Cancer of Expectations

As I mentioned in the last blog, friendships imploded after our shoplifting escapade. Most of the girls were grounded and had to come home right after school. In my world, at trouble was brewing.

I was twelve and heading fast into teenager hormone mind set. I wasn’t a pouting, yelling or stomp around the house teenager, but I did get waves of sadness and cry.

I cried at animal movies like ‘Born Free’ a movie about a pride of lions returned to the wild. I cried at a showing of ‘Dumbo’ when the mother elephant was accused of being a mad elephant and separated from her baby. (I still tear up thinking about it).

Why animals? Growing up in Minnesota, it felt as if the only place where I could breathe was with my cat and dog. My pets accepted me exactly as I was. Before we moved across country, we gave my cat and dog to close friends who owned a farm. They were well cared for and the dog became the favorite to their family.

The first year in California, I wasn’t allowed pets. Finally in the second year we adopted a Siamese/tabby mix we named Graymalkin. (It’s the name of the cat in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the name my mother as an English graduate found acceptable.) Graymalkin became pregnant by the neighbors full Siamese Tom and produced four beautiful kittens. We kept one, Danielle.

It’s time to mention, before we moved from Minnesota to California, my mother had a mole removed from her upper back. It was cancerous. This was in the early 1960’s and treatments for cancer were non-existent at this time. There wasn’t chemotherapy or radiation as a way to combat the disease. The doctors said she could live another 7-10 years, maybe more. Maybe. She was 33.

Death is inevitable and how people face their mortality is unique. Some fight it, some ignore it, and some deny it. I figure it’s best to accept it.

Accepting the reality of death instilled in me a practical attitude. There is no avoiding death, so I realized it was best be friends.

I’ve known several people who were given a dire prognosis. In high school, a classmate in my junior year was told she was dying from cervical cancer. She was determined to graduate before she died and worked very hard to cram her last two years of school into one. She did and passed away before Christmas of what would have been her senior year. She wasn’t going to let a disease stop her.

In my thirties, I knew a cantankerous man diagnosed with Hokinson’s disease. He went through chemotherapy, lost his full head of wavy brown hair, recovered and was declared cancer free. He was cantankerous the entire time.

My father got lung cancer and was told he had about a year left. When he spoke to me about his feelings, I suspected he was afraid of dying alone and that I would find him. He did not want that. My younger brother and his family took him under their wing and a serenity came over my father that I’d never experienced. It was just over a year he had living with them, but rewarding for all around.

So, what does this have to do with my 8th grade? Hang in with me for a bit longer. I will get to it in the next few blogs.

The wall between my mother and I grew. It was little things that built a solid yet invisible wall brick by brick.

She’d ask my opinion about something and get upset when I’d answer truthfully. Things like, she’d ask me if I liked her new haircut, I’d truthfully say I thought it was too short. (I’ve always preferred longer hair, what can I say?) But hair grows, so too short isn’t undoable it just takes a month to fill out. She snubbed me for the rest of that day.

One night, she tried a new spaghetti sauce recipe and asked me if I liked it. I believe I said it was too spicy for me. She was incensed. My younger brother, perhaps to smooth over the rift, said he liked it. My mother sneered, “See? He likes it.”

I was learning a lesson. Don’t voice my point of view, even when asked. As women we blame men for suppressing us, but I believe mothers can be just as harsh particularly against a child that challenges.

One night washing dishes, tension between my mother and I came to a blow.

I should mention that my older sister and mother were very close. My sister seemed to know and understand exactly what my mother needed, and provide it. If she needed reassurance, she got it. If she needed gentle guidance, my sister provided it.

All this sounds glorious. To have someone deeply, fully, and unconditionally understand, it’s like what we call a soul mate. I beg to differ, there is always a hidden cost.

My sister is very smart. She had a wonderful grade school education from nuns at a prep school for girls. She thrived in that environment.

When it came time for me to enter that school, I was rejected due to the scandalous nature of my parent’s divorce. Yeah, nice Christian beliefs, right?

Actually we were all blocked from entering catholic schools in the district due to the divorce.

My mother was advised by her sister to personally go to St. Luke’s Catholic elementary school, and beg the principal to allow her children to attend. She was to take me with her. St. Luke’s was a respectable school but not on par with a prep school.

In the Principal’s office, she begged and cried for her children to be allowed to attend, My older sister was to enter seventh grade, my older brother to enter fifth grade and I was to enter first. That was a wise move as the nun had to see me, a blond child of five being rejected for a sin I didn’t commit. We were accepted.

My sister hated that school and said she had never been so bored in her entire life. But, like a train pushed off its rails, it took something to get back on track. Some never get back on track and that is the tragedy of our times.

I’ve long suspected that my sister helped my mother with her term papers for her college classes. I don’t know if she wrote them, but edited, corrected a phrase here, helped clarify a point there. Gentle guidance at its finest.

When my sister was accepted by USC and moved into a dorm, my mother expected me to step into the space vacated by my sister. Not the writing of papers, although a couple of times she tried and as I was in eighth grade I was like “Ummm, I don’t know.” I wanted the loving conversations she and my sister had, she wanted the behind the scenes caretaker that my sister had been.

What did that mean other than writing papers? Handing over my wages from babysitting, and money my grandparents sent me. To say nothing of cleaning the house without being asked, buying groceries and managing the bills. My sister did it, what was wrong with me?

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. My sister had every right to go off to college, but it left expectations silently passed on to me.

I believe my sister wanted my mother to wake up and realize how much she made our broken family function. It cost my sister her youth, she had to be the parent to my mother. The backlash she went through when she reached her twenties was harsh.

Next week: the Cult of Beauty and how it is misused.