Consider the Heart Before You Beat it Up

"He just irritates me sometimes," she said, while eating lunch with me and another co-worker in the lunchroom at Thomson Multimedia.  It was January 2000, right after all of the computers in the world crashed.  Remember that?  Anyway (or is it anyways), the three of us were discussing Suze's significant other. Suze had been married for twenty-five years and she still loved her husband, but he did things that bugged her. He walked like a duck, made little smacking noises when he ate, and talked through his nose, just to name a few irritants.

After working for Thomson (formerly known as RCA), almost thirty years, I had lots of office friendships that ended at 5:00 o'clock every day and picked back up at 8:00 the next morning.  Suze was one of those friends.  Always positive, very intelligent, good conversationalist, easy laugh, and sweet.  Suze was so sweet.  Except, that is, when it came to her significant other.  "He's a wonderful man; he adores me, yet I'm so hard on him," she continued during our lunch hour, "but I can't help myself.  I can be so mean, and he never says anything.  He just takes it."

Thirteen years have passed since that conversation with Suze, who is still married to her wonderful, yet irritating husband.  So many times over the years I've wondered why.  Why is Suze, a sweet woman to everyone else, so mean to the man who adores her? Why does her husband allow her to treat him so disrespectfully?  Why has this dynamic lasted so long without Suze realizing the harm she is doing to her husband and her marriage? Why are so many people just like Suze? Why is Suze's disrespectful behavior toward her husband so common in up-close and personal relationships?

CONSIDER THE HEART BEFORE YOU BEAT IT UP

When my younger sister Lynnette moved in with me when she was eighteen, I had expectations.

1. When the pile of clothes on the floor reaches 5',
     it's time to put them away.

2. When the sink, stove, and countertops are full of
    dirty dishes, it's time to wash them.

3.  Don't leave the door wide open when leaving the house.

4.  Never stuff food down the sofa cushions.

5.  When the tub turns black, it's time to clean it.

6.  Don't hit other cars when backing out of the driveway.

There were other expectations, but the above were created out of frustration, irritation, and anger.   One would assume that one would look before backing up and hitting the car behind it, but, maybe not at eighteen or seventy-one for that matter.

It was during the short time that Lynnette lived with me (I moved out soon after she moved in) when I realized my not-so-nice scoldings and occasional verbal abuse sprinkled with naughty words were unwarranted.  She was young and naive and just out of childhood.  It occurred to me that her behavior was not devious or mean-spirited or intended to hurt me. She was a wonderful young woman who adored me. I realized then that before I got mad and took my frustrations and anger out on my loved ones, I should consider their heart. Why did I think I had the right to disrespect others?  It's a message I wanted to share with my office friend, Suze, but I was afraid she would consider me an up-close and personal friend and yell at me.  So I'm telling you.

What Happens in Childhood, Stays in Adulthood

Tom and I recently watched a series of documentary films called The Up Series.  In 1964, fourteen seven-year-old British children, ranging from rich to poor, were selected for this series.  As young school children, they were asked questions that had to do with their opinions about life in general, their dreams, ambitions, and how they thought their lives would turn out. Every seven years the film crew returns to see where they are now.

"Give me a child until they are seven, and I will give you the man," is a Jesuit motto that director Michael Apted has repeated in every one of the seven films we've seen so far.  The eighth film called 56 Up is due to air soon.

There has been a lot of controversy about the series. Some believe the producers and director of The Up Series were using these people for monetary gain without considering the consequences of exposing them to public scrutiny and critique.  Regardless of their motives, I find the series fascinating.  It doesn't explain the whys, but it does give credibility to the Jesuit motto:  "What happens in childhood, stays in adulthood."  But I want to know and understand the "whys."

Why do we do what we do?  Why are some of us (like Tom, for example) so fundamentally stable, and why are others (like me) missing a few pebbles from their cornerstone?   After six decades,  I'm leaning a little to the right, but I look fine from the street, and my curb appeal, for my age, is acceptable, but it's those dang missing pieces that sometimes make my foundation shake, rattle and roll, and that can be worrisome, especially to a friend of mine, who thinks I should mix a little cement with Prosac and stuff it in the cracks.

It's not my fault, I tell you!  I wasn't the contractor of me.  Someone else built me. But they're not to blame, either.  Contractors are not perfect; they are human and to be human is to err.  Just ask any contractor, and they will tell you they do the best they can with the tools they have.  So. Missing a few pebbles?  No big deal!  Just add a little Prosac to the cement and stuff it in the cracks.

I'm only missing a couple of pebbles.  Not that many, really.  It's not that bad.  No, really it isn't.  From a distance, I look perfectly fine.

Love Without Conditions

Hazel wasn't happy.  I can still see her standing at the door crying as he backed his truck out of the long driveway on Rawles Avenue.  I was twelve but I'll never forget that disturbing scene of a strong, always-in-control woman crying, consumed by sorrow.  I was in the truck sitting on my sister Judy's lap.  Mother sat next to the driver, her new husband. All eyes were focused on the door.  Hazel fell to her knees and buried her head in her hands, her body heaving with sobs.  The truck continued slowly down the drive, backed out on to the street, and then drove away and out of Hazel's life forever.

He came to Indianapolis from the foothills of West Virginia.  At first it was difficult due to his backwoods "Aw, shucks" demeanor and native-American heritage.  Some folks confused him for black, and for no reason other than his looks, disliked and harassed him.  But he stayed until he found work in a local factory, joined a church, and eventually met and fell in love with Harriett Louise.

I was happy.  A new dad, a content mother (in the beginning, anyway), a house in the suburbs with my own bedroom, and a few years later, a little sister, Lynnette.

He had a great laugh.  I can still hear it so clearly, and he's been gone almost sixteen years.  When I take the time to reminisce about the forty years I knew him,  I slide back into that uncomplicated, comfortable, and safe space that he brought with him when he married my mother.

With him, there was no pretend.  No fake social bla, bla, blabber to win others over or insincere compliments to get people to like him.  There was no pride, bragging, or self-promotion.  He was a down-home country boy who didn't wear shoes until he went to school, and those had been passed down from an older brother and were full of holes,  but "I never allowed I was poor," he'd say.

With him, it was unconditional love directed right smack at me.  I'm pretty sure I was loved before 1957, but for a plethora of reasons--busyness, challenges, struggles of daily life, depression, fill in the blank--the words were never spoken.   If I'd had the ability to reason like an adult back then--which I didn't--I could have logically analyzed the environment in which I lived and come to a conclusion on my own.  "Well, of course I'm loved.  It's implied. I don't need to hear the words to know it's true." 

He focused on me; he made time for me.  He laughed at all my silly antics and childish jokes. He thought I was funny.  There was so much he wanted to teach me, he said.  He was the first person to tell me I was smart. Really? Me? Smart?  He didn't want me to make the same mistakes that he had made.

There was a simplicity to him that I haven't found in any other human being. He wasn't a Forrest Gump, but close.  His words and actions were, always, always, always, directly from the heart.  From 1957 to 1997,  this man whom I proudly called "Dad" adored and loved me and never failed to let me know it.

It took him eleven days to die after they told us there was nothing more they could do for him and unhooked life support.  He laid in a hospital bed in Community Hospital North unable to move.  They said he was in a coma, but we talked to him anyway as if he could still hear us.  Two days before he passed away, I spent the night on a cot in his room.  I wanted to have time with him alone, just the two of us before he was gone forever.  About two o'clock in the morning, he sat up in bed and said, "Please don't worry about me, Hon. I'm okay. I love you."  When I turned over in disbelief--he was in a coma and could not move--he was lying on his back with his eyes closed.  "I love you too, Dad," I said as I reached out to touch his unresponsive hand.  The next night Lynnette spent the night on the same cot in his room.  In the middle of the night she said he sat up in bed and reassured her that all was well.  The next day he passed away.  I will forever miss him, this man who loved me without conditions.

A Puddle of Pee

Three houses down from my former friend, Margaret, lived my accusers.  When I first moved to Rawles Avenue in Irvington I was nine with an innocence and naivete that allowed me to believe that everyone should like me.  What was not to like?  I was a good and nice little girl.  Even Hazel, the self-appointed head of our family, liked me a good bit of the time.   It was during those times when I behaved like a child (say, a nine-year-old) that got me in trouble with the boss.  But seven houses down the street, I was trouble; I was a very bad little girl.

"There she is!  Get her!" a girl about my age yelled over the chain-linked fence.  She was standing with an older girl and a man in their backyard.  Huh?  I was just walking down the street with my hands in my pockets.  What had I done?  I was used to angry accusations of wrongdoing at home, but these were strangers.  The girls pointed to me and the man started walking aggressively in my direction. "Stop right there!" he yelled.   I couldn't move; I was paralyzed. The girls joined the man on the sidewalk, and all three demanded I give it back.  I stood dumbfounded, saying nothing as they continued to yell at me.  I had no idea what they were talking about, yet I believed their anger at me was justified.  I was guilty. But guilty of what?  What had I done this time?

There is some debate at what age children can use mental reasoning to decipher their environment, apply logic to it, and then discuss it with intelligence and maturity.   Some say the age is seven.  Others say younger, but most agree it's no older than nine.  Not so in my case.   As I was standing alone on the sidewalk seven houses from home, surrounded by three screaming strangers, I was unable to discern fact from fiction.  In fact, they convinced me I had it--whatever it was.  Maybe I did have it.  The day before, when I walked past their house, possibly I saw it on the sidewalk, and I thought it belonged to no one so I took it.  I was confused.  I couldn't remember.

"You, young lady, are a very bad little girl!" The man said.  "Give it back right this minute or I will call the police!"  I began to tremble at the thought of going to jail.  I wet myself and started to cry, but I couldn't find the words to defend myself.  This adult, a person of power and authority, said I was bad, so therefore, it must be true.  I'd been on the losing end of false accusations many times under the tutelage of Hazel, so I knew my chances of proving myself innocent were not good.  I was being accused of stealing it by three angry neighbors, and I didn't even know what it was.  To make matters worse, once Hazel found out I wet myself, I would suffer the switch.

"I found it!"  A small child yelled from behind the chain-linked fence.  He was holding something in his hand and waving it back and forth.  "I found the turtle, guys! It was right here all along."  Suddenly, I was all alone on the sidewalk standing over a puddle of pee.  Oh, boy!  Was Hazel gonna be mad.

Sex with Ed Sullivan

Warning: This post contains sexual content, so if you're a child reading this, and your parents haven't told you the story about the plug and the electrical outlet yet, turn away. It's gonna get naughty.

Once upon a time oh so long ago, when I was living on the farm with my first husband, J.J., his every-other-weekend daughters, six-year-old Amy and eight-year-old Stacia, and our son, Jason, I took it upon myself to tell my step-daughters how babies are made.  Well, I thought they should know, and I didn't want to tell them the silly stork story like my mother had told me, or have them learn the hard way like I had, so I searched the house for the perfect tools to use in my "show and tell" sex education class.

"Come here, girls.  I have something I want to show you," I said as they ran screaming by me and jumped on the waterbed that filled the front room of our old farmhouse.  Their seventeen-month-old monster brother was chasing after them growling like a fierce bear cub.

"Girls!  Got something interesting to show you,"  I said again.  They ignored me and jumped off the bed, still screaming.  Jason fell on top of them.  Then all three took off running toward the kitchen.

"IT'S ABOUT HOW BABIES ARE MADE!" I yelled after them.  Three seconds later the girls were sitting next to me, one on each side.  Jason was still a big bad bear, but they didn't care and ignored him.

BACK TO 1957

By the time I was twelve I knew Mother had lied about the flying bird delivering babies in a sling.  Well, come on now. Really?  That makes no sense.  I was pretty sure that the woman's belly button opened up and out plopped the baby.  I suspected there was a man involved in the making of a baby, but I had no idea what part he played.  I knew his part did not involve seeing a woman naked, though, because in our house of four females, our bodies had to be covered at all times.  Being naked in front of another person, even a family member of the same gender, was a very bad thing.  It was a sin that could possibly send the offender to H E double L.

A few years before, when I was nine, Hazel had moved us to Irvington, a community of modest single-family homes six miles east of Monument Circle, and within a few weeks, Judy and I had become friends with Margaret, a girl who lived four houses away.  Her mother had told us that she had a seventeen-year-old body, but her mind was closer to my age.  Margaret and I became close friends and we spent a lot of time together at her house playing checkers and watching television from her big four poster bed.

One Sunday night, while Margaret was beating me at checkers, she informed me that a friend would be joining us later to watch The Ed Sullivan Show, so when twenty-something Howie showed up at her bedroom door, I was uncomfortable but not sure why.  Her mother seemed to think it was okay for Howie to share the bed with us while we watched television, so I figured my uneasiness was unwarranted.

While Margaret and Howie propped up pillows and leaned back against the headboard, I took my pillow and moved to the foot of the bed with my back to them.  When they started giggling, I wondered what they found so funny about the commercial.  Then the lights went out.  Loud slurpy lip-smacking noises followed.  "Oh, my goodness! What is that? Is that kissing?"  I laid perfectly still, paralyzed.  I felt the bed start to move. Then Margaret was leaning over me.  I closed my left eye, the only one she could see from her angle.   "It's okay, Howie," she said.  "She's asleep."  But I was very much awake.

Remember the part about me not knowing how babies were made? Neither did Margaret and Howie.  (I found out later that Howie's body was in its twenties, but his mind was younger than mine.)  So now there were three of us on the four poster bed who had no clue what to do.  Two trying desperately to figure it out; one trying to figure out how to escape the nasty naughty that was consuming the room.

I yawned and stretched to make them think I was waking up, but in the heat of the moment, they didn't notice.  Since I was asleep, they felt it would be okay to use every inch of the bedroom to get the job done.  Then they are between me and Ed Sullivan.  Oh yuck!  Two naked bodies saying things like, "I can't find it," and "Where does this go?"  I'm not making this up.  This really happened.

The next day my mother called Margaret's mother, and Margaret and I never saw each other again.  No more checkers, no more television in bed, no more sex with Ed Sullivan.

RETURN TO 1982

In one hand I was holding an electrical plug.  "This is the male," I said while Jason began smacking Amy and Stacia on the back of their heads with a Tonka truck.  "And this," I said while pointing to the outlet, "is the female."  I put the plug into the outlet and said, "And that is how babies are made."  

"Oh, okay." They said.  Then they were gone; chasing their baby brother through the house.  I thought I was saving them from the trauma of finding out about the nasty naughty on their own.  I thought they would thank me later.  They never did.

The Broken Me

It was a screaming contest between the three of us.  My eleven-year-old sister, Judy, had a good solid scream, but her friend Esther's was incredible; it was a beautiful high-pitched, piercing shrill that she could hold steady for twenty seconds or more. My scream sounded like a chicken giving birth to a breech egg.  Esther won.

I was eight and starting to take note of things I could not do well or not do at all.  Screaming was out.  So were whistling, singing, snapping my fingers, skipping rope, and throwing a ball. I also couldn't read like the rest of my classmates, and they were fast to single me out as different. When it came time for picking teammates, I was generally the last one standing. Concentration was difficult for me as well as sitting still or staying clean or keeping on task or following the rules.  A mix of these things in concert throughout each day kept me in a constant state of feeling broken.

What a difference a few chromosomes make.  Judy--same mother, same father--was the model child that Mother had prayed for.   She was pretty, smart, obedient, conforming, demure, and sweet.  I was an unattractive child who challenged the rules, found different means to justify the end, and was demur (demure without the "e").  But I was sweet.  Still am.  Just ask Tom.

Judy is seventy now and is still making Mother proud (me too).  I still can't scream or whistle or sing or snap my fingers or skip rope or throw a ball, and that's okay because it was that mix of things (and many more) in concert throughout my life that kept me always working that much harder to fix the broken me.  In 1953 no teacher excused me for not being able to read because I had a learning disability.  No one in my family appeared to notice.  It was very hard, but I fixed the problem myself. (Just sayin'...not making any politically-incorrect statement here.)

So, have I fixed most of those things that keep me in a constant state of feeling broken?  Nah!  But I'm sweet.   No, really I am.

The Love of Skunk

Skunk is one of my favorite smells.  It's right up there with coffee, baking sweets of any kind, freshly-mowed grass, old musty antique shops, and Maggie Mae's wonderful "doggy stink."  The love of skunk began oh so long ago, when I was just a little stinker myself.  

In the summer of my seventh year, my mother's roommate, Hazel, (I guess she was my roommate, too) took my mother, my sister, Judy, and me to visit her family on Spooner Lake in Wisconsin.  There were no interstates in 1952, just two-lane back roads through small towns and big cities all the way to the lake.  Until Hazel, I had never been more than three miles in any direction away from Monument Circle, the epicenter of Indianapolis, so going on a trip that would take two whole days in a car was beyond anything I could ever imagine.  I had a difficult time containing my enthusiasm. For weeks before we left, I was what Hazel called "a handful."

A Handful

Someone, generally a child, who is

 chock-a-block with excitement and energy; is
 in perpetual motion, who never, ever shuts up,
and tends to drive someone, generally an adult,
C-R-A-Z-Y!

                                              --Wikidikipedia

Hazel had met my mother in church and after a short friendship, she thought it would be a good idea if we all moved in together.  No one asked me what I thought about the new living arrangements, but at the time I was five and still carrying my "stinky blankey" everywhere I went, sucking my thumb--I finally stopped at twelve, which explains the buck teeth--and wetting the bed.  I definitely had an opinion, but no one could understand me through my tears, my thumb stuck in my mouth, and my blankey wrapped around my head.  Well, I was five.  What do you expect?

The new leader of our home, a self-proclaimed old maid, would have been an excellent matron at a girls' boarding school. Strict, no-nonsense, and great at keeping everyone in line.  She was a bit hefty, always wore dark-colored, mid-calf dresses with clunky shoes, and her hair was tight curls close to the scalp.  She wasn't particularly fond of children, which didn't bode well for me.  My sister, Judy, loved Hazel but she has always been a suck-up.  Just kidding, Judy.  No, really I am.

My most favorite memories from my childhood are the two trips we made to Spooner Lake when I was seven and eight.  Hazel was on vacation from work, and during our two weeks away from home, she forgot she was the boss of me.  I was free to be a kid.  I had permission to be a handful. She even let me love on her.  It was only four weeks total of my childhood, yet those were the "good times" that I remember.  

All the way up to Spooner and all the way back to 16th and Broadway, skunk after skunk crossed the road without looking both ways.  So, why did the skunk cross the road?  To get some lovin' on the other side.  Makes sense to me.