Terry's 3M's
Tomorrow the kids go to school for a half a day and then they are out for the summer! Summer vacation. I used to love it!
Even in the bad years of abuse, I used to love summer vacation.
I was 9 when my mother left my father. I don't blame her. He may love the Lord now, but back then he loved drinking and illegal gambling. That would have been bad enough, but the drinking led to a personality change and my normally amiable father would turn into an ugly wife-beater.
Believe it or not, I think I understand why he drank. He didn't marry my
mother because he was in love with her. He married my mother because I was
a product of one night's lust with her and they were both Catholic and it was
1952 and that's what was expected, encouraged, and almost thrust upon them.
And in my mother's heart, she was accepting second best because she was in
love with my father's oldest brother. [When my mom left my dad--she left
with that brother and eventually spent 29 years married to him--until he
died 3 years ago. He was my uncle, my step-dad, and he's Faye's father.]
He was younger than my mother by a couple of years and they had 2 kids by
the time he was 20 and 5 kids by the time he was 25. He couldn't handle
the responsibility.
In spite of the stuff going on between my parents, my childhood until I was 9 wasn't that bad. I was happy. I didn't understand exactly how poor we were. We were spanked when were bad, but, we weren't abused. In fact, I thought that we were luckier than some kids--after all, when I was bad, I didn't have to face a cat-o-nine tails (a leather switch with several unbraided straps at the bottom). But summer vacations? Boy, I got to go to my rich aunt's--and so what if my cousin [who was 4 years older] didn't want to play with me. For 2 weeks, I could be without my brothers. I could sit and read under the weeping willow tree. (BTW--they weren't really rich. They were middle class, but, we were so far down poverty lane that they seemed very rich to me.) The house was in the country and they had a huge backyard and a large garden. I would color, read, or maybe just daydream. But, I loved it! Summer time also meant that my great-grandmother would visit for a couple of weeks each month. And she would be brought to our house by one of my aunts along with a grocery sack or two of garden produce. My favorite was fresh peas. Bubshie [as near as I can figure out the phonetic spelling for the Polish word for Grandma] and I used to shell peas--one pod for me, one for the pot. Her English was very broken, but, she usually could understand. Except when I tried to teach her to dial a phone...she never did get the hang of that.
Bubshie would gather us kids around the table at night and we would sit there
as she went around to each one of us with a basin of water and washed our
feet. I didn't hear the Bible story of Jesus washing his disciples feet
until years later. But, my Bubshie taught us a lot about the love of God by
example. After the foot washing, she would sit at the head of the table and
we would repeat the sections of prayers that she was saying/teaching to us.
In Polish, of course. I learned the Sign of the Cross and the Apostle's Creed
in Polish long before I learned them in English. In fact, up until I more or
less gave up on the Catholic church, I would often say my evening prayers in
Polish instead of English--I could say them much faster that way!
Summertime was also the time to play outside. My play buddy, David, and I once told we were heros because while playing hide and seek in the backyard, we looked through the window of a line of garages that were rented out back and spotted smoke coming from a pile of rags in the corner of one them. We ran into the apartment and I told my mother about it. She called the fire department, they came out and quickly stopped the rags before a real fire could catch. The firemen told us that we were heros because if we hadn't reported what we saw, the oily rags would have blazed and set that whole block of garages on fire. That was a pretty heady experience for a 7 year old! Pa {my uncle/Faye's father) used to take us places in the summertime. Ma didn't drive back then and neither did my father. We would go for long drives in the country. He once took us to a secluded area where we could go swimming. My mother said, "Don't go in the water above your waists!" Sounds like something to challenge for me! So, I practiced something. I found out that if I was a waist level, I could jump up and if I lifted my legs so that I landed on my knees, I could look like I was in water up to my neck. It would look like I was disobeying my mother, but, I really wouldn't be. The only thing was, when I shouted, "Hey, Ma! Look at this!" I bounced up in the water but came down to the side of where I was--right into a drop off. I didn't know how to swim! Luckily, Pa was right there to yank me out before I could drown! Thus ended my trying to deceive my mother. Pa also took us to drive in movies. This was an out of town trip because Amsterdam didn't have a drive in. The closest one was in nearby Broadalbin and the other one we went to was farther away in Rotterdam (this is in upstate New York). We kids would go and play on the playground that was provided (there were swings, slides, and whatyacallit--those round circles that up to 6 kids could push in a circle then hop on and spin until you were either dizzy or ready to throw up. If it was a fun movie, we kids wouldn't go to sleep. Fun movies included Sinbad the Sailor (the one where he battles the cyclops). We were expected to go to sleep by the second feature. One night, I didn't go to sleep. I stayed up and watched Bette Davis in "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?". I was lucky not to get caught awake, but, it was hard to be still and not scream when Bette Davis served Olivia de Haviland dinner--raw rat under cover!
There's was a lot to do in the summer. If we were lucky, Ma would give us older
kids permission to go to the park and get wet. I don't say go swimming because
the park's swimming pool was really very shallow and wading pool would have
been a more accurate term.
Well, I'd better hurry and get this uploaded. The computer will soon be in use for something else.  |