I was spanked as a child. Sometimes it was because I was naughty. Sometimes it was because I deserved it. But what still stands out to me the most is the time in 1st grade when I was spanked once for every wrong answer I got on my school work. The memory that sticks out to me the most is one day I got my worksheet back and I got 100% on it. No wrong answers. And I started to cry, so relieved that I wouldn't be spanked at all for this worksheet. And then in an uncharacteristically mature moment I suddenly realized that something was seriously messed up with the wrong answer/spanking arrangement.
As a young, new mother I started out spanking my sweet little babes. Because that's how I had been raised and I thought that's how it was supposed to go. But one day something snapped in me. I realized: Spanking was not teaching them anything. It was a violent means for me to express rage. Spanking is hypocritical at best. Don't hit your brother...WHACK!
I stopped hitting my children. I've never hit them since. It was hard at first making the transition because it required me to dig deep and figure out a way to get through to them. I learned to first control myself. I started talking. I got down on their level and explained what was wrong. We talked it out. They understood. They'd stand in time out, 1 minute for each year old, to think about it. Our entire relationship dynamic changed.
As a child my mother devoted everything to us. She wanted to stay home with me, so she started doing daycare to both work and be with me. It paid for all my toys. My birthday parties were HUGE affairs with a pony, a clown and stacks of presents. It wasn't until years later that I realized that everything was tax deductible since all of my guests were her daycare clients and it was really a business expense and not entirely for my sake. But she taught me the gospel and infused into me her passion and testimony. That was, and still is, enormous for me. She was also my biggest cheerleader. She pushed me to be my best but as I got older her will for my life became stifling. She interfered when she shouldn't have. Like the time she told my crush's father that I liked his son...in front of me...at our church's summer pool party. Or the time she called the school to tell the principal that a boy said something incredibly inappropriate to me. Only she got the name of the boy wrong, and an innocent boy sat in the principal's office crying, denying that he had said such a thing.
I had graduated from my first choice University in Chemical Engineering, served a full time honorable mission for my church, married in the Temple having waited for my husband rather than indulging in the worldly values of premarital sex. A year after I had graduated I got pregnant. It was an accident. Our barrier birth control had a technical malfunction and...whoops. But, it wasn't a REALLY big deal. We were married. And we would love our baby no matter what. But when I told my parents, they were less than thrilled. My mother took me on a drive around town and berated me up one side and down the other about how I had thrown my life away because I got pregnant before buying a house. Thrown. My. LIFE. Away.
wow
I ended up having a miscarriage because it was a blighted ovum. We were devastated.
I can't even imagine what would have happened if I had made any seriously wrong life decisions. Like drug use, drunk driving, or teenage pregnancy.
But I can tell you what happened to my brother Daniel, who sent a letter to everyone in the family that he had decided to leave the church. He had been inactive for years already. His relationship with each of us and the peace in his own life... THAT was more important. In my mind he had left the church years prior to having his name officially removed from church records. His only request was that we correspond our response to his announcement via written form rather than phone calls or visits. I wrote, telling him how relieved I was that there wasn't something seriously wrong; disease, impending death...or something along those lines. I loved him no matter what he chose. All of my brothers sent similar letters. But my mother? She couldn't acknowledge it. She's tried to write dozens of times but can't get through it without bursting into tears. She didn't write. We begged her to respond.
More than a year later she tried calling him on his birthday, but he didn't answer or had changed his number again already.
She doesn't talk about him. Not unless we bring him up first. And because she never responded Daniel cut all ties to everyone in the family. Husband told me we would probably never see him again. We would never know anything about his life or death. Several brothers have tried to visit his house when they've been in his town. He doesn't answer the door. Ever. And my mom has never outwardly mourned his loss. She doesn't show negative emotion. Not even when my father died. She holds it in.
She also is prone to fly off the handle. Once when JackSniper (who is now 12 years old) was 2 we were at my mother's house on the hill. We were there to have dinner with the family. Jack watched all of the grownups getting into the pantry grabbing little snacks to nibble on before dinner. My brother Surfer-Dude did it. Another brother, Frodo, did it. My sister-in-law Aunt K did it. So little Jack walked over to the pantry to have some too. Grandma couldn't yell at grown up children, but someone who was smaller and more vulnerable ...my mother grabbed the fly-swatter that was hanging in the cabinet and started beating little Jack over the head and shoulders screaming at him that he shouldn't be eating before dinner.
I was dumbfounded. And completely disgusted. I didn't even bother telling my mother that her behavior was beyond inappropriate. I picked up FrostKnight, who was 4 and poor little Jack whose eyes were red and swollen, shaking from the attack and started walking home. Husband was on his way to join us for dinner and I figured he would pass us on the way and just pick us up.
And for her everything is an emergency. HER emergency. "I MUST mail this letter at 3 o'clock in the morning. It can't wait." True story.
"I want to know what time dinner is (even though it has been at 6pm for the last 16 years...consistently) so I'm going to call Cookie's phone 8 times in a row and not leave a message or text to ask my question." Really, Mom? True story.
After Daddy's death my mother made some VERY unwise financial decisions. She was vulnerable and trusted when she shouldn't have. She took all of my father's life insurance money, all of his stock market investments and retirement savings, plus mortgaged her house to it's full market value (it's highest point in 2006) and gave it to my brother Surfer-Dude who gave it to Jake Dayton who gave it to Rick Koerber...who lost it all. Rick Koerber got off on the technicality that his trial took too long. But my mother was one of thousands of people who were financially destroyed. She lost close to one million dollars.
She came to us one day in 2011 in tears that her home was in foreclosure, she was going to have to file bankruptcy and she had no way of pulling her financial life out of it's flaming nose dive into the cliffs. Husband promised that she would always be taken care of and we did all we could to help her out and rebuild her life.
I put my children into public school for the first time to do daycare out of a rented apartment in town. My mother received all of the income. Soon after we received a modest inheritance after Husband's grandmother passed away. We used the money as a down payment on a house, that we bought for my mother. Because of FHA requirements, we had to live there for a time, but ultimately the house was bought for her. A one story house that she could age gracefully in and NOT live with us. I continued to do daycare. And we co-signed on a nice house where she could live and build her daycare. All of the daycare deposits were given to my mother. She gave me enough back to cover the house payment.
While helping my mother file her bankruptcy papers I stumbled across a bit of information that had me tripping out in the Twilight Zone for the next few weeks. My mother, who always insisted on perfection in EVERYONE else, had been married and divorced before my father. His name was Ralph D. Steele. They were married at 21 years old on September 21, 1969 in San Francisco. She never disclosed this information. She pretended like it never happened. When I found out I wanted to ask her about it. But she didn't want to discuss it. At all. I never told anyone and just kept the secret to myself. But then my father's sister spilled the beans to my brother Wings, her favorite nephew. My brother told Husband. Husband came to me with the big reveal, and then was so disappointed when my response to the information was, "Ya, I know." 😥
So...there's that.
My family moved into a bigger house that we rent in the next city over from my hometown, but I continued to do daycare with the same arrangement. Claude deposited all of the checks. I get enough to cover the house. Rather than saving, however, my mother hired more and more people so she could boss more people around and go run around doing her own fun things during the day leaving her staff to run the show. She loves to buy new, bigger better toys. She loves to spend money. So rather than saving she spends. And now she wants us to give her the house we bought for what is owed on it, as if she had bought it originally instead of us. Because it's all about her. It's always been about ...her. Meanwhile we are living in a rented house and unable to buy another home for OUR family because we don't have a big enough down payment to make that happen. Since my episode the daycare was shut down, we have to cover the house payment ourselves so we have that much less to save for a down payment.
She doesn't appreciate what we've done. She doesn't even see it as a sacrifice on her behalf. It's like we owed her. We STILL owe her. She should get the house for what is owed because she's been paying on it the whole time anyway....RIIIGHT.
And I wasn't doing daycare this whole time working for it. And our down payment wasn't poured into this house. And YOU would have been renting this whole time anyway without us....and probably in a rundown apartment because the nice ones wouldn't approve you because of your financial train wreck. So...ya.
So with this absolutely glowing background information....SHE is disappointed in ME because of everything that happened with my episode and being diagnosed with bipolar. I threw everything away. Everything that SHE had given me. Because I "chose" this for myself.
You know what, Claude? {Bad word}. Seriously... We're done. {String of profanities}. I
Update: This was originally blocked out because I had a lot of angry swear words and gut wrenching rage I needed to purge out. But it has been edited to more accurately reflect what's going on in my head. So if you want to read it, highlight it and ...voila!
So, let me go on and tell you a little bit more about my mother.
As a child she signed me up for every activity that I wanted to do. I went to swim lessons, ballet classes, gymnastics, French lessons. She also took me to Cheerleading camp, but I didn't like it so she didn't take me back. She also encouraged me to do Junior Lifeguard, but when being around some particularly unpleasant people who made me miserable, she didn't make me go back. My parents took us all to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Great America, Zoos and Hershey's park among many others. They took us on a six-week tour of the United States all around towards Oklahoma and through Florida to Disney world. They took us on a vacation to Hawaii when I was 16. My brothers all played soccer and baseball. I was a member of the school marching band. They were supportive in every way possible. My mom went with me on an overnight school field trip and lost her job because of it. She and my father supported me through college, even after I was married.
My mom loved to dress me in beautiful new floofy dresses. It was fun for her to dress me and make me beautiful. I eventually reached a point that I just wanted to dress like everyone else in jeans and a T-shirt, and when I did, she let me. She believed in me in spectacular ways. I would achieve my goals and she would gush to people about how capable and successful I was.
My mom is a go-getter and has an amazing ability to GET STUFF DONE when nobody else would be able to accomplish even a fraction of what her tenacity is able to pull off. But she also doesn't mince words with people. Whether its because she has some mild form of Asperger's or because ...I don't know. That's just how she is. Everyone who knows her knows that she's quirky like that and just shrug and say, "That's Claude"
When her mother-in-law had a stroke my mother jumped in to take care of her in extraordinary ways. I'm talking WAY above and beyond. Other family members would come to visit, see all that my mother was doing and then tell her, "I want YOU to take care of me if I ever get sick!" That was the best compliment she could have received.
Anything she does is head-and-shoulders above anyone else. Actually, she prides herself on being the very best at anything she sets her mind to. That's why her day-care is WILDLY successful and she never has a shortage of people who want to enroll. What she is able to accomplish with babies and toddlers is nothing short of amazing.;
Since everything has happened I've had to give up daycare, like I've already said. I've also given up homeschooling my children. That has been a huge part of my life, and giving it up has been perfectly agonizing. I've also been released from my calling as a Primary teacher. But I just can't do it all.
My best friends used to tell me they didn't know how I did it all without breaking. New day-care clients would come in for a week of observation and tell me they didn't know I how did it all. I would always tell them, "If my 21 year old self were dropped into my 38 year old life I would break under all the pressure. Well, I did brake. The balls all dropped. Maybe people weren't meant to maintain super-human juggling power. Instead, I need to learn to prioritize what's most important.
And even though my mom isn't perfect, nobody's mom is. Heck, I'm not perfect. I really hope that my children don't hold on to my less-than-stellar moments and focus on them when they're adults.
My mother grew up with a father who, if you screwed up even once, he would disown you. This personal flaw wasn't apparent until we were grown. He was a loving, hardworking man who, when I was 16, bought me a used car. But because of his inability to forgive, eventually his circle of family and friends had been cut down to one son, David, who was suddenly attentive because he was on the verge of getting his inheritance. This is the same son who was shockingly disappointed when his mother started to recover from cancer. However, when my mother couldn't financially keep taking care of Grandma, she went to David's house instead. And while she was in his care, he didn't fill the prescription for her urinary tract infection and THAT'S what killed her. Not cancer. I believe that's called negligent homicide.
Near the end of Grandpa's life it finally happened. My mother messed up in his eyes. So she was cut off from his life and her baby pictures burned. Harsh. I think this may have always been her fear. That if she screwed up, that she would disappear from his life. Maybe that's why she could never acknowledge her inevitable mistakes, like her first marriage.
Grandpa had a long history of maintaining unbreakable grudges. He'd tell elaborate stories on the horrid people in his life: his neighbor (the witch), his brothers (who he thinks tried to kill him), former friends (who were only out to screw him over). He ended up dying alone with a hired nurse. Not one person from my side of the family went to his funeral. Not because we didn't love him regardless, but because we weren't invited and we certainly weren't welcome. And David, the lone remaining son, had positioned himself to receive a greater inheritance at the expense of his other siblings. After his windfall inheritance David clear cut all of Grandpa's trees on his property and then sold the land. If Grandpa had been alive for this, he would be absolutely LIVID. I'm going to leave that one to Karma.
My mom isn't perfect. But she's mine. And she did give me what is most important above all else: Love, support and a testimony of Jesus Christ.
I love her. I hate her. I hate that I love her. Don't want to, but I can't put nobody else above her.
It's that damn bipolar again. Up, Down. Hot, Cold. Love, Hate.
Mom.
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