Until I was seven years of age, my mother worked outside the home.
She managed the concession stand of the only drive-in theatre in the area. She introduced Pizza Pie from the home office of Chicago, Illinois to the drive-in theatre going public of Independence, Missouri and they were immediate sell-outs! Also, for the shredded beef Bar-B-Que sandwiches, she made Morgan’s Bar-B-Que sauce from scratch, which was her family’s own secret recipe. It still remains a closely guarded secret, and hides out in my pantry, still in Mom’s handwriting. Everything she did was just a little more special than the norm. She was also an excellent business woman and was recruited several times by other corporations.
Whenever she worked during the day, taking inventory, I would run up and down the ramps of the drive-in, finding treasures that had fallen out of cars during the evening or I’d investigate places I’d never been. During one of my morning ventures, I went into the men’s bathroom and saw my first urinal. I thought it was a very cool bathtub and wondered why women didn’t have such treasures in their restrooms. It hardly seemed fair... Then, sometimes, as the popcorn machine was preparing the night’s offerings, she’d let me get my own hot popcorn and use the butter machine to slather my tub with as much butter as I wanted – at least four squirts. It was too special for words.
I never felt deprived by Mom working. I thought the adventures of new venues and babysitters were fun. During my daytime visits to the theatre, I also expanded my circle of friends, as I buddied up with Mom’s employees. There was a man who looked just like Arnold Stang, of Chunky candy commercial fame. I always asked him to say it for me and he’d grin a huge grin, and then – he would! “Chunky! What a chuuuuuuunnnnnnk of chocolate!” he’d say, smacking his lips. It never ceased to make me laugh! Lila ran the popcorn machine, Elvin grilled the hamburgers and Michelle ran the register. They were like another family.
Also, whenever there were special promotions at the theatre, such as finding the needle in the haystack for $100 prize or the performing white German shepherds, I always got a good seat to see the events. Every Easter, the drive-in held a sunrise service on the roof of the concession stand and broadcast the Easter message through the speakers. Although I’ve never been a morning person, I loved getting up while it was still dark, putting on my new Easter clothes and rummaging through my Easter basket while the minister preached about love and redemption.
At other times, when I was unable to accompany my mother to work, my eldest sister, Harrylon, who is nineteen years my senior, would babysit me. We were big buddies while I was growing up. Her son Lonny, three months younger than I, was my best friend. When it came time to send me to kindergarten, Harrylon called a taxi. My daddy, “Curly,” used to drive a taxi and all the drivers in our small town knew that I was Curly’s little girl, so I felt perfectly safe – and special. They’d always say, “Are you Curley’s girl?” I’d smile and nod and we'd speed off to deposit me at kindergarten.
I loved being with Harrylon and Lonny. Harrylon always had some interesting new food to try, pickled pig’s feet is one I remember now with revulsion, but loved then, and Lonny had a Jerry Mahoney puppet, which we’d play with on the sidewalk, next to their duplex.
Additionally, because my mother worked, we had money for extra things. I always had beautiful clothes. “This is the latest fashion,” my mother would tell me about my aqua dropped-waist dress, or the black and white checked with the red bow, and that I’d repeat whenever anyone complimented me. We received great toys for Christmas and birthdays, yet were generous with those in the neighborhood who didn’t have much.
Our house was lovely, and sported salmon-colored living room walls with sanded-paint and floor-to-ceiling draperies with impressionistic pictures of the Eiffel Tower, Parisian cafés, and the Arc de’ Triomphe. The year I was five, I wanted twin dolls for Christmas and got two Buddy Lee dolls, one a sheriff and one an engineer, which I still have. They sit on the bookshelf in my office and overlook my progress. That same year, I also got multi-colored bells on which I learned to play a variety of songs. Life was full and rich and fun.
Then, in an instant everything in the world as I knew it, changed.
Dorothy, mom’s sister, lived in Miami. She called to tell us that her husband had committed suicide with a gunshot to his head. Their twelve-year old son had gotten to him first. Mom flew into frenetic activity to go to her sister’s aid. My brother, Billie and his wife, agreed to stay at our house and care for his two little sisters; Kandi and me. Mom, Daddy and Imza, my middle sister, made arrangement with Delta Airways, to fly from Kansas City, Missouri to Miami, Florida to be with my Aunt Dorothy in her time of need.
However, there were hurricane warnings.
Regardless of the warnings, my mother, who possessed true grit beyond grit, went anyway. She needed to get to her sister and no warning of inclement weather was keeping her grounded. Their plane tossed, twirled and did loop-de-loops in the perilous weather and, as a result of pressurization loss, both of my mother’s eardrums ruptured during the flight. Until the day she died, her ears continued to extrude black liquid. As if the trauma of such an event was not stressful enough, upon her return, she had to stay in bed for weeks, trying to regain her equilibrium.
Her career came to an abrupt halt. Although the company held her job for her for months, she was never able to work again. Life as we’d known it, ended.
Although Daddy worked also, and was diligent and hard-working, his position as a laborer didn’t pay the money my mother’s in management had paid. So, we began to live the life of those who were poor. We ate commodities from the government. I wore my sister’s old clothes and coats that didn’t fit. Our toys and clothes from that point forward came from the Goodwill. I don’t remember caring about the toys being used, but I can remember not wanting to go to school sometimes because I didn’t have anything pretty to wear. Hmmmmmmmmmm, self-conscious even then – some may say, vain. Now that I think about it, pretty clothes continue to be paramount for me, perhaps it’s some unresolved childhood yearning rearing its head…
For years after Joe’s suicide, Mom rarely felt well enough to sit upright. I’d come home from school and find her lying on the sofa or behind her closed bedroom door. Our relationship changed abruptly with the onset of her illness. As a child, I didn’t understand all the changes; but I knew that my mother’s attention had been diverted from me. I felt sad and abandoned, although I couldn't put words to it for years. Our household went from fun and frivolity to darkness and solemnity.
Because Mom’s position included management activities during the day and supervising staff in the evenings, Daddy watched us at night, and we had great fun. He’d fix our dinner, watch the Mickey Mouse Club with us, and then later, we’d sit in the Adirondack chairs in the back yard, listening to the Cicadas and eating watermelon or ice cream. Additionally, he had a goofy sense of humor and we’d often jump around whooping like monkeys or he’d pretend to groom my hair as monkeys do to one another – monkeys seemed to be our favorite animal to imitate. Then, because Missouri nights are so hot and we didn’t have air conditioning, he, Kandi, and I would all sleep in the one bed that had the big window fan blowing. Daddy slept in the middle with Kandi lying on one of his arms and me on the other. In this Christ-like pose, I don’t know how he ever got any sleep, but he loved his girls and seemed unaffected.
That all ended also.
With Mom not working, Daddy’s responsibility as caregiver ceased. Because he arose at 4:30 am, and no longer needed to remain alert in the evenings, by 7 pm he was usually asleep in his chair. We occasionally did things together on the weekends, but not very often. Life became about being quiet and not bothering Mom, who didn’t feel good or Daddy who had to sleep.
However, Harrylon was a stabilizing presence until three years later when she had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in a Missouri mental institution. She received extensive electro-convulsive therapy, as well as massive amounts of pharmaceuticals. As her illness continued, she was eventually diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder. I was ten.
I understood all of this with the understanding of a child. However, as I matured, I never seemed to expand my understanding and let Harrylon off the hook for her disruptive behavior. With Mom and Dad, I acknowledged that they’d done the best they could, given their health and the circumstances; but not Harrylon.
Life took on a surreal quality when Harrylon was around and we all ostracized her for it, except Mom. Mom always forgave Harrylon, regardless of the transgression. Mom said we didn’t understand enough about mental illness to make judgments.
Harrylon said she’d shoot our mother; we kept the drapes drawn and stayed away from the windows. When I was twenty-three, she dragged her daughter, whose arm was caught in her car, down a road, to teach her a lesson; I went through the court system to take custody of Lisa. Harrylon fought to keep her, until she learned that I didn’t intend to take her $10 weekly child-support payment. She then allowed me to relocate her sixteen-year old daughter to my home, 2,000 miles away. She’d kept her children home from school because she was lonely; none of them finished high school. She got mad at one of her five husbands and baked him a cake out of Ex-Lax, instead of cocoa. She put sugar in the gas tank of another man with whom she was angry. She got mad at our Mother for an imagined wrong and allowed her to die of cancer and languish with multiple fractures suffered in a horrific collision with a tractor-trailer truck, without ever making peace with her.
I was through making excuses for her! How could you love a boil that always threatened eruption? This was Harrylon: sore to the touch, menacing and unpredictable - she frightened me with her wicked ways.
So, my self-righteous anger kept me insulated from her illness - and her pain. Following the incident with our mother, I decided I wouldn’t talk to her – again - ever. Twenty-six years after I made that vow, Harrylon had a stroke. When I heard about it, I began to sob and to experience deep remorse about my silent treatment toward her for all of these years.
I went to see her.
In addition to the stroke, she has dementia and pneumonia. She resembled a tiny bird slumped down in her hand-cranked hospital bed with only her eyes peering over the top of her blanket. I don’t know if she recognized me, but when I told her my name, she said, “Well, you sure have grown.” I wondered if she’d remembered me as that little sister who so adored her all of those years ago. I hope so.
She’s 75 years old, still paranoid schizophrenic and still exhibiting multiple personalities. I’ve changed. Thank goodness.
In retrospect, it’s unbelievable to me that I’ve held her to normal standards for all of these years, when she was incapable of behaving normally. Her ranting always involved images of the church, Christ, or the devil. She seems to be haunted and has believed black devils sit on her back and on the backs of those she loves. She was and is ill.
That doesn’t mean her behavior didn’t make our family dynamics ricochet off the chart when she was episodic, but, as a fifty-something, I don’t have to let her behavior influence my love for a sister who has known a lifetime of hospitalizations, medications and shunning. I can be kind and loving toward her without needing to fix her (because I can’t) or insist that she acknowledge all the pain she’s caused to those who’ve loved her – because she can’t. The definition of paranoia is the BELIEF that someone is out to get you. This is what she BELIEVED. Her actions, crazy and incomprehensible to her family, were to protect herself – not to harm someone else. The distinction may seem like semantics, but is huge in its implication.
I also want to believe that she did the absolute best she knew how to do, given her circumstances.
Limitations come in all types of forms and behaviors. We all have them. Usually, only when we acknowledge that we aren’t perfect and never will be perfect, do we make peace with our foibles and by doing so, are able to accept weaknesses in ourselves and in others. I hope I continue to recognize and accept the flaws within myself and then continue to offer grace instead of judgment to others – and to myself.
This Mother’s Day, the best gift I could offer in my mother’s memory, is to continue to extend grace, understanding and peace to Harrylon until the day she is released from her troubled mind, when her spirit rejoins our mother’s, and she is free from her demons, at last.
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