I loved my Mother. She was my world. Even though she and my Dad left me to live with my Grandparents when I was a baby, I still loved and longed for her. Just to be with her. A little girl missing her Mother.
My Grandparents were great. Couldn’t have treated me better, and they tried to do the best they could for me. My Grandfather especially loved me deeply. He used to even sit with me outside beside a fire and play ‘campfire girls’ with me. Wow, he sure loved me a lot. My Grandmother did too, in her own way. She was a stand offish kind of person though, and gave my Grandfather a hard time with pretty much everything he ever did. Grandpa and I – we hung together like glue.
I remember once my Mother gave me a pink teddy bear. I loved that bear. I always slept with the bear and it comforted me when I cried myself to sleep missing her – I did this often.
Every now and then Grandmother would let Mom and Dad take me home with them for the weekend. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stay with them. As a child I was a very picky eater. My mother only knew how to cook a couple of things. Most things she cooked, when she did try to cook, consisted of beans. How I hated, and still hate, beans. She and Dad would try to make me eat. This one particular weekend I remember she made me go to bed and beat me with a hickory stick. If you are from the South, you know what those are. Stung like blazes and hurt terribly when hit with them. She hit me so much I was covered with whelts. My Grandmother said she had a feeling that the visit wasn’t going well so she and Grandpa came to see how things were going. When Grandmother saw me, she picked me up and took me back to their house. That is my first memory of being at Mom and Dad’s house alone with them. Little did I know how this type of treatment, and worse, would continue.
Then, my Grandparents built a new house and moved with me to a different town. I was in the third grade at that time, and things got better for me in the new school. Things with Mom and Dad were still the same. They would come visit on weekends and that was the only time I ever saw them. I saw my Grandparents on my Mother’s side at Christmas, that was the only time during the year I ever saw them. So, they and my cousins and aunts and uncles were strangers to me. Still are. Pretty much.
I lived with my Grandparents until I was 12 years of age.
My Grandfather got sick – with skin cancer. This frightened my Dad and he bought a house trailer and moved it in beside my Grandparent’s new house. When they move there, that was when I moved in with them. For the first time in my life. Very weird.
One Woman's Life 