My Memoirs

I have decided to start writing my memoirs and to post them here. I know that it may not interest some of you, but if they don't, then don't read them ;).

I know that I’m not crazy. This is the foremost thing that I have to keep in mind as I write this, and that you need to remember if you read it. Questioning your sanity is normal right? If you have four kids and too much time on your hands, you probably would too. If your children were constantly telling you that you didn’t love them, that you wish you’d never had them, if they ground it into your head all day every day, that you were crazy, or just not good enough, I bet you wouldn’t be able to stop questioning your sanity.

Maybe this would’ve been easier if I’d grown up with a functional mother, or if she just would’ve cared more, but I doubt it. Having teenagers is supposed to drive you insane, so I must be right on target. How do they learn to push just the right buttons exactly at the right moment? Is it something they’re born knowing? If that’s true, I wonder what happens to the babies that get adopted; do they adapt and learn to be just like every other kid out there? I couldn’t have been this way to my mother, even with the problems we had, I never treated her like my kids treat me.

What do you think of when you think of your mother, the very first thing? For me it’s the smell of Budweiser and aluminum cans, cigarette and pot smoke. The sound of cards being shuffled is right up there too, as well as the feeling of being very tired but knowing that we couldn’t go home until she was ready to leave. I think of Aqua Net hairspray and Charlie perfume; bacon frying, coffee brewing and screaming. Everything I ever did was wrong, so maybe the sound of her screaming at me should be higher up on the list.

For all of my life I have always considered my maternal grandma, the epitome of perfection. I guess that’s how confused and needy I was as a child. My grandma was a beautiful person, warm, caring, gentle, authoritative, smart, sweet and sincerely loving. She was also an alcoholic. Everybody in my family either had a drinking problem, or was cultivating one when I was a child. Sure tons of families deal with alcoholism, but this family just happened to be mine so that made it different, right?

Most adults look back over their childhoods with generally fond memories, recalling all of the holidays, birthdays, family vacations or small things like bedtime stories and being tucked into bed by their parents. I remember the Salvation Army homeless shelter for families on 6th Street in Tacoma. I remember driving away from my father in the back of a beat up red-orange Datsun station wagon as my mother left him. We had some good times, but the real memories, the vivid ones, are the sad, scary or bad times. Maybe that makes me morbid or overdramatic, but it’s what I have, so it’s what I’ll tell you about.