Memories Are Made Of This

Diary - Entry14

Many people have critized the way that I have lived my life, raise my son and so forth.  Every human being on the planet makes mistakes, I have spent the last 20 years making up for mine, but they never seem to be forgiven or forgetten.  I have learned that I forgave myself, and if others cannot, oh well!!!

While I have touched on this subject before, It is most prevelent in my mind at the moment, because my husband is away and at some point, our son crawled into bed, snuggled up and said "bad dream, can I stay here?" Yes, I replied  So I wrapped my arms around him and he fell back asleep..

When my great grand-father started making me take naps with him, he was in his seventies at the time, he had the weirdest smell.  Old tobacco, days without bathing and some kind of alcohol.  I hated him and that pink house, but loved my great-gandmother dearly, as she made most of my clothes, and made my life bearable in a sense.  Saturdays were my favorite, we would unbound her hair which was down to her waist and she would let it dry while we hung clothes on the line.  When it was almost dry, she would let me braid it again and we would re-wrap it around her head for church the next day.

Arkansas winters can be quite cold and bitter.  In those days, because I was Assembly of God, I could only wear dresses.  I would walk to the end of the gravel road, I would be shivering and have to go to the bathroom, but the thought of going to the pink house,where he lived, and was closest, so I wouldn't miss the bus, filled me with such dread and anxiety that I would I would just pee my pants, and go to school smelling like that. 

With my parents ledgendary battles, moving around and such, I eventually went to Missouri to my mothers grandparents.

Many years later, after I had taken all the craziness I could from my mentally ill mother. . . I too, went down to join my brother Todd and live with my father.  It wasnt' long before he had a new girlfriend and made her his wife.

One day,  I went to my step-mother Barb, and complained that Papa (my grandfather) would shove his tongue down my throat, while grabbing my ass and pinching my boobs.  The sage advice that she gave me: "We'll if you didn't go around dressed like a slut, he wouldn't be tempeted".  I was mortified.  As a teenager, in the summer, I did not think that shorts, sandals, tank tops and tee shirts was a justafiable cause to make not only such a statement, but to put in in such a manner that it felt as if she had slapped me across the face and filled with such bitterness you could feel it in the air.  I never talked to her about anything important while under their roof, again.

I never had a childhood, not in the real sense of the word,  I had not planned on every having children.  I wanted to live in New York, be a writer and never go back to the person I turned out to be.  I had children, loved them dearly,tried to make the best of a bad marriage the first go round and then waited 17 years before tying the knot and starting another family.  I have tried to be the mother to Hugh, that I , at the age of 19, was not able to be for my son, Hayden, who through no fault of his own, had parents that were desperately still in-love with other people.  Although we tried to make it work, the was just to many things and people involved in our marriage.

Hugh has a childhood, it is painfree, full of life, travel, collecting everything from coins for Cub Scouts to rescuing homeless pets from shelters and things.  He is tender of heart, loving and most of the time, very polite (although he does have his moments. . .unfortunately he is both McFarland and McDaniel and is prone to boughts of anger and tantrums, when he does not get his way. . .which, trust me, isn't very often). 

I never spanked him unless he truly did something wrong, because I just had been beaten so often, that I could not bear to inflict that on him, so I chose time outs, removal of favorite toys and the like.  Because of the abuse in my family, I guarded his person and his personal space with a zealousness of a mother bear protecting her cub.  Most people think, that at ten years old he should be allowed to walk to his friends house, alone.  Most people don't understand why I make my husband go the the rest room with him.  Or why he cannot spend the night at his friends, but they are welcome here.

I really don't care about most peoples opinions, especially in an age of prevelent pedophilia, child pornograhy, rape and murder of young children.  It is easy to stand on the outside of a family,  looking through the window;  make comments, judgements and assumptions, but is it really your business? 

The bond between a parent and a child can be, should be and would be unbreakable, if it were a perfect world. In that world, children are loved, cherished and put first, no matter what the personal sacrifice because the child had no choice in his/her parentage and should never be punished because of it.

However, we do not live in a perfect world.  Yet, as a parent it is our examples that light the way for change.