Out of the blue this evening my mind began to wander. A reddit article caught my eye and suddenly brought back a memory that has always made me cry. I don’t know why I thought of it, nor do I know why it has stuck so firmly in my mind. I don’t even know what made me think about it.
When I was little, around 7, my parents divorced. I know that this in and of itself is not unusual or unique, nor does it make me special. To me, the unique element is that my mother became the sole support for her seven. It seems a bit like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In my eyes, she is now and was even more so then, the epitome of bravery. We’re talking about a woman–now single–suddenly being solely responsible for seven children aged 10 to 2. And she herself was only 28.
That’s phenomenal. What a strong woman.
There a lot of memories that both trickle and flood back, occasionally without warning. Sometimes in vivid detail, but also in snippets or blurred thoughts that can be triggered by sights, sounds, and smells. Senses heighten memories, sometimes making them tolerable and often unbearable. They can bring back overwhelmingly taxing feelings so are usually better left buried deep inside, tucked away safe and sound so they don’t continue to hurt. When they’re deep inside they don’t reopen wounds long since scabbed over.
Of course, not all memories are painful. Some are even funny, but those aren’t usually the ones that immediately come to mind.
One memory I have occurred shortly after my parents divorced. My mother knew that she needed to start over and since she had family throughout most of the United States, she asked all of us to drop places that we wanted to move to into a hat. I remember California, Pennsylvania, and Alaska being thrown in there, but no others. This is one of those vague, fuzzy memories. Somehow, California was selected. The good part was that we had family there–my aunt.
Our trip from rural Michigan to southern California was quite an adventure. Mom packed us and all of our stuff into a circa 1970s station wagon–complete with wood side trim–and began that week-long journey across the United States. Several years ago my husband and I took a week-long, 2500-mile driving vacation through the southwestern United States with three kids and damn near lost our minds. And there were two of us that alternated the driving. I can’t imagine my mom driving a car full of kids 2200 miles across the country and not having anyone to take the wheel for her when she got tired. I also remember the car breaking down outside of Wagon Wheel, Arizona. Another vague memory of my mom crying … something to the effect of I could have killed my babies. It turns out the axle was broken and could have come apart at anytime causing a potentially fatal accident.
I don’t actually remember much of anything about that trip beyond this one incident.
So much happened once we arrived in Hacienda Heights, California. At the time, my aunt was married to my uncle Gene, a world-class asshole. They only had one kid, a son named Robby. He started out a typical semi-affluent, spoiled little shit, but many years later turned into an all-right guy. Gene, however, was a sadistic jerk, but we were living under his roof, in his house, and we had to follow his rules.
At some point, we ended up in a house in El Monte. I vaguely remember a neighbor boy named Alby. Mom worked nights waiting tables–yeah, I know, it sounds like a Lifetime movie–and somehow with a little governmental help, she managed to keep us from starving. I think the last house I remember living in was in Azusa. It was a green house with a huge palm tree in the front yard and it was right behind what was then Market Basket grocery. The reason I remember the trees is because my sister Michele and I had Crissy dolls whose hair “grew” when you pushed a button on their tummies that somehow ended up hanging from the fronds.
Sometimes brothers suck.
Tonight, the memory that came to mind was one that often blindsides me.