The Final Cut

Most of us, regardless of age, wish that our relationships with our parents had been different. Although both of my parents are dead and have been for a few years, when I allow myself to cast back into the past, I fall back into the void pain that represents a few simple things I wished that my parents had done for me before they died.

I am an only child. My childhood was largely uneventful, other than the fact that I consider myself to be the first latchkey child in America. The first five years of my life were spent in a kind of fantasy world. My parents and I resided with my paternal grandparents until I was five years old. As the first born grandchild, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles doted upon me. I was the cleanest child in the neighborhood due to the fact that my mother changed my clothes a minimum of three times a day. My shoes were hand made because I was born without an arch, in other words flat footed, and my mother wanted me to have beautiful feet. My every whim, and many that I had never even thought of were fulfilled by my grandmother and grandfather. My father was threatened with physical harm by my grandfather if he thought about spanking me or punishing me, even to instill the necesary fear that would save my life.

My mother was young, and at this time of my life I can clearly see and understand that she had been abused and misused in her life before she married my dad. The extent and type of abuse my mother suffered was never discussed but my assumptions are based on the fact that my mother was unable to fully love me. I'm certain she loved me, but her love at times was twisted. I can't tell you how many times my emotional life was assaulted by her inability to comprehend that I was a child that needed love and guidance and not just discipline to survive in the world. My mother had invisible "lie jars" that sat atop our refrigerator collecting the "lies" that I told to her over the course of time. The jar would collect my so-called lies until the top would be forced off by the pressure of the lies within and then I would be spanked with either a leather belt, or, my mother's favorite, a fresh switch from one of the trees. Of course I was sent to fetch the switch, not too thin or puny. If the switch I'd fetched didn't pass her inspection, I would be sent to fetch another one and of course this always resulted in my receiving a few more swats to make up for the delay I had caused her by purposely choosing an inappropriate switch for her use.

My mother also concocted a rival for me. According to my mother, when she had me she also delivered my sister, an identical twin, who was smater, more obedient and more beautiful than I. When my report cards came to the house, my mom was always cynical and berating. "Hmmm a 'B'. This is just not good enough. Your sister would never insult me by bringing a 'B' home on her report card." Whatever I did, it was never quite good enough. My identity was bastardized by her into two categories; if I had indulged in poor habits or behavior, I was clearly my father's child. Whenever I received praise or acclaim, it was solely because she was my mother and I was just like her.

My father allowed my mother to get a job when I was seven. I learned at seven how to wash my school uniforms by hand and to cook for myself. My father worked three jobs and my mother was always exhausted when she came home from Wright Patterson Air Force Base. So, my best friends by cjoice were the characters in movies I watched alone or the people I read about in books. One of the greatest things my mother did for me was to purchase books. I had a complete library from floor to ceiling that covered two walls and this place, "my play room," was the place where my heart learned to soar with joy or to break with sorrow. I was alone so much that these people in between the pages of these books became the texture and context of my life.

At one point, my parents marriage began to decline. They had lost tens of thousands of dollars in a business venture and my father lost his ability to look at me, my mother, or himself in the mirror. So, he left, and began to live on the railroad tracks. My mother also lost her mind at this time and it was if I were just a pon on a chess board. Whenever my mother wanted to see my dad, she would contact either of my father's two sisters and tell them to tell my dad I had some debilitating illness. My father would come home to check on me and invaribly my mom would have some fantastic meal prepared - food that was kept under lock and key when my dad was not present. My mom bought me a 100 pound bag of potatoes to survive on, while the freezer upstairs, under lock and key, was filled with every cut of meet and fish known to man. Within hours of their reunion, my parents would be fighting. Their fights escalated to blows being passed and eventually my mom would take a shot ( as in hand gun) at my father and he would leave, once again until the next time I took "sick." This cyclical turn of events occured over a two year period and for whatever reason my mother decided she needed a change of scenery. My father came to visit voluntarily because it was Christmas. He brought the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. The tree was never put up, it laid abandoned in the back yard, like the pieces of my life, and the day after Christmas all of our worldly belongings that could be carried in a car were loaded into cardboard boxes and placed in the trunk and backseat of a 1946 Buick. Our destination was California. We had no money for hotels or motels, so my dad would pull over at rest stops and I had to crawl onto the boxes in the backseat to sleep. To this day I hate the touch, smell, and sound of cardboard when my hand or body comes into contact with it.

At twelve, my mother decided I needed a job. At the time she worked for an attorney, a rather large, unwashed man, who sweated profusely. My mom volunteered my services to the attorney - I was to be his personal laundry service. It didn't matter how many times I washed his shirts, his stench filled the air and my lungs as I steam ironed his shirts. I learned not to eat the morning before I had to do his laundry because the undigested food in my stomoach would invariably lurch into the base of my throat, forcing me to gag.

Despite the fact that we lived for over six months in a studio apartment my mother made sure I attended private school. So, I was lucky that I didn't have to compete with the other girls in the area of fashion. Uniforms look alike and the only way you can change them is by shortening the skirt or doing something crazy with your hair. Neither form of creativity was acceptable by the dean of students.

I managed to graduate from high school. I married the man of my dreams three months before graduation and kept the secret from my friends at school until my day of graduation when I wore my wedding rings to the ceremony.

I am certain that my parents were disappointed in many of the choices I made in my life. As a grown woman and mother, I stayed in contact with my parents on a daily basis and I spent most of my adult life trying to impress them, trying to get them to see that I was a valuable human being. My father used to tell me that if he was as smart as I that he would rule the world. Either he misjudged my intelligence or I am as inept as he presumed me to be. My mother, well, I never really excelled in the areas she wanted me to. You see, in her estimation I didn't marry well. The man I married wasn't wildly wealthy or even rich, nor is he today. To her, it wasn't enough that I just happen to be still madly in love with the man I married thirty-nine years ago.

So, when both of my parents died, neither took the time to tell me simple things like "job well done!" or, "you did a great job with those kids!", or simply "I love you." That's really all I ever wanted to hear from them and yet I spent a lot of my life longing to hear those simple words from two of the people who meant the most to me in life before my husband and my children. I knew as a child that their union, despite the fact that they had created me, was just that, their union. They had no room for me in their lives. I was merely an accessory. Being just an accessory was and is today more painful than all of the spankings I underwent, all of the cruel emotional games I was subjected to at my mother's behest. So, my parents delivered the final cut and I will carry the pain of not being enough for them to my grave.