"Ruth Yvonne! What do
you think you were doing young lady?! I never thought a child of mine would ever
embarrass me the way you've just done! How can I go back to that table and face
the family?! What were you thinking?!"
I can still feel the sting
of my mother's words as they lashed out at my tender young ears. I can still feel
her hands quivering as she held me at arm's length in front of her. But, what hurt
the most was the sight of her tears and realizing that, yes, I had embarrassed her
in front of her whole family.
When I was young, we'd never miss the yearly
or, at the least, bi-annual family reunion. The family members from all around Florida
and Georgia would gather at one family's home and everyone brought food, lots of
wonderful food. It was always great to see all the cousins again and my favorite
aunts and uncles.
On one such occasion, when I was about seven, the reunion
was held at Aunt Viola's house. Being a child, I flitted like a butterfly from
one group to another playing and absorbing bits of conversation here and there.
One topic of conversation in particular seemed to be in discussion wherever I went.
The ladies in the kitchen were talking about it. The men on the porch were talking
about it. The cousins in the yard were talking about it. What I kept hearing was
that one of my grown cousins, Christopher, was about as worthless as could be and
that he was after his parents and a more affluent uncle for another loan...but, of
course, everyone knew he'd never repay the money. He never had before.
After
we had been tortured for hours with the wafting aroma of collard greens, fresh creamed
corn just cut from the cob, sweet sugar-cured ham, crunchy fried chicken and sticky
sweet cakes and pies, lunch time finally rolled around. Everyone was seated at one
long table in the yard. Actually, several tables had been pushed together and covered
in white linen. After the far too lengthy blessing, all the varied dishes the ladies
had prepared were passed, one after another, down the length of the table. Conversation
and laughter rippled around the table like a babbling brook until Cousin Christopher
brought up his need for cash. It was then that I looked him in the eye and, in childish
naivety, loudly asked him "Why do you keep asking for loans? Everyone knows
you never pay them back?!"
Silence dropped upon the table like a heavy
water balloon which then exploded all over me as my mother jerked me up from the
table and dragged me away into the house where I received a royal tongue lashing.
"Ruth Yvonne!" it began and went on and on. I was confused to say the
least. I had only repeated the same thing everyone else had said. Why was it wrong
when I said it? I learned, that day, one of life's hardest lessons — Gossip is not
repeated to the one being gossiped about - or - If you can't say something nice
about someone, don't say anything at all! My mother told me in no uncertain terms,
"It's not nice to hurt someone's feelings like that."
From then on, I became "Silent Sam" as my high school gym teacher later
dubbed me. I talked hardly at all, finding it a lot easier to say nothing than to
say something anyone might construe as wrong, stupid, embarrassing or hurtful. I
am still a lot like that to this day.
I did, however, go through my "middle-age
crisis" years later by heading in just the opposite direction. At that time
in my life I was at a point where I felt my silence and pleasant attitude were being
forced upon me by family, life and circumstances in general.
While my children
were growing up, there were so many problems with my daughter's health, my son's
homosexuality, and my husband's hospitalization for a cerebral aneurysm that, in
order to keep us all looking up and in good spirits, I was expected to be the family
Pollyanna. No matter how I actually felt, or what I actually thought, I had to be
positive, encouraging, happy, creative, helpful, spiritual, and could never, never
complain about anything, no matter what. I had to be someone everyone looked up
to and respected and have all the attributes of the perfect mother of a handicapped
child, a son who was not yet "out of the closet" and a husband who was
hospitalized for three months and temporarily an invalid for some time thereafter.
Inside, turmoil was brewing. Inside I didn't feel positive. I felt like
giving up. I wasn't happy. All my creativity had dried up. I let some of my imperfections
and impure thoughts out into the world abut that time. I felt I couldn't go on being
"Peggy's mom" and "Mrs. Perfect." I didn't believe a loving
God would put any of us in the position we were in. My daughter Peggy had infantile
spinal muscular atrophy, a neuromuscular disease associated with muscular dystrophy.
When I read or heard people say how lucky any parent of a handicapped child was
that God had given them this special assignment, I wanted to rant and rave and laugh
in their face. The God I believed in wouldn't make a child handicapped just so I
could be given the privilege of caring for her. But I couldn't talk about those
things. They just boiled and stewed inside. The woman everyone loved and respected
as "Peggy's mom" had evil thoughts, strong spiritual doubts, couldn't cope,
sometimes didn't feel very loving, and couldn't express her anger or fear or frustration
because she believed she would be hurting someone's feelings, or saying something
that everyone knew, but no one talked about (out-loud).
Somehow, I felt I
had to show the world this other side of myself which no one but me seemed to know
existed. Was I just the sum total of what everyone else thought I should be? I
had to find out who else I was or if there really was a real me after all. Was there
really a Ruth hiding inside "Peggy's mom" and would she be anyone worth
knowing once I found her?
A few months after my youngest son graduated from
high school, I divorced my husband and sought solace and love in the beds of a couple
of dozen other men before I found one to settle down with. I worked at letting people
know I wasn't the perfect wife or mother and never had been. My thoughts and feelings
flowed out in my poetry and in the content of some pretty angry and accusatory letters
I wrote in the heat of emotion and made the mistake of mailing. When someone asked
how I was doing, I wasn't always "fine" as in the past. I opened up more
and told them how I was really feeling and why. It wasn't something they always
wanted to hear and some of my friends grew more distant as the years passed.
I questioned my religious beliefs and began searching for a church or group of people
whose creed was closer to what I felt I believed at that time. I had and still have
a deep love and respect for God. But I just don't seem to fit in with traditional
concepts and practices.
The reticence brought on by that incident at the
family reunion so many years before is slowly shrinking. I am learning, after all
this time, how to say just enough...not enough to hurt someone's feelings, but enough
to express my own viewpoint. And, I am learning that, whether painful or joyful,
all of life's lessons go into the making of the person you turn out to be
So, who did I turn out to be after all that searching? I found that Ruth the poet,
author and artist is in there somewhere, but she's not alone. There is also the
adventurous and sensual Amanda who is the pseudonym I use in some of my stories,
and the reverent Seeker still spreading hope and love and faith, and yes, I'm still
"Peggy's Mom" too. If I've learned one thing at all, it's that there is
no one definable person who is me. I am a multifaceted individual and one who is
ever-changing.