Looking up my Past

 I wonder how my parents saw the parties and goofing around that they did?  Were they just too inebriated to understand what they were doing?  My father went along with things, but my mother seemed out of it completely.  She had a deep need to be liked, and she wanted that liking to take the form of being enamored of her.  Her stock in trade was being attractive, and it didn’t take much for her to be plowed under.  I saw it as revolting, and my mother thought she was being the most attractive woman in the room.  I also think she didn’t care, when she was looped, about what was proper or not.  After all, she had grown up on a farm, was out on her own at 15, had lost the love of her life in her teens. The price she paid was being attractive to men.  She just floated around men looking for someone who would take care of her.  And my father did.  He was a lost soul as well but determined to make good.  And after the war he did.  My mother went along for the ride, but the price was steep.  They didn’t know what they were doing, but they did well, as so many people did after the war.  My father worked for Lee Jeans, and learned the business, and my mother raised me and my brother beautifully.  When Lee sent him to Alabama to turn around the plant, he was so proud, and he did.  But he did not get his $10,000 a year, and that meant that Levi’s took him away and he went to California.  My mother was happy with that, and when we were sent to Virginia, even more happy, because Virginia was the kind of place she came from, but now she was important.  She didn’t use a maid and did all her work herself, and still had the prettiest house in town.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking up my Past

  My Mother’s mother was so busy that I never really Knew her well, but I do remember the farm and watching her kill chickens and that she never raised her voice.     She died of melanoma when I was twelve, and I remember her in the hospital and holding her hand.     That time with her was a great gift to me and I’ll always remember it. But Today I want to talk about my father’s parents, who were very important as well, especially when I was a kid but also, they lived until my early twenties, and late twenties in my mother’s case.  The first five years, when I lived in Kansas City, my grandparents took care of my brother and I many times.  My grandparents had a small white framed house outside of Sedalia, Missouri, and It was rural then.  There were neighbors up the road, and sometimes we visited them.  We went nowhere with them, just played outside and inside the house.  My grandma had little things for us to pl...
Read more

Looking up my Past

  I remember my father’s first mentor at Levi’s.     it was Milton Grenbaum, and he was a sweet guy.     We all saw him a couple of times a year.     He was so friendly and so kind.     We didn’t like going there, but we knew it was an obligation we could not shirk.   My father got a lot of information from Milton, and he never forgot his advice.  If we were there, we had to eat frogs’ legs or Snails or whatever was on the menu.  I hated it all, but I think Gary grew up to love all that stuff.  I knew we were beholden to him and his wife.  What made Dad so attractive to my friend?  They may have had a deep understanding of each other.  I know my mother never questioned it.  My father needed mentoring, and he learned at the knee of Mr. Grenbaum.  What I missed, not knowing him better?  I’ll never know, because he never told.  But it was Importan...
Read more

Looking up my past

  I realized that my tenure as a member of an advisory board for Berkeley was perhaps too soon.     I let myself ease out of the position after a year.     I really didn’t want to be overly connected to safehouses anymore.     As I was finishing my book, I became enamored of a new topic:     Writing letters back to my young self about my situation in Fiji.   My editor was crazy about it, but later, I learned she had told her partner and the next two books her partner wrote encouraged my plan, and my idea was made irrelevant.     That’s how my editor paid me back.   I threw myself into more parental roles as a friend of the libraries and helping the School Board with art.  As a result, they encouraged me to apply for the role as art teacher for Jessi’s kindergarten class.  The next year, Emerson Elementary School made me the art teacher for the entire school.   I was supposed to teach for ...
Read more