My Life Before Mom and Dad

Thank You, Grandmother for Taking Care of Me

Stevens Courts was and still is Texarkana housing. In the 1950s, it was a red brick haven for me the first three years of my life. There I was born, delivered by my Grandmother. While I know today that the Courts were built for those who had little money, I never felt deprived. Short memories are probably God-sent. I ate well. I had my own bed and room and lots of cousins to play with. I have pictures that show that I could have been considered a princess by all the standards that princess carry. I had the flouncy dresses and socks with laced trim inside my white high tops. My hair had beautiful barrettes and I laughed a lot. At least according to my pictures and the stories my aunts would tell.
     But, my life was created by the melding of two hearts. I like to believe that. I also believe that their tale will shed light on the complications of relationships, especially with the barriers before them. Color issues. Societal issues. Men and women issues.
     I would say that I am the luckiest of people in having come from these two individuals, but a child doesn't think that way. The child in me was safe and secure at the start of my life, but then there was upheavals that once made me slightly bitter. Taking parts of the story, I've grieved tremendously. But, then I tell a story or lesson from my childhood and know that it wasn't bad after all.
     Would my life have been different if I had stayed in East Texas? Most definitely. And I wouldn't be able to say which direction my life would have taken. Some of my cousins didn't fare well. Others did. East Texas was a place where bigotry was the norm. In many ways, I think my father did me the greatest service in taking us away. I know now that he was running away from some things that plagued him--demons, if you will. He had the best reasons for moving us to a land where bigotry was low on the totem pole and he had enough on his plate to deal with. I'll share these over time.
     For all of his problems, this is what he leaves me. He built a construction company that stands today, one his nephew ran until he death a couple of years ago at age 74. There's a McCary subdivision in New Mexico. A legacy. Mine and my siblings. Yes, some of it is marred by the negative, but to look at it in bits and pieces and then step back and view the entire landscape makes me realize that the idea of a princess still fits. I am the daughter of royalty, strong genetics and an impeccable pedigree. I came from the two people whose role in my life makes me who I am. And that's saying something.
     Next: Family Dynamics

Mom and Me ...

And then there were three.
     Our first house in Alamogordo holds a lot of conflicted memories. While I clearly remember giggling and hiding in the back seat of my father's car so that I could go with him to work and then, later, often being frightened of him, too, I clung more dearly to my mother's skirts. I was never shy. I remember my mother putting me in beauty pageants at that age. She would buy me beautiful clothes and I would model at community functions. I can still see the stage and me going out and turning around and around. I also remember sitting with her as she read books to me. She had so many books and I know that my love of books comes from her. We went to movies a lot, too. My mother loved westerns. After a matinee, we'd walk home and I chattered like a magpie. Mom said that I talked early and ever so often, when she would hear me speak, she said that she knew that I would write for a living.
     During the day, it was just my Mom and me. We walked together everywhere. I learned later that the reason my mother walked everywhere was that she had not yet learned to drive. I can remember my chubby hands in hers as traveled to the market or to the movies. She was my beautiful mother and she loved me dearly. My mother told me that I was the best baby. She said that I had the sweetest disposition, sleeping through the night almost from the first and giving her time in the morning to rise and do chores before I awakened. She said that I always smiled and was happy.
     That seems to work with my memories. About her. About me with her. Playing jacks on the steps. Walking home from a movie. Making ice cream with her. Being read to. Comforting memories of our time together.
     When I asked my mother about how she met my father, she told me that she was a junior in high school in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. My father was a teacher there. Mom said that he was the smartest man she had ever met. My mother had to have been about 17 or so. She was the only of her siblings at the time who pursued her education, finally going to school where her mother's sister lived in order to finish. My mother's father was not the same father as her siblings. He was a dark man with wavy hair, like my mother's with strong Indian blood. She met him a few times and was even friends with his son later in life, but she didn't like to think of herself as the bastard child although the stigma lay dormant in her heart.
     Interesting how history often repeats itself. I consider myself as having two grandfathers--the legal one and the biological one. We have family reunions where my legal grandfather's family (cousins, aunts and uncles) meet and we never discuss my mother's father. I'm part of that family dynamics and culture. Simple enough, but when my mother was divorcing my father, she shared with me that she thought a child should be with his or her real parent and that it went a long way in her decision to marry Henry. She told me about Dr. Hill and said that she was ready to marry him until Henry divorced his third wife and asked for her hand. Mom explained that she didn't want me to feel as she often felt, abandoned and never really belonging to her father. But, I did feel that way sometimes. There was something fractured in my relationship with my father early on. Was it my fault?
     Being almost a decade older than my Mom, I wouldn't say that she was looking for a father figure when she and he came together. Dad was still relatively young when they met, but he was the adult and she was the child. Her relationship with him probably wasn't sanctioned by society. My mom remembered that one day he was gone. I asked her if Dad had been fired for dating her. She said simply, "I think so."
     My mother idolized my father and even at their worst moments, she didn't allow me to talk bad about him. She would quietly remind me when I was at my wits' end about him--"He's your father, P.K." However, I do believe that the time they met in Bartlesville placed them indelibly in each other's soul. It was several years before they would meet again. The attraction was still strong and then I was conceived. While home, awaiting my birth and her belief that they would get married, he abandoned her again. Yet, her heart was true. Those times that he abandoned her, I believe he was bowing to societies' dictates. Each time they came together, she was ruled by love.
     I think over the years my father basked in my mother's worship of him. Even when they divorced and she was at her angriest about the things that he had done, she never stopped loving him. She never remarried. I believe she understood him best and now, trying to see through her eyes, I begin to see why.
     Next: The March of the Munchkins--Siblings Galore

Alamogordo, New Mexico

The White Sands I Remember

My first home with my parents was in a white adobe house with two bedrooms. Here is where my memories start with both of my parents, especially my mother. My sisters and brothers don't remember Mom as I do. By the time they were old enough to even understand that Mother was a nurse, nurses wore pants and tunics, not the formal nurses uniform of white dresses, stockings and shoes.
     I remember sitting and watching her dress for work. She had beautiful skin. She had this gorgeous raven black hair, a delicate bone structure and keen features. She was always beautiful to me. What I remember is watching her prepare for work, ironing her uniform and polishing her shoes a stark white. All of my life, my mother's care in her dress was exceptionally beautiful. I have, I admit, always felt a bit awkward around her. I was big, large hands and feet. She had bony fingers and thin feet. Learning later that she had been chubby until she was in her twenties and that it was in this chubby state that she caught my Dad's eye was a revelation.
     Anyway, I loved my mother, idolized her. I wonder if part of it was that in order to take care of me, she had to live some place else. So, I didn't have a mother everyday, but everyday I knew about her, she was an integral part of my life. I never felt deprived. Maybe it was because my grandmother always let me know how lucky I was that my mother loved us enough to work hard. I also realize that because my Mother worked as she did, my grandmother was able to devote a considerable amount of time to my care. This blog is helping me to piece together the chronology of my life and my parent's life. It is my hope to get into more of this as I write this journal, but here is some of what stands out.
     My mother didn't wear a lot of makeup, but she always wore lipstick. She worked the night shift. Most of my life my Mother worked the 11 to 7 shift of whatever hospital she worked for. As she would get dress to go to work, I would watch eagerly. The highlight of my valiant  watch was after she placed her nurse's cap on her head she would expertly apply red lipstick to her lips. It kept me enthralled. I can still feel my anticipation because once she applied that lipstick, she would leave. But not before kissing my lips briefly so that I had red lipstick on, too. Then she would tuck me in the bed and kiss me goodnight. As I snuggled down into my bed, my mother would put on her wool blue cape, swirling it around her shoulders, pulling it together with a gold clasped chain and the final touch, pinning on her nurses pin, a pin I cherish more than any jewelry she owned. This is my one treasure of her because of this memory it evokes.
     My father did some construction work at White Sands. I do remember the mountains of white sands and going there with my mother, father and grandmother. These memories must be of the family times. Abstract and mostly in bits and pieces. The first memory of my father--something that I know happened--was hiding in the back seat of his car wanting to follow him to work. He finds me, of course, and he's not angry about it. I am disappointed that I can't go with him and I am not sure whether I cry or not. I do know that my Mother and Father laugh about it. I think I know why. It meant that I was bonding with him, something my Mom desperately wanted. I think he did, too.
     I don't know when that changed. For some reason, there came a time when I didn't sleep in my room anymore. I always dragged a pillow and covers to the couch where my Mother would find me the next morning. I do remember the dream, though, and it came barreling into my consciousness the night we fled from my father. The night after he brandished a rifle and demanded a lie from me. It shook my very soul as I drove my Mother and siblings to Texarkana, back to the place where I had once felt safe.
     I know now why I slept on the couch, but I didn't until I told my Mother the dream I had. I told her that I remember someone knocking on the door of the house and my father gets up to let the person in. I remember trying to pretend to be asleep, but I peeped out from under the covers blanketing my head as my father and the man walked down to the end of the room not far from me. I don't know how I knew, but the man with my father was the devil. He was as good looking as my father and they talked. I couldn't hear them. They pointed at me and I knew then that they knew I was awake and that I knew who they were.
     Next: The Two Faces of Henry.

My Mom, My Dad and Me

"My Momma said, 'Don't lose you 'cuz the best luck I had was you.'

But I know one thing, that I love you."

Michael Franti singing in "Hey, I love you."

Michael Franti sings these words throughout his song, "Hey, I love you!" I sing it most mornings when I need a pick me up. But, the part I like best is when Michael sings about his mother's love for him. I guess in many ways, I have always known my mother loved me. I wasn't so sure about my father. However, I think I understand why. I can sympathize with him for many reasons and hopefully these vignettes will help you see as I finally was able to see. Everybody needs someone to love them.

     As I sat in the backseat of the car with my mother and father, I wonder what I was thinking. I was leaving the comfort of the only home I knew at Steven's Court in Texarkana, Texas with my Grandmother and her husband, Mr. Leon. I was leaving cousins I adored, aunts who adored me. I was heading somewhere and I only understood that it was away. I guess you don't actually explain these things to a 3 year-old child, do you? I imagine not. 

     The Fifties was an unusual time for blacks in this country. There was unrest and the treatment of black people in this country, especially in the South, was bad. Both my parents were educated. Their combined intelligence is probably what made me a somewhat gifted child. I don't say that to brag, only that I realize my DNA comes from two remarkable people. Isn't it a shame that we don't recognize the best of us. I think perhaps people have always focused on what is wrong rather than what is right when analyzing the past. I am finally recognizing that it must be the whole truth--the entire story--that helps us to understand.

     My father, as I've come to understand, wanted to take us away to a better life. The west beckoned a lot of blacks during this time. Even so, I imagine that the trip out West was difficult. Since I don't remember the drive and only have the memory of wanting to stay with my Grandmother when she asked if I wanted to stay with her, I have to use my knowledge of what that drive might have been. It was summer, I know, probably late summer so it would have been hot. I imagine that we stopped often and that I was probably a little clingy to my mother. Children would be, would they not?

     Seeing my father with other children and even remembering him with my younger sisters and brothers, I would imagine that he tried to engage me. Did I only just meet him? Had he been a regular visitor? The answer, I know now, is no. He saw me for the first time when I was about 18 months old. I don't think he saw me again until he came from Kansas City with my mother to take me away.

      After my birth, my mother went back to work at the Negro Hospital in Kansas City. It has always been a source of pride for me that my mother seemed to have gotten on with her life after such a huge disappointment. My father had married someone else. According to my aunts, he married someone who was socially his equal. She was also fair as he was, meaning that they were both light skinned. My father decided soon after my birth to enter into the ministry. My grandfather, his father, was a minister. He would become one, too.

     I understand that my mother started dating a black doctor during this time. His name was Dr. Hill. Like her, he was dark chocolate in coloring and according to my aunts, "a dream." They were happy for my mother, too, until they learned that my father was entering into the ministry. My aunts thought this was the height of hypocrisy after what he did to their sister. I don't think my mother knew what my aunts were planning that day. In fact, I am sure of it. My Aunt Ollie (ne Olive) and my Aunt Josephine had taken me to Kansas City to visit their sister, which I understand they did regularly. That Sunday while Mom was at work, they dressed me up and took me to church, the church where my father was being ordained. They sat me on the front pew. Have I said how much I look like my father? I think that is why they did it.
     After the service, according to my aunt, they took me away and didn't let him talk or touch me. I don't know what happened after that. Did his wife know? Did the members of the church know? It seems that they did after that. It was a year later that my mother and father married. How did that happen? What was the catalyst that not only brought them together and caused my father's divorce? Was it me? 

     When my father was in his eighties and in the hospital, I went to see him. When I walked into his room, he said, "You were the prettiest child I had ever seen the first time I laid eyes on you." There was pure love in his eyes it seemed as he remembered that moment. But, I needed to know. 

     "What was I? Two or Three?" I asked.

     "Yes." He said it quietly and simply.

     The tears spilled from my eyes. It was the first time he had admitted that he hadn't been married to my mother when I was born. Sometimes over the course of the years between my sixteenth birthday and my late forties, I felt I didn't matter to him. This memory triggered something for both of us that day. Was it forgiveness? Healing? Love? Maybe all three?

     ... but I know one thing--that I love you.

More--Life in Alamogordo