Christmas 2015

It’s coming on Christmas/

Cutting down trees/
Putting up reindeer/
Singing songs of Joy and Peace/
-          River by James Taylor

I’m sitting here listening to James Taylor’s Album Christmas to a song called River.  I love the first few lines I have posted here for y’all.  I am trying to get in the Christmas / Yule Tide spirit.  I thought I would tell y’all a few stories of Christmas past, and as always we will start with Oma.

Oma made the holidays joyful, with a huge tree covered in lights, lights on the house, and a plastic Santa complete with Reindeer outside.  What I remember about her most was Christmas at her house.  The whole family would gather.  My uncle and his family would drive in from Houston, and the rest of us would come in from our local towns and communities.  There was often a well timed phone call from Germany calling to wish us well.  With a seven hour time difference they would have already had Christmas and be heading to bed at that point.  With that call and all of us there, it would seem as if we were not so far apart, for one night we were this big loving family, even if there was an ocean between us.

I think Christmas was when we expressed most of our German culture and traditions.  A week or so before Christmas a large metal box would arrive from Germany sent by Oma’s brother, from a company in Nurnberg.  It was filled with all kinds of candies, cookies, and breads.  For us it was Christmas Eve that was most important.  That’s the night we opened presents.  There were lots of presents, but nothing extravagant.  Angie and I often got matching gifts.  One year we got these huge life size dolls that Angie’s mom had made for us.  Angie’s looked like her’s, with blond hair and blue eyes.  Mine looked like me with brown hair and brown eyes.  We both got typewriters that year.  That was Oma’s last gift to us.  We were 6. 

In our area of Germany they did not do stockings.  The custom was to do Weinachtstellers, or Christmas Plates.  They were these thick paper plates with Christmas images on them, and fluted edges.  They were filled with nuts, an apple and an orange (luxuries during winter, not that many generations ago), a good chocolate bar, cookies, gold chocolate coins (for wealth), Marzipan, a few candies and sometimes a small gift.  My last plate from Oma had a lip gloss dressed up as a dolly, on a string.  Everyone had their own plate, per their own tastes.  I have a wonderful photo of those last plates she made sitting on a table in her house.  Christmas at her house was always warm and loving.

We kids had our own table, where the appetizers were, I always ate heavily from the relish tray.  The relish tray for those of you, who are not from the South, had black and green olives, and several types of pickles on it.  We kids would all get excited and run to open the presents, or try to eat from our Christmas Plates, have to be corralled back, told that no, we had to eat our dinner first, and then we could open presents and have our plates.  Only after dinner, desert, and finally when they were almost done with Coffee and/ or starting on the Schnapps would we be allowed to open them.  Oh waiting was such agony!  That joy and wonder of the season, that since of family and connection, across towns, states, and continents, when Oma died it all went away.  As far as I remember, after her death, we never gathered as a family again to have Christmas Eve.  Oma’s brother kept sending the metal boxes from Nurnberg, until his death, but it was never the same.

Christmas at Novelle’s, Daddy’s Mom, was different.  There were no plates, no calls from Germany.  I have this great memory of us going to hunt for a tree for Novelle.  You didn’t go buy a tree back in those days.  We drove down the road, until we saw some trees we liked, and then got out of the truck with an ax and just cut one down. 

We were out doing this one Christmas, and Daddy had been chopping on this tree for a bit, and this man walks up to us.  He was dressed all in hunter orange, gun over his arm, and I think carrying some birds.  He stopped to speak to us and my Daddy got real nervous like, and the man says to us, “This your land?”  Daddy says, “No sir.”  God I knew were in so much trouble, when he said it like that, and the man says, “Mine neither,” and then he just walked right past us.  It never occurred to me, until much later in my life, that we were not supposed to be on, whoever’s property we were, and damn sure not stealing their tree.  I think Daddy chopped down a little scrub pine, could not have been more than 4 feet tall.  We brought the tree back to Novelle’s, stuck it in a coffee can full of dirt, put some paper chains on it and called it a Christmas Tree. 

Mom and I have continued with the tradition of Christmas Plates and talking on the phone to the family in Germany on or around Christmas.  Calls to German, for most of my life, were just too expensive to do any time you wanted, so you had to save it for something special.  Now we have Facebook and can talk to them anytime we want!  Yeh for technology!

I went looking for the origins of the Christmas Plate early on in my Pagan path.  I found that it comes from the tradition where a bowl of milk would be left out on Christmas Eve as an offering, and if it was accepted the next morning, it would be filled with nuts and gifts.  I believe, although I cannot think of the reference at the moment, that the milk was left out for Odin and the Wild hunt, which includes Holda.  Milk is a traditional offering left for her, since she is related to children and domestic animals like goats and cows.  That makes sense to me.  Offerings for Odin and the animals that pulled his chariot could also be left in the bowl instead of milk, things like hay and carrots. 

In my family traditions the Christmas Tree does not come down until the New Year.  Oma refused to wash clothes between Christmas and New Years.  She believed it would bring bad luck.  She was big on luck.  She loved shamrocks and had lots of superstitions, like no shoes and no hats on the table or bed.  She loved shamrocks so much that she took Good Luck Bear, the green Care Bear with a shamrock on his stomach, as her personal totem, when she got cancer.  He went with Oma everywhere.  I think we even buried her with it.  On his stomach Oma wrote her personal mantra, “I can, I will, I must.”  

It took me a while to track down the origins of leaving the tree up and not washing clothes.  Oma was unknowingly passing down to us, old traditions of Yule.  The Christmas Tree was left up from Christmas to Epiphany, which covers the 12 days of Yule, a holy time for our ancestors, a time out of time.  House work was traditionally not to be done during this time of year, cause you cleaned like a mad woman right before it.  You were to take these days off and not clean house, or wash clothes.  The old saying is that, “no wheel, should turn during Yule.” 

I have, since I became Pagan, tried to keep the 12 days of Yule, which starts on Mother’s Night the night before Winter Solstice and goes until New Years Day.  I used to clean like a mad woman starting about Halloween and going right up until Mother’s Night, until Jay told me he didn’t like that, cause it just about drove me crazy.  The old belief is that when the Wild Hunt pass over your house during Yule, and finds it neat and tidy that Mother Holda will bless you.  I hoped each year that she would bless us with a human child, but that didn’t happen.  So the crazy cleaning has fallen by the wayside, but I am still anxious to get up and clean the top of my kitchen cabinets before Yule starts.  But Jay will have to help me with that, so we will see. 

For the last, oh so many years, I have made sugar cookies for Christmas.  I always try to leave Mother Holda an offering of these cookies and milk on Mother’s night.  The next morning I remove the milk and pour it in her well, a sacred spot, in my little grove area, where my outside altar is.  I split the cookies between our fur children (7 dogs,3 goats and pig). 

I hate the commercialism of Christmas / Yule Tide.  Some of my Christian brothers and sisters get it right.  I feel most Americans today are missing the entire point of Christmas.  Excluding Christmas in July, in this country we start putting out Christmas stuff just as soon as the Halloween stuff is sold out.  Christmas commercials start before Thanksgiving, which has gone from a major holiday into a minor one.  I like my holidays one at a time, Halloween, Thanksgiving and then Christmas / Yule Tide.

We can’t even give thanks in this country for all we have, without being bombarded with what almost seems like the foreplay of Christmas.  This ecstatic rush of presents, and lights, and parties, and charging up one’s credit cards to keep up with the Jones, and so that no one in the family might for a moment, be denied the smallest things they want.  People fight each other over dolls and rolls of wrapping paper, that will all at some point be thrown away.  It all finally culminates in Christmas Eve / Morning with the ripping open of presents, and beleaguered now broke parents.  These happy children who have no value of a dollar, who as adults will be dismayed when they finally learn, they can’t have everything they want.  When the kids go to their room and the parents are left to clean up all the mess, they are as exhausted as if they have just had a long loving session.  And in a way they have.  They have been fucked by this idea of crash commercialism that we are feed as Americans.  Buy more and you will be happy!  It’s all about making the kids happy!  X marks the spot, sorry darling, but that’s not it.

Long before the myth of Santa, or of the Wiseman giving gifts to the Christ child, or of Odin and Holda in the Wild Hunt, it was about Winter.  We forget in our cushy lives of AC / Heat and ready available food supplies, that winter used to be the time when lots of people died, those most vulnerable among us, the young, and the old.  Presents were given at Winter Solstice, the start of winter, so one might SURVIVE to see the next spring.  Gifts were practical, warm clothes, good portions of food, blankets and furs to keep warm with.  Anything that might help that person you loved, get to the Spring.  Neighbors helping neighbors, family helping family, friends helping friends, no hospitality was to be refused even to one’s enemies during winter.  The most valuable resource we have, is each other, both now and then.

Parties were held in the north lands on Mother’s night to honor the mothers in our lives, both alive and long dead.  To honor the gift of life, and the sacrifices they made for us to be here.  I think of those Viking Mother’s often, in the dark, by a smoky fire, never quite warm, and never with quite a full stomach.  Spinning, knitting, weaving, a gift to keep a brother, a husband, or a daughter warm and to make it through to the warmth of Spring.  The mother’s worried then, if she could ration out the food they had stored up long enough, to get them to the first harvest, and to when the chickens would again lay eggs, and they would have fresh protein for their children and themselves.  During Yule the family would come to visit and gifts would be exchanged, it would be one of the last times they would see their families before Spring, because soon the snow would be so thick, that traveling would be almost impossible. 

So as you are maxing out your credit cards this year, standing in line at Wal-Mart reading this on your smart phone, I urge you to think, “Will this gift help the person I love get safely to the Spring?”  Maybe put back the Xbox that you can’t afford, and get them some fuzzy socks and a good book instead.  I’m just saying.

Last year Juno told me that she had never really had a Christmas, that her family had always been too poor.  So Jay and I gave her and Kay one.  Many poor kids grow up thinking that Santa doesn’t love them, or that they were not good enough to be given gifts at Christmas.  I hate that.  I hate that in this culture, some poor kids believe that no matter how good they are, they will not be rewarded by presents, because that is what our culture teaches them.  If you are good Santa will come, and give you these lavish gifts.  Maybe if we didn’t buy into all of this, and got back to what the root of what each of our holidays are, no matter your tradition, it might be better for all of us.  Me, I’m hoping for functionality and practicality this year, I am hoping for fuzzy socks.

Blessed Yule to all of you. 

Ilsa

Many thanks to my Heathen Brother Rob who proofed this for me. 

http://urglaawe.org/Englisch.html

Starting School

When I started school I knew I was different then the other kids.  Way different.  When Oma brought me into have me tested for placement in Kindergarten, I could read, I could write a little, I could count to ten in English and German, and I could sign my name in cursive.  There was discussion about putting me in 1^st grade, but they decided to put me in Kindergarten, because I lacked social skills. 

I remember being shocked by the stupidity of the kids around me.  Sorry if I sound arrogant here.  They did not know their numbers, their colors or shapes, and could not read.  Much less they did not understand German.  I thought everyone spoke another language at home.  I remember walking into the cafeteria and watching some of them eat with their hands.  These were not kids that were from ethnicities that ate with their hands.  These were American children, who should have known how to use a fork and spoon.  I was shocked and appalled. 

My first week of school I understood I was different than the other kids.  Some of my clothes, were what was hot that year in German fashion.  I didn’t care a back pack, I cared a satchel.  Oma had gotten it from German for me.  I knew I was different, and I desperately wanted to fit in, make friends and be liked.  Instead I would be singled out and called crazy or weird for my entire schooling. 

Angie was my best friend and Sean was my boyfriend.  Sean had been in my life as long as I could remember.  He was this beautiful little boy with blond hair.  His mother and grandmother cut Oma’s hair.  I have this memory of Sean and I being in the closet together and getting caught.  When they found us,  Oma and them had shocked looks on their faces.  Neither one of us remembers what we were doing.  But I am sure the two of us were up to now good!  LOL! 

Sean and I would get married in the morning, on the play ground and then divorced by lunch.  I remember lying in this ditch birthing his imaginary babies, while my friend I nicknamed Doc attended.  We did this every day.  Sean and I would sleep next to each other at nap time and cuddle.  I would even throw my leg over him.  Oh the teachers did not like that and had to separate us.  It really upset me.  I felt like I was all alone.  Sean remained my on-again-off-again boyfriend until the 3^rd grade, when I caught him holding another girl’s hand.  That was it for us.  I avoided him after that.  It helped we were also in separate classes.

Sean and I found each other on Facebook several years ago, and I got to see him on a trip into town.  He is just as beautiful as ever.   I was just as attracted to him, as I was when we were little.  He has a beautiful bald head, now that all his lovely blond hair fell out.  I got the chance to apologize to him for ignoring him all those years, we were still in school together.  He told me I am still his longest relationship to date. 

I attended Logansport Rosenwald Elementary School.  Now the Rosenwald here is a bit of a misnomer.  Julius Rosenwald built 5000 or so schools across the country to help educate mainly African-American children in the early 20^th century.  These schools were 1^st -12^th grade.  Our Rosenwald school was opened in 1952 and used as a segregated high school until the 70’s.  I remember going to school and seeing large photos of all black graduating classes.  Now I lived in a very small town.  There was only one high school.  It didn’t make since to me as Rosenwald was then used as an elementary school up until 6^th grade, and then you went to the high school.  I just kept looking at those pictures wondering where all the white kids were?  What was Rosenwald High School?  How do you explain the past of the segregated south and Jim Crow laws to a kindergartener?

My school was very small.  Maybe a 1000 kids from K-12.  The year I started school we had 90 in my class, by the time I graduated there would be 47 of us.  We were all a pretty tight knit group.

In May of 1982 Mom would met the man I would call my father for the rest of my life.  I talked about that in Novelle. They married that summer.   Daddy loved me almost instantly.  He picked up the gauntlet of being my father, long after Beau had thrown in down.  I think the great thing about Daddy was that he always considered me.  I remember going on family dates.  We’d have a picnic or go to the zoo.  When Mom got to go on a date, I got to go too.  I loved that.  I was a bit confused.  When Dad married Mom I thought he was marrying me too.  I used to go around and tell people, “well you know I got married this summer.”  LOL! 

They married in the same church, I would marry in 20 years later.  I was Mom’s Maid of Honor.  When they kissed I was so embarrassed I put my hand over my face, and just shook my head.  There is a picture of this.  I could not believe they were embarrassing me by kissing in church!!

Daddy legally adopted me that fall.  He never had any natural children of his own.  I am the closest thing he has.  Now let me have you understand, Jef is my father, Beau is my biological father.  Jef fed me.  Jef clothed me.  Jef disciplined me when I did wrong.  I was accountable to Jef when I screwed up in school.  Jef taught me to dance, love Motown, and read.  It was Jef I confided in and drank my first beer with.  It was my conversation with Jef and his offer to move me home, that got me to leave my abusive relationship.  It was Jef that gave me away at my wedding.  Beau did none of that.  So by everything that a father is measured by, Jef is my father and will be heralded here as such. 

Oma loved my Dad, Jef.  She found great comfort in him I think.  I remember we would have a big dinner, and after coffee they would sit and drink peppermint schnapps.  My dad is the only man I have ever seen stand up to my Grandfather, James Parker.  And the only man I ever saw my Grandfather back down from.  My dad was a godsend for all of us, a father, a husband, a lover, a son-in-law, but most of all, an advocate and a fighter for both my mother and I. 

During my first grade year they would diagnose Oma with Multiple Myeloma, a terrible form of cancer.  She would die before I started 2^nd grade.  She was 57.  By the time they found the cancer, she was already in the advance stages of the disease.  It had metastasized to her bones.  The end was not pretty and made me an advocate of euthanasia. 

Oma was shuffled back and forth between the hospital and home.  There was no hospice in those days.  My Mom and Dad did everything for her.  The rest of the family refused to help.  Perhaps they thought it was my Mom’s place because she was the girl?  Perhaps because she didn’t have a job?  During that year period I would spend a lot of time with Novelle and the rest of my new family. 

My last memory of Oma coherent is hard to put down on paper.  I was in the kitchen standing by the refrigerator and Oma was laid out in her brown leather recliner in the living room, not 20 ft. from me.  I suddenly hear this very loud, ragged, sucking inhalation.  I look up at her and a few moments later I hear her utter, “It was so beautiful.”  I know now she was traveling between worlds and had just come back into her body.  The Gods and The Dead were preparing her for her death.  She turned and she saw me standing in the kitchen.

 “Oh Ilsa, when I die I am going to be your garden angel.” 

I was confused.  I told her, “Well when you die tell Elvis I said Hello then.”  She and I were big Elvis fans back then. 

She smiled and told me to bring her some grapefruit juice. 

The last time I saw her we were in her hospital room.  They must have called all the family in, because they were all there.  I was the only kid in the room.  I am sitting on Mom’s knee and she whispers in my ear to take a good look, because that may be the last time I ever see Oma alive.  I wish to the Gods she had not.  That image is still stuck in my head of Oma laying there with a green oxygen mask on, moaning in pain, and finally she started screaming and I was ushered out of the room.  The morphine had long since quite working. 

I remember the whole family standing around her bed arguing who was going to take care of her.  My Mom begging my uncles to come and give her and Dad a break, as they were caring for Oma all the time and were exhausted.  One uncle said flatly, “I have a daughter to raise.”  I know made no since to me either.  Grandpa never hired a nurse.  I wonder if he thought, “why should I pay, I have free help in my daughter and her husband.”  Grandpa did take her at night after Mom and Dad left. 

When you have a family member come down with an illness that requires round the clock care, you really start to see the families true colors, and who you can depend on.  Usually one family member is singled out, just as my Mom was, to “handle it.”  I guess so the rest of the family isn’t inconvenienced. 

I was not allowed to attend Oma’s funeral.  I was only 7, but other kids in the family did.  I know my parents were trying to shield me.  I don’t know if going would have better or worse on me.  I will never know.  I understand Oma’s funeral was so packed that the men stood outside, to let the women and children have a place to sit.

My mother took Oma’s death very hard.  She nearly grieved herself to death, she became depressed and suicidal, and she also became anorexic.  Those were tough years for me.  I had lost my Oma, in my little girl heart my mother, and then to watch what my Mom loose her mind.  I had to become my mother’s emotional protector, both Daddy and I did.   Every word I said to her had to be measured, as to whether it would make her breakdown in tears.  For years I walked on eggshells around her and others.  I have often felt, too much was placed on me too soon.

I did not know that I was also in a deep depression at this time.  It became like second nature to me.  For most of my life I forgot what real true happiness felt like.  I hated myself and felt like a burden to my family.  So depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts became my norm. 

The first time I remember wanting to kill myself was not long after Oma died.  I walked into Mom and Dad’s bedroom and told them I wanted to be with Oma.  Mom said, “You want to die?”  I don’t remember what I said but it was in the affirmative.  My Mom lost it and I was pushed out of the room. As far as I know no one ever discussed with my Mom getting her any kind of mental help.  She refuses it to this day even though she is plagued with Panic Attacks and Anxiety a well.  I wish to God they had, for both of our sakes.

Ilsa

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first memories

So I’ve taken you forward, now I want to take you backwards in my life.  I set out to let you know what happened to me during my marriage to Mike, to tell you things I didn’t answer in my “Prodigal Daughter” articles, and forward from the end of those articles until now.  I think I am done talking about that part of my life for a while.  I want to talk about my early life.  I hope you will enjoy it.

I covered my birth, Mom’s surgery, and Beau leaving in Hello Ilsa, Goodbye Beau.  My first memories are not of my Mom but are of Oma.

I was a loved and adored child by all those in my life.  I was welcomed in the same pomp and circumstance that most babies are in this culture. I was a cute and precocious child, ever the entertainer.  I remember jumping on the top of tables to sing and dance.  Putting a straw pot cover for a plant, on my head and dancing about.  Tucking a pair of pliers under my neck and pretending to be the doctor, and was ready to give Oma a shot. 

Angie was my best friend at that time.  She was my cousin, born two months after me.  Many of my pictures at this age include her in them.  Grandpa would later pit us against each other, making us compete against each other.   He would give us a dollar for every A on our report card.  His way of motivating us I guess.   He would say things like, “Well Angie got all A’s this semester and you only got 3.  You need to do better next time.” 

In Kindergarten I was devastated that she would not play with me.  I remember just balling.   Angie, and Sean, who I will talk about in Starting School, were my only friends.  Angie was from a little different socio-economic class then I was.  She was a bit more middle class and I was just working poor.  She gravitate more towards those of her own kind, nothing wrong with that.  She would become a cheerleader and one of the popular kids.  Although we are still family, we are not friends like when we were kids.  She is now a grown woman, a teacher , and has children of her own.  I recently saw her at a family function and was so please that she sat next to me.  We visit with each other on Facebook and share our lives, but I don’t think we will ever be that close again. 

I grew up literally next door to Oma and Grandpa.  They had moved Mom’s trailer next to them after the surgery.  Mom, Dad, Me, Oma and Grandpa all shared about a 5 acre spread in Logansport.  It was big enough for two houses and a large garden.  I have early memories of falling asleep in Oma’s house and waking up in my own bed.  I would start crying, because I didn’t know where I was. I spent lots of time with Oma and Grandpa.  I often wonder if my first language was not German.  I believe Oma spoke it to me a lot as I grew up.  I still understand more then I speak.  Angie and the other cousins visited occasionally, but as far as I know never spent the night.  Knowing what Grandpa did to me, I am very grateful for that.  I hope he never got any other grandchild other then me. 

I have an early memory of Oma taking me from her house to Mom’s house and telling me I was going to start sleeping at my own house.  I was screaming and crying I kept calling Oma my mother.   By the time Oma got me in the house, she had to calm me down and tell me, “I am not your Mother.  I am your Oma.”  Mom says this conversation never took place either, but she could not hear us, as we were in the hall and she was in the kitchen.  My little girl brain did not understand that Oma was not my mother.  I thought that my mother was my big sister.  Sorry but a lot of my early memories of my Mom,  are of her going out and “looking for a new daddy” for me.  I used to go up to strange men and ask them if they wanted to be my Daddy. 

I could read long before I went to kindergarten, by about age 3 or 4 I think.  Oma would read me the books, and then tell me to read them back to her.  I am still big about books and parents reading to their kids.  Grandpa imparted his wisdom on things like the stars, gardening, and his world travels.  He was a Merchant Marine, that’s how he met Oma you know.  He was often at sea, but in the summer time, me, Momma, Oma and him, would all travel in his motor home aka RV.  He sold Chase refrigerated doors.  These are the doors you see in the grocery store, that are made of vinyl, and seal in the cold air in the meat and frozen food areas.  They are usually split down the middle and have clear windows in them.  I traveled 7 southern states, before I was 5. 

Three of my early memories happened in that motor home.  The first is of my mother.  We had been driving all night.  We pulled over, parked and slept.  I remember awaking in the dark to the sound of  ocean waves crashing against the shore.  My mother was lying beside me in bed.  We had arrived at Biloxi Beach and we spent the day there swimming.  My next early memory is of sitting at Oma’s feet, crocheting and singing “On the road again.”  I was maybe 3 or 4. 

The third memory is I believe of Grandpa attacking me.  I believe he attacked me at least twice.  Once about 2 ½ and other time about age 4 or 5.  I believe he would attack me in my sleep.  I believe these two times I woke up during the attacks.  I have this memory of just him and me alone in the motor home, on a trip by ourselves.  My mother says it never happened, but I remember him telling me this story of us being on a trip in Mississippi.  He told me he could not get me to quit screaming.  That I screamed from Mississippi, until he put me pack in Oma’s arms here in Louisiana.  I remember part of this.  I was sitting in the big chair up front, and every time I looked at him I started screaming and crying.  I believe he attacked me on this trip and this was my reaction. 

Oma made one more trip to German before she died, in the early 1980’s.  I know there has been talk, from family members, over the years that many believe Oma would never come home.  That she would just stay in Germany, now that her children were grown.  That finally, she could be free of Grandpa.  Whatever her reasons, whether she came back for me or us grandkids, or for Mom, or for other reasons she came back. 

Ilsa

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

Blood in the water

I am a big girl, at the moment I am currently pushing 350 lb.  and just under 5 ft tall.  I have not always been big.  As a little girl, about age 6, I loved to run.  I remember one time Grandpa was going to whoop me.  I said, “Oh no you’re not!”  and I took off running around the house.  He just calmly sat on the porch until I ran out of steam.  I made three trips around the house before that happened and I collapsed.  I was also a very picky eater.  If I didn’t like what was on my plate, I would just flip that plate over, food and all. 

My mom married my new step-dad, Jef, when I was 6.  I remember thinking that I wanted to gain weight so that I would look more like my new step-dad Jef, and then people would not know I was not his biologically.  Oma dies, when I am 7.  I become very depressed.  It is not long after she dies that I walk in to Mom and Dad’s room and tell them that I want to die too, to be with Oma.  Mom, who was already in a bad place at that time, kind of loses it.  Although I have no idea how to accomplish such a thing, I think this may have been my first suicidal thoughts.  I begin to gain weight.  In the pictures of my 8^th birthday you can tell I am chunky. 

It is in those early years I develop my first cases of Bronchitis and my first case of Pneumonia.  My new step-dad, Jef, who I will refer to as Daddy from now on, smokes in the house.  It is a while before we understand the connection.  I am terribly allergic to smoke.  As the idea that second hand smoke was bad for you is new, and Dad’s are hard to change, he continues to smoke in the house until I am in my teens.  By that time I am having about 3 cases a year or more.  I am told I must not get to hot outside or run and play too much or I will get sick again.  For years I am watched for signs of getting to hot, being red and sweating.  My running days are over.

Mom continues to lose it for several years after Oma’s death.  We cannot even talk about Oma or she will burst into tears. She nearly grieves herself to death.   She becomes anorexic and one night tucking her in bed, I can count every rib.  Mom never gets help and no one, I guess, ever suggest it too her. I continue to gain weight.  My Pediatrician suggests putting me on a diet.  I am 9 years old.  Mom begins to recover soon after and becomes obsessed with my weight.  Eating disorders are very common in those who have been sexual abused. 

Growing up unconditional love was something I only got some Oma.  As a child most of the “I love you’s,” came with a “but” attached.  I love you, but you’d be so pretty if you just lost 10 pounds.  I love you, but you should lose some weight.  I love you, but your butt is getting too big. 

At Novelle’s, Daddy’s mother, she berated me on a regular and public basis.  I remember many, many family dinners where she would sit and tell me how fat I was, and was I going to eat all my food.  NO ONE stood up for me.  Not my parents, my cousins, my aunts or my uncles, none of them.  I was forbidden to defend myself or say anything to her by my parents.  In fact this treatment from her continued until my teens, where I would drive to family functions in my car.  If she insulted me, I would quietly pick up my plate, place it beside the sink, and leave. She never did this to her other grandchildren, some who were bigger than me.  I believe she did this because I was her step-grandchild, and she always, until the day she died, saw me as such.  Despite being legal adopted into the family, and doing family genealogy on her side of the family. I am still listed in the family bible as a step-grandchild.  She even goes so far as to tell me one day, that no man will want me because I am so fat. We had a complicated history, but more on that later.

I never asked to be put on a diet.  I never saw anything wrong with my body till everyone else did.  Then the self hatred began in earnest.  Wanting to please I did as I was told, but the weight would not come off.  I look back at my pictures from that age and do not see a fat child, maybe a bit pudgy, but not in need of diets.  I never knew when the newest diet would begin.  My mother became the food Nazi. I was of course not allowed cakes, cookies, or cokes, even in moderation.  Things I had never been denied before.  Some days I would come home and only be allowed Slimfast for dinner, while my father ate a full meal, plus dessert. Mom would diet with me.  I never knew when the diet would start.  I have done Weight Watches, wheat germ, Slimfast’s and lots of other fad diets that were around at the time. And of all cruelties, when I went to stay with Novelle, she feed me as much ice cream, cokes and cookies as I could hold.  I remember eating extra portions, and others left over lunches at school. 

I was bullied in High School about my weight, by Jeremy Pace, John Scott Smitherman, Cajun Rink, and Neil Alexander.  They were my tormenters.  Every day from about middle school till my senior year, I heard about how fat, how ugly, how stupid and how crazy I was, sometimes on an hourly basis.  It was during these dark years that I first truly began to contemplate suicide, and stayed depressed most of the time.  I don’t know if they could smell the blood in the water or they just picked me for no reason. It was everyday, constant from them, being told how fat and ugly I was while sitting in class and anywhere else they wanted to at school.   I developed chronic stomach aches and anxiety over going to school.  When I told my parents, I was told two things that kids are cruel and I was never to fight back.  That if I did it would go on my permanent record and I would not get into a good college.  Again I did as I was told. 

Only one teacher every did anything to them, my 7^th grade English teacher.  Jeremy and them were being especially bad that day.  She called him out and told him to apologize.  She made him go outside the room until he was ready to apologize.  When he came back in he would ask for my forgiveness.  I told him I would not forgive him.  He did this about three times.  Finally I told the teacher, I will never forgive him for what he has done to me.

Jeremy and I had an interesting relationship.  He constantly harassed me at school, but we had United Methodist Youth Group (UMYF) together and he never messed with me there.  One night our leader took us into a little chapel to pray.  She told us to write our deepest heart’s desire on a piece of paper and pray over it.  She gathered them and slowly read out loud, with no names, from the back of the chapel.  Mine was, “Please make them stop teasing me.”  After that Jeremy was no longer the ring leader, and most of it stopped.

It wasn’t until Cajun joined the group in high school that the mooing started.  They would moo down the hall and call after me, “Free Willie!”  If you don’t get the moo thing, its cause Borden, the milk company, has a cow named Elsie.  And of course Elsie sounds like Ilsa, thus the mooing.  And I guess they thought I was as big as a cow.  Cajun loved to torment me.  He even went so far as to paint penises on my car one afternoon.  An action, over which, would get him suspend, again.  Thankfully the Principle had been hiding in a parked school bus, watching the kids, and had seen the whole thing.  My great joy was watching Cajun have to scrub my car with a toothbrush!

Jeremy’s mother was one of my favorite teachers.  I found her on Facebook some years ago, and I told her of the torment that her son and his friends had put me through.  I did not hear from her again for a while.  Turns out she was waiting to confront him about all of this.  He responded to her that yes he had bullied me in high school.  When asked why, he simply said, “Everyone did it.”  His mom apologized profusely for him.  She had no idea any of this had ever gone on.  She did give me an explanation though.  About the time this all began, Jeremy’s dad was abusing him.  It was threw this statement that I was able to forgive him.  If he was being abused, he may have simply used me as a scapegoat.  It was a way for him to blow off anger over the abuse.  I have never received apologies from the others.

I never stood up for myself until two weeks before I graduated high school.  I was sitting in class, quietly holding my cousins hand, when Eric Miller stood up and gave me a Texas Titty Twister.  Now for those of you who don’t know what that is, let me enlighten you.  A Texas Titty Twister is when you walk up to a girl and grab her nipple and twist it one way or another.  When he put his hands on me I had had enough.  I snapped! What the hell were they going to do to me next!  That was too far!  I grabbed Eric by the shirt and threw him against the desk.  But that wasn’t enough.  I felt the rage boiling in me.  I grabbed him again, and threw him to the floor.  He was stunned.  I stood over him and said, “You ever fucking touch me again and I’ll kill you!!!” Everyone was shocked.  They had never seen me react to anything they did to me.  Hey I was fixing to graduate, what the hell could they do to me.  I am hauled into the Vice-principles office.  She not angry at Eric for what he did, or what I did, she’s angry at me for holding my cousins hand!  She tells me there are to be no public displays of affection at school!  I still don’t know what kind of punishment, if any, Eric received.  But this incredible thing happened!  After that incident, nobody, my bullies included, ever messed with me again. 

My diets continued until I was 18, when I told my mother that I was legally an adult and she could no longer force me to do anything.  I remember my elation on my first day of college, no one mooed at me, and no one said anything about my weight.  I was free.  It was finally over. 

There is only one more incident of Mooing in my life.  It happens late in my college years.  I am walking past a group of freshmen.  They Mooed.  I decided to scare them a bit.  I figured part of it was because they had never had a fat friend and no one had ever called them on their shit.  I turned and went up to them an introduced myself.  I meant to ask them why they had done that, but the look of shock on their faces was enough for me.  They were clearly embarrassed.

No one Moo’s at me anymore but when I am out in public I am ever vigilant that it might happen again.  I have my comeback all ready.  “Thank god you told me I was fat!  I didn’t know!  I can’t see it every morning when I look in the mirror!”  Come on mother fuckers I’m ready for you this time!  

Ilsa

 

 

What she left behind

Oma’s life was not a beautiful fairy tale that ends happily ever after.  This woman, who had survived so much, was about to have to survive a lot more, from a man who she thought would be her savior. 

Grandpa tells me many years later that Oma had escaped back to Germany with the kids.  Mom and her brother must have been little, as Grandpa says she was speaking, but Mom has no memory of it.  Grandpa says, “It took me a while to find them, and bring them back.  When I did the kids could not speak English anymore.  It took me a month to beat the German out of them.”

I talked with my mother recently.  She said her first memory is of Grandpa beating Oma.  Oma then walked into the kitchen, with all her children and turned on the gas.  I don’t know what or who stopped her.  I’ve been in that place of abuse where you think you have no way out.  Now remember this is in the late 1950’s there was no national discussion on domestic abuse, no shelters for battered women.  She had lived a very difficult life with two kids in Germany.  I do not think she could imagine trying again with four.  She had run away and he had found her.  No place was safe for her or her kids.  She was trapped.  For this woman who had survived so much, death, at that moment, seemed like her only way out. 

The fact that Grandpa beat Oma and molested the kids was not a well known fact in the community, and had never been talked about publicly.  Nor was the fact that he would often leave and go to sea and leave Oma with no money.  No money, no groceries, nothing.  It was another way to control her.  Had it not been for a family friend, who let her borrow the money to buy things like food and shoes, they would not have survived.  Everyone knew my Grandfather was an ass.  Everyone, but my father Jeff, was afraid of him.  Grandpa was a big man and no one ever stood up to him.  I think few outside the family understood that he was mentally and emotionally abusive at all times.  James Parker was nothing but a bully. 

When I was in my early teens my Grandfather remarried to a woman named Barbara.  She, for the most part, was a nice lady.  She was a great baker.  Before she would marry my Grandfather he had to convert to Christianity.  My Grandfather was a long avowed atheist.  Oh what men will do for some pussy! Grandpa converted.  It was all a lie.  He never spoke of his new found faith or of Jesus.  To this day, I believe it was all an act.  I believe he died an atheist. 

We, Grandpa, Barbara, my parents and I, were active in a local church.  My mother came out when I was 19 and began to tell those around her about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of my Grandfather.  It split the family down the middle.  Most of the church and the community did not believe either, because he was well respected in the community.  He was seen as a self made man.  Barbara believed for 24 hours, until Grandpa convinced her otherwise.  I have refused to speak to her since then.  But I understand.  She chose to believe her husband, rather than her step-daughter.  My mother is messed up because of what my Grandfather did to her.  You cannot convince me otherwise.  I was in the room with her when she confronted him.  I was there when he admitted to what he had done. 

It was not until the last few years, and having lived with Mike, that I began to understand the depth of Grandpa’s disease.  He was a pedophile.  I remember being little and hiding in the closet, for whatever reason, and there was this trunk.  Oma caught me in it one time and was very shocked an upset at what I had found.  Turns out it was a trunk full of porn.  I must have got in there so frequently she put a trunk with my toys next to it.  My Grandfather worked on many Merchant Marine ships in the Orient.  I wonder now if he chose Asian assignments so that he might have ready access to children involved in the Asian sex trade. I wonder now if he married Oma just to have access to her kids.  And then there are my own impressions.

They begin to surface in dreams.  In these dreams I was trying to tell myself I had been raped by my Grandfather.  I did not believe them, at first.  Then I remembered something that had happened the first time I ever made love.  Mike and I were getting ready, he climbs on top of me and for about 2 or 3 seconds I wanted to freak out.  I wanted to claw Mike’s eyes out and all I could think of was my Grandfather.  I wanted to get away.  I pushed it down and rejected it.  Mike and I finished, and I did not think about it again for many years.  I mentioned it to no one.

It has taken some years, but I now believe, despite my mother threatening him, that he did indeed attack me.  I believe at least twice, before the age of five.  Before I could form real memories of the abuse, understand or tell.  I knew my mother had been assaulted.  I have never asked her for details.  Because I just cannot deal with that. I don’t want that in my head.  My councilor and I were able to recover the memory from when I was two using a self induced semi- hypnotic stat.  The details, of which, I shared with my mother.  She was shocked that my details matched hers.  I believe both times, that I know of, I was attacked in my sleep.  Both times I woke up.  I don’t know how many more times I was attacted, and did not wake up. When I was 5 I had surgery on my urethra.  I was told it was too small and I kept getting Urinary Tract Infections from too many bubble baths.  I wonder now if it is because I was being molested.

I had hated my Grandfather from the time I could remember.  Every time I was around him, he made me want to vomit.  In fact it was Texas, my beloved dog, who gave me the first clue that he was not a good man.  Texas refused to leave me when Grandpa and I were outside, often standing between us.  Dogs know if you only listen.  I shared my feelings with my family who told me, “You must love him!  He is your Grandfather and deserves your love and respect.”  I was taught to negate any instincts and feelings I had in order to tow the family line and pretend all things were normal. 

My hope, in you reading this part of the story, is that if you were attacked you understand you are not alone.  My other hope is that when a child comes to you with such feelings you never, ever tell them to ignore them.  That you trust those feelings and understand that something is wrong.  That you will not insist that they must do what is right, when everything tells them it is wrong. 

There were moments when my Grandfather was a wonderful man.  He taught me about the stars, gardening, talked with me about his voyages to exotic places and started me on a love of science.  He even helped me stand up to a bully once.  I wept so much at his funeral that I was almost asked to leave.  I fainted at his coffin.  After my mom came out, I refused to speak to him, or see him.  I am told he died calling my name.  Now as my Oma had the same name I am not sure which one of us he was calling.  I am happy to say that my Grandfather is currently in Hell, serving a sentence for all the things he did to us.  He can no longer hurt anyone!

Oma died August 20, 1983.  Thirty-two years ago to the day of this writing.  She was 57.  She spent the last year of her life fighting Multiple Myeloma.  By the time they found it, she was already in the advance stages of the disease.  It metastasized to her bones.  The end was not pretty and made me an advocate of euthanasia.  She remained married to my Grandfather until her death.  I was not allowed to attend her funeral.  I was only 7.  I understand it was so packed that the men stood outside to let the women and children have a place to sit. A woman who had gone from knowing no one in the community, to a community that overflowed with love for her. 

Oma’s life and her death has had a transformative affect on my life.  When I was 11 I began doing genealogy and research on my family. I doubt I would have gone looking for answers about my family if she had been alive. I would begin in my late teens collecting stories about her.  The story I have just told you, of Oma’s life, has taken the last 25+ years to piece together.  I am constantly learning new things about her.

At first there were only rumors that Oma had been in a camp.  I could not understand as she was not Jewish.  I did not know that more the Jews went to the camps.  At first I thought it was because she did not look like an Aryan, you know blond hair and blue eyes.  Oma had brown hair and green eyes.  Then I believed she was in one of Stalin’s camps, but now it seems she was in a German labor camp outside of Danzig. I’ve been trying to put her life back together and understand it in the context of history. She left behind a hand written account of her survival during the war in Poland.  From which I borrowed heavily for this article.  A copy of that article is on file at The National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. 

What I remember of her life is very little.  She was warm, kind and gracious.  She was a gifted hostess and cook.  I remember singing with her, crocheting and knitting with her, cooking with her and lavish Christmases at her home.  I remember her stanch patriotism and how proud she was to be an American.  I remember the unconditional love she gave me.  Something I am eternally grateful for.  I remember thinking in my little girl mind that she was my mother.  My first memories are not of my own mother but of her.  She has colored the way in which I see reality. 

It is odd now that I would become the caretaker of her history and her story.  My younger cousins come to me and ask me to tell them her story and my memories of her.  I am honored to do so.  Her story has left behind a legacy of courage, and bravery in the face of adversity.  To never give up hope, to never surrender and to keep going even where there may be no end in sight. 

Three of her four children are still alive.  She has seven grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.  We are scattered thru out Texas and Louisiana and see each other for weddings, funerals and share our lives with one another on Facebook.  We retain good ties with our family in Germany and my mother even went to visit some years back. 

For many years I wanted to write a book about her life.  I was going to entitle it, “What she left behind.”  Although not a book, I am happy to have finally shared her story with the world in these articles. 

Ilsa