I’m home alone in the kitchen with the oven on and sipping
my second cup of coffee while reading a book I picked up at the library
yesterday -- Crazy in the Kitchen by
Louise DeSalvo. While in the library I hurriedly grabbed several books without
really reading the covers and not once glancing at the first pages like I
normally do because my partner, Dan, was downstairs waiting for me. Of all the
books I checked out, that one I thought was going to be the one for Dan because
I just knew it must be written by a famous TV chef with loads of Italian
recipes inside.
But, I really don’t know who that is. Here’s what I do know.
Like Louise DeSalvo the women in my family were abused verbally, sexually, and
physically on my mother’s side. I don’t know much about my father’s side, and
what little I do know about my mother’s is mostly violence, betrayal, and
worthlessness. I had no idea how much of that I carried until a few years ago.
I thought I had skipped the abuse that women in my family had experienced. I
hadn’t been raped or beaten. I had a father who adored me, but I also have no
memories until I was five and very few until I was in 6th grade.
Here’s what else I know: I was raised in an environment
where it was okay for my brothers to belittle, disrespect, and treat a girl as
worthless. And then there was my father who put me on a pedestal. I was raised
in the south by a father who was around marginally because his job was to work
to provide for his family. He did his job, and when he was at home he poured
himself a drink before anything else. He put his head in a book or a newspaper
crossword puzzle more than having a conversation. My father wanted to escape,
and he taught me well. I read incessantly. I feel naked if there’s not a pile
of books beside my bed. My father was a genius, a valedictorian in his high
school class who won a four-year scholarship to Notre Dame, but only got to complete
a few semesters before being drafted and heading into the midst of WWII.
My father never spoke a word of his time in the army. He
wouldn’t eat chocolate because it was in his k-rations. He had his wool
uniform, a German rifle with bayonet and Nazi flag with a bullet hole in it, a
purple heart, his honorable discharge papers, and a book about his battalion.
They were all out in the garage hidden away until my mother decided to clear
out the clutter.
I really don’t know much about my parents’ past. I don’t
know much about their parents’ lives. I did find out that my mother was an
“oops” child and her siblings were many years older than her, but still young
enough for her brother to abuse her, her Methodist minister father and his
brothers to violently, verbally, emotionally, sexually, and physically abuse
her and her sister. I know that her father had raped her older sister, but when
my aunt was to testify against her father in court, she had already been
removed from the county by the family. The father, my grandfather, went about
his preaching and torturing instead of going to jail.
My mother ran away as a teenager, changed her name, and
married thinking she would escape her father. That plan failed. He found her
and beat her and took her back home. At one point he even tried to run her over
with her car when she tried to escape his grasp. She told me how she rolled her
body stiff as a sausage under the car so that the wheels wouldn’t hit her. I
was a teenager in my bedroom doing my algebra at my desk, my mother on the
floor with her legs curled up to her chin when she told me this story. She told
me more like those as if she were telling me about a movie she’d just seen on
TV.
I was raised by a very strong, courageous woman who had no
self-worth. She could fight any hidden dragon for her children, but wouldn’t
lift a hand to defend herself. This, she taught me well.
I have a daughter, a very strong, courageous woman who has
been handed down a legacy of women struggling with their own self-worth. I hate
that. I despise that. I feel it in me erupting like spewing lava, hot and
intense. It is a black, dirty and sometimes horrifying darkness that I have
buried deep within that is no longer willing to stay put, and unfortunately I
have taught her well.
We live many states away from each other, but after talking
to her on the phone yesterday and hearing what she’s been struggling with, I
realized again how similar our journeys are still. When I think of her I feel
this enormous strength build up in me to do whatever it takes to break the
cycle we women have been perpetuating. When I was 21 years old, I dove easily
into a marriage where the husband’s happiness was everything. It wasn’t until
decades into the marriage that I was asked what I wanted, what would make me
happy. I was stumped. I had never once asked myself that, and the person asking
that time was my builder wondering if I wanted ceramic tile or granite for a
kitchen backsplash. It altered my thinking so much that eventually I could no
longer stay in a marriage where I didn’t matter.
Even though I’ve been on my own for years now, I still feel
like an infant in the world. I still imagine and re-imagine how to configure
myself, my thoughts, and how I show up. I find myself going deep into the muck,
where the thoughts are so shitty that I can’t even speak. I feel the
generations of self-loathing spiral up and out, and after each infiltration
into the darkness I emerge quite a bit cleaner and clearer. But the muck is
expensive. It costs a lot to carry such venom within. It’s so heavy I become
immobile. I retreat so I don’t infect anyone else. And, finally when I emerge I
feel as if I’m a phoenix rising out of the ashes.
I had just emerged from one of those times the day I called
my daughter, returning her call. She, too, had had similar experiences. I trust
that hers are lighter than mine because she’s who she is, because she’s more in
tuned, more conscious, and more flexible. But, mostly I believe that because I
want to. I have to. The thought of my
daughter going through what I put myself through is almost more than I can
handle. The tiger within me stretches to heights high enough to destroy
anything that keeps her from being her magnificent self.
However, yesterday she admitted (as she has before – she is
this smart!) that her difficulties lie within herself. Oh, fuck it to hell… Our
problems, the women’s legacy of self-unworthiness, is a fuckin’ inside job.
It’s not about money, colleagues, work, relationships with others, where we
live, or anything but how we think.
She said that she’d told her fiancé that she wanted to leave, go somewhere
else, but she couldn’t leave those who count on her. And besides, she’d be
taking her problems with her because everything she was struggling with was in
her thoughts, not in any situation.
I listened to her words like I have all her life – the wise
old soul that she has always been – and the tiger within me laid back down.
There was nothing “out there” to vanquish. By changing how we thought, by
seeking peace within, we’d change our world. I already knew this, and she knew
I already knew this, but hearing it again from a soul that I have infinite love
for opened my heart even more. It’s not the stories of our pasts that make us
who we are; it’s how we perceive those circumstances and allow them to form our
beliefs and behavior.
What the stories have done for me is soften me about my
feelings for my mother and my grandmother. I truly believe they did the best
they could with what that had at the time. And what they had was pretty darn
piss poor when it came to model examples of standing up for themselves. I don’t
have to leave that as a legacy or even acknowledge it as what they’ve left for
me. I too can change my perception and truly see them as they were – strong,
beautiful women courageous in some of the toughest circumstances who not only
survived, but they thrived. They loved. They created families who loved and
respected them. They made a mark worthy of remembrance, because every single
time they were knocked down they got back up. Every. Single. Time.
Now, that’s a legacy worth remembering.
