Flight 512

When you are young, things seem possible. Your dreams still have lift, texture and shine. As my family drove back to Illinois homeless and broke, I can imagine my mother – with two babies and an erratic unpredictable, intoxicated husband – felt her grip on those dreams melt away like the sweat from her brow as the car headed north, making its way through the humid landscape of corn rows and bean fields. She was going home, the only home she’d ever known: 512.

            One spring morning in 1942, she found herself coming into a world that had not been planned for her in this very house. Her mother, my grandmother Lillie, was forty-one years old and having a child at that age was certainly not what she wanted. It had been such a strain on her heart that she was bedridden because of it. My mother’s life up to this car ride had been sheltered and not in the direction she dreamed of going. Growing up in a town I will lovingly refer to simply as Shit Town, she found a hell on earth. She wasn’t what you would call “in” with the popular group, or any group for that matter, during her public school life, and being shy and meek and eager to please, she found herself rolled over by everything and everyone.

            There are two kinds of people: smashers and shooers. This is a woman who would not hurt a fly. She would shoo a fly before she was swat one. She was basically a happy, quiet child that played a lot by herself, as most of her siblings were older. By the time she was born she had two older brothers serving in the military, that whole WW2 thing, a teenage sister and another older brother who was five. She was the baby of the bunch and by the time she was five or six years old she was alone.

            Finding yourself alone most of your childhood breeds loneliness to a certain extent, but it really cultivates your imagination. You have to create your own entertainment, your own fun. But no matter how you grow up, at some point you find yourself needing some kind of validation of the dreams you have conjured in your heart and mind. My mother never had that. Not from family, not from friends, not from school teachers. The realization of how lonely her childhood was breaks my heart. I’m not saying she wasn’t loved at home. She was. She loved her mother and idolized her daddy. Her sister Flora feeling, I’m guessing, a little bit of solidarity, being one of two sisters, always tried to include my mom in the things she was doing.

Flora eventually went to college, the first in the family to do so. She graduated from a teaching college in Normal, Illinois and went on to work with special education right out of school. She took a job in Germany to teach army brats on the U.S. military bases and by 1968 she was living in California teaching in Sacramento. She sent my mom financial help during this difficult time, a practice she would continue until her death.

 As the car turned right on Elm and came to be parked in the driveway at 512, my mother made a decision. All the years of being looked over, picked on, pushed down, after years of turning the other cheek, she stiffened. She looked at my sister and me and looked over at my dad as he filled the car with hollow promises of change and pleading for forgiveness. She made one of the bravest actions of her life. She chose to save herself and her children and cut loose the deadweight that threatened to sink them all. She divorced my dad, not for herself, but for us. She knew what would be said to her by her family. The “I told you so’s” would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky. The question, “How do you expect to raise two children on your own with no job, no money?”. She jumped, sacrificing all her dreams, to save us. I learned this somewhere in my thirties and I was so proud of her. This meek, quiet, unassuming lamb stood up like a lioness against an uncertain, scary future. Our flight to 512 North Elm Street in Shit Town, Illinois was complete. I was home and didn’t even know it. This address had been an oasis for wayward children and lost animals since it was purchased in the 1930’s. And so began my life as a fatherless son.

            Mother’s Day has just passed and I reflect on how much my mother has given up to be a mom. It has inspired me to try to do whatever I can for my kids. You made the right decision that day Mom. I know you probably have doubted a lot of things you have done with raising us, but you did good the day you set us free. Thanks Mom.

Almost Arkansas

It’s 1968 My mother had just been served a eviction notice, my Dad was gone with the car and she had no idea where he was. She was alone with a baby (me) and a 1 half year old( my sister) and since my Dad had left she had no money, mainly because he was out of a job. They expected him to show up at a given time every day, do work and collect a pay check at the end of the week. Those Bastards! I can’t imagine the fear and stress this put my Mom under. With no money, no way to pay bills, the utilities began getting shut off. Water, phone, power, fortunately the gas was still on.

            Her neighbors took pity on her, given her situation, and ran a garden hose from their outside nozzle and put it through her kitchen window. She was able to get water that way and boil water to warm my bottles. My Aunt helped out with money when she could.

Then one day the neighbor came over to say that my Dad was on the phone at their house. “Where are you?” she asked “They are kicking us out of the house!” He was in Arkansas an Army buddy had promised him a job. “ I want you and the kids to come down here.”  Now I can’t speak for my Mom, but I believe I would’ve been saying “WTF is wrong with you!” Mom with help of family and friends moved her belongings back to my grandparent’s house. Filling the garage and basement with our meager things, and laying on my mother a guilt and embarrassment of epic proportions.

            All I can guess is that she loved him despite his obvious alcoholic tendencies. How she got it together I do not know, but she bordered a bus in Bloomington Il, with my sister, and me, the colicky baby. Now I don’t know if any of you have ever ridden a bus for any distance, but it is the most boring, uncomfortable way to travel. People just love you when you travel with little kids, especially when one can’t seem to stop crying.  I can see her getting on the cramped bus and feel all those disapproving eyes hitting her all of them resolving in their minds that she better keep that kid quite or else… After 9 hours finally they arrive at the bus depot in Little Rock. There is my dad waiting and he leaps to her kissing her hugging us like nothing has happened. He grabs the suit case and they walk to the curb up to a Chevy. Only it wasn’t the Chevy he left with. “What happened to the Impala?” she inquires. “I sold it.” He says. This was my mom’s car she had it long before they even met: she loved this thing, and now it was gone. “Did you get my camera out that was in there?” she asks knowing the answer. “ I didn’t know it was in there.” He replies.

 Oh fuck! Why would you. No problem, just leave us destitute and homeless. If you can sell shit that isn’t yours without asking and then drink the money you got for it, that would be great!  It would’ve been funnier if he had said “ I traded it for a microphone” But that movie wouldn’t be made fro 12 more years. So he couldn’t even do that right.

 

Do they stay in Little Rock? Will the new car start? Will I ever stop being colicky?

Oh a side note: The camera that was lost had the only pictures of me as a baby. My mom had one picture of me at the age of 6 months. Then you don’t see me again in pictures until I’m 4 years old. Where was I taking a smoke?