Mother's Car

When Mother called me over to tell me her driver's license had expired, she wanted to sign her car over to Ron and I.

Wouldn't that be awkward in lieu of her letter . . .

Hindsight

So much is clear in hindsight.

When Mother first moved here, I took her to all my doctors.

She liked Dr. Hudson, but they cheated her on the bill.
The nurses at the allergist talked ugly to her.
Her eye doctor in Arkansas was a nice guy but the gal that fitted her glasses spoke to her like she was ignorant.

The helped a young man with a loan and he quit paying it. When she went to see him, he wouldn't talk to her.

She's never had a job or volunteer job where the people didn't eventually turn on her.

This has played out dozens upon dozens of times. Here and there. Literally everywhere we've lived. It's not just friends. It's everyone.

Houston to Atlanta

I was pregnant with Joe when Ron was transferred to Atlanta. The movers came the same day Joe did.

I stayed with my parents while Ron moved. He made arrangements for us to move out 17 days later. I was anxious to see him. Even under the best of circumstances, it's not your parents you want to be with when you have a newborn.

Now Ann was living with my grandmother and going to college. She had planned to come in the weekend after Ron was coming back to get us. Mother and Daddy let me have it. Ann had every right to meet this nephew of hers and I would stay. I was alone, defenseless, and didn't even have a room to go into and shut the door because I was staying in the living room. I really did sink into my shell.

I tried to explain to Ron. I knew he wouldn't understand and it was on the phone.

I recently told Ann and her response was, you've got to be kidding? Of course I would have liked to see Joe, but you guys needed to be together.

I was almost afraid they wouldn't take me to the airport. AND I was never so relieved to see anyone as I was to see my husband that day.

Ron

Ron is not perfect. He would be the first one to tell you that. But he is kind and generous. He is generous when I am not. He has been oh so patient.

He has always been generous with my mother. He has taken her shopping for groceries and clothes, picked her up for church. He buys her air filters and changes them. He has changed light bulbs and moved furniture. He has paid for untold number of Sunday lunches and weeknight dinners.

There was a time I told people she loved Ron more than she loved me.

Pain

I physically ache. My stomach aches. My chest aches - or is that my heart? I could crawl in the bed and cry. I keep crying in short little bursts like when I've slipped out of class to run to the bathroom and have to get back quickly. I feel betrayed all over again.

AND I'm kicking myself. Why did I think that because she was aging or because she needed us or because she moved here or any other reason that might change? That she might want a normal relationship. That she might be different this go round. What in the world was I thinking?

I feel loss. I have finally come to grips with the reality of what I never had. And it is painful.

Duke vs WFU

I was at the game -- fully expected to see Duke beat the stuffing out of young WFU. Thought winning the the first half was a victory!

With 5 minutes to go, I was screaming. I was jumping. Ron kept saying, "we still have 5 minutes and it's Duke."

I kept saying, "enjoy the moment!" He still had a little smirk though - he couldn't help it. It was fun.

We had Duke customers in the box. Poor things - they came in fully expecting what I was expecting. They were so dissappointed and then when the Duke players started to foul out. One-by-one . . .

What's that on the court!?! Ahhhhh! the rush of Wake fans!

Dino, in the aftergame interview, he kept calling the players kids! Well, they are aren't they! All those freshmen and sophmores! And they beat Duke. I do realize this may be it, but man, they looked GOOD last night.

The Emotional Cripple

This would be my dad. I know this is why he worked the way he did because at work he could shine. At home he was just one of the rest of us. He was abused like we were. He even escaped once and came back! Ann and I probably had something to do with that. He didn't stay gone long enough for us to adjust and we were stuck with mother. We didn't know then that we had any other choices than to be her children.

Daddy's childhood was emotionally crippling if not physically crippling. I'm sure of the first. The second is not so easy to discern. Every thing they owned was sold out from underneath them. PaPa left with other women. He moved off with at least one. Laverne left and moved half way across the country as soon as she could. Martha Jean, well, she's the one we strongly suspect sexual abuse with, but too much time as passed and too many ties have been broken.

Daddy's first wife favored his sisters we've been told. She drank. She ran around on Daddy. She gave him a son and verbally abused them both.

Mother and Daddy met at Western Union in Baton Rouge. Married, had me, led and idyllic life. Right. Daddy had a great need to be dependent on someone, to have his life organized for him, to be told what to do and when to do it. Mother had a great need to make people dependent on her. It was the perfect union.

After Daddy left and came back, Mother had everything, absolutely everything put in her name -- bank accounts, business, CDs, house, retirements. She had that right. He'd left. He'd not been honorable. He knew he was tied to her in unimaginable ways. One of Mother's new favorite stories was that she could just utter the words, "Travis, we need to talk," and Daddy would blanch. She loved the control.

The moment Daddy went back to mother, I realized how dependent he was on her. They were tied together with a gossamer thread, but not the pretty kind like you think of fairies using. This one is harsh and cold and unrelenting. This thread is the kind that nightmares is made of.

Sexual Abuse

Mother was sexually abused by her grandfather while her mother watched. She's lied so much about so many things and I have only her word for this, but I believe her. It makes so many things right. It explains so much.

I don't even know if she remembers telling Ann and I -- not at the same time, but at different times. Once, when we were all here together in Winston Salem, after she'd moved, she told us in one of her pronouncements that she wanted to have sit down and explain some things to us that might help us understand her better. That's what made me think she'd forgotten that she'd ever told us. She wanted to tell us again. I cringed. There are some things you just don't want to hear. There are some hurts you are healing yourself and you don't have the strength to help your abuser heal.

The Young Couple

There was one young couple in Fort Worth. I don't remember their names. They were fun. They laughed. She had the cutest hair and they had a little chihuahua. They had holes in the bottom of their car and I remember that I was always afraid that my shoes would fall off and land on the road.

He worked for Daddy.

They came over for dinner one night and admired the handiwork of some salt and pepper shakers that Daddy had made. The set was wooden and had little tiles around the middle. They were eight or nine inches tall. There was another set in the drawer and I told them about the other set.

Mother and Daddy both said, "NO."

I should have caught on, but I was a kid. A pretty small one if we were still in Fort Worth.

"Yes, there is. See!" And I hopped up to get them. Well what I ruined I didn't know, but I ruined it.

Later that couple quit coming over. Daddy said the young man stabbed him in the back. Typical. It was always something. I guess when I said that Daddy never had a friend I forgot this one. He behaved more like Mother than I thought. Best friends and then no friends.

The Ice Queen

I'm not talking about the one from Narnia. I'm talking about the one in my memory. I'm not sure when I realized that's how I thought of her. It is sometime in recent history though.

Writing for LifeWay

An inquiring mind at the BB *coughEdEdwardscough* wanted to know more about my writing years at LifeWay, so here is the story . . .

We were living in Marietta and I was a children's division director at a mega church and very active at the associational level. I had taken a group of preschool and children's teachers to Ridgecrest for training and one of the conferences was on writing. It was led by an adult editor. He did every thing possible to discourage anyone from writing as I recall. He made it sound grueling and boring and inconvenient and unrewarding. It is all those things - except for the unrewarding.

At the end of the meeting, he handed out cards for us to fill out for our age division if we were possibly interested. I think I was one of a handful. He was a very good discourager

Not too long after that I got a phone call from the editor of Bible Discoverers, Louise Hobson and was assigned to my first writer's conference. Lots of changes happened during my time writing, and I about 8-9 years ago, I made the switch completely to the Media Center, so now I'm completely out of the loop.

When I first started, the KJV was still being used, not too long after that, we got an NIV-KJV parallel and used both in all the lessons. I know they use the HCSV now but that was after my time.

At that time, there were two writers for each unit. The unit writer who worked with children in Bible study and a Bible background writer who was either an adult Sunday School teacher or a Pastor. I had the great fortune of always being able to write my own Bible background. I don't know how that worked out, but it did. Later, all writers got to write their own Bible background.
In the children's area, we would have a writer's conference. Bible Learners, Discovers, Searchers all conferenced together at the same time. Family Bible Series - Children usually conferenced at another time. We were given our assigned scripture and we had to come in with a pre-assignment which changed depending on the layout of the curriculum - but would include a variety of ideas that we charted to make sure that there wasn't too much overlap. Some overlap was inevitable, but we really did try to minimize it.

At the conferences, we would work in large groups, we would work one-on-one with the editor, and we would work in our quarter groups. All the time we were trying to eliminate duplication. Those of you who use the curriculum wonder what happened I know - it's hard. There are only so many things that can be done in a single Sunday, so many ways to present a lesson, so many ways to get the kids actively involved . . .

The first year I wrote, I'd write a lesson and send it in. Louise would make corrections and call me. We'd argue ( ), I'd fix what she'd told me to fix, and resubmit it. Because I worked so closely with her on that first unit, I was asked to immediately come back. And soon I was writing two units a year for Discovers. And then I started writing for two publications - Discoverers and Searchers and doing some work for Learners in other capacities, and then I started writing for Family Bible series and picking up pieces for the children's magazines.

Writing curriculum is not like other kinds of writing. You write it, you submit it, they do what they want with it, and it is published. You are very removed from the process after you submit your work. You also work a year or two in advance. I remember one year, for my Bible background I'd written an intro about Anwar Sadat and I didn't know it had been cut until it the material was published. When I called the editor to find out why, I was told that she had good reasons at the time. This is one of the drawbacks of this kind of writing. At the time, she was a new editor and I was an experienced writer. I remember how unhappy I was because it was a strong intro for the background.

One of the things I really enjoyed were rewrites. One year, the powers that be decided to redo the curriculum in the middle of the year. Six of us were brought in to rewrite two year's worth of curriculm in a week on computers in conference rooms to the new format. And a couple of times, I got to rewrite curriculum that was turned in but not usuable.

I always wrote on a computer, but at first, I still mailed in a manuscript, then I mailed in a manuscript and a disc, then a disc, then I emailed it.

Again, I haven't done this in 10 years, so I don't know what's going on now.

OH and when I started, it wasn't LifeWay, but the Baptist Sunday School Board. Now I feel very dated.

Presents

Presents were odd things.

First of all, sometimes they were hand-me-downs. If Mother and Daddy got a replacement, Ann and I knew that the old would show up as a gift.

Second of all, we didn't get taken shopping. One year we made net hangers for gifts and Daddy asked what I was going to get Mother for Christmas. Why he asked I didn't know. I'd made her a set of net hangers and told him so.

"How do you think that will make her feel? That's what y'all made everyone else."

There was no offer to take me shopping. I didn't make an allowance anyway. I rewrote a poem I'd written for school and scrounged around and found a frame. It was the only gift I remember giving.

Emergency Room Visits

I had to take Ruth to the emergency room today. She didn't make it to Chapel. Who spoke, what was said, I don't remember. I got back to my classroom and Pam was waiting for me. Ruth is at the office and I'm to take her to the hospital. She's having chest pains.

So I spend a few minutes readying things for a sub to walk in behind me and off I go. We are of course sisters having been through this before. I am the natural one to take her.

They get her into an ER cubical. She is hooked up, wired up, NitroGlycerined up. She is probed, poked. Lunch time comes and goes. I know the school is waiting for an answer but we have none to call them with. We are both starving. She can't eat. Well, in reality, I can't either because there is nothing to eat. mmmmm We finally break the rules and call our husbands and the school to report . . . nothing whatsoever.

The highlight of the day was when they brought in some machine to do something (the day is such a blur that I don't remember exactly what test it was for) and the doctor said, "This will never do, she's much too tiny for this!" We both rolled with that after all the trouble she'd gone through to lose weight!

Way after dinner time, they announce that they have a room for her. Just precautionary as she's not had a heart attack. They are sure her chest pains are related to her surgery. After getting her settled in the room, I head back to church to close down her classroom, pick up her things and deliver her car to the house. I drop my bag in the parking lot (I am carrying two sets of things - briefs, purses - and she parks on the other side of the world from me). A woman passes by and says, "Awww, too bad." I know I scowl. She of course has no idea the length of my day.

Have I mentioned how wonderful Ron is lately? He picks me up from Ruth's house and takes me out for a long awaited meal. What was it? Doesn't matter! It was warm, filling and with him.

The Baby Primary

This was cute.

http://www.slate.com/id/2181495/slid...entry/2181476/

They don't all look incredibly comfortable holding babies . . . *ahem*

Scouts

Now Daddy was Scout Master. I can see him in his uniform. One evening I burnt my tongue on too-hot hot chocolate and he put a slab of cold butter on it. He was in his scout uniform.

I remember the scouts coming to the house, mowing the yard. I watched them from my bedroom window when I was just a squirt supposed to be napping.

I stuck my hand in a wasp's nest once when he was ready to leave for scouts and he put a baking soda paste on it.

The Beach

Ann remembers going to the beach.

I love the beach. Why can't I remember going to the beach?

Chattanooga

When I was little, we made one move to Chattanooga. We lived in a trailer in a trailer park. Apparently we weren't going to be there very long.

It was before Ann was born.

There was only one bedroom and the bed was so big that the door wouldn't shut. That's where I slept. The bedspread was pink. Mother and Daddy slept on a couch that wasn't a sleeper bed but more like and old timey futon. It just kind of laid down into a bed. I only remember Daddy in the mornings.

In my memories, the trailer park is deserted except for one woman. She must have been the manager. I remember leaves and a pool. I remember mother and I going to a park - just the park as if from a distance. Not that we did anything just that we were there. I don't remember swings or slides or sand. Just a park.

Lunch out!

Well, this just doesn't happen very often for school teachers! Lunch out and at the Piedmont Club even!

It was a bit late at 1:30, but the students didn't leave until noon. It was scrumptious and we had entertainment even. Lovely event.

Ruth missed it though, she's prepping for her surgery. It would, of course, been better with her.

Full Disclosure

Nothing was ever discussed fully.

You want to go to college? OK, apply. That was my college talk.

Daddy had open heart surgery and I found out after he'd had it.

Your Father's been married before. I was a teenager when I found that out. Something was about to happen. mmmm Maybe that was the year I had a brother. Maybe that was the year his exwife called everyday.

Mother made Barbie clothes. She also sold them - that I didn't know until I saw my next door neighbor with the same Barbie clothes I had. She'd gotten hers from Santa. I told her where they really came from. Shouldn't have done that.

Information was doled out in bits and pieces or no pieces. Just enough to make you wonder what was happening. Just enough to keep everyone on their toes.

I spent a lot of time in my room.

Anger

I was angry. My dad was angry. I doubt he knew it. He ground his teeth down to stubs. He had a bleeding ulcer. He threw things. He slammed things. I learned from a master. If I had to be like a parent, and in reality we most always do, then I would be like my dad.

So I boiled. I baked. I steamed. I broke things. Small things. Big things. I could pop a pencil in two really fast. I broke a microwave door once. I'm not embarrassed by that anymore. It's part of my distant past.

So in what other way did God draw me to him?

When the kids were older children or early teens, I heard someone use the verse about the sins of the fathers being visited on the next seven generations. I heard seven. Maybe they said seven.

Here's the actual Scripture: (Exodus 34:6-7) - "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

These verses really bothered me and I didn't know why. I mulled over them. I didn't know why I couldn't put them down. They bothered me for a long time. It just didn't seem fair that we were held responsible for the things our parents or grandparents did. But the reality is that some sins are reflected in a vicious cycle. Now you probably know the what & why that I didn't. I hadn't given everything to God. I held my anger like a badge. I deserved to be angry! BUT I had to give it up. It had to be sacrificed at his feet, in his name, and for his glory. If my desire was to please him. If I wanted my children not to bear the scars that I have, then it had to stop. I claim victory. AND he gives victory!

The Drawing Power of God

Because I do not mention God in every entry does not mean his presence is not always there. It is. He has sustained me in ways I cannot fathom. When I give Ron credit, I am crediting God for placing Ron in my life. Please know that!

I accepted Christ as my Savior as a child, but as a child, time is meaningless. I did not have role models. My parents did not go to church until we moved to Houston and then going to church meant working at church - fulfilling roles - doing the jobs assigned. Going to church never meant worship. Every church had a myriad of things wrong with it. Every staff member, like every friend, was perfect until they were not.

I left home as soon as I could. I left church right after. I was rebellious. But God was not nearly as finished with me as I was with him. I knew something was desperately wrong. I was empty. And as much as I wanted to escape my parents, I was pulled to them like the old proverbial moth to a flame. They were going to Tallowood, so I decided to go there too.

An amazing thing happened. During the invitation, I felt the God's draw. Now the only way to respond that I knew of was to walk the aisle but I became physically ill. Should I go despite the strong desire to be sick or should I stay in my seat. I felt the drawing. I had to go despite the physical discomfort. As soon as I started to walk, the physical discomfort left and a renewed life began. A time of rededication. A time of yearning, of learning, of surrender. I understood what Paul meant when he talked about the carnal man and the new man. In this period, I became active in the singles department. I met other young people who loved the Lord. I met Ron. In my mind, the two events are intertwined -- meeting Ron and surrender to Christ.

But I hadn't surrendered everything. I just thought I had.

The Fiasco

This is the event that began to bring my mother's true colors to light for the rest of the family. This is the time when my sister and I solidified the relationship that had begun to come together in December. This is the moment that I realized when I remembered, what I remembered wasn't skewed. It just wasn't right or normal.

January was a difficult month for me migraine-wise. I thought I'd lose my mind. I had 16 days of full-fledged migraines. In the middle of this my mom called. We had just gotten back from a trip to see Joe and Blythe and she wanted to know if they'd talked about her.

"No," I said.

"I'm not surprised."

"Why?"

"They've defaulted on a loan that I made them."

It seems that they needed some money to sit in the bank for their loan approval. $4000, and they asked Mother. She agreed. The loan was for two months. Mother said they were two months late and she called Joe about it before we went to see them and Joe yelled at her. He told her he had no intention of paying the loan. That she'd made it as a gift to them.

Well, this was all a surprise to me. I sputtered a few things. I wasn't sure what I said. I tried to stay as neutral as possible. Ron was out of town. Mother said that she had an appointment with a lawyer and that at the very least she intended to ruin Joe's credit. She intended to ruin his credit? This is her grandchild she's talking about isn't it? I mumble a few things trying still to remain neutral, yet supportive. I wanted to hang up.

I couldn't call Ron because I know he's at a dinner, so I sent him an email. He needed to know in case something happened. Turned out that Ron had talked with Joe over the weekend. Joe had agreed to pay Mother back by the end of January.

After Joe talked with both of us, he called Mother. Mother was very short with him, but we have the phone records that he's called. Good thing.

In the meantime Mother mailed us a copy of the check. The check was dated November 8. This is very interesting. How can it be two months overdue if is was dated November 8 and now is just mid-January? Joe said that they had a verbal agreement for payment at the end of January. He's upset over her behavior. Blythe is upset. Ron and I are caught dead center.

The next Sunday we went out to eat. At this point Mother said she needed to talk with us.

"OK."

"I know I was a foolish old woman for loaning Joe the money, but you weren't completely honest with me."

"What?" we ask.

"I'm not going to say anything else," she says.

"You can't drop that bombshell in our laps and quit talking."

"I'm finished with this discussion," she replies.

Now this is common for her. She makes a jab and retreats. But I'm not a kid anymore. I've come to grips with lots of things in my adult life and I don't let up. And Ron's sitting there too. It's not just me anymore.

"The night I called Bitsy, she said, 'You'd think he'd outgrow that kind of thing by now.' You should have told me he had a history of not repaying his debts."

Well! I don't even remember saying that! I was just forming sentences. I was just stringing words. I was trying for noncommittal. So much for that effort. I tried to explain that wasn't what I meant. Ron and I had already shared with her before lunch about how bad a month January had been. We'd already told her about all the migraines, about the different meds, about the crying fits, about the night we got in the car to go to a Wake game with customers and he had to bring me home because I couldn't stop crying and she latched on to one phrase I said.

"You're right. I'm just a stupid old woman." She actually said that.

At this lunch, we told her that we'd talked to Joe and that he told us he'd called her. She called him a liar. We had his cell phone records though. He wasn't the one lying. We also had the copy of the check she said she never got.

We tried to placate her, but this was the beginning of the end. She wrote her grandchild off. If we were Jewish, he'd be dead.

New Traditions

Thanksgiving Day a new way.

We spent it at Joe and Blythe's and had a lovely time and a lovely meal. Brandon stayed there. Ron and I stayed in a hotel.

The day started EARLY - we picked Brandon up at the crack of dawn. Well way before the crack of dawn at the airport and then drove to Greenville.

New traditions for changing family.

Harsh Realities

When Daddy had his first heart attack. I was in the 11th grade.

I didn't know how much we needed him as a family. I didn't know how much he protected us from Mother.

Mother said that she prayed him back to life. That she prayed to God for him to live because she could not raise these girls alone.

I knew that God had spared him. I later knew that God had spared him because he protected Ann and I from the severities of living with Mother.

What I didn't realize until this year was that I would have been OK. Please don't get me wrong! I benefited! My life was far easier because Daddy lived! But God kept Daddy alive for Ann. I had just turned 17. Ann was 10! Can you imagine what the next 7 or 8 years would have been like for her? I left as soon as I could escape. She would have been left. Alone.

This is a harsh reality.

Authority Figures and Abuse

The following comes from a website called nothing more than Emotional Abuse. Charming title don't you think? It aptly describes my mother. My sister and I cried through it. Well, we've cried through a lot lately, why not this?

Authority figures (AF) can be parents, partners, teachers, principals, supervisors, religious figureheads, cult leaders, etc. Dependents can be children, partners, students, employees, religious followers, etc. What matters is that there is a power imbalance and a dependence of some sort, whether physical, financial, "spiritual," psychological or emotional.

1. AF's are the masters of dependents.
   
2. AF's alone decide what is right and wrong.
3. They alone make up the definitions, the rules, and the "consequences" (i.e. punishment)
4. Dependents are held responsible for the AF's feelings (anger, disappointment, embarrassment, humiliation, happiness and unhappiness)
5. The AF is only responsible and accountable for good things that happen, never the bad ones. Thus the AF' appears to always be in the right and when things go wrong, the dependent is always blamed and feels responsible and guilty.
6. The AF tries to exercise total control of the dependent by controlling his thoughts, feelings and behavior. Whenever this control is not absolute, the AF feels threatened.
7. The dependent's individuality is minimized as much as possible by the AF.
8. The AF creates an intricate system of punishments and rewards which rob the dependent of any sense of inner direction and esteem.
9. The following freedoms listed by Virginia Satire are denied to the dependent as much as possible:
10. The freedom to perceive
    

    • To think and interpret

    • To feel

    • To want, need, and chose

11. The AF never (or rarely) admits mistakes or apologizes.
12. All of the above take place in a way which does not expose the AF's true motives and none of this is openly talked about. No "back talk" is allowed

Some of the Consequences

· Mistakes are concealed

· People are under constant stress

· Needs are frustrated, denied

· Fear dominates

· Power is based on fear, not respect

· Information is withheld and distorted

· Information flow is primarily from top down

· Behavior is forced; does not come naturally

· Behavior is not consistent with true feelings, which adds to the stress

· Conflicts and problems are blamed on the dependent's "poor attitudes" and "character flaws."

All of this tears the dependent person apart, causing self-alienation and even self-loathing. The dependent person loses faith in his/her own mind and feelings with devastating self-esteem consequences. Depression, rage, mood swings, co-dependency, self-injury and self-destruction are typical outcomes. If the authority figure is a parent the person will likely develop symptoms of various "disorders" such as the so-called Borderline Personality disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Anoexia, Bulemia etc.

The Move and After

My mom had been talking about moving to Winston Salem almost since the day my dad died. She talked about moving to Little Rock first. That's where my sister was. She offered to buy a townhouse for my sister. My sister wisely said no knowing that one day mother would call that favor and move in.

About five or six years ago, when mother came out, she asked to start looking at condos. She actually put a hold on some new units over by Wake Forest but let that lapse. I figured it was just talk and wasn't worried about it. I was in no hurry for this to happen.

Then she got sick. One winter she got pneumonia or something as serious, and in her version of events, no one would take her to the doctor. She was so sick she crawled around the house, so she decided to move here so that Ron and I could take care of her if she ever got that sick again.

She wanted to move into the boy's rooms with the bathroom in between. We told her that wouldn't work. The boy's weren't finished coming home. They'd not graduated from college/grad school yet. Even when they did we'd like for them to have a place to stay. There was a unit right across the street from us. That would be nice -- a little close but nice. She could walk over for dinner occasionally, go to the grocery store or shopping with us. She wasn't interested in that though, so we looked for something else and she eventually found something by the church.

Now the adventure began.

Ron offered to fly out and drive back out here with her, but Mother would never give us a firm date. She got Ann to do it instead and she'd been fussing that we weren't there helping. When she got to Winston Salem, she had no idea when the moving van would get here. It was almost a week later.

She wanted to help in the Media Center so I got Kathleen to train her, but she never would start working. She went to Sunday School with Ruth Ann once and talked about how terrible the teacher was, so she never went again. She signed up to work in Children's Bible Fellowship, but she complained about Sherri and the people in her class all year. She went to one of the Senior Adult Luncheons, but no one called her, so she didn't go back. She wanted to work in Children's Choir, so I introduced her to Gale Foster. I guess they didn't know they were supposed to call her either. This past year, she has gone to a class of very old women and felt at home, but she's made no friends.

She has made very good friends with two women in her complex, Barbara and Mary Ellen.

The week school started, Ron gets a phone call from Mother while he is on the golf course. She's upset, but too upset to talk. He calls me, I call her. I go over. I call Ann before I go. I don't know what I'll meet. We pray.

She's miserable. She's got no friends. She's lonely. Her driver's license has expired. She can't pass the test. She wants to go home. She's never been in such debt.

She's been telling Ann all this with a whispered "Don't tell Ron and Bitsy," so I know, but I don't know.

I walk her through. "Where's home?"

"Arkansas."

"If we could get you there, would that make you happy?"

"I don't know. I don't have anywhere to stay now."

"What if we could find somewhere for you to stay?"

I asked enough questions to circle it back down to the fact that her drivers license has expired. Now she let this happen, but I don't bring that up. She's known since she moved here it would happen. She took it twice in the first week she was here and failed it. She said she went again but can't pinpoint for us when that other time was. She waited until the week school starts to make an issue over it when it expired on her birthday in July. The timing is suspicious . . .

I took her out to eat lunch when all was said and done. I asked her if she'd like to try a different Sunday school class with one of my friends. Ruth Ann's class has a new teacher and they have raved about her. That teacher is a friend of mine too. Maxine's teacher is excellent. How would that be? Oh, that would be wonderful! Both ladies have taken mother's number. I brought Mother in so they could work out the details. Told them both she'd not made friends where she was. Told them that she'd like to go with either of them. Where is she? Why isn't she here this week? I don't know. I can't make her come. I appreciate your efforts.

Mother said that she thought about going to a driving school. I told her that was an excellent idea. I would find one for her to go to. She wanted my help preparing for the test. I told her I'd make flash cards if I could take her book. This was Friday afternoon. Sunday morning she asked for her book back. I hadn't gotten flash cards made yet because it was the first week of school. She asked Ron to make sure she got to the grocery store each week. He said he'd do that. I gave her the school's name and number I found that was conveniently located so that Ron and I could get her there.

The students returned on Wednesday. Ron called the next Saturday and took Mother to the grocery store on that day. Sunday he picked her up for church after he dropped me off as is our custom and we went out for lunch. Monday she called and asked about school. This caught me off guard. For a few minutes she acted like she cared. Then she said, "I'm going to put some pressure on you. I need some help with this test. Will you help me?" Ann had been here over the weekend. She'd drilled Mother all weekend, but I hadn't done enough. We picked her up for dinner, and Ron casually asked her when her drivers license expired and she actually said it had a few more days on it. She lied. He said, why don't you see if you can get your Arkansas license renewed online. I suggested he try to do that for her while she was over our house. When he looked it up, the instructions said that it expired on the birth date and he read that to her. She had to admit then that it was expired.

He drilled her while I fixed dinner. She hasn't called the driving school. She has no intention of calling them. She got someone else to take her to the grocery store the next weekend.

Ron called twice the morning of the letter. He most likely won't call again.

Ann

I have a sister.

It's true I do. For years no one would have known it necessarily because I didn't talk about her much. There is six and a half years difference between us. We didn't run in the same circles growing up, so of course friends didn't overlap. We didn't talk much as adults. We lived and learned about each other through my mother. Isn't that a very odd way of doing things. It's the way my mother set it up.

This past Christmas we got a chance to talk and started to rebuild some bridges - still not understanding why they needed RE-building.

The reason for the need started to become clear near the end of January and early February. Our Mother had been the master puppeteer. She guided and directed and shared stories and items and tidbits that were designed to keep us apart. Stories that had a basis in reality but which were not true.

We've had to apologize to each other multiple times. We believed her! Why wouldn't you believe your mother. You are supposed to be able to believe your mother. I think we've gotten past that apologizing for not trusting that the other would know better, do better, act better -- but just past it. Now we've started to apologize for the hurt she's inflicted - the pain she's caused. The pain she can still cause.

Friendships

I didn't see the evidence of friendships growing up.

My Dad had no friends.

My Mom had friends, but as soon as a disagreement arose, they were gone. They were best friends and then they were no friends. I don't know how to describe the feeling of this, especially if they had a girl that was my friend.

Learning friendships as an adult has been terribly difficult. I've got them, but they've been few. They've been precious.

There is Rita. What would I have done without the Myers and Rita growing up. I can't imagine. How would I have made it through my teenaged years without having had the Myers's house as a refuge? Did they even know? I haven't talked to Rita in years, but I think of her so often. I need to try to find her.

There is Sharon. She was my first friend in Atlanta. Our children were best friends for years. We can pick up at the drop of a hat. It amazes me how God brought us together and keeps us bonded over the time periods that we miss.

There is Wendy. We talk daily. We talk about spiritual matters, educational matters, family matters. I can't think of anything that is out of bounds.

There are my friends at CBDS. Now this is amazing to me, because before I started working here, I counted my friends on one hand. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd ever have more than one or two friends at time. I'd never seen it modeled. I didn't think it could be done. I didn't know that a group of men and women could love and care for each other through Jesus Christ in friendship. Most especially, there are my precious, precious friends who have listened to my scarred past and hurts and have hugged me and cried with me and have loved me unconditionally.

Irony

September 7 I had a migraine that Imitrex didn't help, so I came home and went to bed. These migraines are exhausting. My face stays numb, my head continued to ache even when the migraine itself goes away.

So when Ron brought the mail in and said, you have a letter from your Mother, I asked him to read it - I just didn't have the strength myself.

I knew that eventually, the past would have to meet the present. I'd already been thinking about the things that would have to be addressed - a mental laundry list if you will, but the fact that I'd just written about letters and then one presented itself was almost too much to handle.


Then we get the letter. This one was scathing. She loved and trusted Daddy. Daddy had told her before he died to never trust Ron. She should not have let us move her out here. We moved her out here with dishonest intentions. Where did that come from? We did not move her out here. That was her decision. She would not even tell us when so that Ron could fly out and drive out with her like he offered. We do not come over enough, we do not do enough, we do not spend enough, we are not there enough. She is going to see a pastor at our church.

Is that last line a threat? It's hard to tell with the fantasy the letter is. Mother loved Daddy? She trusted him? Daddy didn't like or trust Ron? OH my goodness!

What would she like to see? Us not go on business trips? Ron not drive a company car? We tell her where we are going and why we are going and yet she still tells Ann that we never tell her anything or that it's been three weeks since we've seen her.

Then there's the part about us moving her out here. She announced to us that she wanted to move out to be near us so that she would be near someone in case she got sick again. She'd had pneumonia the winter before and was all alone and it scared her! I told several friends at work how uncomfortable I was with the idea.

This is typical of how she operates. Expectations that she has kept secret, but expects you to know. She dumps them on you ceremoniously and then expects life to go on as usual. Well it can't. How do you do that when she tells you that she doesn't trust the man you've adored for almost 30 years?

I'll go forward, but I won't be abused. That's one thing I've learned in 2007.

The messiest house in town

That would be our house. You really needed to see it to believe it. Mother always said it was Daddy's fault. Well eventually Daddy died and it was evident that it wasn't Daddy's fault.

We had stuff everywhere for as long as I can remember. It wasn't as bad when we were in El Paso, but there was still stuff. I remember a day when Mother entered my room and told me it was a pig sty. "What?" I thought. "How is my room different from everywhere else?" A that point I made a decision to be different - to be neat. I picked up every little thing angrily thinking that I would show her that should would never have to tell me to pick up anything again and she didn't.

In Houston, things were always messy. Ann made the comment recently that when company came, literally everything got shifted to Mother and Daddy's room. That was housekeeping. When they moved to Arkansas, things were so bad that you had to move stacks of things to have a place to sit or to eat at the table. When Daddy died, the floor was caked in dog hair.

Sometime near the end of last year, I asked a friend with experience in this field what that kind of housekeeping meant and she suggested undiagnosed depression. This could well be. Mother's been desperately unhappy for as long as I can remember. Daddy was a terrible disappointment. Most of her friends didn't live up to her expectations. Goodness knows Ann and I haven't, so it's entirely possible. Undiagnosed depression could explain some things.

Isolation

When I got in trouble, there was never a discussion. There was almost always a letter. I knew when I got home from school and there was a letter sitting on my bed that I'd done something that would let me know that had disappointed my again. It would tell me the infraction and the punishment which was usually some period of isolation in my room. We never talked about it.

I don't remember ever what I did. But I do remember the letters and how my heart sank with each one.