Start with her

My mother, isn't this the start of every woman's deep rooted issues?

My mother had me at a very young age, barely 17, she was a child herself. I consider this to be a big reason for many of the on-goings of my childhood, but those are stories for later, let's start where the beginning is. My mother was the first born, she was my center of my grandmothers world. My grandmother married a man that was not my grandfather and seven years after my mother came my aunt. This is when the story gets dicey. My aunts father is not the man that my grandmother was married to, nor is he the man that was my mothers father. My mother and my great grandmother seem to think these are important facts in the story of my mothers life, I don't but you make up your own mind.

My mother claims that after the arrival of the cute child, she was abused and hated by her mother. I have heard that my aunt was favored, and that she was also a much more introverted child- she was also seven years younger than my mother. I have seen the pictures of the toys at birthdays and Christmas and know that the two girls had everything they could want- my grandmother worked her butt off to put herself through college without the need for a man to support her and her daughters.

Supplying everything that a child could need seemed to come at a cost. While the children had what they needed, and wanted- there was little "love" in the house. The women on that side of the family are not the lovey dovey type. It seems that the essential need for affection was replaced with monetary things.

So somewhere along the way, my mother fell off the train. My aunt grew up, went off to college ( a few years longer than most), graduated, got married, bought a house and has two children some pets and a slew of extracurricular activities. My mother is a horse of a different color. Since my birth, she struggled with finishing high school. In her words, she finished with honors and was offered a full ride to several colleges (conveniently ones that I applied to), in other stories, she barely passed and some question whether she ever did receive a degree.

After high school, I assume she did in fact receive a degree after finishing her classes post-graduation ceremony. I would have been too young to recall, but through pictures and vague memories, I can see faces and places. I remember various small apartments and some boyfriends. My stepfather and her got married and soon after I had a brother. We are three years apart, my mother wasn't even old enough to have  a legal drink and she had two children under the age of three and a husband.

The first house I remember, I had a mural in my bedroom. Hand painted by my mom, if she was nothing, she was creative and skilled. Always with a new project or artsy endeavor. In this house I can recall a bat getting trapped in my room, my brother and all of his epic tantrums and the start of the endless battle between my father and my mother.

I am too young to know what my mom did for work at this period in her life, I know that I walked to school, across the street and down a block in my little plaid uniform. I discovered later on that we moved out of this house for repossession reasons. A vivid memory is when I was young, probably five, I was sick at night and I went to tell my stepfather that I didn't feel well.

The pre-cursor to this story is that I do not like confrontation, thinking back to my childhood, this is something that I have carried my entire life. So remembering the feeling of lying in bed and being so sick that I though my belly would explode only to walk down the hall and not make it to the bathroom, I was not only physically sick but anxious to tell anyone that anything was wrong. When my mother came upstairs, she was furious. I was put in the bathtub and my soiled clothes were rubbed in my face for my punishment. At this point I lived with my mother, stepfather and brother, I didn't know any different.

I also knew at this point that despite what went on at my mothers at the worst if times, I didn't want to be left at my fathers house. the weekends there were the longest days of my life. I would often call home in the middle of the night crying. One night my mother (or stepfather) made the mistake of calling my father and stepmother to ask about me or rat me out for calling and as you can imagine it did not bode well for me. But my father is for a later time.

My Little Mermaid room would be the last true place I would consider home in regards to anything or anyplace. Over the next few years we moved so much and so much happened that every residence was simply a house or a residence and "home" was a state of mind and less a physical thing. House #2 I got a hamster, I think I named her Debbie, and I think she had babies, so I would have had to have had a mate for Debbie and I know when Debbie had babies she bit me, for a while I held that against her, but now that I have my own child, I get where she was coming from.

I also had a cat named Pete. Pete was the world's greatest cat. A giant orange and white tabby, he was laid back and perfect. When my sister came along, three years after my brothers debut, Pete was banned from my room when I developed allergies to him. It was a sign of the problems that would come with my sister, I should have known. At 6-7 years old, I was old enough to start realizing what was going on around me, and some things you just won't ever forget.

It was the first year that my brother traveled to North Carolina with my aunt and my grandmother- we went in the summer. I had a growth spurt that summer and I can remember that my mother was HUGE- my sister was an August baby, though for the life of me I can't seem to find any large prego pictures of her. To this day, I still have the black and yellow sandals I got on that vacation, I can remember the white t-shirt I wore everyday and my very first two piece that was lime green and black. That vacation seemed perfect. My grandmother and my aunt were my family- without them, I would not have survived.

My mother and grandma fought before we left for vacation, my stepfather and mother had started fighting, and there was a creepy boy that lived behind us that was always trying to play the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game. It was an awkward time in life. I still had my own bedroom, I think it was small, I know I had bunk beds, I know it was never clean- partly because I was a seven year old and partly because my mom is allergic to cleanliness. My brother had his own room that I am positive was in a constant state of destruction. He was a classic case of I will scream, break and throw things. When my little princess sister came along, she took up residence in my mothers room. I remember playing mommy alot. I would get her up, I could make bottles, and all of this became pretty normal later on.

My mother and stepfather, who I loved as my own father, and never referred to him as anything but "dad," started fighting. They would argue, and sometimes even get physical. I can remember having to call the police on several occasions and then corralling my two young siblings into my room to distract them with my Mr. Mic tape player to drown out the yelling and throwing of stuff downstairs until someone arrived to make it stop. Sometimes my mother would leave, sometimes my stepdad would leave, sometimes his parents would show up, or his sisters, and sometimes it was the police. No matter who it was- they all gave me the same face- you don't ever forget that look of pity- and even at a young age, I knew I didn't ever want to be the recipient of THAT look again.