Pagan Commune

So the girls move in to the back bedroom in July of 2013.  A few weeks later D & K move in to a little trailer out back of the house.  Now forgive me, I know I am repeating myself.  I have covered a lot of this in Becoming Druid.  But I will cover it again for those of you who might not have read that article yet.  Hopefully I can shed some new light on things, I forgot to tell you the first go round.

I met D & K in our Druid group.  In about May or June they really began to attach themselves to me.  Why Gods always me!  Sometimes all 5 of us, Juno, Kay, me, D & K would hang out together.  Sometimes it would just be D & K and me.  They found out that I could sew and they told me they wanted robes. I told them if they bought the material, I would make the outfits for them, and they did.  I became their sewing fool.  I know I made two robes, at least one cloak, and a bag in the span of a few weeks. 

So we are all hanging out and getting on pretty well.  D & K tell us they don’t like the way things are going with the protogrove.  They have problems with Rovena.  D feels she is racist, because she dismisses her good ideas.  D is African-American.  I admit that I am not feeling particularly spiritually fulfilled at this point.  Somewhere in here we began to talk about putting Holda’s Hands back together. 

D comes to me one day and says that she has thrown out her husband (basically a friend she legal married) and their other roommate, not K.  I think she gave me some sob story about how was she going to afford everything.  She was going to school on line and cutting grass for a living.  She was living in a trailer, she owned, not far from my house.  She says she is going to rent out the trailer to make money.  Her mother owns a rent house in the hood and she does not want to go back to live in it.  She asks, if she buys a little trailer can she put it on my land. 

Me, ever wanting to please, ever wanting to make and gather family around me, says yes.  I never thought to say, “Well let me consult with Jay first.”  Yeh I’ve been a bitch like that.  I have had to eat crow and apologize to Jay a lot about things like this.  I think I often unwillingly and unconsciously make his life difficult sometimes, and I am very sorry about that.  I apologize to him frequently about all this stuff, more so since I have started writing my truth again.  Still he loves me through it all.  I will never deserve him.  For a long time I felt that just us living here, on this land, and us living by ourselves, with our farm and our animals was not enough.  I wanted to add people to our tribe, to make almost like a pagan commune.  For a few months in 2013 that’s exactly what I had, and it didn’t take long for that to wear pretty thin. 

By the Fall of 2013 six of us were sharing my little trailer.  The girl and D & K kept much different hours then Jay and I did.  They are also half our age as well.  Internet access became a big thing out here.  Most of them had not lived without it in a long time.  D had to have it for school.  She was in school on line, but K did all her homework for her.  What terrifies me is soon D will graduate with a degree in psychology.  The fact she is controlling and manipulative to almost everyone in her life scares me, and I think it should scare others. 

All 4 of them would leave and take off and go to Wendy’s for hours at a time.  When we were finally able to get satellite internet here, they would all congregate in Juno and Kay’s room.  They would leave me out here in the rest of the house.  There was literally nowhere for me to sit in there, so much of the conversations I missed.  I began to feel they were excluding me from their little club.  Childish, right? 

One of the things that really irked me was that Jay and I would cook dinner, clean the kitchen and go to bed.  D&K who had cooking facilities in their trailer, would come in and cook in my house at 10 or 11 o’clock at night, making lots of noise while we were trying to sleep.   Jay often had to get up at 4 in the morning.   Then they would leave their dirty dishes in the sink for me to clean up the next morning. I asked them not to do this.  I even started leaving the dish washer clean and empty for them.  Nope didn’t help.  Still got up in the morning, and there were dirty dishes in my sink.   Now I charged these girls no rent, any of them.  They would help out and buy me dog food, and share groceries, sometimes in exchange for rent.  Sometimes I would find Juno washing D & K’s dishes, but never D or K. 

I usually run out of propane in the early spring and then again in the fall.  When the tank ran out, I told D&K since they were cooking in the house, I wanted them to give me $50 to help fill up my tank.  I told Juno and Kay the same thing.  Not much I thought as it usually takes $300-$500 to put propane in my tank.  D&K suddenly decided to cook in their trailer. 

D  also wanted to drive my car everywhere, and I let her.  Stupid me!  D had a huge SUV.  She wanted to drive my car, because it got better gas millage.  She comes in one day and starts talking about me putting her on the insurance.  I started getting the feeling I was being used, all over again.

I was getting to the end of my rope about that time.  I was just overwhelmed.  I was suicidal.  Juno was having trouble with D then too.  She could get no peace and quiet.  They just walked into her room when they damn well pleased, never knocked, even if the door was closed.  My final straw came when I found out D was talking smack about me to Juno, in my own fucking house.  Something so bad that Juno has never had the courage to tell me what she said. Oh no I’m not going to stand for that!  Bitch you free loading off me and you going to disrespect me in my own house.  Oh you can carry your ass! 

D had accused me of being a raciest.  Continually told me how dirty my house was.  She took it upon herself to tell me how I needed to run my life, on several occasions.  I felt at the time, she pushed me to put Perro down.  She tried to break up Juno and Kay.  Treated K like a dog and never lifted a fucking finger to help herself.  She made K do everything for her.  She used her like a fucking slave.  I got to the feeling that I just wanted to kick D ass to the curb. 

We tried to work things out.  It didn’t work.  I finally made a phone call to Rovena.  I told her I needed to have an emergency conference with her.  Juno and I both went out to meet with them.  We told the everything D was saying about them, behind their backs.  Then I told them what was going on in my house.   I said I need you to help me make a decision.  I did not want to be rash.  I said, I am considering asking D & K to leave.  What is your impression of them?  I will never forget Boogie saying, “I think she is a pathological liar. I don’t trust her any farther than I can throw her.  She’s a lazy bitch!”  I was bit taken aback by that.  I thanked them for their wise council and left.

I went to Tami a few days later, told her how D was treating me, and what I should do.  Tami said, “I would tell that bitch to bounce.”  After finally talking to Barb I made my decision to ask D&K to leave.  I told D, “Some friends just cannot live together.  You have two weeks to get out.”  It was my intention to ask D & K to leave, it was never my intention to ask Juno and Kay to leave as well. 

Juno was furious with me.  She spent hours yelling at me, telling me what a horrible person I was, what a bad pagan I was and that she had loved me like a mother.  That one really hurt.  She finally concluded with “If she goes, I’m going too.”  Juno did not speak another word to me, although it took two weeks for them to move all their stuff out, for more than 6 months.    

With Juno, Kay, D & K gone, and our relationship in shambles I felt I could not go back to Druid.  So for the first time in my life I became a solitary witch.  I had burned all my bridges.  I had been threw 2 covens, started and closed 2 more, and now felt I could not go back to Druid because of who was there.  For the first time in about 8 years I had no community to practice with.  I felt utterly alone.

As the girls drove out of the drive way, I looked at their empty room and decided I should paint it.  I would go with the Chinese theme that Jay loved so well.  I should give Jay back his room I though.  So I went down to the Lowe’s and bought me some red paint and black paint and started to work. 

What D didn’t know is that the day I asked her to leave, Jay and I received a large oil well check.  It felt like confirmation to me that I was doing the right thing.  The check would be enough to buy our food trailer and start the food business that we had always dreamed of Garson Du Bayou.  I means Boys of the Bayou in French. 

I never seem to stay out of trouble for long.  In October of 2013, Paige would come back into my life. 

Ilsa

 

 

The Girls

It has been our great pleasure over the last few years to watch over and care for Juno and Kay.  We often refer to them as “The Girls,” a misnomer as they are very capable young women.  I have over the last few years served as their High Priestess, their friend, a kind of aunt and at times a surrogate mother.  They are a great joy in my life.

Juno and Kay are from a far away land called Indiana.  I hear the summers there are quiet pleasant and rainy.  You can understand how for someone from Louisiana that sounds like a fairy story.  But I am assured this place is real.  I have after all seen it on a map, but as of yet have yet to journey there myself. 

Juno and Kay have been together for many years.  For a large percentage of their lives they have lived with Kay’s parents.  Kay’s stepfather became attached to Barksdale, and so they moved here to the hell that is Louisiana.  I often admire them for being an open couple, and living their truth, in the buckle of the Bible belt.  A place that can at times be very homophobic.  When Juno and Kay walk in the grocery store holding hands, people look at them hatefully.  Just makes me want to kick people’s asses!  You know that thing about Jesus tells us to love everyone, only applies to certain people, or so a lot of people around here feel.

In January 2013 we learned that Kay’s stepfather intended to retire, and return home to Indiana that Summer.  The girls were informed they were no longer welcome to live with their family.  If they returned to Indiana, they would have to do it on their own, and find their own place to live.  Jay and I graciously opened our home to them, as we knew they had no money to do such a thing.  As Tami was living in Momma Muriel’s house, I could not offer that to them.  They would be moving into our guest bedroom in the Summer, but until then the room had to be cleaned.  Our guestroom also functions as Jay’s man cave.  Juno and I chose paint colors.  The first time she had ever been able to do that in her life.  So our great plans were laid.

Juno, Kay and I began to worship with Rovena’s ADF grove at Imbolc 2013, and continued to hold our Holda’s Hand rituals here at my home.  Since I had been possessed two years before I had been studying books on how to Sit High Seat, or as the Wiccan’s say Drawing Down.  It was my hope to learn so this I might learn to control this ability, and that I would be able to teach Juno, so she could pull me out should something go wrong.  At our Holda’s Hands Imbolc 2013 I put myself in a semi-trance, half possessed state.  Pan came through again, and then the Mother.  I did not know until later, how bad I had scared Juno.  It greatly disturbed her.  I have never again tried to actively become possessed.  Jay hated me doing this work, but I persisted in my studying, after some time though I gave it up.   I have deiced that my mental health is already too fractured, I do not have the necessary training, and it upsets Jay too much.  I recently sold all of my books on the subject. 

So we rocked along.  Juno, Kay and I kind of stopped doing Holda’s Hands.  Goat Problems took up a lot of my time.  I’m sorry I have not talked about Jay a lot here.  My emotional adventures often overshadowed our lives and our relationship.  Jay was still working for Unifirst.  He had been with them for almost 3 years at this point.  Jay worked anywhere from 50 to 80 hours a week for salary, or basically for 40 hours worth of pay.  He worked in a panel truck, with no AC, that could easily reach over 120°F on a warm day, much worse on a summer’s day.  All of which we found out was perfectly legal, although we felt immoral.  Corporations’ could care less about their employees.  They are expendable and highly replaceable.  All they care about is their bottom line.    Jay was chronically sleep deprived.  He spent two nights a week away from me. 

In May of 2011 Jay went in for his yearly physical.  His blood work showed that his calcium levels were off.  We continued to do blood work on him threw out that summer.  It was finally decided that it was his parathyroid, and he should have it removed.  One of the things your parathyroid controls is how your body absorbs calcium.  In September of 2011 Jay had most of it removed.  It was many times larger than it should have been.  Other than that his life pretty much stayed the same, go to work, help me with my crazy, crash on the weekends, and then goes back to work. 

In July of 2013 Jay developed a pimple under his right arm.  We did not think much about it.  A few days after we popped that pimple he developed a mass the size of a softball.  It was hot and it hurt him.   We took him into our PCP.  Our Dr. took one look at it and said, “Jay you have a massive staph infection.”  We were quickly admitted to the hospital.  Jay would spend 5 or 6 days there.  They tried for two days with antibiotics to get it to go down, and it would not.  Finally he was taken into surgery to have it drained. It was over 30 cc’s. 

Jay was sent home on light duty, with drain tubes in his arm.  It was so gross.  I shiver just thinking about it, even now.  I had to change his dressing twice a day.  I was always terrified I would hurt him, or worse do it wrong and that it would come back.  A few weeks later he developed another pimple, on the same arm, only on his forearm this time.  In a few days it began to swell as well.   Jay went into his surgeon, who told him it was staph again.  He said that he could readmit him and drain this, or if he was tough enough he could cut it open, drain it, and pack it in the office.  Jay’s a tough old boy, so he chose the latter.  He said it was the worse pain that he had ever felt, and he’s been in three car wrecks.  He said the packing hurt the worse. 

We feel the second round of staph was left over from his first round.  Jay had been picking up dirty clothes from Flower’s bakery the week he first got staph.  It was a new stop for him.  We believe he picked up something there.  He had never had it before, and after stopping work on that particular route never had it again. 

Ilsa

Goat Problems

In late 2012 I had acquired a new dog I named Perro, an Australian Cattle Dog, aka a Blue Healer.  Tami had found him.  I took him because Tami had too many animals.  He had belonged to some Spanish fellows, and they had been trying to get rid of him.  He was such a bad dog, they were planning on putting him down.  I never could properly say his name.  So I named him Perro, the Spanish word for dog.  At first he only spoke Spanish.  He had never been in a house before.  He was terrified to come in the first few days.  It was only later that we would find out how severally abused he had been.

Perro could at times be a very good dog.  Then a switch would flipped in his brain and he would attack.  He had been raised on a horse farm, and he kept attacking the million dollar thoroughbreds.  He was trying to herd them, by biting them in the leg.  He was beaten for that, often.  He would be beaten so badly one time, he defecated on himself.  We would learn later, that if you do not properly train one these dogs from an early age, they kind of go nuts.  They are not for a first time dog owner.  I believe Perro had brain damage from his abuse.  We later found out that his original name meant Devil dog. 

Perro would bite my goats and not let them go.  They would just scream out in pain and not let them go no matter how much I screamed at him, or threatened to beat him.  It was no simple nip in the heals.  He often broke the skin.  Our goat herd was large that year.  We were running about 14 head at the time.  I would turn them out to graze, and go about my day.  They would just take themselves across the highway, to the fire station and start grazing in the woods over there. 

One day we went to round them up, taking Perro with us.  I had hoped he would herd them for us.  He didn’t he just ran around biting them.  Tami and I were riding on the back of the truck, and I had my leg hanging from the tailgate.  Perro was happily following behind us.  Suddenly he reached up and bit me in the leg,  and threw my jeans he drew blood.  The only reason he didn’t take a whole chunk out of me, was because his bottom teeth tried to bit threw my boots, and could not get thru.  I knew I in trouble.  I was bleeding, but I had to cowgirl up and go on.  My goats took priority. 

We were able to get the heard back across the road and in the pen.  By that time I am hurting pretty bad.  “Jay I’m in trouble,” I said.  And I dropped my jeans, in front of Tami, god and everybody.  I was pouring blood at that time.  Tami was shocked and ran for medical supplies.  Jay was pissed and fussed me.  “Why didn’t you say anything?!” he scolded me.  I told him we had to get the herd safe first. 

The wound was bad enough that taking me to the hospital was discussed.  I told them, “No.  If they find out it’s a dog bite they will put Perro down.  It’s my fault for what he did.  I should not have been dangling my leg.”  Thank the gods Jay is a trained medical assistant and first responder.  He patched me up, and although I was sore for a few days, the two deep punctures I received, healed up nicely. 

My goats continued to go across the road, every time I let them out.  The cops were nice about it the first 10 or 15 times they were out here.  In March of 2013, the livestock man came to my house.  He is in charge of arresting people for livestock violations.  He drives a truck with a fifth wheel attachment in the bed, to hook up the goose neck trailer to take your animals away from you.  He is a regular police officer with a gun, handcuffs and everything else. 

He’s a bit terrifying.  He came to my house to discuss my goat problem.  He told me, “If I have to come back out here again I will take all your goats, and it will cost you $75 a head to get them out.”  And he looked around at my dogs, who are free roaming, and said what terrified me most, “and I’ll take your dogs too.”  I kind of lost it after that.  I went into a suicidal depression for several weeks.  I jumped at every sound.  I was terrified he was here to take my fur kids from me. 

We continued to have goat problems.  We put up a fence, and the goats just jumped threw it.  At some point that year Jay and I were both separately slapped with a lose livestock fine.  In August of that year I gave away most of my heard.  I kept Star, Kali, Bridget and Dagda, because they never went across the road.  In September I had to go to court and plead guilty to a misdemeanor.  One of the scarcest things I had ever done. 

Perro’s attitude never improved.  He often wanted to nibble or give love bites to people.  He never got any better.  He had tried love and we had tried whooping him.  I would not keep him confined or chained up.  That is no life for an animal.  We did not know what else to do.  Perro was becoming a danger.  He was still biting the goats.  I never knew if he would bite me again.  I never knew if he would suddenly decide to bite someone else.  What if he bit a child?  I was also feeling a lot of pressure from D & K to put him down.  Perro was unpredictable and a liability. 

Jay and I made the decision to put him down.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I have never had to put down a perfectly health dog for mental issues.  In the end I could not be in the room with him when it was done, and we did not bring him home to be buried.  I wonder if he hated me for that.  Felt abandoned.  I hope one day he can find it in his heart to forgive me and return to me in a new body. 

Perro taught me a very important lesson.  You can’t save every dog.  Some dogs are just too far gone from, abuse, trauma, bad breeding, etc.  That doesn’t mean we should not try, I just think we shouldn’t be devastatingly angry at ourselves, if we try our best, and it does not work out.  Sometimes we are just not the right home, the right owner, or the dog is not the right breed for you.  I often still kick myself, thinking that I did not do enough for him.   I wonder if someone who knew more about his breed, could have pulled him though this and made him change. 

I recently journeyed to Holda’s Garden.  I wanted to check on some of my goats who had passed over.  Holda told me the pasture was around the bend, and so it was.  Just past her house, down the dirt road, thru a grove of trees I found the pasture.  Sitting among my goats was Perro, watching over them.  I did not expect to see him there.  He came to me, and gave me love.  He told me that he had had, “a broken brain.”  He told me he was all better now and his job was to watch over the goats.  I told him again how sorry I was about putting him down.  He said he didn’t blame me, and assured me again he was alright.  I am glad he is there with them, doing what he loves.  Even if it may all be just in my head.

Ilsa

 

Hello Ilsa, Goodbye Beau

My mother and my biological father, Beau, met in school in the early 1970’s.  He was a few years older than her.  They were introduced by mutual friends at a local festival. My mother graduated high school in 1973.  She and Beau married the following year in May of 1974.  They were married in Oma’s living room by a Justice of the Peace.

The story goes that I am conceived in a hotel room in Texarkana, after a Star Trek episode in June or July of 1975.  I am born in March of 1976, in a hospital in Shreveport, just like most people from Desoto Parish are.  In the days before ultrasounds, the old women told my mom she would have a boy, because of the way she was carrying me.  She was going to name me Mike, after her brother.  When I was born a girl they were all surprised, but happy.  Mom took a bit to figure out what to name me.  She settled on Ilse in honor of her mother.  Oma begged Momma not to name me Ilse, she says, “They will never say it right.  They will never spell it right.”  And what she said is still most defiantly true, but Mom decided to name me Ilse anyways. 

I am glad to have a unique name, even if I can’t find it on a cup or a key chain.  Well I can now, because of the internet.  I think unique names make unique people, never wanted to be a Jennifer anyways.  Sorry to you Jennifer’s ahead of time.  If you have a unique name, you always know when someone is about to say your name for the first time, by that confused look on their face.  I’ve always said I would answer to anything but, “Hey Bitch!” 

My first few years seem to have been uneventful.  We were living at the time, in a yellow and white little trailer next door to my great Aunt Ruby, outside of Longstreet.  Beau worked for UPS driving a truck and mom stayed home with me. 

Now here is where things seem to get kind of murky.  In the Spring of 1978 my mother became very ill.  She began to have paralysis on the right side of her body.  It took them several weeks, to come up with a reason, why a healthy 23 year old would be having these types of problems.  Many theories were thrown around.  In conversations, I would have with Beau later in my life. He would tell me, that the Doctors came to him, and believed that he may have unintentionally spread a Zoonosis to mom, from the cows he had been keeping. 

Mom had 13 CAT scans during this time.  The Doctors saw what they believed to be a tumor in her frontal lobe region. She was taken into surgery on April 13^th, 1978, after 13 ½ hours she immerged alive.  They found no tumor.  They did try to grow a culture, on what I don’t know, but it did not work.  During surgery they had scratched a nerve and this permanently left Mom with seizures.  She remains on medications today, due to complications of this surgery.  Before the statue of limitations ran out on filling a malpractice suit, Mom went to her pastor to ask what she should do.  He told her she should not file a suit.  She has also been denied disability. 

There are many things I still do not know about this time period in my life.  Many of the players are dead, won’t talk about this, or are no longer involved in my life.  My mother would suffer a mild stroke on December 9^th, 2014.  We learned a lot during that stroke.  As they loaded Mom into the MRI machine they asked, “Do you have any metal in your body?”  She said, “No.”   She got in the machine and they found that she did in fact have metal in her body.  She has a metal plate in her head, put there during the 1978 surgery.  No one had ever told her that.  They also find evidence that she has had two significant strokes in her life time.  I believe that one of these strokes, may explain the events surrounding the 1978 brain surgery.  My mother does not share that belief.  There were no MRI machines around, in this area in 1978, and a CAT scan would not have necessarily picked up a stoke. 

Beau decided to take the events surrounding Mom’s 1978 surgery as a chance to leave.  He tells me years later that he had gone to my mother, while she is sick in the hospital bed, and asked her to choose him or her family.  She chose her family.  My mother has no memory of any such conversation ever taking place.  But then her memories of her being in the hospital seem to be a bit hazy.  Something from that time she remembers and something’s she does not.

While all this is going on you’ve got to remember, my Grandpa is right in the center of all of this.  He was a controlling, manipulative, conniving, brilliant, mother fucker.   It is my guess, that he had a hand in all that went down.  Grandpa, I am sure, was trying to assert his dominance in the situation.  What he and Oma wanted to have happen.  As for me, I am with family members at this time. 

After Mom’s surgery she was given Amphotericin B, is an antifungal drug often used intravenously for systemic fungal infections.  It made her deathly sick.  After the surgery Mom had to walk and talk all over again.  She was never given rehab.  Oma helped her to relearn all these things. After 3 months Mom is sent home. Divorce papers for her and Beau had been filed, and our little trailer had been moved, about 15 miles south to Logansport, next door to Oma’s house.  It is on this 5 acre spread that I would grow up, constantly going between Oma’s house and my own. 

Mom would begin to make trips to a place called Scott and White Hospital in Texas, for her follow up care.  She and the rest of the family could no longer trust the doctors here, after what they had done to her.  Scott and White hospital was very advanced for its time.  They believed that Mom had an abscess from a tooth go to her brain and cause her paralysis.  She had gone in to have some dental work three months before she became ill.  Funny thing is Mom never remembers having had the pain of an abscessed tooth.  Mom would continue to go to Scott and White for a good majority of my life.  She recently told me she has made peace with the man who butchered her, Neurologist, Dr. Donald Smith.  Maybe one day I will be able to too. 

I have watched the story of what Beau did change over the years.  At first I was told he left mom for a 17 year old.  Now it has become a 16 year old, who was pregnant at the time.  Part of this is a lie.  My sister Elisha was not born until the 1980’s.  When Beau began his relationship with his second wife Sandy, and the mother of my 3 siblings, is really of no consequence to me.  Beau and Sandy have both told me they do not remember when they met.  Sandy has assured me she was of age at the time of their meeting.  I have not felt it is my place to dig into her life.  The important thing is that Beau chose to leave this situation, maybe he had been looking for an out for a while.  I don’t know.

In the few years that I have known Sandy, she has been nothing but gracious to me, including opening her home, so that I might meet and visit with my siblings. I am not sure, if I was in her shoes, that I would have been so kind. The first time I met all of them, which you can read about in My Mother, I learned a few things. 

It was hammered into me, from the time I could remember, “Beau left US!  Your Daddy left US!”  US is an awful big word to use for a kid.  It means me and you.  For most of my life I felt Beau had left me.  Sometimes I felt that it was because of something I did, even if that was just existing.  It took a lot of therapy for me to understand that Beau did not leave US.  Beau left my mother.  I was a causality of a war that I never even knew was being fought. Nothing I ever could have done, could have resulted in this outcome.  One day I had a father and the next day I didn’t.   I still have abandonment issues because of it, and a deep distrust of all men.  From an early age I remember my mother telling me, “Don’t ever trust a man!”

My mother never spoke a kind word about Beau in my life, or shared with me a pleasant memory of him.  I grew up hating him, and any part of me that reminded her of him.  Anything that I knew was like Beau I squashed and dismissed.  When I smile you can see my teeth.  It’s a natural response on my part.  My mother would tell me, “You smile like Beau.”  I learned to smile without showing my teeth.  I remember this often the moment, before a photo is snapped.  For years I wanted to rip out my brown eyes, because they were his.  I wanted to rip out my own DNA. 

For most of my life, I would not even look, at his old family home in Longstreet, as I passed by it. One day I would have a large family that loved me and one day I wouldn’t. When Mom erased Beau from my life, she erased the whole family.  He’s extended family, who carried for me while Mom was in the hospital, was forbidden to see me, or have any contact with me.  Attempts to visit me were met by my shotgun wielding Grandpa.  I was taught to hate all of them, as much as I was taught to hate Beau.  I was told how horrible they were, how dirty they were, and what white trash they were.  Only two members of that family were ever allowed to have anything to do with me, Aunt Ruby and my cousin Bobby Joe.

I remember receiving a phone call, from Beau’s mother, around my 18^th birthday.  I thought she was someone else, so I talked to her at length.  It wasn’t until the end of the conversation that I began to understand who she was.  No caller Id back in those days kido’s.  She told me, “Well you are 18 now darling.  You can make your own decisions.”  When she said that, and I realized who she was I hung up on her.  I have no idea how long she had waited to make that call. I see now what courage it took for her to call.  She died a few years later, and I never got to say how sorry I was, about what I had done. 

My mother destroyed all pictures of Beau.  What few I found I horded.  After spending a summer putting together photo albums, when I was 19, I found about 5 or 6 that had not been destroyed.  I put them in a little yellow photo album that I kept hid under my bed for years.  I was terrified she would find them and destroy them too.  When I had my bad days I would pull it out, and stare at them and wonder.  Wonder what he was like and why he didn’t want me. 

Even my own name, part of my identity was taken from me.  Not long after Jef, my Daddy, legal adopted me, which I wanted.  I came home with my birth last name on one of my school papers.  I remember my mom telling me, this is not your name anymore, and making me erase it and put my new name.  While I was proud to be Daddy’s, it came at the price of having to erase who I felt I was at the time, who I knew myself to be.  It caused a shit storm in my family, when I added my birth last name back to my Facebook page.  It was a way to reclaim my identity, and help others in the family find me.  I am proud now to be associated with the rest of my birth family and with Beau. 

If Beau had not left Mom, I would never have had Jef, my Dad.  I asked Beau why he never fought for me.  He said, “I knew Jef.   I knew he was a good man and would be a good father to you.  I did not want to disrupt your life.”  I am glad for what he did.   

The moral of this part of the story is if you are angry at your partner due to divorce or whatever, PLEASE I implore you, don’t bad mouth them in front of the kids, or even in the same house!!!  Those little ears are listening.  You never know how a child will take this kind of stuff, how they will internalize it, and how long they will carry it.  Your anger at your partner may make your kids hate who they are, what they are, and anything that came from that parent.  Clean up your own shit!  Don’t make your kids carry it too!  If you need to vent do it away from them, do it with a friend, or better yet in therapy.  These kids already have enough to deal with, having a parent gone, without having to hating themselves too, because of your anger.   

Ilsa

My Mother - Part 2

Beau and I continued emailing, instant messaging, and phone calling for almost a year.  I learned I had 2 sisters and a brother outside of Tyler, Texas.  That his new wife had a daughter in Carthage.  I made plans to meet her soon.  Not long after I spoke with my siblings on the phone for the first time.  They had not always known of my existence.  They were of some age before they were told.  It was not long before we all became friends on Facebook.  

My relationship with Beau continued for almost a year.  His new wife did not like me much.  When I told her I wanted to come up with her daughter and her grandchildren to see Beau, I was told, “When my grandchildren come to see me, I want to visit with them, not you.  Y’all are always so needy.”  I would call and she would not give him the phone.  He was in the shower, at work, in the shop, or taking a nap.  Finally I began to understand that one or both of them did not want to talk to me anymore.  He promised me things that still have not come about.  I sent him a message and told him that I saw him as a coward, because he would not stand up and fight for me against his wife.*

I still get a birthday email from him, but I have little communication with him other than that.  I did not tell my mother I had been in contact with Beau until it was all over with.  Keeping that secret from her was one of the hardest things I have ever done. 

I told Jay that for my 36^th birthday, I wanted to meet my siblings.  So in March of 2012 plans were made to meet and visit with them.  I asked my mom to watch the farm for me, so she spent the night.  The house had been cleaned top to bottom, before she came to stay.  As I got in the truck I told her we would be meeting at my siblings mother’s house.  “You’re going to Sandy’s house.  The woman your father left me for,” she said.  I told her yes.  She walked in the house and that would be one of the last conversation she and I would have for 2 ½ years.  I have never heard her call Beau my father at any other time in my life, before or since.

We drove to Texas on a Saturday morning.  We met that afternoon.  Oh I will never forget seeing JM, my baby brother, for the first time.  He just embraced me and would not let me go.  I instantly fell in love with him.  JM stared back at me with the same brown eyes, that I saw every day.  The same ones that so many times in my life I had wanted to ripe out.  No one in my family had brown eyes but me.  But JM did.  I never understood why I am artistic. But JM did, he’s an incredible metal artist and painter.  I just could not physically let go of him.  I felt he would slip away.  My sister Ashley was beautiful, warm, loving, and a really good mom. My sister Elisha and I had history.

When I was a senior in high school Elisha had been having trouble in her life.  She transferred to my school and lived with family.  One of the cousins had warned me that she intended to whoop my ass, because of the way I talked about Beau.  I avoided her at all costs.  She never got a hold of me.  Years later our meeting would be tense, but cordial. 

In later conversations with my siblings I would find that Beau really could have cared less for Elisha and Ashley.  He loved them, but took no interest in their lives. It was JM he lavished attention on.  A cross that JM still caries to this day, that he was more loved by Beau then his sisters were. 

Sandy, Beau’s second wife, was gracious and pleasant to me.  I am not sure that I could have done the same thing in her spot.  I sat and talked with her for a few minutes to show her the few treasured photos I had of Beau.  I also showed her photos of my mother in the hospital.  She never knew.  She told me, she had not known about me, until later in her and Beau’s relationship.  Out of respect for my mother I have had very limited contact with Sandy. 

 I had the best time visiting with my family.  I was coming home, riding on a cloud.  I felt so good.  I could not stop smiling.  My face hurt from smiling so much.  I felt whole for one of the first times in my life.  I got a call from my mom.  I don’t remember what she told me.  She made allusions to the fact that I was with Sandy, and I had better come find somebody else to watch my farm, because she was leaving.  I hung up with her and called Melinda.  It would still be a few hours before I was home. 

Melinda was there when I arrived.  My goats were screaming.  When we looked in on them we found grain on the ground.  I had explained to my mother very clearly that you have to put the grain in their bowls, or they will not eat.  So basically my goats had not eaten in two days.  No wonder they were screaming.  They were starving! 

Punka was lying in a pile of her own piss.  She had obviously not been peed that morning.  There were dirty dishes in my sink, when the dishwasher was empty and magazines thrown about my bedroom floor.  If I had done this in my mother’s home, she would have said that I had “trashed” it.  There was a nasty note taped to my refrigerator.  Basically don’t call me, I’ll call you.  I was devastated.  I sank in the chair and cried.  I don’t care what you do to me, but YOU DON’T EVER FUCK WITH MY ANIMALS!  We took poor Punka, peed her, and bathed her.  Poor child, I have no idea how she was like that. 

It took us a day or two, but we began to notice things that were missing.  Weird things, some things my mother had given me: my red lawn chair and a bag of oranges.  I would not notice the main thing for six months.  My Oma had a large collection of amber.  In Germany it is considered very valuable.  We have large pieces and necklaces that had been passed down in the family.  I wore these pieces in ritual.  My mother knew this.  I thought they were locked in the safe. 

I made a new apron dress, and from it’s hooks I intended to hang my three large strands of amber.  I went looking for them.  I could not find them.  I tore up the house looking for them.  I could not find them.  Finally I put in a call to my father, who I still had a relationship with.  He laughed.  “You just now realized they are gone.  Yeh your mom took them to punish you!”  I wanted to come through the phone and strangle both of them.  I said you need to return them to me now.  You have 24 hours or I will call the cops.  He told me, “No.”  Twenty four hours later I called the cops on her ass.  Oh that shut her up!  Within a few hours one of the three strands was returned to me.  To this day she says she cannot find the other two.  I believe that is a bold faced lie.  Either that or Holda has hid them from her, so she cannot find them.  

My mother stole them from what I call my working altar, where my book of shadows lies.  I still in many ways consider it a hate crime.  Imagine if someone came in to your church and stole your candle sticks off the altar, same kind of thing.  The only reason she did not steal the rest of my amber is it was locked up in the safe. 

I finally called the cops off of her.  Mom said they belonged to her, and I said they belonged to me.  There was no documentation either way.  I begged her to get counseling.  She refused.  She would tell me later that she stole from me because, she was afraid I was going to move in with Sandy and like her better.  What???  I’m a grown ass woman, with a husband, a home, a farm, and animals.  Yes I am going to sell everything and move in with her.  How fucking stupid can you get!  So she decides to hurt me, because she can’t get over her own shit?  Fuck her!  It’s been 35 years!  Give it up and move on!

After she robbed me, we did not speak for 2 ½ years.  We began talking about 9 months ago, two days before her stroke, because I could no longer stand to see my father in such distress over us not speaking.  It is only for my love of him that I do this.  My relationship with my mother is still complex and difficult at times.  I have slipped up and told her that I loved her a few times, since we began speaking again.  I don’t know after what she has done to me, if I will ever really love her again.  I damn sure don’t trust her. 

She has begged me for forgiveness, and tried to explain her actions.  I have told her repeatedly that forgiveness is a Christian concept and one I am not obligated to follow it.  We are our deeds.  She must take culpability for her actions in her life, and how she treats others.  I believe she will never do that.  I had a councilor once tell me that given the father my mother had, it is surprising she learned to love at all.  I learned long ago, the kind of love she gives, I don’t want.

Ilsa

*Beau would tell me years later when I reestablished a relationship with him that, he had felt like I “put him on trial.”  I was very much my mother’s mouth piece.  Beau was the one who avoiding me, Nancy was being protective of him.

 

My Mother - part 1

I think in order to really understand my relationship with Melinda you kind of have to understand my relationship with my mom.  My relationship with my mother has always been complex.  My first memories are not of her, they are of Oma.  Since Oma died I have continued to look for that unconditional loving mother figure in my life.  I had it for a while in Momma Muriel and I thought in Melinda as well. I would ultimately find in it in my relationship with Holda. 

As a small child I believed my mother to be my big sister, and my Oma to be my real mother.  My mother is not right, whether she was born that way or as a result of the surgery I don’t know. Read about that here in HelloIlsa, Goodbye Beau.  She is very narcissistic, everything must be about her. 

I remember one time being in the fertility Dr’s office for a vaginal ultrasound, my mom is there for support, holding my hand, because with IC it is quite painful.  The lights go off and suddenly she starts telling the Dr and nurses, about how her husband left, when she was in the hospital with brain surgery, when I was two.  I had to tell her to, “Shut the fuck up!” I said “Nobody wants to hear that now!”  She could not stand, for just a few moments the attention was on me. 

When I call to talk to her, she immediately launches into her day. I had to train her to ask me how my day was.  She does it about 50% of the time now.  Most days she still forgets.  

I am fiercely protective of my mother, always have been.  I would end up being the same way with Melinda.  In many ways I feel I raised my mother.  My father and I became her emotional care takers after Oma died.   Mom started in college when I was 13.  I helped out and  did a lot of the housework, and then sat down at night to help her with her homework.  My father wrote all of her college papers.  Her successes felt like my successes. 

Since Oma’s death I have had to walk on eggshells around Mom.  Her love always comes with strings attached.  “I love you, but you’d be so pretty if you just lost weight,” was the main way I remember her telling me she loved me as a child. 

Despite cleaning my home before she came, I was always told how dirty my house was.  I remember one day when I was living in Apartment C in college, Mom came to visit and helped me clean.  She took a q-tip to the seal of my refrigerator door and found mold.  She held it up in my face and said, “See!  Your fucking nasty just like Beau!”  If she does that shit now, I just hold the door open and tell her to leave.  No one will insult me in my own home!  My Mother always did everything she could, to always make me feel inferior. 

Love was always conditional with her, and I never knew when she would throw me out of the family, like I had seen her do to so many others.  I have always said, “My mother loves me, but she does not like me.”  No matter what I did, I could never please her.  It was just never enough.  I wonder if sometimes she looks at me, and sees Beau.

After my mother robbed me on March 31^st of 2012, Melinda very much became my mother.  She allowed me to do things that at 36, my mother still forbade me from doing.   Stupid me was still wanting to please my mom at that age.  Small things like to dye my hair red and get double holes in my ears.  Simple things of self expression, that my mom assured me, would not look good on me.  It took me a long time to understand,  that control and manipulation does not equal love. 

You’re sitting there shaking your head, rereading the above paragraph.  Yes you read it right.  My mother did rob me.  Now let me explain to you why, and that’s going to take a moment.  So get another glass of iced tea and I will tell you the story.  Told you this was going to be a long, but good story.  I’ll wait.  Back now.  Okay so lets continue.

My biological father, Beau, left when I was two.  I have seen him once more and that’s when I was 6.  He came to pick me up for my birthday.  I was taken to a huge, what I guess was family reunion.  I was put in a play pen with a baby.  Her name was Elisha and I was told she was my sister.  Beau took me fishing, and we dug for worms.  I had a great time.  I came home and I was so excited!  I was jumping up and down and screaming, “Momma I have a sister!  I have a sister!”  She whirled around from washing dishes and said, “If it didn’t come out of me, it ain’t no relation to you.”  I was devastated.  For one afternoon I had family and in one breath she took it from me, again. 

Questions about Beau were met with hostility and some disgust, both at him for who he was, and what he did, but also at me for asking.  In college I had to do an eye color chart for biology.  I had to track eye color in the family and find out what was dominate and what was recessive.  I contacted Bobby Joe, one of Beau’s cousins.  One of the few of his family members I had been allowed to speak to all these years. 

I sat with Bobby Joe and his wife for several hours one day,  looking at old pictures and trying to put together this chart. It was to Bobby Joe that I began to ask those long held questions.  He gave me a beautiful picture of Beau, my mom, and me.  I had only seen the cut out version before. Bobby Joe was also able to confirm that Beau’s father was in question.  So In the end I had to guess, about the eye chart.  I worked really hard to get the C in Biology and graduate that year. 

It had taken me tremendous courage to go behind my mother’s back and ask Bobby Joe those questions.    To see pictures of my ancestors, to find out things about who I was genetically, also felt like I was betraying both Jef, my step father, and my mother.  I did not try again for many, many years. 

There were attempts to find Beau over the years, especially once the Internet came about.  But it is kind of hard to find the right James Smith.  There are millions of them.  Finally in the Summer of 2009 I told Jay that I wanted to contact Beau.  I had hoped that speaking to him, might clear up the blockage in my 1^st and 2^nd chakras.  It has not, to my knowledge. 

I rang Bobby Joe, who said he did not have Beau’s number, but another cousin might.  I called the cousin, who said, “I have an old number for him.  I have no idea if it will still work.  I have not had contact with him in some time.”  The phone number worked.  In the space of less than a half an hour I had found my biological father.  He was living in Northern Pennsylvania.  With a new wife, who was not Sandy.  Jay sat beside me, holding the gumbo pot should my nerves fail and I needed to vomit.  He told me he always knew one day I would find him, when the time was right.  We had both been trying to find each other on Ancestry.com, but had not yet made the connection.  Questions I had had for many years were asked, some accusations were made, some truth was told and I am sure some lies as well.  I hung up after 2 hours, and promptly vomited from all the pent up nerves.  That was the first time I ever remember him telling me he loved me. 

Ilsa

A visit from an old friend

Since I started this blog in August, I have had quite a few visitors come to my home.  They have come to sit at my old, round wooden table and share their truths with me.   Yesterday afternoon was no exception. 

When I left the HP coven, I left behind my besom named Hagatha.  Once I was told to never step foot on the property again, I lamented her loss, but there was nothing I could do about.  I put myself in exile, and removed all my former coven members from my Facebook.  I have had no or very little contact with them since that time.  A few months after I left, I was shocked to receive a message from one of the members, Steph.  She had my broom and would love to give it back to me. I was shocked.  This was the same woman I had felt was trying to take over my position in the coven.  I was amazed she would do something nice for me.

Jay and I went to Steph’s house in our truck, as Hagatha is about 6 feet long, made of willow and broom corn.   She’s too big fit in the car.  She’s a gorgeous broom.  We visited with Steph for a while.  I tried to tell her about Melinda and that I had been kicked out.  She kind of didn’t want to hear it, and I understand that it was difficult to hear.  We thanked her and left.  I added her back to my Facebook friends, but we had not talked in depth in many years.  I knew she was still with the HP coven and I knew the HP would not like it, if she knew I was contacting her members.  I did not want to make the HP any more made at me, than she already was. 

I happened to post something on Facebook the other day and Steph commented on it.  We started private messaging.  I asked how the HP was.  Steph told me that she had no idea, as she had left the coven a year before. I was stunned.  We decided perhaps we should meet up and visit.  So Steph came over and visited with me yesterday afternoon.  We talked for hours.  Catching each other up to date, on what had been happening in our lives. 

The stories that poured from both of us were sad and troubling.  I will not tell you of her story, as I feel that is her truth to tell you.  But as we talked last night I realized what a dark place Melinda had taken me too.  I had felt that Holda had moved me out of the HP coven before things got ugly, and it seems she had in fact done so.  I did not understand then, and I am trying to come to an understanding now.  Perhaps I had done what I was supposed to do there.  I don’t know. 

In my heart, in many ways, I am still devoted to the HP.  I have refused to use her name, or to tell you where her coven was located, so as to protect not only her, but others in her group who might still be in the broom closet.  I still respect her, and gods help me, after everything I still love her.  For years I expected the phone to ring, and it be the HP on the other side saying, “Look we love you, we miss you, why don’t you come out and have a glass of wine and let’s talk.”  Finally I came to the realization that what I wanted, would never take place.  I would never go home again, and that is when I finally cut and burned my cords.

Listening to Steph talk last night, I wonder if such devotion is warranted.  I feel very much this morning that I am grieving.  I think the thing that always hurt the most, in all of this is that, I never got to explain how Melinda had snowed us all, and never really understood why I was asked to leave, other than my association with her.  I am still scratching my head as to what I have done.  Steph told me last night, “I don’t have any answers for you, and I don’t know that you will ever know.”  She’s probable right.

I often tend to see the world in black and white.  You are either my friend or my enemy.  You are good to me or bad to me.  You have used me or you haven’t.  It’s real hard for me to often see what people have done or are doing to me.  Gray is often hard for me.  I am trying this morning to decide what category to put the HP in.  I have problems with things I can’t classify.  Her actions with both Steph and me can best be described as erratic and illogical.  They just don’t make any sense.  My devotion to the HP seems unwarranted.  I feel I am grieving my coven, and my relationship with the HP all over again.  I don’t know whether to be really sad, or really, really pissed off.

I think sometimes a person’s totems can say a lot about a person.  A totem, used in the pagan since, is a sprit animal a person uses, or one they identify with the most.  Melinda was a spider, Mike D. was a wolf, and the HP was a snake, all of which bit me or infected me with their poison in the end.  Me, I’m a Polar Bear, a dog and a goat, as if you couldn’t tell already, fierce, loyal, and stubborn.  Even if a person is no good for me, or worse off using me, it takes me a long time to come to that realization.  Then my angry polar bear comes out.  It often takes the person in question being mean to someone I know, before I will react.  One of those you can fuck with me all you like, but you touch my friends or family and it’s on. 

Yesterday’s visit gave me answers, but left me with questions.  Dr. Hailey, one of my Anthropology professors, used to say, “The beautiful answer, that asks the more beautiful question.”  Indeed.

Ilsa