An Interesting Topic

My Mother.

Like most people, knowing who they are is much more interesting if you know where they came from. My mom was born in 1941 to a poor family. She was the 3rd child of a couple she knows very little about. Mom found out that she had an older sister that died at the age of two, and she had an older brother who she knew most of her life.

There are several gaps of time in my mother's life that are somewhat unaccounted for. I know her mother died when my mom was just a toddler. Her father, named Noah, tried to take care of mom and her brother as best he could. I don't know my mom's mother's name. I just realized that. Anyway, Noah took the children to stay with a woman friend he knew. She was some sort of prostitute, I guess her husband looked the other way while she earned money. Mom said they weren't mean towards her brother and her, it's just that their lifestyle was inappropriate for children, and so at some point they were taken by social services. I believe they were all practically homeless, and living in and out of motels.

It was at that point that my mother's extended family made a crucial decision that changed her life forever. When asked if they wished to take the two small children in, no one in the family was willing to do that, and so mom and her brother, Albert, were sent to live in an orphanage. A man and wife, who were southern baptists, took the 2 children in. I guess there were other children there as well. Don't ask my mother today what she thinks of the baptists, she's basically never gotten over living with them, and her hatred runs deep.

When I asked my mother how she could hate a church over the actions of one woman, she was thoroughly disgusted as she explained that this wretched woman would drag the children to church every Sunday where she was praised for her work with those little "orphan" children. It's taken me a while to get it, but basically it's this, mom and the other children were viewed and treated as if they were some charity cases by the congregates, and at home they were treated as less important than the family goat! The woman, according to my mother was unbearable, cruel, and nasty. She beat the children, practically starved them, and made their lives a nightmare. Sitting through Sunday after Sunday of this woman being praised made my mother so angry, she has never been able to stand any of them since. Sure, some might think that irrational, but considering she was somewhere between the age of 2-9 when this was going on, it probably made a deep impression on her that she can't shake even today, she won't let it go.

My dad says it's that very stubborn side of my mother that has helped her to survive such a childhood. He says the strength she has always had is a result of that time in her life, that she developed this hardness, and inflexibility as a means to survive. I guess it makes sense, she is one heck of a tough woman, and she doesn't buckle under pressure, ever. Interestingly, she is also extremely stubborn in her love of her children, and it never falters. She'd do anything for any one of us kids no matter what it is.

My mom has spared many details of her life with those people at the orphanage, but I do know this, mom's mother died when she was 2, and mom was adopted when she was 9, so there is 7 years in there we know very little about. That's the time she was with the horrid baptists.

At some point along came a couple to adopt my mother. Clarence and Elizabeth were their names, and they did just that. The only thing they did wrong which I find extremely bizarre, is they did not adopt my mom's brother too. They left him there, and he ended up staying where he was until he was in his teens and eventually ran off. Mom told me that grandmother would have taken him as well, but grandpa didn't want to, which isn't all that surprising knowing him. He didn't think people should have more than one child, which becomes an interesting fact later on in this story. I guess people thought differently back then, I can't imagine separating siblings, but I guess they figured it would be better for at least one child to get a better life. These people became my grandparents.

They raised mom, part of the time, in the same small town the rest of her biological family lived in. Mom told me once that her biological grandparents lived across the street from her adopted ones, but she did not know it at the time. Grandma and Grandpa were actually pretty well off. He had a midas touch, and owned businesses, properties, and built houses, he even named streets and neighborhoods after my mom and grandmother. Mom grew up living in different places between Missouri, Oklahoma, and Colorado, and got to travel other places as well. In the summer they would run a little motel in the mountains in Colorado during tourist season. Grandma and mom cleaned the rooms, and ran things for the most part, then in the winter they headed back home to Oklahoma.

Mom had nice homes, horses, a full belly, and lots of love. Grandmother doted on her buying her nice clothes, and things. They got my mom some corrective plastic surgery she needed after being born with a cleft palate. They gave her a fantastic life, and she accepted it as well as she could. I believe my mom tried to be the little girl they wanted, but mom also had a hard time with affection. To this day my mother bristles when anyone attempts to hug her. She simply cannot stand it. We tease her about it, and sometimes sneak an arm around her shoulder, and she tolerates it, but we know not to go too far. When we were babies and small children mom hugged us and held us, we weren't neglected, but as we got older, she did it less and less. She was still quite sweet, and actually a really fun mom as we got older.

I picture my mother as a little girl going through what she did, and am amazed at the woman I've always known her to be. I've never known my mom to not help someone in need. I've never known my mom to deny a meal, or a place to stay to anyone she cared even remotely about. I've seen my mom taken advantage of and dismissed by greedy self serving people, and her continue to be kind towards them. I've also seen her wrath if someone pushed it too far.

There is much more, but I have to stop for now. More later.