What some little girls are really made of....

When I think of how I grew up, craziness comes to mind. I mean, real live diagnosed nut jobs and also insane moments. My mother went crazy, literally, and jumped out of a second story window smack dab onto a concrete drive-way when I was about three. Her version of events is that she saw 'ticker tape' images on the wall from Satan himself telling her that if she didn't make the leap her kids would be in danger. Wow. Talk about your above average early-on guilt trip. How does a child process guilt like that?

Anyway, I was the only kid home at the time. My sisters were in school. My dad worked nights and went to school so he was asleep. I was watching cartoons in black and white and sitting in front of that tv stand (with the slats for a shelf I used to poke my feet into while I watched the tube). Naturally, I was sitting 'too close' to the tv again. I looked to my right. There was Momma, hair in a bun as usual standing by the window in the dining room. Curtains were blowing in a soft breeze. I turned my head to watch my cartoon again. Just a short time later I heard a loud siren sound. Short siren. I turned to the sound to see the window still open, no Momma. I went over to investigate. (Here is where, as a mom, I thank God I didn't follow her....) I got on my tippy toes and peered over the window ledge. There was Momma, sprawled out on the black concrete, not moving. Some neighbors were gathering around her. They were holding up their hands to me, telling me to back away from the window and to go get my dad. When I heard the loud knocking on the front door, I ran to daddy's room. "Daddy, get up...daddy get up..." Grumpy, sleepy man. He's angry at being woken by the toddler "Where's your mother?" Then he heard the banging on the door and got out of bed...my memory of the events are gone from there. After that, I just fail to remember any more from that day.

I think I'm glad.

I'm guessing the siren sounds were my mom screaming on the way down...

Momma did survive the fall. She broke her back in three places and was in and out of mental institutions and hospitals for years. That left the three of us girls to fend for ourselves. I was too young to live with my sisters at home that summer, so I was sent off to live with family friends. But when I was a bit older and Momma was home, she was on Thorazine to mellow her out, still leaving us girls basically without a mother. We had to fend for ourselves when dad was at work. Don'tcha know, the solution to my chemically imbalanced mothers illness was to tranquilize her instead of finding the real problem. From what I hear, she had shock treatments, too. Yeah, that fixed her. The general consensus in that era was to lock them up, grog them up and hide them. She's better now. She's alive and well and taking a fantastic medicine that balances her out quite nicely. But she lost several years, her husband, and her youth in the process. That's not all she lost. I bet you can imagine that she probably wanted to raise her children proper. She was absent, tho. The medications did their trick and she was distant and mellow most of the time. She she just ate and slept. She got fat, had bladder problems due to the fall, and was pretty mean at times. She also smelled pretty bad sometimes because she would wet herself while she slept and didn't know for hours. She wore pads, but they can only do so much. My dad finally left her after about nine years of this. He really tried several times to get her out of her shell to no avail. There was nothing he could do to help her then. Many people think he's an asshole for leaving her at all. I don't have an opinion there...I wanted away from her sometimes back then, too. She would punch me if I acted out...grab me by my hair if I tried to run. She really had no business being in the home with us back then.

Daddy told me stories of her when she was younger. How one day he came home from work late because the only car he had to get him to school and work had died. He was beside himself trying to manage everything...three kids, work, school... Momma was on a strict home budget. She shopped at thrift stores and scrimped and saved already. Things were so miserably financially meek that my dad didn't know what to do. That's when she got up from the table, went over to the bookcase, got her bible and pulled out seven hundred dollars she'd managed to save from her meager home allowance. My dad was blown over!! And back then that was more than enough money to replace the car he'd lost.

He said many times he'd come home and the kitchen would be a different color, or the furniture would be re-arranged. She could cook beans fifteen different ways. She could stretch a dollar further than anyone he'd known. She was an excellent cook and seamstress. She drew a guardian angel on the chalkboard every evening for my sisters to sleep next to at night. Her faith was strong and he was an atheist at the time. She was usually clean and makeup done, even when they just stayed home. She wore three maternity outfits that she had to keep washing when she was pregnant with me and didn't complain. She had a beautiful singing voice. She sounded like an angel. He said she had a passion for life, an extreme mothering instinct, and was a wonderful, attentive, loving wife before she got sick.

I wish I'd known her.

To know her now, you'd not know she had any real problems. She's showing her age, tho, which is sad. She still loves to find bargains when she feels up to getting out. She's prouder than proud of her daughters and grand babies. She's the sweetest person you'd ever meet. She's the type of person who'd give you her most valued possession if she thought you wanted it. She braids her long black hair and teasingly calls herself Pocahontas. Her sense of humor is still cast iron. Sometimes she's surprisingly witty! She's survived cancer twice. First lung cancer four years ago. Now breast cancer last year. She smoked for years and finally quit. She can still stretch a buck. I can hear the excitement in her voice when I call her. And I call her almost every evening on the way home from work. When she visits, she messes up the bathroom a bunch. She has a bladder problem still and has to cath herself to keep accidents at bay. But we just come behind her with the bleach and never say a word. She's worth every extra effort we have to make to have her visit.

I used to be so angry with her. Truly angry. I was certain that she was pretending to be sick, or doing it on purpose when I was a child. It took me an incredible long time to assess the situation and come to terms with her illness. And realize that it wasn't her fault. Forgiving her was easy, forgiving myself for not believing or understanding was a little more difficult.

My middle sister is still a little angry at Momma. She's still angry at her for leaving us so unprotected. I understand her exactly.

When I say we girls were pretty much on our own, I meant it literally. I remember parties at our house that my sisters threw while Mom was sleeping. (Big ones, too.) There were drugs there that I had no business knowing about when I was eight years old. I smoked my first pot at eight...it was wrapped in a big red, white, and blue paper. We were getting the cat high and laughing about it while Pink Floyd blared in the background.

Once at one of these parties, both of my sisters took off! I was the only one left to tell people to not pee on the house.... When the cops showed, I just ducked into the basement and waited for them to wake Momma. Again.

When mom and dad divorced, things only got worse. Now, without the fear of 'wait until your father gets home' we shoplifted, did drugs, skipped school, and ran amuck.

I remember that once Momma locked me out, unknowingly. Rather than risk the beating she'd give me for waking her up and being out so late, I climbed up and over the roof of our two story home to wedge myself into an open window. I was 10.

We lit off firecrackers in the house. One day I actually burned a huge hole in the dining room rug after smoking an apple bong. I'd have Sprite fights in the living room, and went streaking at an early, boob less, eleven years old.

My experimenting with drugs got worse. Much worse. I wound up in the hospital for a drug overdose. I turned eleven in the hospital.

It's a miracle that we survived our youth. I look at my eight year old son and think of what I was seeing and doing at his age. I'm sometimes unsure how to act as a mother, because I never really had my own mom at that age. But I know what to look out for; and I know what too much freedom can do for a child. God love them, they will not be able to get away with much! I'm too ready for them! I've done more than I'll probably ever share with them.

My sisters and I sometimes get together and talk about how lucky we are. How our lives came so close to going another direction. My oldest sister is a teacher. She escaped our childhood by going to school. My middle sister is a nurse. She straightened out by joining the army. I went to live with my dad and his new wife shortly after the overdose. I am pretty sure his new wife saved my ass.

If you met me, you'd probably never suspect my origins were so insane. I'm pretty normal, really. I drive an SUV and hold an office job. I have sweet kids and a very happy marriage.

There are definite reasons why I count my blessings more often than not.

Sugar and spice and everything nice. Ha. And then some.