real. There were some awkward moments. At one point, I felt I was acting as hostess in his fancy home as I would have done in the past. His sister’s and their spouses talked with me as we always would have, but years had passed since we had actually been around each other in this way. My own sister was there and told me my dress suited me well. She wouldn’t say it if it weren’t so. It was nice to have that feedback as I proceeded as an individual.

The graduate didn’t give me an opportunity to get a picture of him with just me.

But before I left for home, he informed me he had been invited to two different graduation parties. “I want to go to both, do you mind?” I offered him my confidence and trust in his judgment with the freedom to be out as long as he wanted. I also told him he could call me if he needed a ride home. I joked about him being a light weight and he let me know he might have more experience than I thought. I was satisfied with the respect he had shown by discussing his plans with me rather than just doing as he pleased.

Later that evening, my young son and I watched a comedy with Ben Stiller. We ate popcorn and more cheese from those cheese trays. He had discovered that day that he liked pepper jack cheese. So do I. Here was something new we could enjoy together.

Formica Fire

My grandmother’s log home still had old amenities. My mother had grown up there with an outhouse. I don’t know when the bathroom was installed. It was straight across from the entry with the kitchen to the right and the living area to the left. It had a bathtub without a shower. With my parents getting ready for work and me for school daily over the past winter, it was getting a lot of use. My mother was worried about mold and mildew setting into the walls. If any repairs were to be done for the rest of my grandmother’s life, it would be my dad doing them. My parents decided to install a Formica tub surround.

The day of the installation, I played outside in the grass under the pine trees. My parents busily prepared their work areas and my grandmother fussed around them. It was my job to stay out of the way, so I casually watched. I sat in the grass pulling out strands and tying them into knots. I could hear the adults talking through the door left open for ventilation. “Here is a bucket you can put your paint brush in.” “We’d better put our cigarettes away, no smoking near the glue!” “Can I help? What do you need?” “No, Mom, we’re fine. We’ve got it.”

I found a ladybug and carefully lifted it on a piece of grass, let it crawl onto my finger, then onto another piece of grass until it flew off. Suddenly, there was a low, loud, “Whoosh” which caused me to look up. The window to the living room glowed orange. My mother yelled, “Jim! Jim!” in a scared, panicked voice I had never heard from her. I ran to the door. To my right, my grandmother was at the phone pushing buttons, “Hello! Is anyone there?” She clicked the receiver down and tried again, her fingers shaking and glancing off. To my left, I watched my father pick up a large rectangle of flaming Formica while my mother opened a door leading out to the street side. Dad carried it out yelling “Damn it!” He dropped it onto the ground. Then he was flapping his hand and grabbing it. My mother rushed by his side and they headed into the kitchen. “Run cold water on it!” My mother turned on the faucet while my dad put his hand under the water. “Ahh! Jesus Christ!”

The linoleum in the living room was singed brown over about four feet. My mother’s eyebrows were singed off. My dad had large blisters on his hand. The gas forced air heater which I loved to sit in front of had set the fire. My parents had forgotten about the pilot light. My mother worked in front of it, spreading glue across the panel with fumes filling the room. Fear was replaced with humor. “Aren’t we so smart, get rid of the cigarettes but forget the pilot light!” “How do I look without eyebrows?” Out of earshot of my grandmother, Dad said, “A lot of help she is when she is scared! How could she mess up dialing the phone?” They laughed together about Granny being flustered. Added to it, they had taken care to shut down the entry furnace but had forgotten the one in the living room.

My Dad had a bandaged hand and blisters for a week or so. At that time and whenever the story was re-told, he was the Hero who rescued my mom from certain injury. The fear and danger were real, as were his gallantry and bravery.

Three Generations of Lucretia, About 1975

My mother, her mother, and myself are all living in Hailey:

                   Joe Anne Lucretia (Donahue) Reed, age 40

                                    Lucretia Reed, age 8

                         Lucretia (Tribble) Donahue, age 80

                             Spending time at Grandma's

                           The day of my first communion

Riding Bicycles with the Neighbor

I was at the neighbors’ house playing. There was a five-acre field between our homes. The neighbors had six daughters. Well, at that point in time, they had five daughters. I was used to a quiet house with a slower pace. When I walked through the entry of their home, I was met with a number of coats, hats, boots, scarves, and gloves, bags stuffed with stuff all strewn around, piled on and falling off of a bench. You could tell that people came and went in rushes. To the left were split stairs going up to the main living space and down to the basement family room. Already, there was a decision to make. When I was there, I was generally half confused, trying to take it all in.

         (Me becoming a country girl. The tree from my house is behind me as I sit on the neighbors' fence. 1975)

This day, we were outside. Their home was set far back from the main road and had a long, paved driveway with a circular turnabout in front of the house. We were riding our bikes fast down the driveway and whipping round the turnabout. My bike had a hard plastic molded seat and pedals of the same hard plastic. It also had training wheels which rattled as I road it. This bike had been fine on city sidewalks. Now, I lived with a dirt and gravel road in front of my house, no sidewalks. Others had ridden their bikes off to the side of the gravel road and worn trails. These trails were more solid, but they also had a lot of rocks sticking through. When I road my bike on the trail, I hit these rocks and bounced up and down on that hard plastic seat. Or, my wheels glanced off of rocks and jostled me side to side. I frequently had to stop and get myself going again.

Riding bikes at the neighbors was much more fun. This day, one of the older daughters, Mary, asked me, “Don’t you want to get those training wheels off?” “Uh, I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Here, you can use one of our bikes. I’ll teach you!” she said. I was terrified! But I didn’t want her to know. My shame at being afraid was stronger than my fear of getting hurt. I didn’t say that I didn’t want to do it. I found myself on a bike with a cushioned, banana-style seat. The handle bars curved back towards me and the pedals were rubber. It was so comfortable, I was happy just sitting on it. Mary had me at the end of the driveway and explained that she would hold the back of the bike as I pedaled. We got going, as the bike wobbled, I could feel her hand on the back edge of the seat helping to steady it. “Keep pedaling and don’t stop,” she urged me. I kept pedaling and it smoothed and straightened. “Keep pedaling,” she yelled. I kept pedaling and the smoothness felt good. Then I realized she was hollering at me from a distance behind. She was no longer holding onto the seat and running with me. I don’t remember stopping. I don’t remember crashing. I must have done ok.

I tended to play with one of the other daughters, Angie, who was closer in age to me, just a year younger. I became proficient at riding and had my own purplish, wine-colored bike with a banana seat. We rode our bikes downtown in that small country town. It was only two or three miles. We rode to the library to return books and to pick out new ones. Then Angie wanted to go to the store and buy some candy. “I don’t have any money,” I said. I knew I was dampening the fun. “Just go ask your dad for some!” she exclaimed. She was matter-of-fact, casual about it. That is what other kids did, they asked their parents for money. I never had done so. I wondered if he would get mad at me. I had a sense that I shouldn’t ask for money. She waited for me as I rode over to my dad’s store. Since we were living in what was supposed to have been his shop, he had rented a store space on a side street off of Main Street. My parents had painted the outside in wide red and white stripes and named it Reed’s Appliance and Repair. 

When I rode up on my bike, my dad was standing by one of the front bay windows talking to a man. Dad was relaxed, shirt sleeves rolled back, occasionally smiling as they talked. I waited patiently. He turned to me and asked, “What are you up to?” I explained I was with my friend and “Could you give me some money to buy some candy?” I asked. He hesitated. I knew I was putting him on the spot by asking in front of the man. It felt wrong. Dad looked serious. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter which he handed to me. This was a grave transaction. I knew I shouldn’t ask again in the future. I joined Angie and we bought our candy. She enjoyed hers without a care. I enjoyed mine, but knew this would not become a habit.

                       (You can see the corner of the TV here in the lower left of the photo. Close living space.)

We lived in the small space that had been meant to be my dad’s repair shop. I would come home from school and sit on the floor to watch TV.  At one point, the TV stopped working. It was the old kind which had a fuse. I think the fuse went out. Whatever the cause, my parents couldn’t afford to fix it right then. We went at least a month, maybe two, without a working TV. Even when it was working, it received its signal from an antenna on top. I could barely get three channels clear enough to watch. A year or so down the road, my teacher at the time wanted us to watch a certain TV show and do a class assignment. I went down to my friend’s house to watch the show because I couldn’t get it. She also could watch the Muppets and I could not. Even though the Muppets show was popular at the time and it aired for several years, I only saw it a couple of times total. I told myself it didn’t matter.

One day after school as I sat and watched TV, I heard a loud pounding on the wall to my left on the other side of our entry door. Then a cracking sound and part of the wall board pushed through as a jagged arch. “What is happening?!” I thought as my heart stopped for a moment. The pounding continued as well as ripping and tearing. When enough of the wall was removed, my parents’ friend, Jim Riggin, looked through with a smile and said, “Hi, Cretia! How are ya doin’?” Jim had managed the construction of the original shop section and he now was managing the construction of an addition to the home. He was friendly and nice, so I figured him tearing our wall to pieces was ok. I went back to watching TV.

Children of Great Grandpa Peter Donahue

My cousin, Lyn, recently went onto ancestry.com and found this family photo of my Great Grandfather, Peter, and Great Grandmother, Julia, and their children including my Grandfather, Joseph James Donahue (farthest to the left). This sparked quite the conversation between several of us cousins through Facebook messaging! The consensus was that it would have been nice if my Uncle Paul and my mother, Joe Anne, had told us more about their aunts and uncles and explained the relationship dynamics in the family. Writing it down as a family record would have been useful. In any case, we could see how certain names had been passed down through the family. I am sure my mother would have been thrilled to know we were all taking such an interest in our ancestry.

Joe Anne Returns to Hailey, Reviving Her Angst

Joe Anne returned to Hailey, Idaho. Hailey welcomed her as if she were that little girl sitting on her daddy’s lap. All of her memories of her dad were in this town. Her mother still lived in the house they had all lived in together. There were old timers that had known her father and could tell her their memories of him. Joe Anne had graduated from Hailey High School in 1952. Several of her classmates and friends still lived in the area.

*Hailey High. Photo originally posted by Jeannie Savelberg Bradshaw

She took a job as a legal secretary in Ketchum, the town 15 miles north of Hailey. Ketchum was at the base of Baldy Mountain, the center of Sun Valley skiing. Ketchum catered to the tourists and to the rich. Joe Anne hated Ketchum with vehemence. It seemed extreme and stemmed from teenage rivalries between the Ketchum School and the Hailey School. While working there, she complained with disdain of the high priced amenities as well as too narrow streets and terrible drivers. She befriended Lucille, who worked as a bank loan officer. They ate their lunches together. Lucille also lived in Hailey. Eventually, Lucille and her husband, Martin, became the couple that Jim and Joe Anne socialized with on most weekends.

To ease my transition into a new school, Joe Anne tried to introduce me to a daughter of one of her high school friends. At another’s home get-together, I was taken to meet this little girl. She was shy and quiet and politely said 'hi' to me. Her mother and her aunt had been good friends of my mother. When I was older, I was told of a slumber party my mother had as a young teen in which they got a bottle of some alcohol and all drank too much. They drank themselves sick! Well, as I was just meeting this little girl, her already established friend walked up between us, took her hand from mine, and pulled her away to play in another room. At school that week, I walked up to Shy Girl at her locker and said 'hi'. Domineering Girl walked directly over, said, “Don’t talk to her. We don’t like her,” and said “C’mon,” indicating they should walk away. Shy Girl looked at me then turned and walked off with Domineering Girl. At this point, a split was put into place that lasted all through high school. Domineering Girl was part of the popular group, possibly its Queen Bee. I was not accepted into the popular group.

We attended the Catholic Church for a while. Joe Anne even volunteered and I accompanied her to the church on Saturdays to clean. I dusted the pews and she swept the wooden floors. However, I believe she never felt worthy and it was easy for her to assume she was being judged. I remember being at a church service with her one morning when the priest was trying to get everyone fully engaged. He wanted everyone to sing. My mother was insecure about her singing and thought she sounded terrible. She was singing, but quietly. The priest turned directly to her and urged her to sing louder. He insisted until she did. She was embarrassed. Embarrassment turned to anger. She never returned to the church for services. She said she couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of some who presented as good church-going Christians.

Several of her good friends were members of the Catholic Church, so Joe Anne remained connected in spirit. There were gatherings and events at the hall next to the church which Jim and Joe Anne would attend. The Catholic Church put on a St Patrick’s Day celebration annually which they always joined. My grandparents had met at a St Patrick’s Day dance, both of them having an Irish background. Joe Anne was proud of her Irish heritage and needed to honor her parents’ tradition. I had been baptized as an infant and went through the first communion ceremony when we were in Hailey. I stopped attending weekend mass, but continued to attend weekly catechism after school. I only went to mass when I occasionally accompanied my grandmother to the Christmas Eve service.

Joe Anne enjoyed her job as a legal secretary. She was good at it. Her verbal and written skills (vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, typing dexterity) were valuable. She was intelligent. James Reed started out in Hailey with his own appliance repair business. They were very poor at this stage in their lives, but they had hopes and dreams. They were very happy for the first few years in Hailey.

Halloween When I was Little

With Halloween approaching, I thought I would reminisce about this holiday when I was little and still living in Idaho Falls. I can still recall wearing the ghost mask and feeling my warm breath leave condensation inside the mask. I also remember playing with that little wand, waving it around. I thought it was great! I had a little friend from down the street who joined me in going home to home with the help of my siblings. It was a fun time.

To Grandmother's House We Go

My Dad and I walked in through the carport side-door into the dining area and I stood looking into the family room. The front door was open and there were men I didn’t know urgently going upstairs and back down to the main floor. There were large boxes. One box was tall and a man next to it asked my mother if it looked ready to go. I saw clothing from my parents’ closet hanging in the box as if it had been taken directly from closet to box. My mother stood in the middle of the room, energetically responding and giving her approval. The tall box was yellow on the side and had Mayflower printed in large letters that took up the whole side of the box. I knew the Mayflower was one of the three ships that carried the pilgrims to America. The man tilted the box onto a hand truck and pushed it through our front door onto a ramp leading to a large truck with the same Mayflower on yellow printed largely on the trailer. Another man leaning over a square box said to my mother, “I am about to seal this one up. Is everything in there that you want?”  Mom answered in the affirmative and tape cracked loudly as it dispensed across the top, sealing the box.

In the evening, we loaded ourselves into the car. I was in the back seat. We were traveling to my grandmother’s house. I had been there for Christmas the year before and we had gone during summer time. I was comfortable with the idea. My cat, however, was not used to riding in the car. My parents had heard that wrapping the cat in a towel might calm him and would protect us from thrashing claws. My Dad handed Smokey to me, wrapped in a towel and placed on my lap. It didn’t work. He yowled and cried. He sounded terrified and I felt terrible. There was no way for me to convey to him that it was alright. Eventually, I let him out of the towel and he frantically jumped around the seat, to the floor, up into the window, until he crawled under the seat as much as he could, remaining there for the rest of the drive.

It became dark. I looked out the window at distant lights of towns and houses until I became tired. I stretched out on the back seat to sleep. We didn’t worry about seat belts back then. My parents talked quietly. My mother periodically would roll the window down a crack while she smoked a cigarette. She opened the window in consideration of me so that I wouldn’t suffer from the smoke. Most people then didn’t concern themselves much with that, either. Eventually, Mom fell asleep and I watched the back of her head resting on the head rest and moving side-to-side with the car motion. My dad calmly drove, occasionally looking to the side of the road at scenery then back to the road ahead. (When I was a teen, he would explain to me that changing my viewpoint while driving long distance would help prevent eye strain and fatigue.) His driving habits were reassuring to me; everything was under his calm control. I slept until we pulled into my grandmother’s front, dirt parking area, our headlights shining on lilac bushes with pine trees over-hanging. We were there. We had left the city for the country.

I was happy enough at my grandma’s. Her house was an old log cabin that green shake siding had been placed over, while inside, wallboard covered the logs. She had a tall gas furnace that ran up one wall of her living room and it blew warm air out the front through lower and upper vents. I liked to sit on the floor in front of it with the warm air blowing on my back. I would read or draw and be disappointed when the warm air would turn off. Granny worried and fussed about my being cold. She would turn up the thermostat. I tried to assure her I wasn’t cold, “I just like the heat blowing on me. I am ok.” She never really heard and continued to fuss about her poor chilled granddaughter. The linoleum was old, worn, scuffed and it creaked as people walked across it. It just seemed cozy to me.

 

I was enrolled in school, second grade. I had to ride a bus for the first time. I had to wait at a stop about a block down. Soon, snow fell in this mountain town. City trucks would clear the snow off the streets and push it into large piles, especially at the street corners. These piles were several times higher than my height. Even the snow along the sides of the road came above me. It was amazing. It didn’t take me long to learn the joy of climbing on those piles, sliding down, digging caves. My cat wasn’t so happy though. As we became more confined to the house during winter, he became on edge. Granny would talk to the cat in a high pitched voice whenever she let him in or out and she would pat him on the head in a manner that caused him to flatten his ears and looked as if his brains were being jostled. The cat took his stress out on me.

My grandmother’s couch resided against a wall which held the opening leading past the entryway. Granny would let Smokey into the house and greet him in her cat-irritating manner and Smokey would run around the wall, jump onto the couch back, then jump onto my head with claws out on all four feet, tearing sharply into my scalp! I would scream helplessly. On more than one occasion, my Dad came running to smack the cat off of my head, leaving me crying. After one of these episodes, Dad rolled up a newspaper and placed it into my hands. He said, “Next time he does that, you take a newspaper and roll it up like this and hit him with it.” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hit my cat that I loved. He attacked me again, and again my Dad told me I had to hit the cat. Smokey’s behavior was becoming so predictable, I was ready with a rolled newspaper the next time he came into the house. I knocked him off my head but missed him with the paper. Dad yelled, “Hit him!” Smokey had landed with a splat on the floor and was crouched down. I hit him once on his back with his eyes meeting mine. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was enough. He didn’t attack me anymore. I didn’t realize this was my first example that a good, nice person sometimes has to harden kind feelings and take action to protect oneself. I would come to realize this lesson a few more times over the years.

The cat wasn’t the only one being driven up the wall. Mom was also on edge living with her own mother. We had moved to Hailey because my parents had previously purchased some property there. The plan was to build a shop for my dad where he would run an appliance repair business. They would have a house on the property as well. The shop was built with a small entry facing a wall with an open window for my dad to serve customers. There was a door to the side entering a workroom with a small restroom.  My parents cut their stay at Granny’s short and we moved into the tiny shop to live. The idea of a separate shop/business was abandoned as we lived in it and they gradually built additions on to become our house.

 

 

Wildfire Anguish

A huge wildfire is threatening to engulf the town where I was raised. Hailey, Idaho in the high desert mountains near the famous SunValley ski resort has a huge fire rushing towards it. Only a hop skip and it would be over the Big Wood River that runs through town. At this time in August, the river must be fairly low. May is when the mountains are a pretty new green but they quickly turn brown from lack of rain. In August, those hills are covered in hot sun-warmed rocks, dry sagebrush, and smatterings of tough, dry, needled trees. This fire covers 140-some miles of land with winds blowing over the past few days as night falls at about 30-miles-per-hour. Residents of Hailey who live West of River Road, which parallels Main street just three blocks over have been mandated to evacuate. Main street is a portion of highway 75. In some places, the fire is just one mile from the highway.

The home I grew up in is across the valley to the east. It has been a relief to me knowing that the fire is not on Red Devil Mountain behind my childhood home. If the fire were to jump the river and the highway, it would be in the heart of town and could spread very quickly. There are over 600 firefighters working very hard to prevent that from happening. There have been three DC-10 aircraft bombers dropping fire repellent along with helicopters doing the same. Still, there are photos of tall fire tornadoes skipping around the mountain slopes. I have been very bothered by this dangerous action and the feeling of helplessness it evokes.
http://news.yahoo.com/aircraft-used-battle-idaho-fire-smoke-clears-231000602.html

But my reaction is more complicated. Only one other time in my lifetime has there been fire in the hills near my town. This was in August of 1994, the same time of year under the same conditions. My parents lived in the house and I received their interested and excited reports. My father was a small business owner who had only just retired two years before. I had visited in July and thought my father looked ill. He was naturally a thin man who looked even more thin and I observed him barely eating, seeming to struggle to even finish a bowl of soup. On August 23rd, I received the horrible phone call from my mom telling me that my dad had committed suicide. He was a man who valued duty to one's community. He had driven up into a canyon with the family car and carefully prepared the area around with a fire extinguisher. He then used the exhaust from the running vehicle to bring him the permanent sleep he had wished. He didn't want his actions to cause another fire for the community to have to manage.

Now, as I hear the reports and see the photos of the rapidly advancing fire threatening my home town and I feel this helplessness, it has another layer, the deeper layer of the helplessness I felt at the loss of my father. This wildfire of August 2013 is stirring up the wounds of August 1994.

Early Childhood Memories Through Lucretia's Eyes

Until I turned 7-years-old, we lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I have several childhood memories from that time. Some memories are cute and fun, some are hurtful (to a child), and they are wrapped up by suddenly moving away (It seemed sudden to me.) There are messages I received from my family and lessons I learned that affected my beliefs about myself and the world and contributed to choices I made in the future.

Those years were my brother’s teenage years. My mother loved a good story and my brother was having exciting times. He would come home and tell her all about it. I remember him describing having been at a party when the police arrived and he and his friend running to get out of there and hiding. I remember his being in a school musical. He was dressed as a cowboy with a hat and he practiced his singing number in our backyard using my rocking horse as a prop and dramatically ended with lifting the hat off of his head and holding it high. My brother made everything seem exciting. One day, he came home with a bottle of bright red nail polish for me. I sat still while my mother carefully painted my nails. She had me place my hand flat on the table with my fingers spread apart. She put a stripe of polish down the center of a nail, then would roll my finger to one side and spread the color from the center over the side of the nail, being careful to not get paint onto my skin. I had to be patient, this process took time.

 

My brother would stay home with me some evenings while my parents went out. We would have most of the lights out and he would play his record albums and we would sing and dance. I also remember him opening my piggy bank and spreading my change out on the floor. He showed me how to count my money. We made stacks of ten dimes and placed them neatly in a row. He would straighten the stacks and they looked nice and perfect. We made stacks of quarters and I remember counting the pennies, separating them out. I learned there was a system, a way to do it.

My dad emphasized always reading the instructions before beginning anything. I remember him holding the paper and saying, “Ok, let’s read this all the way through.” I also remember sitting in the kitchen and bouncing a little ball. My dad walked in and got a piece of paper and showed me how to make slash marks for each bounce of the ball. After the fourth mark, one makes the fifth mark as a slanted line over the other four lines. Then, you add by fives to get the total. Here was another system, and it made the counting easier!

My brother played basketball and football. One season, he got his head shaved as part of initiation for the basketball players. He goofed off with one of my mother’s wigs. He was also the football quarterback. He was amazing! One time, my mother let some cheerleaders in to decorate my brother’s room. There were streamers and balloons everywhere. Streamers covered the doorway and he would need to break through them to get into the room. They left a teddy bear hanging hammock-like in streamers from the center of the ceiling. My own teddy bear had most of the fur worn off from my constant carrying and snuggling. My brother’s bear had long brown fur. When my brother left for college, he asked me to take care of that teddy bear for him.

 

 

My sister came home in the summer from college. I had a stuffed tiger named Tigger. His fur was also worn off such that he had patches of material that were completely bare. He had begun to come apart at the seams. My sister repaired him for me. I watched her measure his stomach and cut out some orange fabric. I then sat next to her as she carefully sewed the fabric on being sure the stitches were small, neat, and even. Tigger was different but perfect again!

 

One day, my brother walked past me as he headed outside. He said something I don’t remember, possibly telling me something to do. I said “no” and he told me not to say that and then gave a little slap to my face. It wasn’t a hard slap, it was more symbolic. A little later, in an unusual moment, my Mom sat in the kitchen and pulled me over to sit on her lap. We were not generally an affectionate family, so this was different. I must have looked sad or something because she began rocking me and sang “Rock-a-by-Baby.” She was being light and playful. We looked out the window to the backyard where my dad was showing my brother how to mow the lawn using the electric lawn mower (taking care to keep the electrical cord off to the side so it couldn’t be run over and cut by the mower.) Mom made the observation that Mike was learning to mow the lawn and I broke down crying, sobbing. With shock and surprise she asked, “What is wrong?!” “Mike slapped me!” I said without explanation because I was crying and barely said the words. In an instant, my mother was in the back yard and I watched her grab my brother and pointing at his face she yelled, “Don’t you EVER slap her!” She continued yelling at him and was quite threatening. My dad stood by with a silent sigh and waited for her to finish. My brother appeased her. I watched and felt terrible. I had had no intention of getting him into trouble. I loved and idolized my brother and was simply deeply wounded by his disapproval. I later learned in psychology classes that the face is connected to our identity and a slap to the face is deeply personal. Though it barely hurt, it had great meaning.

Another day, I was like a lost child. I approached my mother as she loaded the dishwasher. I tried to talk to her but she was irritated and sent me away. Next, I was around my brother who was watching TV and he grouched at me to be quiet so he could hear the show. Then, I approached my dad who was working on something and before I could say anything to him, he swore in anger at whatever he was trying to do. I left him alone. That night, we did my bedtime ritual. Mom tucked me into bed. Dad came in and hugged me, kissed me, and told me goodnight. Mom came around to do the same. Then she asked me if I had had a good day. I broke down crying and said “no, everyone was mean to me and didn’t want me around!” As Mom got the information on what had happened and I continued to cry with tears running down my cheeks, my dad returned and so did my kitten, Smokey. He jumped up and laid on my pillow right next to my face and then reached out his paw and placed it on my cheek. Mom said, “Look at that! Smokey loves you and he wants you to not cry. He wants you to feel better.” It worked.

 

So my dad had been getting those migraines I talked about in my last post. He worked for National Cash Register and often would be called out in the evenings to repair machines while businesses were closed. I remember going with him to a bank and a pretty, nice young lady let us into the bank and into a large room. Dad took the panel off of a machine and began to make repairs. I ran around the room, colored on some copy paper, and watched him work some of the time. He had his shirt sleeves rolled back and his hands and arms in the machine. Over the years, this is often how I saw my dad with tools such as screw drivers, wrenches, and pliers, loosening wing nuts, bolts, and screws and removing them by turning them with his fingers. He would set these objects aside in a certain spot for safekeeping and in order of use.

Dad was also in a supervisory position at work. Evidently management had changed or company policies had. Employees were under pressure to meet quotas. My dad was under pressure to fire employees who were not meeting the quotas. He was getting migraines from it. As a child, I didn’t know this. I guess he took a vacation and didn’t meet his own quotas and then quit his job. I remember him coming to my school one morning. I was in the second grade. They were selling cupcakes that morning, pushing around a cart from room to room. Dad bought me a cupcake and we went home to leave. We were moving to Mom’s hometown, Hailey, Idaho.

On the Day I was Born

A few famous events took place on my birthdate, July 7th, 1967

The Beatles released, "All You Need is Love"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEtGRUrtJo

The Doors' "Light My Fire" became the #1 Hit Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbFxzb-YIxE

The actress, Vivian Leigh, who played Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind," died at age 53
Here is the clip, "You Need Kissing Badly"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nACj50uq6_s

Here is the Time magazine published on this day
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601670707,00.html

July Baby: Lucretia Reed is Born

I was born on July 7th. My parents had considered themselves to be done having children. But my mother identified herself as Catholic and Catholics don't use birth control. Mom always said that I was proof that the rhythm method doesn't work. After I was born, Dad got a vasectomy. There were things said and done that could have left me feeling that I was unwanted, but I never felt that. Undoubtedly, both of my parents loved me. But my mother didn't stop smoking while she was pregnant, didn't cut down at all. I was born weighing 5 lbs 5 oz and my skin was blue. This was from lack of oxygen due to a placenta that was shriveled and half gone, the effects of smoking. My mother said I was the "ugliest baby [she] had ever seen." Well, that was her fault, not mine. She also said that because I was so little, my stomach was very small, so I would eat and be hungry again right away. She said I cried all of the time. But when I interviewed her in later years, she said the day came for me to be born and she called my father at work. Her voice cracked with emotion as she recalled saying to him, "Are you ready to have a baby?" They brought me home to join my siblings. My brother was eleven and my sister was fifteen. Everyone adored me. I was named after my grandma.

I did put a bit of a strain on the family. My brother and sister were expected to babysit much of the time. When my sister was sixteen, she stopped taking me out in public with her. This came after an incident in which she took me to a store and was pushing me around in the shopping cart. She felt several people's disapproving glances as they assumed she was an unwed teen mother. She couldn't stand the judgemental looks.

My brother complained about fighting me for the TV. He came home from school and wanted to watch shows of his choosing. I would be watching 'Sesame Street' or 'Mr Rogers' and would scream and cry when he changed the channel. He thought it was about time that I let it go because I would have already watched those shows four or five times throughout the day. I knew the alphabet and my numbers before I ever entered Kindergarten.

I didn't talk fully as soon as other children. For the longest time, I would only say phrases of a few words. It took my brother tormenting me to make a breakthrough occur. We were sitting at the table across from each other for breakfast and he was teasing me about how I held my spoon. He was making faces and copying me. Then, I tried to look at the cereal box with it between us. He kept moving it aside and making faces at me. He wouldn't stop. I became so angry that I stood, stomped my foot, and screamed at him. I clearly recall looking around the kitchen and getting ideas/images of what I was yelling at him. I shouted, "I am going to rip your head off, get blood all over the floor, and throw it in the garbage can!" My brother was in shock, and my mother had heard this from the other room. She couldn't believe it! This story was told over and over as the first full sentence that Cretia ever said, spurred by her brother tormenting her. My family did have a twisted sense of humor.

I was a serious child. I can remember being about age five and feeling that seriousness, a feeling that something wasn't quite right with the world. I can't recall anything wrong in the family, I don't recall any arguing or outward signs of trouble. My Dad did get migraines. I remember crawling over my Dad's lap and questioning him as he sat on our couch holding his head. Mom told me to stop talking and be quiet around him because his head hurt. His face was tightened and twisted from the pain. I felt very sorry for him.

I went to daycare at Mrs Brown's. She was a very nice woman and I preferred to be with her rather than playing with the kids. I remember her slicing a dill pickle and introducing me to that wonderful taste. I was uncomfortable around the other kids. Some were older than me and tended to direct the playing. I was quiet and shy. One boy decided I was his girlfriend and I was in his rock band. We set up our stage in Mrs Brown's yard and sang Credence Clearwater's "Proud Mary - Rollin' on a River."
http://youtu.be/L-2Of9aznxg

When I was turning seven, my mother took me to a pet store and we looked at some kittens. On my birthday, my brother came driving up in his beater car and brought me a little gray kitten for my present. I named him Smokey, I think because he was gray and my Dad was brainstorming and said it was the color of smoke. I associated that with Smokey the Bear. So Smokey became the name. I loved that kitten. He grew into a Tom cat who I am certain helped to form my views of what a man should be. That cat along with the Disney movie, "Lady and the Tramp," were strong influences on me!

My family also came up against the world a few times in my early years which instilled a fight in me that I didn't realize I had. I will describe those experiences in my next installment.

As I go along with my writing, please post comments, questions, observations. I welcome anything that will help bring out the telling of my stories.

Marriage Anyone?

During my master’s degree program in Clinical Psychology, I took a course in family therapy. One of our assignments was to interview an older couple who had been through various stages of their marriage. I interviewed my parents. My dad would have been about 60-years-old at the time of the interview. My dad said that he wanted to marry my mom, in part, because she was intelligent and had a good head on her shoulders. “She seemed to know what she was doing.” My mother reacted with some surprise to his comments. They both told me a nice account of their early days together.

 

My dad said that he thought he had made one major mistake when they first got married, and if he could do it over, he wouldn’t make the same choice. He said that as a newly married couple, they rented an apartment along with another couple. The two couples lived together in the one apartment. The other couple had a young child and the father disciplined by spanking with a belt. Neither of my parents approved of this approach. After seeing this happen repeatedly, on one occasion, my father confronted the man. My mother proudly reported, “Your Dad told him to stop hitting that boy with a belt and if he saw it happen again, he would pound the guy!” There was tension between the two couples until they were able to separate. Looking back, my dad assessed that their bonding as a couple was hindered by the presence of other people.

 

There was a lot of tension in my parents’ marriage by the time I was growing up. This had developed over years. There is a psychological diagnosis, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), which comes about when an event in a person’s early childhood years seriously disrupts the normal development of bonding between parent and child. This event could be an illness, separation from the parent, abuse, or anything that could be experienced as traumatic. For my mother, it was the death of her father when she was age five. RAD manifests as a difficulty to form stable relationships and to bond with another. The normal, age appropriate stages of development are disrupted. It can severely impair a person’s functioning from family to employment to community. I don’t believe my mother would meet the clinical diagnosis. She certainly bonded with each of her three children and she did remain in a stable marriage for almost 40 years and was stable in her employment. I could only say that she had traits of RAD. My mother painfully doubted my father’s love for her and frequently lamented to me that he didn’t with various examples of less than sufficient care for her. I would try to reassure her that he did (Of course he did, right?!) The insecurity wasn’t just in my mother. My dad admitted during a confrontation by her that he indeed didn’t say the words, “I love you.” He said to her, “You know I have trouble with that.” She was not happy to just accept that as good enough. My dad restricted his emotion, possibly lost touch with the true experience of a full range of emotion. For example, when given a gift at Christmas, he would put on an act of a happy reaction. He would say something like, “Wow!” or “Whee! Great!” but it seemed put-on over a basically flat response.

 

Attachment theory describes secure and insecure attachment. One form of insecure attachment is ambivalent attachment. In observational studies of young children, this type of insecurely attached child would panic when the parent went away and would cry for their return. But when the parent returned, the child would be angry and would reject the parent, would even hit or kick at the mother. Regardless of my father’s restricted expression of fondness, my mother generally carried with her a guardedness, a distrust, which didn’t allow her to relax into the marital relationship. Like the insecurely attached child, she desperately wanted my father’s love but she frequently pushed him away with anger. When she was wounded, she would enter into yelling rampages. My brother said when he and my sister were growing up, my father would argue with my mother; he would engage. I am eleven years younger than my brother, 15 years younger than my sister. During my growing up years, he no longer argued with her. He stayed quiet, clenched his jaw with the muscle in his cheek bulging from tension, and he would walk away. Evidently, by then, he had determined it wasn’t worth it.

 

My mother held onto hurts and slights. There was a story which when brought up, even many years later, would still rouse her anger. Early in their marriage, my mother met my father at the door upon his return home from work. She tried to do the typical 50’s era wife thing of greeting him with a kiss. His response, “Get away! You’re just like a sticky fly!” Mom’s response, she never initiated such affection again.

 

When my brother and sister were little, Mom became angry at Dad while he was across the street talking with the neighbor. She left the kids in the house, backed the car out, and yelled at him, “You take care of the kids!” as she angrily drove off. Dad calmly said to the neighbor, “Guess I’d better go take care of things.” Another time, she was so angry with him she packed a couple of suitcases and was going to leave him. I don’t know how he calmed her in that instance. Though he no longer argued with her directly during my years, he did act as a buffer for me. Mom was intense. She loved me. I knew she loved me. I loved her. But at times my Dad would need to step in. For example, when I was about age 14, Mom’s friend, Phyllis Barth, came to visit along with her high-school-age daughter. Phyllis dramatically told of her daughter’s recent illness with high fever and severe dehydration. It almost killed her. It just happened that I was sick. I tried to go to bed, but became nauseous and vomited. Mom became adamant that I needed to keep fluids in me so that I wouldn’t become dehydrated. I drank a little water and threw up. She had me drink water again and I threw up. Again, despite my protest, she insisted that I drink some water and I threw up. Somehow, she and Phyllis got the idea that I should have orange juice. I had some sips of orange juice and threw up. They were still pushing the drink upon me. We were all in the kitchen with me weakly sitting and my dad across the room leaning against the counter. As I was being pressured to drink some more, I looked at my dad miserably. He then arose to my defense and said, “Leave her alone now. Let her go to bed.” And my mother followed his direction. This was an interaction that would happen over the years, my dad stepping in when my mom was going too far. When he passed away, that was one of the first losses I recognized: I no longer had a buffer.

 

Also, in my self-awareness, I realize that I learned from my mother to be guarded and distrustful in relationships. I can be overly trusting in the goodness of other people, but in regards to being vulnerable with my emotions, I keep much hidden and maintain a degree of distance. This was reinforced by watching the course of my parents’ marriage and by the dissolution of my own marriage. I also restrict my emotions like my dad, generally and automatically keeping a stoic control over my reactions. Then, in close, personal relationships, if I feel hurt (and those closest to us can inflict the most hurt) I react like my mother. I find it interesting that I have developed defenses by taking on the defenses of my parents in reaction to the hurts they experienced in childhood. The influence of those hurts extends to the next generation that didn’t directly experience them. What was my Dad’s early childhood wound? He was born in 1930. This was the Great Depression and my grandparents lost their farm that year. They moved into town when my dad was one-year-old. Possibly my dad took on a style of depression he picked up from his own parents produced from their substantial loss and combined with a German stoicism.

 

My parents did enjoy each other. They were best when they could go out dancing. My dad was entertained by my mother’s spunk and rowdiness. They both liked to share interactions or observations from their days that they could laugh about. Humor was something they had in common. And they were a team when it came to parenting. They agreed with each other; there was no playing one against the other. They could set a firm limit. Both were intelligent and valued education. They had the same values of honesty, loyalty, perseverance, striving to do one’s best, and being responsible. They were good parents. They were a good pair.

Joe Anne meets James Reed

Joe Anne returned to live near her mother. At that time, my grandmother was living in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. She always kept the house in Hailey, Idaho but would go to other places to teach during the school year. My grandfather’s parents had moved from Mackay, Idaho to Pocatello, Idaho where they were living at the time my grandparents married. My grandparents were married in Pocatello and returned to live in Mackay. My grandmother was now living in Lava Hot Springs, which is quite close to Pocatello. Pocatello was the family stomping grounds for a few generations.

My mother was a young woman. She liked to have fun! She liked groups of people and dancing. One weekend evening, she was with her friend, Edie, and the girls were looking to have fun. Edie knew some guys and called them up. Three young men arrived and they had already been drinking. The good times were on! They all headed to Pocatello to go dancing. At some point in the evening, they needed more alcohol or cigarettes or something. My mother joined the guys on the drive. The man who would one day be my father, James Reed, was in the front seat with her in the middle. He rested his arm on the back of the bench seat behind her shoulders. She told me she knew he was a nice guy because he didn’t try to touch her or make any moves. She felt comfortable with his arm just behind her.

They returned to the dance scene. My mother was dancing to nearly every song played. In those days, everyone danced with everyone even if they were part of a couple. (That doesn’t seem so easy to do these days, maybe because there isn’t a formal dance step for people to follow which could make dance partners easily interchangeable.) According to my mother, James Reed had imbibed so much alcohol later in the evening that he was barely conscious. Sitting in a booth, he slouched sideways and rested his head on her shoulder. She would lift his head and push him aside to rest against the wall when she got up to dance. When she would return to her seat, he would resume resting his head on her shoulder. She would push him aside again when she wanted to dance. According to my dad, the next day he had been so drunk that he couldn’t remember what she looked like or what her name was. He just knew he wanted to see “the red-headed girl in the pink dress” again. He went asking around about her.

 

James Reed was just out of the navy. He had been in the navy during the Korean War. He had a tattoo on the back of his right forearm of an eagle and an anchor from a night of drinking with his sailor buddies. He was from American Falls, Idaho of the “crazy German family that lived on the hill and made dandelion wine.” When he contacted my mother after the night of drinking and dancing, they met in a park. My mother brought my sister, Christine, who was a year old. My mother said she determined he was a good person to date because he played with my sister and my sister liked him. They dated, many weekends of dancing and socializing while my grandmother babysat, and were married after six months (My sister was age two then). My dad’s employer at the time said it was a good thing he was getting married and would settle down a bit because he was going to kill himself with all of the drinking he was doing. He did settle down. He didn’t like going to the bar after work to drink with the men. He wanted to go home. He got harassed because he helped around the house, for instance, he helped my mother to wash all of the windows. His new job with National Cash Register took them to live in Ogden, Utah, where my brother, Michael, was born. My sister was four-years-old.

 

 

A Mind Destroyed

Jim and Paul Donahue both graduated as valedictorians of their high school senior classes. They also both went to Albion to continue their schooling at the same place my grandmother received her teaching certificate. The brothers shared a room together. They also both were called to serve in the Korean War. Though my Uncle Jim wasn’t in the middle of the fighting, he didn’t fare so well.

He didn’t ever talk about the war itself. He did tell me about the Korean children who had very little and were hungry for food. He said the American soldiers would throw a single candy bar on the ground in front of the children and watch them scramble, scratch, and fight each other to get that candy bar. He didn’t make it clear what point he was trying to make by passing that image on to me. We didn’t really talk about anything. He would throw out odd comments, statements, observations and I just received them. When he told me about the children, he didn’t really express an opinion as one might expect such as the tragedy of war, the baseness of humanity, or our animalistic natures. He just presented it with an odd half smile, maybe of amazement. I wondered why he told me that.

Uncle Jim had a wife, Kitty, and a daughter, Anne Jeanette. The family didn’t last long. As I was growing up, my Uncle Jim lived with my grandmother. He had about six different medication bottles that the VA sent him every month. They stacked up in the pantry. My grandmother told me he didn’t like to take them because they made him feel loopy. He became an alcoholic.

Pretty much every Friday night until I was about fourteen, I stayed the night at my grandmother’s. In the middle of the night, Uncle Jim would come home, walk across the living room past our bedroom door, and sit in his leather chair. He would chain smoke Pall Malls or Camels. Sometimes, he would mumble and grumble. Sometimes he would tell a joke to no one present and he would share a laugh with them. Sometimes he would carry on an argument. He might sleep for a while in the chair, but most times, he would make his way up the narrow, steep stairs to his bedroom.

In the mornings, I would awaken to hear he and my grandmother arguing in the kitchen, both loud and harsh, criticizing the other. I would walk out to the kitchen and they both would smile at me and tell me good morning. Uncle Jim liked to tease me. He prided himself on finding a person’s sore spot and taunting them. I would smile and shake my head like he was getting to me. However, I never let him know what would truly bother me. That is where I learned to smile, keep my mouth shut, accommodate, and put on a poker face. He would smoke a cigarette or more, tons of ashes in the ash tray, and the tips of his fingers were stained yellow from the nicotine of unfiltered smokes. He would drink some coffee. The cup could only be half full; his hand shook so that the coffee would slosh and spill. It would shake as he lifted the cup to his lips. I learned what the DTs were. He would leave at 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning to walk downtown to find an open bar. He had a car for a while, but it went away along with his driver’s license.

Sometimes, he would come home so drunk he couldn’t make it to his chair. At least once, he fell on the porch trying to come through the door. My grandmother dragged him into the house just to the point she could close the door. She left him passed out on the floor. Many times, he vomited in the bathroom, missing the toilet, and my grandmother would rant about cleaning up his mess.

They would argue because he lost the mail during his wanderings downtown. He would blow up at my grandmother, accusing her of opening his mail or of stealing it. Once, when no one was there, he picked up a chair over his head and threatened to hit my grandmother. She yelled at him that he better not because if she couldn’t do it herself then “Joe Anne will make sure you go to jail. You know she will!” He put down the chair. I was witness to a time my mother got between him and my grandmother and shouted him down. Many years before, when my dad was first with my mom, Uncle Jim threatened to beat him up. My mother pulled a kitchen knife on him and told him she would kill him. I tried to never upset anyone in my family.

Only one time, as I was trying to understand what had happened to make Uncle Jim this way, my grandmother told me something that seemed unreal. She said that during the Korean War, Uncle Jim had a mental/emotional breakdown. The military saw this as a danger because Uncle Jim had a high security clearance and knowledge of sensitive information. She said they put him through electric shock to his brain with the purpose of erasing his memory! She said it made him infantile. He needed to learn how to talk again and how to do basic motor skills. She had to feed him with a spoon like one feeds a baby! That’s the way to hammer the nail into the coffin.

My mother thought he had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. I didn’t know if that could truly be the diagnosis with his alcoholism and this supposed purposeful trauma to his brain. He definitely was paranoid. Years later, my mother called me and told me that Uncle Jim’s grandson had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. So there was evidence that it truly was and it had been passed down genetically.

I don’t know how it logically falls into place. Uncle Jim and Uncle Paul both returned from Korea and graduated from Idaho State University. Uncle Jim did work for some time with the technological cutting edge computers that were so big they filled entire rooms. But, he could never keep a job longer than about a year. My grandmother’s firstborn son who was supposed to be the hero, the champion of the family, dissolved into belligerent illness. In the end, his brain deteriorated. One Christmas, my sister gave him the book, “All I Ever Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” He stared at the cover vacantly. Half an hour later he chuckled at the title.

I was never afraid of my Uncle Jim. He always was happy to see me and his teasing was his way of being friendly. He never turned his anger in my direction. Once, he ran into me downtown and he bought me a hamburger. He wasn’t drunk and he must have just received his check. After a stay in the VA hospital, he brought me a hand crafted marshmallow roasting stick his roommate had made out of a golf club handle. Once, he sent me a card while I was at college. He was up in the night unable to sleep. Then he heard my grandmother and he said he had better close and turn out the light before she knew he was up. Paranoia? One time, my grandmother wasn’t home and I was there to mow her lawn. Uncle Jim came out to tease me about my skinny “chicken legs.” He said, “I know I give your grandma a hard time, but she truly is a good woman. But don’t you ever tell her I said that!”