Mom’s Family

Trigger Warning: sexual abuse

There are three  parts to the story, each distinctive yet under the same roof.

Part One

Mom was the oldest of six children and grew up in Stayton, Oregon. We called our grandparents Dade and Gram. Dade built their two-story house, using poor grade lumber, walls very thin and certainly wouldn’t pass inspection like today. Mom bought the windows for the entire house. 

She had three sisters, and a brother.

Gram called Mom her right hand. Mom took their house payments to the bank and at home answered the door when they didn’t know who was there. The unknown really scared Gram.

She took pills from a bathroom cabinet for her extreme anxiety. I didn’t know why until I was an adult..

Part Two

When my Aunt Fran was little she had a series of ear infections so one of her eardrums burst as a result. She didn’t hear well, her speech garbled, the kids at school made fun.  Gram didn’t like it so she took her out. As a result Fran never learned to speak clearly, her handwriting barely legible and spelling very poor.

On my summer break she had a nightstand and had a small dish full of coins. I wondered why anyone needed money in the bedroom. She used Ben-Gay rub for aches and pains. I loved its smell. She had false teeth it was fascinated to watch; she put them in a cup and added a blue tablet, a fuzzy blue explosion. 

I learned a good work ethic, just like on our farm hard work pays off.  She got up early and made a full breakfast, eggs, bacon toast then packed lunches before we left to work the crops and me alongside; picking, raspberries, strawberries, beans, tomatoes, corn and others I’m sure. 

One problem I learned was to pay my own way. It carried into my marriage with Dave. I was used to paying my way. I drove our new car to pick beans, we didn’t need the money. He wasn’t happy, he was embarrassed but I saved the two hundred dollars a long time to feel secure.

Part Three

My Aunt Betty’s husband was driving drunk and crashed his car into a bridge abutment. He died instantly. She was left with an infant boy, no home and no income. The obvious answer was to move to Dade and Gram’s.

It was complicated; my cousin lived with five adults, highly favored and spoiled rotten. It didn’t serve him well in the real world.

We went to Christmas every year. My cousin had doting grandparents, aunts, and of course his Mother. Each of them gave him several gifts, him ending up with a mountain of presents. My sisters and I got only one, my parents said. We stopped going.

 He was the “king” of the house. In my story he will reappear but not in a good way.

Part Four

Gram was extremely anxious and nervous. I watched her take pills from a kitchen cabinet. I wondered why? Her feet got stuck until someone lifted her up so she could stand. Now I know it is a neurological condition from extreme anxiety and stress. No wonder with her pedophile father living in her house?

Even though her father had done jail time for sexual abuse he still conveniently lived in the house and abused Mom’s youngest sister Norma, leaving her vulnerable and unprotected.

Unfortunately there was a tool shed in the back of the property. There he exposed himself to my sister Grace and Norma.

She fled immediately after high school graduation. She married Bud. We were told that he didn’t want to come to their house because it wasn’t clean. That was a bold-faced lie, the reason was because she suffered abuse year after year.

Years later he sexually abused me in a living room full of adults who looked away.

He was creepy.

He was everywhere.

Why, O why was he living there?

Dade was extremely harsh with his children; his weapon of choice was a razor strap hanging on a nail in the back porch. He whipped Aunt Mick because she wouldn’t eat vegetables. To her dying day her diet was eating chicken, potatoes, strawberries and chocolate. She was thin and gaunt, her own version of anorexia.

My uncle Jim endured the harshest discipline being a boy. He joined the military the very day after graduation. He settled in Texas. He came to Oregon only two times. The abuse robbed me of knowing my uncle.

Jim, Mick and Norma, Mom’s youngest sister, all were essentially run-aways.

But there’s hope even for the broken.