Essays on Childhood: Creative. Nonfiction. Writers.

“Divorce,” and Other Words I Wasn’t Allowed to Say by Jennifer Kayrouz

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 8 Comments

Jennifer moved to West Virginia just prior to starting 8th Grade. Some people thought that her family moved to West Virginia on a dare.  That was over 22 years ago and she now claims she would give her left pinky toe to be considered a West Virginian by her hillbilly peers.  She went off to college once or twice, but always happily landed right back in Charleston. She now works for the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and loves most minutes of it, getting to travel and constantly learning and being challenged. She lives in Kanawha City with her husband, who, while being 7 years younger is still decades more mature and light-years ahead of her in his intellectual and emotional capacity. They are delighted to be the parents of one precocious 4-year-old girl.

Note:  Jennifer worked for a period of months to tell her story in a way that is honest, transparent, and also respectful of everyone involved.  Finding that balance in a story of a childhood where your family is coming apart at the seams is not an easy thing.  I have tremendous admiration for Jennifer and for her difficult work in this effort.  When I read the final version of the essay, I could feel it all just “click.”  As I told her, Damn, girl.  You nailed it!  Well done.

“Divorce,” and Other Words I Wasn’t Allowed to Say

Childhood memories are very polarized. It’s easy to recall that epic Christmas where you got an entire Barbie settlement and to romanticize the moments of your youth, but the bad memories are always there to keep you honest.

The memories I have of our life on 1062 Cloverbrook are certainly some of the best and definitely many of the worst in my life. There were five of us in that house and I can make a fair assumption that all five have a different take on that time in our lives. With every thimble-full of torrential screaming about a dirty bedroom or why our dog fucked up the afternoon, there was a sturdy bucket pouring over its sides with silliness watching a movie as a family and genuine joy at racing down the rapids at New Braunfels. This strange dichotomy was my norm and I began to anticipate the storms because I knew the sun was never warmer than after the rain. There was always a bit of peace that gave some reprieve from whatever caused all the commotion to begin with.

It was within this space between the bad and the after that I seem to remember the most.

My memories are painted all the more surreal because we were living in San Antonio, Texas. If you have never been to Texas, go.  Take your kids. Texas is a circus-like playground. Everyone is a character and life really is bigger and brighter in The Lone Star State. Fireworks were legal (everything was legal in 1982) and beer is as acceptable a beverage at 10 AM as juice or coffee. For the record, my dad drank Busch and Shiner beers.  The weekends in southeast Texas are even more fun. There was always something to do. Always some county festival to conquer or flea market to troll for colored glass. I learned to swim in Medina Lake and to pick strawberries in Poteet. To my childhood eyes, it seemed like it was always the 4th of July; there were just so many people around.

We were a popular family. We had a big yard and there was some type of hutch out back where my brother raised rabbits or guinea pigs.  I took ballet lessons, joined and quit the Girl Scouts before I was ever graduated up from a Brownie, and I was one of the first kids on my street with an Atari gaming system. My older brother was a great athlete and my younger sister was so cute she barely had to speak with all the people falling over themselves to get her to giggle.

My mom had cultivated a beautiful rose garden and we grew vegetables in our back yard. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I could name at least fifteen different types of rose bushes and describe to you their color. I can’t underscore enough the amazing images I have of lush yellow and peach rose petals all over my yard or the way we always had fresh cut flowers on our table. It was as if Georgia O’Keefe had spent time in our yard. What I wouldn’t give now to look at a picture of our rose garden…. It is one of my deepest and happiest visual memories. I can now just barely remember the endless and escalating bickering over how much it cost, who pulled who’s back out digging the flower beds, and who was being ignored for that damned rose garden.

To be blunt, my parents did not agree on much. I am not quite certain about what brought them together in 1973, but I imagine it was because they were both very bright, attractive, and naturally drew others to themselves. In those two ways, they were perfectly matched — my dad, the funny and charming tall drink of water you start chatting with at a party and come to realize that he is brilliant and knows the entire history of everything, and my mom a stunning beauty who  gave off mystery and intellect as easily as breathing. Sadly, they differed in the basics of raising kids, growing a marriage and most everything else.

I don’t want to demonize either of them. I am a parent now and I know that ‘the best I can do’ varies by 100 degrees from day to day. I truly believe that they were doing the best they could with the skills they had at the time. This was pre-Oprah, pre-Internet and pre-other people can poke around in your family’s business. Folks didn’t pour their wash water into the streets like we do now and certainly, if you caught a whiff, you smiled and pretended not to notice. Both of my parents grew up in Catholic families, went to Catholic schools, and were taught the fundamentals of life from immigrant parents who possessed a sharp focus on a narrow line of tolerable behaviors. Mom and Dad were each very intelligent, and each was exhausted emotionally from being themselves and our parents.

You aren’t supposed to see your parents as people. You are always supposed to gaze upon them in their exalted station as safe-keeper to all in their manor. They are not supposed to be the ones who scare the children. I watched my mom stab my dad in the back with a Bic pen over what seemed like folly at the time (she laughs at this now as if it were all an inside joke). I was often so afraid of what miserable disgusted venom might spew out of my dad’s mouth over the smallest of childhood indiscretions that I had almost no fear of what would happen when I really screwed up. They played hard and they fought with equal measure. As I spend time with my seven-year-old self now, I see them as I would see my own peers. The year I turned seven years old, Mom was thirty-five and Dad was thirty-three, both younger than I am as I write this. I see their flaws as people, not as my parents. It has made all of this much easier to swallow now that I know how easy it is for any of us to fall off that cliff. I don’t necessarily blame either of them; I just wish they had been better at hiding it.

For so many of my adult years, I didn’t know all this and I wished that I hadn’t been partner to their marital demise. I know it wouldn’t change the outcomes if I could process all that detail. Mostly, I just don’t want to remember the cruel words that my parents said to each other, the acts of a marriage breaking down, and the three kids who got flung into the abyss like General Zod into The Phantom Zone. I watch the three of us kids floating in space trapped in our panes of glass; none of us knowing how to escape or stop from shattering into pieces. We aren’t those kids any more and none of us ever want to be again.

If you were to ask me 15 years ago to paint my story, it would look very different from how it does now. Fifteen years ago I was angry and self-serving and most of all, self-righteous. I blamed everything on those two people and how they shaped my life. Everything from my fear of commitment all the way down to my student loan debt was because of Mom and Dad. Deep down, I harbored a grudge so fierce that my mouth tasted like metal and salt when I thought of any of it. In an ever more twisted angle, I relished this station and used it to draw my power.

Sadly, in my twenties, I was stupid and short-sighted enough to believe it was working. Thankfully as my youthful duties began to wind down, I began to gain perspective on life in general and how I came to be standing at that point. I wouldn’t characterize it as an epiphany (although it was certainly as powerful) as much as a slow and steady ascent towards understanding. Finally, I was able to look in the mirror and see my dad. When I saw this, it made me want him back in my life. So I started the wheels in motion to enter his world and make a big space in mine for him. As I got to know him as the adult I had become I realized that the best parts of me come from him. Amid many other traits, his sense of humor and silliness are painted all over me, not to mention my sense of right versus wrong and honor among men. I see it plain as the nose (also from Dad) on my face and I relish these parts.

While I had always remained close to Mom, when I looked in the mirror I thought I saw my defenses against becoming her molding my face and heart. I was wrong. Every woman eventually turns into her mother; mine is wonderfully complex and gets funnier every year. The logical and intellectual side of me is the exact same shade as hers. We are both smart enough to bend our reality and I am grateful each day for a tiny dose of her sex appeal. I am stubborn and irrational and just wise enough to get away with it. I have her to thank for that. It serves me well still. I am the perfect recipe of the two people that made me and I am delighted for it.

All in all, I think this is a story of redemption. For twenty years I thought it was my parents who needed to surrender, to apologize, and to beg forgiveness. I always expected heart-felt letters and poetic lectures about why all of that stuff happened. For a lot of it, I just needed an explanation. The daughter needed to know how certain events came to be even if I understood that I would never be able to reconcile them in my head. I thought my dad needed to make reparations to my mom for his part and she needed to mend the ties to me and my brother and sister for how she reacted and lived out the rest of her young life. It was a neat package of justice I held and I thought I should be the one to deliver us all into a full emotional recovery.

None of that happened.

As with everything else ironic in my life, the change and redemption happened to me. I s-l-o-w-l-y released my anger, fear, guilt and contempt and it was I who ultimately was set free. My heart is the one that was pushed open and flooded with love — love for my family and forgiveness for myself. All those years I thought I needed to forgive my parents and be given an apology for my sufferings. They never owed me either.  I owe a great deal to them.

Even though I wouldn’t want to live through any of it again, I have turned out to be a complex and multi-faceted woman with lots to offer to my partner and my community. On some days, I am downright brilliant and funny. Had I been born under some other moon to some other couple, I fear the under-bloomed yeast of my white bread existence. Because I am who I am, however, I will weather life’s rains better than most. I even found my own happily ever after and started my own little messed up family. My husband is very much like my dad and we have a little girl who eerily resembles the four-year-old me.  She was lucky enough to get me as her mother.

God help her be strong – she will need all the faith and patience she can get.

Growing Up (part 4) by Christi Davis Somerville

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 6 Comments

The writer and her Mamaw 1976

My relationship with Mamaw was one of the best things about growing up next door to my grandparents.  It’s difficult to think of her now, since her passing has only been just recently.  My heart aches when I think about her and I miss her more than I thought I would.  In many ways, I was like the daughter she never had.  Mamaw was my security blanket.  She was my homemade quilt, frayed around the edges, but always comforting.  In many ways she was a complex woman.  Highly private and somewhat socially awkward, she was the matriarch of our entire family.  Being the eldest of seven, her job of caretaker followed her throughout her years.  She was a supreme worrier, and was able to conjure up bad happenings better than anyone I ever knew.  But where Papaw was inconsistent, Mamaw was consistent.  Always.

Not only was Mamaw my neighbor, she was also my elementary school cook.  I was fortunate enough to be with her at school every day at Loundendale Elementary.  School was another extension of home and I felt like we owned the place.  I was privy to places (like the kitchen) that other students weren’t allowed to go.  If I started feeling poorly and was sent to the clinic, I had instant sympathy beside me to make me feel better.  (Except when I was faking sick, and she’d sternly look at me and tell me to go back to class!)  In Kindergarten, my entire class called her “Mamaw.”  This upset me so much that I didn’t want to say her name out loud at school.  She was my Mamaw and I certainly did not want to share her with a bunch of other kids!  As I got older, I realized that having her at school was sometimes good and sometimes bad.  Good on days when we had mashed potatoes (an extra helping for me) and bad when I occasionally got in trouble (guess who took me to the principal).

Mamaw was well-known throughout the family and the neighborhood for her homemade hot rolls and cinnamon rolls.  There was no recipe, just lots of hard work and love put into everything she prepared.  Many times I watched her work her magic by turning a little Hudson Cream Flour, eggs, sugar, yeast, and condensed milk into a small piece of dough and roll it around on the kitchen countertop and, ta-dah!, the most perfect little roll of dough you could ever imagine would magically appear.  Twenty four of those little dough balls would go into the oven and a few minutes later, a smell would waft down the hall that would make anyone’s mouth water.  When the bread was done, she’d take it out of the oven and my job was to brush each roll with melted butter.  I can still remember the sound of the butter when it would sizzle on top of those rolls.

There are so many things I learned from Mamaw that I don’t think I would have learned had I not spent so much time with her.  She taught me how to tie a quilt (it is really the ugliest quilt you’ve ever seen—polyester stripes and patterns, brown flannel backing—it is referred to now as the “Tacky Quilt” but I made it!).  She taught me how to make lye soap, and what a science experiment that was.  Lye soap could take the paint off of a Buick!  She tried, really tried, to teach me how to make her famous homemade bread.  I failed miserably since I didn’t understand how to “feel the dough” to know when it was right.

Mamaw taught me other things too.  She taught me to always be prepared.  Whatever the situation, Mamaw could pull whatever we needed, from a wet washcloth to a cough drop, out her huge purse.  She taught me to save my money, but to spend it too on important things—not trinkets or toys.  She taught me to be compassionate, especially for children who had less than I did.  She taught me to always put my family first.  She taught all of this by example, not in words.

My grandmother and I developed quite a close relationship over the years.  We would sit at the kitchen table and talk for hours about nothing in particular, sometimes talking about several different things at once.  Every spring we would go to the farmers market and buy entirely too many flowers—marigolds, pansies, and impatiens–and wonder where in the world we would plant them all.  In the spring, we would count down the winter days to welcome spring at Watt Powell Park to be the first in line on opening day for baseball season.  Sometimes the cold spring air coming out of South Park hollow would make our teeth chatter, but Mamaw would fix a thermos of strong hot tea for us to sip on so we could cheer the Charleston Charlies, and later the Wheelers, and finally the Alley Cats, to victory.  We would read books, Anne of Green Gables, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Heidi, and talk about our favorite parts.  Sometimes she would tell stories about growing up just around the hill on Mt. Alpha.  She would tell me stories of how she met my grandfather and how he called her “chicken legs” when he saw her walking down the road one day.  We spent a lot of time together and I wouldn’t have had that opportunity had she not lived so close to me.

I’m sure my childhood would have been wonderful without living next to my grandparents.  I had, and still have, the best parents anyone could ever have.  I have a funny brother who saves lives for a living (a fireman—of which I am so proud).  I had a wonderful home, pets, good schools, vacations at the beach and camping.  But I really can’t imagine my life without having grown up beside Mamaw and Papaw.

Last April I received an urgent phone call from my brother.  Mamaw was in the hospital.  I heard the words “fatal” and “aneurism” as his voiced cracked to tell me the news.  I dropped everything and drove as fast as I could to the hospital to see her.  She had been having a hard time remembering things and getting around, but the thought of her dying just would not register in my brain, even though she was ninety one years old.

When I got to the hospital, I went directly into her room and knew in my heart that she was dying.  As I sat there with her alone listening to the beeping and humming of the machines, I held her hand and told her it was going to be okay, even though I knew it wasn’t.  She never opened her eyes, but I had to believe she could hear me.  I thanked her for all she had done for me, for all she had given me, for being there whenever I needed her.  I talked to her about our special times together and the memories we had…and then I watched her take her last breath.

It sounds so strange to say, but I’m glad it was just the two of us together when she passed.  I’m humbled that I was there to hopefully give her peace in her final moments on earth.  It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, but I will never regret being there for her one last time.

As I continue my online research into my family’s past, I see my parents, my grandparents, and all my family in a different light.

I see them now as children running through the creeks and hills.

I see them as young adults falling in love and building a home.

I see them as parents and grandparents wanting the best for their children and grandchildren and all generations to come.

And I see myself…….

Making a good life for my future generations and passing on the best of my childhood memories to them.

(This concludes Growing Up by Christi Davis Somerville.  See Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Growing Up in the previous posts.)