Marching to a different beat

I am by nature an introvert.  I tend to be an observer and can relate to the feeling of being on the periphery of a group of friends or family.   Before I started school, I was surrounded by loving family and believed that all mommies and daddies were deaf inside the house and hearing outside.  The reason for that is sign language was still stigmatized when I was a child in the ‘50s-60s-70s.  My parents didn’t sign in public, only using their voices with my brother, family members and me.

When I was in first grade, we moved to a neighborhood about 10 miles from most other family members.  Our neighbors on either side had children and I wanted to be friends with them.  One morning, I woke to chanting out my bedroom window.  I went outside to see what was going on and found these “friends” dancing atop a mound of peat moss my parents had delivered to our back yard.  They were chanting, “Cassie’s mother is deaf and dumb.”  I wasn’t sure why they were calling my mom dumb because she wasn’t.  I was hurt and angry, charging up the mound to push them all off.

I ran inside and found Mom in the kitchen.  I mouthed and acted out what happened, and her eyes began flashing with anger.  I wanted to know what “deaf and dumb” was.  Mom said it was an insult because she couldn’t hear.  That was news to me.

“Can you hear me now?” I asked, loudly, and she shook her head no.  Now I was really upset.  I shouted, “Can’t you hear me NOW?” She shook her head no over and over.  I was thunderstruck.  My parents weren’t like the neighbor kids’ parents at all.  Just as suddenly, I realized we were different.

I did eventually make friends with other kids in the neighborhood but I was more reserved than I ever had been.  I’d been burned and never played with those first friends again.  Sometimes the newer friends would invite me to their houses to play; I was reluctant to ask them to come to mine.  I didn’t want a repeat of those first new “friends”.

At 10, we moved to Baltimore.  People thought I was shy because I was very quiet.  My brother and I did play with kids in the neighborhood but we were always on tenterhooks because we were different.  Sometimes those kids would taunt us and say our parents were foreign spies because they “talked funny.”  It was a lonely feeling, not being a part of the group.

It wasn’t just my parents’ deafness that made me feel different.  It was as if being far from family removed my parents’ inhibitions.  They discovered a social club for the Deaf and that became their center.  The drinking and domestic violence began.  My brother and I didn’t want to have friends over.  I didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about what was happening in my family.  I already had co-dependent characteristics and they were aggravated and increased by the drinking and fighting.

As I maneuvered my way through school, I had a handful of friends.  We socialized by phone only after school.  I never fit in with a clique.  Fortunately, after a disastrous year in junior high, I managed to move up from the bullied loser caste level to a level where the mean kids just tolerated and left me alone.  I was just so relieved to be away from the cliques. 

I preferred to hang out in my bedroom with the door closed, reading or writing, and listening to Neil Diamond.  I enjoyed my privacy and definitely enjoyed being away from my battling parents.

As I got older, I learned about transcendentalism and was introduced, by a favorite English teacher, to writers like Emerson and Thoreau.  I found a quote that hit me where I lived and it became “mine”:

If a man does not
keep pace with
his companions,
perhaps it is
because he hears a
different drummer.
Let him step to
the music which
he hears, however
measured or
far away.  –Henry David Thoreau

This is me, I thought.  It was an early act of self-care that I took this quote and decided to wear it proudly as a shield against hurtful words and being left out. 

It wasn’t always easy to wear that shield, especially when it came to dealing with my parents and their issues.  All of my own were triggered often as I tried to be a “good girl” to control their drinking and stop them hitting each other.  Stress brought on panic attacks/depression and I would lose that shield I was wearing.  Sometimes I couldn’t find it again for long periods of time.  I told my parents I needed to see a psychiatrist, and they were horrified.  How embarrassing.

I got help once I got a full-time job with benefits.  Therapy was a little helpful in that I got medication to reduced my panic attacks and depression. It was 1974 and there wasn’t a lot of information about children growing up in dysfunctional homes.   It was in the early 1990s before I learned about 12 step meetings specifically about my experiences.  Later on, in the ‘90s, I found a therapist who had alcoholic parents.  I learned so much about why and how I felt such intense anger and anxiety.  Understanding why I felt as I did help me learn how to reshape my own responses to difficult situations.  It’s taken years but now I’m in a very comfortable place.

I know how to act like an extrovert and I can take that role if it’s necessary.  Most of the time, though, I am who I am and don’t feel a need to explain myself or feel left out of things or hurt.  I have a few good friends, my books, my music, my writing.  Most of all, I have a supportive and loving husband, and an awesome blended family, 3 of my own adult children, 2 of his, 8 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.  Life is good.  I am grateful.

I still march to that different beat.  I always will.

Estrangement From Parents

FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT

The last little bit about Mother’s Day this year has to do with an article I saw in a newsletter from The Mighty: “What Not To Say To Someone Who Is ‘No-Contact’ With An Abusive Parent.”

What struck me is some people said all of these to me during the years I was estranged from my parents.  I had good reason not to be in contact with them: they were toxic for me.

Childhood was trauma enough growing up with laissez-faire, dysfunctional alcoholic parents.  It didn’t help that they were also Deaf in those years before interpreters were mandated in certain settings.  I had responsibilities beyond my childhood years.  That wasn’t so traumatic; it just meant I “grew up” to life’s realities fast. 

My mother was the primary emotional and physical abuser when I was growing up.  She herself had been physically abused as a child and set apart because of her deafness.  She may or may not have been born with a mental illness as well – or it was entirely caused by having my grandfather bang her head against the wall.  Still, that didn’t help me when I was too small to understand.

Although my father was loving and supporting, when he and my mother got drinking our home turned into a battle scene.  She usually ended up getting the worst of it although she’d give as good as she got.  One night I called the police when they were both beaten and bloody.   The cops stopped the fight but one said to me in a condemning voice, “You don’t want me to arrest them, do you?”  He then suggested I go somewhere else if I was that upset.  Gee, thanks, officer.

After I married, I saw the family through my new husband’s eyes and, for the first time, I saw how “not normal” our home life was.  My husband ended up needing emergency cardiac surgery after our first baby was born.  I asked my parents to stay with our son while I went to the hospital.  They wondered why I needed to be there.  My husband would have nurses, wouldn’t he?  Mom went on to add that I was taking advantage of them.

That was the first time I went on no contact with them. 

Most people who knew the story were supportive. Some weren’t, including family members.

“You only have one set of parents.”  Yes, that’s right and I was an emotional wreck.  From my teen years, I had panic attack disorder and depression, not to mention suppressed rage.  I needed years of counseling and twelve step meetings to start recovering from all that.

“Families stick together.” I’d seen a lot of dysfunctional “sticking together” in my family.  It turns out that alcoholism ran rampant on one side of the family.  Cousins I’d believed had the ideal family life found out what was going on with mine and professed shock.  They suffered as children too, believing MY family was perfect. 

“Forgive and forget.”  In other words, keep submitting to the toxic behaviors because, after all, “blood is blood” and it doesn’t matter what it does to me.  The important thing is to maintain a happy face and go along for the ride.  Well, forgive and forget isn’t supposed to mean that.  Forgiveness means releasing the anger and hurt so it doesn’t eat up your soul.  Forget just means it’s not in the forefront of thoughts; it does not mean trust again.

After our third child was born, I was ready to see my parents again.  They were excited to be reunited with their grandchildren, which brings up another thing not to say.  “You’re being cruel by withholding their grandchildren.”  I felt I was protecting them as well as myself and brought them in when the children were 4, 3 and newborn.

I had to go on no-contact with them two years later because they terrified the kids.

The next no-contact ended when our son graduated high school in 2005.  They were elderly then but still the same people they’d been all my life.  The big difference was we all knew how to protect ourselves from it so gatherings were cordial but distant.

They are both gone now.  I used to mourn the parenting I never got and how I managed it was I allowed my inner child to guide me as a mother to my own children.  The cycle is broken in our family.

 

First Mother's Day

Yesterday I wrote about the conflicting feelings I had about Mother’s Day.  Until I married my late first husband, Rich, I believed I would never marry and never have children.  Those feelings were rooted in my childhood, witnessing my parents’ troubled marriage and emotional/physical abuse from my mother.  Until I met Rich, I avoided any steady relationships with a guy.

To my complete surprise, I found myself falling in love with and marrying Rich.  After a few months, I started to feel my “biological clock ticking.”  I was almost 31 when we married in 1985.  Although I worried about what kind of mother I’d be, I wanted a child that would be a part of Rich and me.

I was so regular with my periods that I knew immediately that I was pregnant.  We were overjoyed when that was confirmed by the obstetrician.  I liked the practice we went to because they had a midwife as well as doctors.  My projected due date was May 1, 1987. 

The most difficult part was giving up caffeinated coffee and smoking.  To support me, Rich also gave up smoking and we went through withdrawal together.  Quitting cold turkey was tough and I’m sure we were pretty miserable until the physical effects wore off.

My parents were thrilled: two grandchildren on the way!  My sister-in-law, Barbara, was also expecting and her due date was for late April.  My brother Pete and I were very excited about the whole thing.  He hadn’t anticipated being a father either.

There was one scare when I was in my first trimester.  I began bleeding and we were afraid I was having a miscarriage.  We were reassured by midwife Ellen.  Ellen performed the ultrasound on me and said the baby looked fine.  I looked at the screen to where she was pointing and saw a tiny blob.  The blob seemed to swell and then become small again.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Ellen replied, “That’s your baby’s heart beating.”

We were amazed and awed.  I am prochoice but at that moment I knew abortion would never be an option for me.

The next moment we anticipated was feeling the baby move.  As a first-time mom-to-be, I wasn’t sure the fluttering I felt from time to time was movement.  I wasn’t sure until the first time I could feel a definite kick with my hand.  Toward the last trimester, Rich enjoyed putting his hand on my belly to feel the kicks.  Once there was a definite foot pushing up.  It was awesome.

Our practice offered child birth classes.  They were so much fun!  We learned breathing and relaxation techniques as well as the birthing process.  Some women needed medication to help them through the contractions.  Medication did have an effect on the newborn, and we didn’t want that for our baby.  I was determined I could get by without them.  We practiced breathing/relaxing daily at home

There were two falls that scared us a bit.  The first one was in the winter of ’86-’87.  We were working the night shift for a market research company and went out late one night to an icy parking lot.  I skidded, slipped and fell hard before Rich could catch me.  The baby had been actively moving but abruptly stopped.  After hours of non-movement, we went back to Ellen and had another ultrasound.  During the procedure, the baby began to kick.  Ellen asked, “Do you want to know if you’re having a boy or a girl?”

We didn’t.  We wanted to be surprised.

The second fall occurred a day or so before our baby was born.  I was already late, very uncomfortable and eager to have the baby.  I went on daily walks to encourage the process.  As I started my usual morning walk, I lost my balance and fell to my knees.  Our mailman was just delivering letters and bills.  Horrified, he rushed over to me and helped me get up.  He escorted me back to our apartment and kept asking if he should call for help.

I assured him I was OK and limped into our apartment, heading for the bathroom.  There were holes in my pants at the knee and I could feel blood running from my knees.  The knees were scraped and bleeding but the wounds weren’t too deep.  After washing and bandaging my knees, I went out again for my walk.

A few blocks over, the mailman saw me and called out, “Why aren’t you resting?”

“Because I want my baby to be born!”

There was a baby pool at work, formed in March.  Employees contributed with their guesses about my due date.  Rich selected Mother’s Day, May 10.  I was horrified.  That was long past my due date and Ellen even figured I might be early.  No such luck.

May 1 came and went.  Our instructor at childbirth class explained that if a pregnancy advanced too long past the due date, the mother would have to be “induced” which would produce longer, more intense contractions.  Most moms-to-be would need a spinal to help them through the very painful contractions.  That was the last thing I wanted.

On May 9, I knew I was going to be induced soon and was worried.  After my walk, though, my water broke.  Thank goodness, I thought.  I called Rich, who was at work, and told him what happened.  He didn’t need to leave yet, though, because contractions hadn’t started yet. 

Ellen said doctors would say I should go to the ER right away.  She added her own advice: walk around to encourage the start of contractions.  However, if they hadn’t started by late afternoon, I should go to the ER to be induced.  Oh no!  I walked around the apartment until I tired.  Nothing.

Nothing was still going on when Rich came home after his shift.  Ellen insisted I needed to go to the hospital so off we went.  I didn’t want to be induced.  Ellen understood and we all continued to walk up and down the labor & delivery corridors for another hour.  At that point, though, one of the doctors from the practice said to stop; I’d need to go on the Pitocin.

Well, that was an experience.  The child birth instructor was absolutely correct in her mini lecture about Pitocin.  It hits all at once with intense contractions and little time between to recover.  I surely understand why women would opt for a spinal to ease the pain.  Were it not for Rich’s calm, constant presence I would’ve been asking for it and at one point, I did.  By then, I was too advanced for it to have any effect.

Our baby boy was born after 4 a.m. on Mother’s Day, May 10, 1987.  There was the complete bliss of holding our son for the first time.  We’d immediately agreed on a boy’s name:  William Richard, for Rich’s beloved grandfather and for himself.

Another reason to celebrate Billy being born on Mother’s Day: a lovely rose with every hospital meal that day.  Yet another reason: Rich won the baby pool.

Some years, Bill and I celebrate Mother’s Day and his birthday on the same Sunday again.  I tell everyone he is the best Mother’s Day gift ever!

 

Mother's Day, Then & Now

 Mother’s Day is complicated.  Since the birth of my first child in 1987, Mother’s Day have been joyful for me.  My son was born just before dawn on Mother’s Day of that year, and my husband and I celebrated becoming a nuclear family.  The following Mother’s Day I had the happy realization that I could stay home with Rich and little Billy.  I didn’t have to spend Mother’s Day with my mother.

I have conflicted feelings about that.  “Honor thy mother and thy father” is one of the ten commandments I learned about in church when I was a child on Long Island.  To me, that meant always obey and respect them.  My gifts to my mother then were simple: childish drawings with simple sentiments and sometimes I’d give her one of my treasured possessions.  I hoped these would make her happy.

I could never tell when Mom’s cheerful mood would turn dark, sour and sometimes violent.  I wanted to hide from her when she was like that and often took refuge at my Grandma’s house.  That just made her madder.  She would scream at me, her face seeming to swell to twice its size, eyes bulging, spit flying.  She would strike out at me as I backed away, my arms coming up to cover my face.  She terrified me.

When we moved to Maryland, I had just turned 10.  As I was trying to adjust to a completely different way of life, people with different accents and teachers that taught math in a way I’d never learned, my parents were discovering socializing at Baltimore’s club for the Deaf.  Soon it became a way of our weekend life.

On Long Island, my grandparents, aunts and uncles seemed to keep my parents on the straight and narrow.  They didn’t drink or gamble then.  When they became involved in the club, they were like a couple of kids at a fair.  Alcohol was their cotton candy and gambling was their games of chance. 

Drinking made Mom more unstable.  Weekends at home were unpleasant and sometimes scary.  My brother and I tried to stay out of Mom’s way.  Sometimes Dad became her target and I would hear them fighting from my locked bedroom.  Arguing Deaf people can be quite loud.  My parents would use their voices even though they couldn’t hear each other.  I could hear them, though, exclamations and curses that weren’t understandable.  Then there were the sounds of their hands coming together in angry signs.  Many times the sounds escalated to a sound even scarier: a hand on flesh.

When we were teens, my brother and I would try to intervene but it was impossible to stop them.  I took refuge in my room most of the time while he would run out of the house and disappear with his friends.  One time the fighting was so bad, we both ran to a neighbors’ house.  The couple took us in and we could all hear the fight through our connecting walls.  My brother and I kept our eyes cast down on the floor while the couple tried to comfort us.  Running to the couple was a breach of our dysfunctional family’s rules:  don’t tell anyone about our family.  We didn’t talk.

So, I don’t have clear memories of Mother’s Day once we moved to Baltimore.  I just remember dreading it and hoping the drinking wouldn’t lead to another fight.  The feeling of dread lingered with me until I moved back to Long Island in 1980.  Spending the day with Mom set my nerves on edge, trying to keep her pleased and content.  In those years, my brother absented himself on Mother’s Day.  Sometimes he would leave a bouquet of flowers outside the door.

When I moved back to Long Island, I felt relieved and guilty to be free of visiting Mom on Mother’s Day.  I was relieved because I was miserable and nervous when I was around her and guilty because I wasn’t “honoring” my mother.  After my grandmother passed away in 1980, I lived in her house and found her diary.  I learned some information that added to my guilt.

My mother had suffered physical abuse as a child from her father, my grandfather.  He was a cold, stern man who apparently had a terrible temper of his own.  My grandmother wrote that often my uncles would intervene and rescue her from my grandfather’s fists.  My mother wasn’t always so lucky.  My grandfather would get so angry with her, he’d knock her head against the wall.  I read that diary and felt sympathy and sadness for my mother.  How could my personal memories and this know knowledge be reconciled?

In 1985, I was back in the same cycle of Mother’s Day with Mom: my husband and I moved to Maryland after our wedding because we couldn’t afford life on Long Island any longer.  With a new awareness of why Mom was the way she was, I tried to be forgiving and kind.  It was hard.  It was still scary.  My parents still drank and fought.

It was very hard to “honor” my Mom and Dad. 

Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings were a blessing.  I learned there was really nothing I could say or do to change my parents.  That didn’t mean I had to continue visiting when Mom was in a “mood” or when they were fighting.

Through counseling, my therapist suggested that along with the alcohol abuse, Mom probably had had an undiagnosed mental illness and had never been treated.  She suggested it could’ve been borderline personality disorder because of Mom’s extreme emotional outbursts and suicide attempts (that’s another long story).  It could very well be.

Mom passed away a few years ago.  Before she died, we’d chat through relay on Mother’s Day.  That was “honor” enough.  Having my own children helped me learn that Mother’s Day was something to be celebrated with joy and not fear or tension.

 

 

Broken Leg

 I don't know why or how these memories just pop up.  This happened in the beginning of summer, 1964.  I was 9 that day.

When I was little, I lived with my family on Long Island.  We lived on the South Shore, not far from the Great South Bay.  We were surrounded by family members, and Grandma’s house was in walking distance.

Grandma was my safe place to fall.  I could feel her love wrap me up like a warm blanket.  Sometimes we would go with Grandpa further east to pick berries which seemed to grow everywhere.  Most of the time, Grandma and I spent quiet times together, watching the birds from the kitchen window, playing a board game, watching TV or just talking.  I loved to help her snap green beans and peas.

One early summer’s day, Grandma agreed to come with us to an outing on Fire Island.  Getting there was fun; we had to first drive over the Captree Bridge to get to some of the barrier islands in the bay.  From Captree, we’d take a ferry over to Fire Island.  I loved the ferry ride any time we went.  It was such a pleasant trip and the salty South Shore breeze was always refreshing.  This day, I had my Grandma with me.

As we crossed the bay to Fire Island, we could see the new Robert Moses bridge in the distance.  It was set to open to traffic later that month.  My parents were excited to have it open because then they could just drive over the bridge to Fire Island.  I wasn’t so thrilled.  I would miss the ferry rides.

From the ferry, we hauled our beach stuff between us and walked some distance to a spot not too far from the water.  My brother and I were fairly dancing with excitement.  We weren’t experienced swimmers yet so we would only wade in the waves and splash each other.  We had a game of running toward the water and then running back up the beach, a breaking wave chasing us.

I was aware of Grandma coming onto the packed sand to join us.  Mom was there as well, pointing to Grandma’s heavy black shoes, shaking her head “no” and then pointing back to the blanket.  “I just want to see,” Grandma said slowly, mouthing her words carefully.

Just then, a larger wave approached, broke and began rushing toward us.  My brother and I ran past Grandma, laughing as we escaped the wave.  Then we turned to go back and our laughter stopped.

Grandma was sitting on the sand.  “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, shocked. “Just look at my leg.”

I looked and my stomach flipped over.  Her leg was bent to one side and it looked like some alien egg shaped thing was coming out of her shin, just below the knee.  Mom was running toward the lifeguard, yelling in her Deaf voice “Help, help!”

The lifeguard wasn’t too far away, and I saw him look at Mom with a puzzled expression.  He doesn’t understand, I realized, and so I began running toward him too.  “Help my Grandma!” I shouted, and he jumped down from his high perch.

He ran past us and knelt at Grandma’s side.  Dad was already there with my weeping brother.  As Mom and I approached, the lifeguard stood up and began signaling with his arms.  Dad and Mom helped Grandma sit up without moving her legs.  “What have I done?” Grandma was saying to herself.

I was terrified.  What was that stuff popping out of Grandma’s leg?  It looked like a piece of uncooked chicken now that I was closer.  Tears filled my eyes too.  Grandma didn’t seem to be hurting but she couldn’t get up and walk, and she was saying the same things over and over.  “Just look at my leg.  What have I done?”

Other lifeguards came running down carrying a stretcher.  There were four lifeguards there now, and one examined Grandma’s leg.  He said to the others, “Compound fracture.  We need to get her to the hospital.”

He then said to my parents, “I need one of you to go in the ambulance.”

My parents looked at him blankly.

I mouthed slowly, “Grandma to hospital.  You or you go with.”

Mom was shaking her head, saying “I can’t talk.”

My father said, “I’ll go with mother-in-law.”  His speech had more clarity than Mom’s did.  He began signing swiftly to Mom.  She nodded and answered, and I could see her hands shaking.

Two of the lifeguards got Grandma onto the stretcher.  She looked small and helpless as they carried her away, still mumbling to herself.  Dad followed after them.

The other two helped Mom pack up all our stuff and carry it back to the ferry.  Mom’s face was white as chalk and my brother was still crying.  Once we got onto the ferry, I tapped Mom’s arm.  She’d been standing at the railing, staring at the unopened bridge.

“Where is Grandma?” I wanted to know.

Mom pointed then.  “Look.” My brother and I watched a white vehicle crawling slowly across the bridge, still closed to the public.  I was awestruck for a moment.  Grandma and Dad were the first townspeople to go over the new bridge.

Mom’s hands were still shaking a little when we finally struggled with everything back to the car at Captree.  I wondered if we would go to the hospital now but Mom had begun driving and I didn’t want to distract her.  I was surprised when she went to my aunt and uncle’s house just on the other side of the Robert Moses Causeway.

My Uncle John and Aunt Joyce were home and Mom virtually collapsed in their arms.  They went to the kitchen and began writing to each other.  Mom always had trouble lipreading her brother because, she said, his lips barely moved.  Aunt Joyce was easier to understand but it was just easier for everyone to write.

My cousins Laura and Matthew were both younger than my brother and me.  Laura was 4 and old enough to know something was up.  My brother and I, 6 and 8 respectively, grew in stature because we knew something our cousins didn’t.  “Our Grandma broke her leg at the beach,” I said importantly, like a newscaster.  “She and our Daddy went over the bridge in an ambulance.”  Laura and Matthew were wide-eyed as we told the whole story, except for the part about the raw chicken thing.

Uncle John left to go to the hospital.  Mom stayed in the kitchen with Aunt Joyce, who was helping her calm down.  They drank tea and the color began to come back to Mom’s face.  After regaling Laura and Matt with our tale, the four of us trooped out to the backyard to play.

After what seemed like hours and hours, Uncle John and Dad returned.  They both looked very tired.  Dad signed to Mom and Uncle John talked to Aunt Joyce.  Grandma had had a bad compound fracture and that was bone and some tissue that popped out of her leg.  The doctors fixed her up and put her leg in a cast.  She would have to stay in the hospital, and when she came home she would need round the clock care.

I didn’t know it but that was the spark that lit the fire and feud between Mom and her sister, my Aunt Betty.  That’s another story.