Childhood

Thank you, D.K. You are very kind. That is a quality you share with most of the people here, and it is one of the lovely things about this forum that keeps me coming back, except when things get really hectic as they too often do. It is a welcoming place where one soon feels quite at home. Thank you, and our other colleagues, for that.

11/28/2012

Victor..

That was such a beautiful story, it reminded me of

friends I have known for over 30 years who fled Cuba when

Castro took over, their father was a diplomat, their parents

stayed in Cuba, they were getting old and they didn't want

to leave their country and start all over again....

By reading your post I sense by the way you talk your

birthday is either August or Sept. ?

Cheers...Joe...

Thanks, Joe.

You're about six months off--I'm a Capricorn. Gosh, I haven't thought about my astrological sign since the 80s.

Victor,

Thank you for your very moving childhood recollections. I am very glad that you shared them with us.

I am so happy you are here. You add much to our forum.

Thank you, Alice. You and every person on this thread are the reason this is one of my favorite sites. Alas, it is also one of the reasons my productivity suffers and my emotions tend to run on hyperdrive. . . .

11/28/2012

Victor...

Some of the items you mentioned in your story made

think you were a Virgo, that's me , You probably have it in

your horoscope....

Cheers.Joe...

Whatever our signs, I suspect we have a good deal in common, Joe, including a rich vein of rebelliousness that one need not dig too deeply to tap, a healthy disdain for the average/conventional/cookie-cutter-blandness that many find comforting and "normal," an unshakable love for this country (warts and all) and a high degree of respect for our colleagues here whom you know far better and far, far longer than I.

Victor, enjoyed reading about your childhood. I think hardship can be good in developing persistence and the ability to adapt/adjust.
Having married a foreigner, her experiences mirror some of yours. Fitting in is not easy and the biggest hurdle for any foreigner is the language. Being able to communicate is vital. That is not only true of learning a new language, but as writers we know how important it is with our own language. The view of the country we live in differs based on background and experience.
I happen to be a Capricorn and in January will add another notch to my advancing age.
With people like you and others on this forum, it feels good to relate personal information as one would like to do with family, unfortunately not every family is as receptive as one finds here.
I'm grateful to be part of this group and for what I have.

alice wrote:

Victor,

Thank you for your very moving childhood recollections. I am very glad that you shared them with us.

I am so happy you are here. You add much to our forum.

What Alice said.

Thank you, Shelagh and Abe,

Abe, I think you're dead-on on adversity helping children adapt and adjust. The stories of true childhood hardship and pain shared by others here show that as well. My experience was not at all unpleasant and I was thoroughly marinated in love (with some tough love thrown in as well by way of not infrequent spankings). True hardship, though, (which I've never known, but others here unfortunately have as children) is a dual edge sword that turns some into saints, but also others into serial killers.

All in all, having to overcome reasonable challenges is a good thing--far better than the effect of giving a child absolutely anything and everything he/she demands in tantrums thrown in the middle of department stores, turning perfectly normal, healthy children into demanding selfish little monsters who believe it is the duty of the world to see to their every whim instantaneously for the rest of their lives.

It is a treat here to be able to see the writers' human side through their shared stories and comments.

Well. I know I'm not a saint ... so maybe I'll just have to be a serial killer.

Shelagh wrote:

Well. I know I'm not a saint ... so maybe I'll just have to be a serial killer.

Hope not, Shelagh. Was your chlldhood that bad?

Wicked.

Who was wicked?

You, your parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers or pets?

Maybe a book is in the making here!

Since Shelagh will not expand on her wicked childhood, I will bore you with mine.

It is hard to believe I was born in 1947. We moved, shortly after my birth out to the middle of nowhere and had no visable neighbors.

We had 140 acres of forest land and swamp. We lived in our garage which my dad had built while he built our house.

He built it board by board as he could afford it. No mortgage ever.

Our cars were junk heaps. My brother and I pushed the old black Buick from Moses Lake, Wa to WI and back to start it. I thought I was a tow truck until at 36 years of age I broke my back pushing a 27 foot motor home up an approach ramp to a freeway.

We had no running water in our house until I was 14. I went to boarding school that year and only returned home for breaks and summer vacations.

My mother did not like Santa Claus or Christmas trees. I love both.

My mother loved religion and went to religious meetings, "religiously."

She was a super motvated workaholic and made me work much of the time.

She handed out jobs to my brother and me. When our English racers arrived, she told my brother to assemble them, she told me to change every bed linen in tbe house. I had just turned nine and there were four beds to do. She didn't like the hasty job I did and hit me with a razor strop until I did not care to sit down.

I am having a happy childhood now,

Alice,
with today's standards, your childhood, mine and many others who grew up in the 40's had similar experiences. We didn't see it as hardship, but as the norm. Struggling to make a living was a family affair. Everyone contributed doing chores or helping to support the family financially. I think it was a positive experience even with the beatings/punishments.
We had one room school houses - one teacher for seven or eight grades. Discipline was administered by the teacher and it was supported by the parents.
We live in another world today and making comparisons to the past is not compatible. We didn't have Electronic toys nor was there TV.
We older folk often find it difficult to accept the manner/conditions in which our grandchildren are being raised. We believe that the exposure to violence produced by the electronic medium is a bad influence. The times we lived in had a much slower pace. Today most things are associated with a fast time factor - a race to win at all costs. I don't buy into it, but I am from the old school. The clock is ticking and when the battery runs down, there will be no replacement or chance for a recharge.

Of course, Abe, We knew nothing else.

I am so happy that Dave had a mother
with different ideas. She took her kids on vacations, decorated for Christmas, went out to eat-- they had fun!

She had little money either--nothing to compare with my folks.

The thought of a vacation was new for me, but I like it and feel the kids learned more on vacation than in school.

Issues of neglect and abuse aside, hardship is a relative term. Wealth, endless loving attention and immediate gratification do not guarantee happiness, and poverty (other than poverty of spirit) does not negate the possibility of happiness and fulfillment.

A case in point is my mom. Her dad passed away at the age of 40, leaving her mom to raise nine children by the sweat of her brow--and theirs. She suffered a year of blindness due to a childhood disease, and lived in a world where she could expect a hand made toy for "Dia de los Reyes" and hand-me-down clothes as a middle child with two older sisters. She left school to work full time at the age of 11 (illegally because of her age at a canning factory owned by cousins who braved the risk of severe penalties to hire her; she would have to hide inside reeking barrels of brine when inspectors made surprise visits). She worked all the overtime that was offered, and then washed and ironed clothes for neighbors for extra money, and carried water from the fountain in the center of town every day not only for her own house (no one had indoor plumbing in her port-side village) but also for many neighbors, for some additional coins. And when ships laden with fish came to port, she worked nights and weekends for additional pay, walking into the ocean at low tide in water up to her armpits to help unload baskets full of fish and walk them to the shore (there were no docks in her town at the time and fishing boats had to be unloaded by hand). Summer, spring, winter and fall, she did this task for the equivalent of a quarter per heavy basket load of fish walked ashore on her head.

When she was about ten years old, shortly after her father's death, she found the body of her oldest brother, Juan, who was missing at sea for more than a week at the shore; he had been killed along with other shipmates in an apparent act of piracy while serving as a seaman to help support his family after his dad's death. She always cries when she recounts that terrible day.

She emigrated to Argentina at 16 and again found work illegally by lying about her age while staying at an aunt's house with her 15 year of sister. Life got no easier for her there, as she worked as hard as always to earn enough money to pay for the passage of her mom and youngest brothers. Nor did things change much when we emigrated here when she and my dad were in their mid thirties, starting anew in a completely alien land, but she (just like my dad with an almost as sad if not as hard life) never yielded, never despaired, never gave up and always walked--walks--the earth with good humor and her head held high.

By any rational measure my mom had a tough life--an unimaginably tough life with no childhood. She is now 83 and suffering from memory loss that has left her with severely impaired short and long term memory, fading further all too quickly. Every day we chat on the phone. Almost every day she recounts her best memories--living in Spain, working as I have described here, and the great satisfaction and genuine happiness of knowing then and now that she was helping her mom, with whom in addition to all other listed tasks she would walk many, many miles nearly every day to help her carry the fish she sold door to door in the evenings, after her outdoor stand at the local market closed for the day.

She was happiest then, not in her relative comfort now. She did not feel poor, perhaps because most everyone else was poor as well. She got no quarter and expected none. While others played with dolls she salted fish and cleaned brine-filled barrels for eight hours a day prior to embarking on second, third and fourth jobs before and after her main job. She was and is proud of her self sufficiency, her ability to make more money than the "grown ups" around her, and to help support her family. (All of her money, save a few pennies from her overtime activities for an occasional piece of candy or pastry, went to her mom to help support her siblings.) She was happy, fulfilled, and gloried in her independence. Her incredibly tough and in so many ways heartbreaking journey tempered her innate steel into a remarkable preternaturally hard, flexible substance that could be scratched and dulled from life's relentless blows, but never broken.

Every day she tells me how very much she loves me. She is proud of me, just like any good mother is of any son who has not blossomed to ax murderer status. Proud of me--a man who is made of far baser, brittle, dull material that would be crushed to dust with a fraction of what she has borne in her childhood alone. Can you imagine the height of my pride in her, and my shame in knowing that in the span of a hundred lifetimes I could never prove worthy of her sacrifice?

Victor, Thank you for sharing that. Although it reflects much hardship, it is also inspiring.

Beautiful descriptions that would also make your mom proud. I'm sure my mom's life was hard though she hasn't mentioned much. She was the youngest of 8 children; and she was the surprise with 15 years from her closest sibling. By the time she was born her father had trouble paying to have the fields of cane, cotton and corn picked and much of the land was rented off at a lesser income for grazing. She does remember eating sweet corn from the field and pieces of cane. She also remembers picking cotton and how difficult it was. When she was little, there were sharecroppers on the farm; but the wars took the young men away first to war and then to the cities away from the farms, so there was no one to work the land. Her dad owned a company store where the sharecroppers paid for everything on credit until their crops came in. She remembers that the store had everything in the eyes of a young girl. Her dad brought the stuff to the store from another town and jacked up the price to make a profit. They had big rounds of cheese and jars of pickles, yard goods, and of course, hard candy. While she was still little, the store burned down and her father lost everything, but he still had the land to rent for grazing that did not bring much income. Of course the house had no electricity, an out house and water from a well and pump. The floors were wood slats but it had a big porch all around as southern homes did. Long into the history of the land, the sharecropper houses were occupied by slaves until they were freed. Some became sharecroppers others went north. Mother went to the city to live with her sister to go to school. As soon as she was old enough, she worked in a five and dime. She finished high school in three years instead of four because she passed the tests early. Her brother needed help in the North at his restaurant so she left all she knew and went to his home to help his wife and work in the restaurant. When I was a little girl, she and I took the train to her parents whose home still had no modern conveniences. I took a bath in a huge wood tub behind the wood burning stove. I used a night pot because I was afraid of the outhouse. I made sure to wear shoes if I got up because the house was not tight and roaches ran across the boards at night. A black woman shared chores with my grama. The black woman cooked for grama and for us; grama sewed clothes in exchange for the woman and her family. Grama could sew anything. All my mothers clothes were made by my grama and my mother's sister until mother went North. My grandparents used a horse and wagon. They grew their own food, including meat that they butchered. I remember my grama chasing a rooster that had chased me as a little girl scared to death. She caught the rooster and twisted its neck and we had it for dinner. I helped her churn butter and she very much loved the butter milk that was left over. Though the black lady did most of the cooking, grama made great biscuits and cornbread. I only remember my grampa on a rocking chair on the porch, "very old." He was many years older than grama and most of my memories of the rickity farm are after grampa passed. I have no memories of him. His father was a Civil War hero who brought home a chest of confederate money that was worth nothing. He had led a bunch of captured southern men to tunnel out of a heinous pow camp in New York and led them back to the southern lines to fight. It's quite a story that I have been trying to write. I also remember that the black lady made almost every morsel we ate on that wood stove in heavy iron pots and pans. Yet, my mother would not let me go to her house to pull taffy because she "wasn't clean." Even as a little girl that made no sense to me and I snuck over there and ate taffy anyway and played with the children. I was very young - 5 to 8 that I remember and much younger that I don't.

So much of DK's story sounds familiar.

My mom's life was fairly normal when she was a young girl. The family lived in a small East Texas lumber town. My grandfather was manager of the general store - owned by the lumber company. He was organist for the church choir, and superintendent of schools - he had been a teacher in his younger days, as well as a lumberjack - I have a great photo of this young, strong-jawed, very handsome young man, leaning on an over-sized ax handle. Hardworking small town people, living simply but in relative comfort. That was during the 20's. The lumber company survived until 1932, when it shut down due to the effects of the Great Depression. That family was among the luckier ones. My grandmother's family still owned the homestead, part of a farming community in the middle of the Piney Woods area. They moved back there. My grandfather had never farmed. His dad was a Methodist preacher who got his start riding what was then called the alligator circuit. His mom ran the only boardinghouse in town. Grandmother and her family had moved from the farm and into town when the lumber boom began about the turn of the century. They had returned to the farm a few years earlier. The other farmers in the area were all related, having first settled in the area just after the end of the Civil War.

My grandfather never really adjusted to being a farmer. He tried; he worked hard. He was a very religious man, and was certain that God brought on the depression to force men back to a simpler way of living, but he had never dealt with the raw side of nature. There were droughts and crop failures and flooded markets in the good years. There was never enough money. After a few years, it all broke his spirit. My grandmother held things together. She was such a stoic woman. I don't remember seeing her laugh a lot, but I don't think I ever saw her cry. She just went about life, taking whatever it brought her way. Mom's brothers were not exactly farmers, either. The older two were in their teens at the time of the move. My grandfather was often gone, taking temporary jobs whenever he could find them, so Grandmother ran the farm. After hearing one of her neighbors comment about them Windham boys just standing around suckling their hoes (I've always loved that analogy), she started leaving my mom in charge of the house and the younger boys while she went out to the fields with the older ones, to help them and keep them on task.

They had plenty to eat. They raised hogs and chickens; Grandmother had a large vegetable garden, which she tended carefully, even as she looked after the fields of tomatoes, corn, and later, cotton. In between, she made all the boys' shirts and mom's dresses, and "put up" jars of fruits and vegetables for the winter months.

My grandmother's sister had married one of the few men who managed to become wealthy during those years. They had left the farming community for work in Houston, and my great uncle worked hard, moved up from laborer to manager, and eventually moved his family to Orange, where he started a building materials company. No one knew - or asked - where he got enough money to start that company. He was a hard man, but he cared about his family. He insisted that his niece, my mom, come to spend the summers with her cousins. That's where she met my dad. His dad and granddad were local shipbuilders, and often did business with my great uncle, who always claimed it was he who got them together.

The visits to my grandparents' farm were some of the happiest days of my childhood. My uncles were always laughing and telling stories. I think that's probably where my own storytelling got started. All but the youngest of them eventually resettled in Orange and raised families there, but holidays, summertime, and many weekends throughout the years were spent on the farm, especially as my grandparents grew older. My earliest memories include kerosene lamps for lighting, an enormous wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and a wooden "icebox" with a block of ice that my grandfather would walk to the nearest town and ice house to purchase and bring home. After the area finally got electricity, there was still the outhouse, which I always thought was a cool thing. I spent my days feeding the chickens, following my grandfather into the smokehouse, "helping" my grandmother churn butter and make biscuits, and accompanying her to the garden to pick fresh vegetables to go with dinner. In spite of all the hardships, it was a happy household, and a close, caring kinship that lasted through all of their lives.

Mom hated the farm. She never let go of her resentment toward her parents, even though she dutifully went back often, looked after them as they got older, and eventually moved them to Orange. She took on the role of "godmother" very early. That's what she started calling herself after seeing the first of the Puzo films. She loved having that kind of control and power. It had nothing to do with the "fairy" kind, believe me. She ran the lives of her parents, her brothers - and their wives - and my brothers and me, with a strong hand and iron jaw. There was all this happiness flowing around her, but she never seemed to get it. It took me a good while to develop a degree of compassion towards her and the choices she made.

We each, I think, choose how we experience the world around us. Some always see the shadows while others somehow focus on the light.

Yes, the depression. The farm wasn't too far from the train and word spread that if hungry men riding the rails looking for work would sit quietly at grama's back stoop, she would always feed them after her family ate. Broken down fences and and equipment on the decaying farm would mysteriously be fixed by those grateful. At least the farmers had food during the depression unlike the people who had gone to the cities.

My mom had an ice box when I was little during WWII and real refrigerators were rationed because of the metal in them. A store clerk took pity on the new mother (who was also exquisitely beautiful) and found a way to sell her a small electric refrigerator. Mother was on her own as my dad was in hospital during the last of the war with medical issues.

Mother said everyone felt part of the war because everyone suffered in one way or another unless they were very rich and got around the rationing.

Wonderful memories, All. Thanks.

Ann, I wonder if your mother was depressed.

My mother was really quite amazing. She had graduated from college before marrying and having my brother and me. After the postpartum episode she got two more college degrees. Women with one degree were unusual, women with three were unheard of.

Depression is a mild condition by comparison, Alice. She probably had a character disorder, though she never saw anyone capable of accurately diagnosing it.

Victor,

Your mother is a real inspiration and I am glad you wrote about her. Has she read your writings about her?

She has reason to be proud.