April 12, 2008
Birthday
I stood alone. My father sat to my left in the black lounge chair. My stepmother sat to the right in the brown recliner. My mother sat somewhere in Kansas.
“Your mother sent a birthday card,” she said. My tenth birthday—or it had been, four days past. “What kind of mother sends a card like this?” She’d signed the card “Happy birthday, Mother.” There was no gift, just the card. And it was four days late.
“She doesn’t love you,” she said. “If she did, the card would have been sent on time, and she would have written something meaningful. And she would have sent a gift.”
My small, skinny, 10-year-old self began to cry, and for the first time, my father spoke.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
Why was I crying indeed? Perhaps because the mother I got, the one I lived with every day, was not so much mother as caretaker. She fed us three times a day. We wore clean clothes. We went to school. She made birthday cakes and held small family parties. These are not small things, and acknowledging them is to recognize part of the truth.
She served as religious educator. We studied our Sabbath School lesson and read assigned religious books every day—an hour on weekends, half an hour on weekdays was the setup, but in reality we started when she told us to start, and we stopped when she told us to stop. She often told me I was a bad, unrepentant child who was on the certain road to committing the unpardonable sin (whatever that was), so to save my soul she repeatedly assigned Steps to Christ
She hit us. Sometimes with a wooden paddle. Sometimes with the leather belt that hung behind our bedroom door. Sometimes with the plastic ruler in the pencil cup on the table next to her brown recliner, or the one she kept in her car visor. Occasionally she hit us with her bare hand. She hit us often, and almost always she hit us in places no one else would ever see.
Fours years and a handful of visits with one mother. Five years of living every day with this other one, plus a father who was often gone. In the face of overwhelming emotion, my ten-year-old self was powerless to do the math, but the result was still the same.
“I’m all mixed up,” I said.
He took me in his arms, and I cried some more.
Read the companion piece to this post at Thursday Drive.
Comments
This was clearly calculated by at least Sue—the others I cannot make a 100% positive statement on that. Really, what was Sue’s point?
“Why are you crying?” It’s so sad that children are not sophisticated enough to begin to understand their circumstances and respond in such. An appropriate response could have been, “Because you want me to,” or “What does it matter? That was your goal, and you’ve been successful.” Not that those words would have made anyone see their own deplorable behavior any more clearly, but I’ve always believed (some) children (in certain places/situations) have to put up with so much more crap than anyone should have to merely because they are children and haven’t learned how to fight back or protect themselves.
And although it’s kind for you to acknowledge that Sue fed you and kept your clothes clean, etc., I have to say that I wonder (really, I don’t wonder much) how much she did that for herself and not for you. If she DIDN’T do those things, then more people might have been more concerned about the state of things at your house. But she kept up appearances to protect HERSELF. (A feminine family trait she certainly mastered.) She made sure she hit you in places that wouldn’t show when it bruised. Her motives from where I sit were not noble on any level.
And I saw some of what you ate, and how much, and I would hesitate to say that you were well-fed all of the time. But then I was only a child, too, and my perspective would not be taken seriously from most adults. I just know that I was glad I didn’t have to eat there very often. It was never a pleasant experience. (The food itself wasn’t the bad experience, just the atmosphere and the utter control of Sue over you and your sister and what you ate. I remember feeling so guilty because I was allowed to dish up my own food AND GET SECONDS.)
I just don’t get how evil people can be. And then to be more evil…and more evil. Too bad we don’t believe in hell.
I’ve been following Jennifer’s recollections of her childhood and I’ve come here to say that all of this resonates with me. I wish that I could be more eloquent and more detailed, but for now, just know that I’ve read and that there’s a part of my soul that’s resonating with these words. We never truly heal from those childhood wounds; we never truly stop wishing for the mother-love we never received…
Hi Ducky. I’m over from Jennifer’s and off to read her post now. I just wanted to leave a comment and let you know I’d been. I think that the real strength in these tales is the people that you and Jennifer have become despite Sue and your parents rather than because of them. I truly wish you all the very best in life.
Ducky,
This was a very powerful post. You and your sister have been through so much and the posts are difficult to read. I hope that you are on the other side and am sorry for what you endured as a child.
Ducky,
What a courageous post. The stories you and your sister share rock me to my core.
Like one of the other commenters, many of these posts resonates within my own life in 1 way or another. I wish I had the ability to express them the way you do.
Ducky, I regularly read your sister’s blog. Through her, I’ve learned of you and this is how I find myself here today.
Right now, after reading your post, all I can say is that were it possible for me to go back in time, I would hold the child you were in my arms and I would have kissed you on the crown of your head like I do my own child and I would have hugged you and told you all the lies I could have come up with to explain why your birthday card came so devoid of everything it should have been bursting with. My reaching out to you does nothing any more for that little girl but for the woman you are now, I want you to know that this stranger’s heart feels all the compassion and care your stepmother should have evidenced at that moment for your benefit. I am so very sorry this happened to you. I rejoice from knowing through Jennifer’s blog, that you both work daily to overcome the sad memories and that today you forge for yourselves a different kind of life. How strong you both are. I admire you equally. All my love for that little girl and in this time, I wish that all your newer birthdays be as exponentially happy as this one was sad.
K, I’m glad to know Sue actually let you have the card. According to hers and your dad’s testimony at the first adoption hearing, the one the judge denied, they claimed I didn’t send you or Jennifer anything. But I had mailing receipts to prove that I had. However, that card wouldn’t have been late because I didn’t send it in time, but because Sue withheld it. I suspect you wouldn’t have seen it at all if I’d written more than “Happy Birthday, Mother”. Sorry, I can’t say *for sure* after three decades if there was a gift with it, but back then I usually didn’t send a card without a gift. I do know your dad’s testimony, gifts I sent didn’t get to you or Jennifer. The only ones I *know* that did get to you were those I sent to your grandparents to pass on.
At any rate, instead of simply holding you while you cried, your father *could have* let you call or write me. I know he claims he didn’t, but he *always* knew how to get in touch with me one way or another. If not directly by phone, then through my parents or the relatives who never moved from the places they lived while we were married. Plus there was W’s dad. Our town was so small and his last name so distinctive, after we divorced anything addressed to me at a previous address would be delivered to him and he’d pass it on. *Always*. I will never get over that you were told I didn’t love you and didn’t want to see you. All those years, your father knew I *very much* wanted to see you.
To Jennifer’s Mother,
It seems to me that this post was about how her father and Sue treated her, nothing to do with you. Although she could have added negative words about you, she did not.
It strikes me that you are not the appropriate person to be saying anything about Sue and Ducky’s father. You have no defense to make her. If you had to speak, my opinion is that you should have done it LONG AGO, and it should have been loving and remorseful, not defensive.
It may not have been ALL your fault that you were not in two of your children’s lives as they grew up. But some of it was your fault. And it appears that you did not make more than a few cursory attempts to change it.
I cannot believe your nerve to come onto the blogs of your daughters and say the things you have. I might think a kind word rather than defensive one would be more appropriate.