phoebesonceuponatime

[phoebesonceuponatime]

the end of innocence

What I know of my parents splitting up is in bits and pieces and I will get to some of that later. I do remember vividly though living with our new stepmother. I went from a  childhood that was creative and nurturing and fun to one that was terrible and  claustrophobic and scary overnight. 

My brothers and I were moved in with this strange new woman and her two strange children  abruptly and with no explanation. Suddenly our mother was gone and we were adrift. We were told all kinds of awful things about our mother, how she was unfit and that she didn't want us and that we couldn't be with her.

I was forced to share a bed and to share showers with this new stepsister that I had never met. We had to eat all of our vegetables at dinner and weren't allowed to leave the table until our plates were cleaned. This rule was enforced so strictly that if we had somewhere to be after dinner and one of us hadn't finished our vegetables we had to bring them with us in a dixie cup to eat until they were gone. We were sent to after school programs during the school year and to day camps during the summer. Gone were the days of art projects and baking cookies and lazy afternoons spent in the sunshine. My father had wanted to take us from our mother and make us live with this evil stepmother but as it turns out he didn't have time for us. Our physical needs were met but that was about it.

My youngest brother was three when this move happened and was a bed wetter. Our new stepmother made him strip the sheets of his bed and carry them down two stories to the washing machine in the basement. He and my second to youngest brother were also hit with belt buckles and hair brushes when they misbehaved. 

We were finally allowed to have a dog (we had had so many pets before) but he was kept tied up in the yard and was never allowed in the house. Finally the dog went to live with the handy man which was sad for us but a blessing for the dog. I'll never forget that poor dog. He was an Irish Setter mix and was solid black and his name was Pepper. I hope he had a nice long life with the handyman.

[phoebesonceuponatime]

[phoebesonceuponatime]

[phoebesonceuponatime]

[phoebesonceuponatime]

I remember

Looking back I know that it wasn't all peaches & cream. My father wasn't around much. I don't know where he was but I don't remember much of him from when I was little. I do remember being chased by a goose once. And being chased by a swan. And climbing up on the kitchen counter in the middle of the night to get cereal or cookies or some kind of midnight snack. I remember walking through a park with my mother and two of my brothers for ice cream. 

I remember that my father had a friend that used to sing a song about a purple cow and I remember being envious that my cousins got baptized in a church and got to have godparents so my father and another friend of his poured some beer on my head and claimed that friend as my godfather. Baptized by beer.

I remember listening to records in the living room...the Beatles mostly is what I liked, the Sgt Peppers album but I remember hearing Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones and going to the bluegrass festival and seeing Bill Monroe play.

I remember my father leaving at some point and living in an apartment downtown. All of the time lines are screwy in my head but around that time he took us away from our mother and we went to live with him and another woman and her kids. That was the beginning of the end of my happy childhood.

[phoebesonceuponatime]

Little bitty me.

[phoebesonceuponatime]

once upon a time...

I had two parents. Life was good. Soon after I came along three brothers followed in succession, one by one. My parents were young when I was born, both just twenty two, and were lacking in decent parenting skills. Yet they made up for that in other ways. Mine was an unconventional yet happy childhood. At least until I turned nine.

They met in Vista. Sort of an American Peace Corps. My mother was from California, descended from an old New England family. My father was from Kentucky, the product of a Southern Baptist upbringing and was promised (some thought) to another.

They were young and they were in love and they were full of hope and dreams for the future. My mother must've been unlike anyone that my father had ever met before. She was creative and unconventional and catholic. He must've caught her eye as well. He was handsome and charming and self assured. They were doomed. On their wedding day, an informal affair, my mother tells a story of a gypsy running down a hillside towards her and pleading "don't do it!". But she did. They married.

They loved one another so much that she chose to face her grandfathers wrath and was disinherited from his will and cast aside. Sadly he died soon after and they were never able to make amends. He loved her so much that he was able to stand up to his lioness of a mother to marry a catholic and to leave behind the girl at home, the one that everyone thought he would return to.

They did good deeds with Vista for a little while and then returned to settle down in Kentucky to prepare for my arrival. They moved around a few times, my father taking up photography and getting jobs with different newspapers in different states. My brothers arrived in Ohio, Indiana and then back in Kentucky again where we finally settled down as a family when I was five. 

My childhood memories are good ones. We had dogs and cats, we had rabbits and chickens. We made chocolate chip cookies and did alot of art projects and took trips to the zoo. My mother made sure that we were introduced to the museum, the ballet, the theatre. We went to the cemetery and wandered through the graves and fed the ducks and the geese and the swans at the lake there. We played on the screened in porch and napped in the hammock hung in the dappled sunlight. We lived in a house with walls painted blue and purple, clouds on the ceilings and rainbows around the doorways.  This was all my mothers doing, this magical childhood. Sadly my brothers were younger and their memories of this magic are gone. But I remember.