The following is the second of 15 blog posts I'll--fingers crossed--be posting in the month of November as part of the October Memoir Challenge.
We were talking about moving back to the city, my mother was
explaining to me. Larry suggested
Greenwich Village but I will never live there again because the worst years of
my life were there.
How could this be? My
memories of this same time were all wonderful.
We lived down the street from my Aunt Frances and within walking
distance of my school, the local library, and even Washington Square Park. My best memories were here. I had good friends at school: Dorie, Alexia, Nikki.
Dorie, who had a younger sister, lived in a building south
of Washington Square Park. Her father
was a dentist and her mother stayed at home, a rarity in my social world. Dorie was tall, with red hair and pale skin
and one time her father gave her a spanking while I was there spending the
night, something that confused me but I still envied her a “real family,”
especially her younger sister.
I envied Alexia because she was beautiful, with long brown
hair that reached below her waist. One
year, when we all went trick-or-treating together, my mother dressed me up like
a witch, with layers of black and even a bat painted on my forehead, while
Alexia was dressed as a princess. I had
wanted to dress like a princess but my mother said it was too cold. One year, Alexia had a birthday party at her
mother’s pottery studio and we made name bracelets with beads her mother had
made herself.
Nikki was smaller even than I with short dark hair and she
was often mistaken for a boy. Still, she
had an older sister and a mother and another woman and they all lived in a loft
apartment with impossibly high ceilings and drywall sheets that partitioned
sections off to create bedrooms.
Compared to the tiny apartment in which my mother and I lived, her space
felt like a mansion. And I adored her, even
though she was so quiet, almost invisible, because I didn’t care about anything
else in her life. She was wonderful.
There were, of course, other friends, and they came over
often. They loved our tiny apartment
because there were so many amazing things there. We had two bunnies and some guinea pigs in a
large aquarium tank in the hallway. We
had two long haired cats—a white with gorgeous orange eyes and a brown
tabby. We had a goldfish and
parakeets. At one point, I even had a
turtle and a mouse. For one brief time,
possibly because my mother lost her mind, we had a collie, a large male that
came and went before I could get used to having a dog.
How did we fit all of this into our apartment, so small that
the refrigerator was in the living room?
Why did we have so many pets? And
what about the gifts given to me, the too generous things that the Tooth Fairy,
the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus left in our apartment and in my Aunt Frances’
apartment too?
My life was good. But
what about my mother’s life?
I was so young and know so little. She had lied to me about my father. She was fired from a job which, when you’re a
single mother, must be just about the most frightening thing that could
happen. Her brother died in an
accident. She dated and eventually
married which is how and why we moved away from Greenwich Village for good.
The marriage is that ended our life in Greenwich Village
where I was so happy is telling, in that peculiar way that hindsight hints at
truths I can’t directly define. Had my
mother been happy, she never would have married this man. If she had loved herself, if she had been in
a better place emotionally, she wouldn’t have wanted a father for me thinking
that a man who could care for me could give us the home she couldn’t give us
herself, by herself.
She never would have married Larry B. I might have remained happy. Maybe my mother would have found a way to be
happy. We’ll never know. What we do know is that everything in our
lives changed. Years later my mother
asked me what the worst thing she ever did as a mother was and I said, “Married
Larry B.” She didn’t disagree but, at
the time, she thought she had no other choice.
I forget sometimes how much a product of her upbringing my
mother was (and maybe even still is) in spite of herself.
As a young adult, I tended to remember the happy times and my brother tended to remember the sad ones. In truth, there were plenty of both, and to say I would have been sadder or he would have been happier if..... well, it's just hard to say. When sad things happen, the little back road to sadness gets wider and longer in the brain, and if sad things happen enough, pretty soon there's a freeway built. Even though we can (with the right personality and cognitive ability) choose to use the back roads that make us happy, in a crunch, the brain uses the quickest route and if the route that's been build is a superhighway to sadness, well... My own mothers struggled with histories they did not make plain to me until after I was grown. The choices they made were much clearer once their backgrounds were understood. Similarly, my own life choices seem less free choices and more like unseen patterns once I perceived the longitudinal trajectory of my families. We are all affected by our upbringing even when we think we aren't.
ReplyDeleteSo true, Deb, about our brains building pathways. I went through a period of PTSD and built a highway to sadness. The good thing is, our brains are flexible, we can always build a new road, and travel it so often it, too, becomes a new highway. I've built a highway to happiness since then, and although I can still go to sadness quickly, I more frequently go to happiness, strengthening it every time I do. But what is built in childhood is so much harder to rebuild in a different direction. And what we do when we're locked on the wrong highway so often has long-reaching repercussions.
DeleteIt must have been a tough conversation you had with your mother about marrying this man. It's fortunate that you're able to speak honestly now, even if you couldn't speak up at the time. This must have been a really frightening experience for you as a child. Thanks for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteAmanda, It was surprisingly easy because my mother 1) wanted to hear what I had to say and 2) was able to see how, in spite of her mistakes in my childhood, we had both grown so loving and close since then that it didn't matter in the long run. Yes, it took a lot of mutual work but we are in such a good place now, the love has definitely overshadowed the pain.
DeleteThis is such an interesting post, Satia. I've often been struck how I and someone else can remember the same event or experience completely differently. And isn't it true that children are very wrapped up in their own experiences. I feel so sorry for your mother, and for you, that this period wasn't equally good for both of you, and had ended differently. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteJane Ann, Thank you. It is odd how I did not know my mother was so unhappy but it does make her marriage to this man less confusing. One doesn't marry an abusive person when in a good place emotionally. I can only imagine how hard my mother worked to keep me, as young as I was, ignorant of her unhappiness. It obviously worked.
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