For A Few Dollars More

One of the unsettling aspects of being physically abused by your mother is that it sets you up to be abused by others later in life. Since you have never known anything else, it takes a while to learn that love is not a four letter word and that that all your interactions with others do not have to come with pain and anguish. It took me a long time to learn that my self-worth was not contingent on whether someone cared for me or not. It took me years to learn to stand up for myself, even when it was apparent I was getting the short end of the stick.

Many people saw how broken I was and took advantage of my low opinion of myself. I did not need as much as others, could work longer and harder for less pay, and virtually be forgotten by those who I so much wanted to love and care for me.

Many years ago when I was a starving college student, I was on my way back to my dorm after working some little thankless job that barely put change in my pocket. I was ill prepared for college life. I had never been anywhere, done anything, or been around girls that had trunks full of clothes and personal property that they could actually cart off to another place. I was an oddity and not just because I was black. I arrived with a half filled suitcase that I knew I would have to fill on my own. I did not go to college for any great love of learning or knowledge. I went to get out of the house before my mother killed me. The summer I graduated high school her rage was great. We both knew that it would be better for me if I was not there.

I used to always walk with my head down, and on this particular day it was fortuitous for me because lying right in front of me was a wad of recently lost cash. Just as I bent to pick it up I head a voice demand that I hand it over. Staring at me was the much, much older boyfriend of one of the Resident Assistants of my dorm. In her I saw some of myself. She was very unattractive and mousy and no doubt very grateful for the attentions of this man. I had the money in my hand and I was reluctant to turn it over. It was, after all, mine. I had found it! I could very well use it to buy cigarettes, soda, snacks. He again demanded the money, telling her to tell me that I had to give it to him.

As much as I felt she didn't want to, she turned to me and said, "You better give it to him." I slowly handed him the salvation that I had briefly held. There would be no late night snacks. No feeling that I had something to rely on. I often think about that incident; how boldly this man stole from a girl who so needed it. I do believe that in the righteous order of the universe, he got more than he bargained for.

I believe that I think about this because now, I would and could know what to do. No one could make me give up anything! Or take from me what was rightly mine. We know better now and that feels good.

Do The Right Thing

I try very hard to always do the right thing. By that I mean never going out of my way to hurt or hinder some one else. I always offer help, even when it is not asked for but may make the difference in someone's difficult day. I try to be patient in those moments when it is truly saintlike to be so. Being a teacher it is not easy. I am not perfect, only human, and often fail in my attempts to be as good as I would like to be.

There are times when I do not want kids in my house; my day was long and there is still much to do, yet I allow them to come because it may be better for them to be here rather than some place else and I try to understand that. My acts of kindness are a direct result of my firsthand experiences of a lack of the same. How often I had wished someone might have been kind to me or noticed my physical and emotional pain.

I know that people knew. I know the nuns at my school knew when I limped to class because my body hurt so, but I was not pretty or blond, and therefore I did not matter. I know the neighbors knew. They turned their backs because it was none of their business. These were the sixties and seventies and everyone was busy with what they were busy with. No one had time to see and I was invisible anyway.

I try to do the right thing because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. I do right by my daughter because I love her so and she is mine. I heal through my love for her. With her head on my shoulder, her hair falling slightly over one eye I heal. It is a long and difficult process and we know it may take a lifetime. Still and now we remember. But we also remember to do the right thing.

What A Girl Wants

There is a part of me that is full of want. Not wants that are selffish or that can be bought with cash money, but wants that are beyond the grasp of my reach. I see and hear them as I dart about my daily business. My wants acost me as I turn the aisle in the farmer's market, as I edge my way through each very unremarkable day, I am confronted with wants that are no longer possible for me.

My wants lie in a history of what could have been had I been the product of a conventional home; two parents who were unconditionally devoted to one another, a yard with a painted picket fence, a dog, perhaps a cat. Leaping out of bed with the cozy pink comforter, I would slid my feet into fuzzy warm slippers, don my robe and hurry down to a steaming breakfast full of all good things for a cherished growing girl. An affectionate mother nuzzles my cheek as she fills my breakfast plate. Later, standing in front of my closet I choose a becoming out fit to start my successful day at school. Later, she will help me with my homework, give me a bath, and tuck me in smothering me with kisses. Together my parents gaze at me lovingly before turning off the light and gently closing the door. Tomorrow it will be the same, and so each and every day after that. I grow strong, smart and confident. And that is all I ever know.

But it wasn't that way at all. There was no picket fence or cozy pink comforter. There was no smothering of kisses. Instead chaos ruled my world, and my father, when he did dare to venture home his stay was short. He was a quiet and passive man, and no match for the woman whose voice, littered with obscenities could be heard blocks away. When I finally did get to know him, I was an adult. We did not have many years together. He died of lung cancer two days before my daughter was born. I mourned that he never got to hold her.

I wanted to be loved and cherished, and to grow up with the basic necessities of life. I wanted to be protected and get gifts on my birthday and at Christmas time. I wanted to live a carefree childhood, and not to be in a constant state of fear wondering when I would get my ass kicked for no good reason. I wanted to be able to have a conversation with my brothers with out being told later that if I was caught having sex with them, that I would be killed. I wanted electricity and heat, food and clothes, and not to be called names that I didn't understand till much later. I wanted to not feel lost and think that everything bad that happened was somehow my fault. I wanted to not feel guilty for having to eat to live. I wanted my mother to like me and not make that face when she looked at me.

But wanting is not a bad thing It's just too late.

Summertime

It is now June and school is let out for the summer. Although I too am jubilant about this fact ( I am a teacher as is my husband) the prospect of a house filled with tween girls frightens and in some ways delights me. The summer vacation is but a day old and already weekend long sleepovers have been planned; the nail polish and movies chosen, the snacks high and plentiful.



I tell myself that this is the summer of youth, the days long, hot and lazy; the nights cool and full of entertaining talk. It must be wonderful to be young, to embrace each day without a worrisome thought or care. The fridge is full of delicious things to eat and the crumb cake I made yesterday has but a few short hours. The boys who once walked my block unnoticed are now met with a chorus of girlish screams, and a dozen feet scramble from window to window just to watch them saunter by. No, it's not George, Paul, John and Ringo. Just Justin and Xavier, the two coolest sixth graders from the local middle school.


Oh, how I could enjoy this youth if only it were my own! My mind would be filled with the most satisfying dreams of love and adventure. What will I be? Who will I marry? But it is not, so therefore I watch with envy and amusement the carefree moments of my daughter and her friends. I give and then give some more because these are moments to treasure and turn to memories. They will provide a cushion on which to ride into those bumpy stages of life before adulthood. It will prove to be a necessary foundation upon which to build the character and love that a mother carries inside for her children. I want for her what I could not have myself.


Although we have been denied so much, it takes but little to see the power of love. In the blink of an eye the summer will be over, and we will trudge through red and yellow falling leaves as the wind swirls them underfoot. Another school year upon us; another season to dream our very own dreams. And on and on....

The Truth About Truth

I often think about what is the truth of my life. By "truth", I mean to really look at what has happened to me over the years. Statements that people have made to me and what I have thought and felt at one time or another. Desires and dreams never realized. Magic made in spite of difficult circumstances. Sometimes my truth overwhelms me and I find it in places where it does not belong. It makes itself known to me at the most inopportune times like an uninvited guest. Once they are there it is difficult to get them to leave.

During the course of my day I rarely have time to dwell on the past. I like to believe my life is different now. For the most part I have joined the ranks of the upper middle class. I have a profession and two degrees. A house and two cars. But my truth of what I lived before is but a flashback away. They come and they go. They come and often they stay. A blinding reminder that although I have crossed over from one road to another, if I look back I can still see that path littered with the trash of bygone days. Truth does not change. It is what it is and always will be. It may be twisted, revised, but then it become something else. It is not truth.

I like to believe that I have moved on. I know that you have moved on too. All that we know is different, changed from what used to be. We are all grown up now, with children of our own that we treat like children. We tuck them in and paste crude crayon drawings on the refrigerator.

In them we see a life vibrant with possibility.

The past cannot be changed, altered. And that is the truth about truth.

Stranger In A Strange Land

Are there times when you are not sure what you are feeling? Only that you know there is an incompleteness in you that surfaces from time to time? A sensation that perhaps you missed an important event that everyone else attended and somehow you were left out?

There are many moments when I feel this way. A nagging feeling that there is something amiss. I am going along fine, my day no different that any other and then: I am falling off the edge, my balance disrupted, slipping off the side of an uneven slope. Conversations of colleagues make their way into my line of hearing: how beautifully someone has decorated their house, an upcoming weekend to be spent at an elite spa and resort. It is not that these things are out of my reach for they aren't.It is that inside I feel as though I am an outsider. Hustled in through a side door to a gathering where I don't belong, eager to be a part of it but with nothing of value to offer.


It is terrible to feel this way as you know. At these moments, I want to get up from the table and not even excuse myself, as those that are there are surely grateful for my exit. Who and what am I? I find myself in these circumstances, how ever did I ever end up here with these people who are so much better than me?



A few years ago another therapist told me how very low my self-esteem was. No matter what I accomplish, I never feel worthy of any of the benefits. As a child, no one ever stood up for me. I took what I got because there was no other way. I was all the names I was referred to by my mother and grandmother, and I would never amount to anything, an embarrassment for the family. My brother once told me I would spend my adult years drinking beer from a brown paper bag, my legs spread akimbo on a dirty stoop. It was just one of the many predictions made for me that did not come to pass, as I was stronger than them all.



I have been diagnosed with a number of conditions: panic disorder, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, post traumatic stress disorder to name a few. I am sure there are more. There are other conditions that plague me too: happiness when I can find it, success in my career, security in the love of my husband and daughter, delight in a job well done. When we sit back and take stock, if even for a moment, we realize that we are not those bad things we were told, but women gaining trust in who we are.



Carry on.

Free to be Me.

It is difficult for me to describe who and what I am. When confronted with that question I pause. Who am I?? What makes me me?? Even now words escape me, and as I try to round up the suitable ones to describe me, I can say with certainty what I am not.

I am not evil or cruel. I am not greedy, nor do I find satisfaction in the ill treatment of others. I am not complacent and will come to the aid of those that need me if at all possible. I am not rich and I do not try to present a false picture of myself to others. As I continue on, I would like to tell you some of the things that I am, try to be, and long to be.

I am and always have been and will be, a thinker, a dreamer, a seeker and speaker of the truth. I am the faithful lover of a stirring man, and together we are more than the sum of our parts. Our daughter is the product of a profound and sincere love, and I am not complete without him or her.

As a small child I was confused as to my gender. I wasn't sure if I was a girl turning into a boy, or a boy turning into a girl. When puberty struck, my confusion turned to panic. To relieve myself of the worries, I identified myself with a comic strip character, a hillbilly by the name of "Snuffy Smith". That was my picture of myself. I cannot tell you why. Perhaps because there was nothing explicitly sexual about him, an unattractive loudmouth that could not be told the difference between right and wrong. That was me, I was him.

Today, I identify myself with me. I am unlike anyone I know. It has taken quite some time for me to be free to be me. I am a reader of good books, a woman of little importance except to my family and small circle of friends. I am a mom who finds it difficult to watch her daughter grow up because one day I will have to let go. In time. I am a work in progress, still evolving, free to be me.