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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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11:22 a.m. - 2005-08-20
I learned something important very early on in my life. I learned if it came to a choice between my well-being and my mother's convenience, her convenience came first. Always. Moreover, I learned my mother would not defend me from those who would do me harm. Ever. How old was I when I learned my needs were secondary and that I was on my own in the big bad world? I was 2 years old. My little sister was born ill. She had blood problems, Rh factor and something to do with her hemoglobin. Frantic transfusions, 5 of them before she was a day old. Medical drama surrounded my sister for many years after that. Between crises she was healthy, but when she got sick she did it big time. But at the first there was the blood thing. I wasn't trouble in the usual sense, even as a toddler I was docile. No climbing, no wandering. But I talked. A lot. My mother swore I started talking in complete sentences at 9 months. And that I didn't even try to walk until I was 14 months old. So she had this sick infant and me, the loquacious lump. I could read by then too and remember sitting in my rocking chair reading Little Golden books over and over. I realize now that a reading 2 year old with a verbal ability on par with Eric Severeid's was an amazing and wonderful thing, but at my house my constant chatter and pleading for books was considered pure pain-in-the-butt and something akin to shameful. For God's sake, did I have to be so WEIRD? And would I shut up already? Who had time for such a chatterbox? Not my folks, that's for sure. Then along came my sickly sister and to the nursery school I went. Well, it was called a nursery school, the term 'day care' hadn't been invented yet. My da dumped me off there in the very early morning on his way to work and picked me up again at dinner time. The 'nursery school' was in an old farmhouse. The woman who ran the place was very old, and as I came to find out, very free with her hands. Me and my fellow inmates spent the majority of the day lying on old Army surplus cots. This wasn't the hardship for me that it was for the other kids. I could be still, especially if I was in the room with the sheets of newspaper glued to the walls. I didn't know who JFK and Castro were, but I read about them. I was probably the only 2 year old in the world with a working knowledge of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'd lie there ruminating about the Bay of Pigs while the other kids wriggled and fretted. One boy in particular used to cry and cry. After getting up once too often and getting beaten for it, the old woman tied him to the cot. I got my share of beatings too. The only thing we were ever fed at nursery school was creamed corn. Served cold, right out of the can. When I objected to this gelatinous fare the old lady used the belt. Across my back. When she asked about the welts I told my mother what had happened. Right now if I close my eyes I can see my mother. Standing rigid next to the tub where I sat in a froth of vulva burning Mr Bubble. The look of disbelief on her face folding into a moue of disgust. No, not disgust with the abusive old lady, disgust with me for 'telling tales'. My previous complaints about how things were at the nursery school had been dismissed as just so much jealous attention getting bullshit from an older sibling displaced by a new baby. Then even faced with hard evidence of my veracity, my mother chose not to see the truth. She coldly told me lying was wrong and the next time I fell off the swing to just say so. Making up outrageous lies about my injuries wasn't going to get me anywhere except sent to bed without dinner. A couple years later after we'd left Rockland for the wilds of the Hudson Valley, the old woman was busted. The scandal broke wide open and the papers were full of horror stories about the abuse the children had suffered at the wretched old lady's hands. I remember my mother and her koffee klatch pals discussing it. One coffee pal said something about me having gone to that terrible place. I remember my mother laughing merrily and shrugging. "Who knew?" she said. "You did." I thought. "You knew and didn't care." . You know, there's just some things even a smart 2 year old shouldn't have to understand. ~LA
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