(K) The older, photogenic one
When my father died, I was eight and my sister (K) was ten. Mother’s world collapsed and she found it impossible to function. She stayed in bed under heavy medication for days, until our oldest sister (C) told her she would lose us to daddy’s relatives if she didn’t get up and start living again. Our oldest sister was 23 years old at the time and already a mother of three. We lived a complicated childhood, visiting our oldest sister and her children but hiding it from our father. He wanted nothing to do with mother’s past.
When mother got up out of her bed of despair, she couldn’t get any more medication from the doctor. So she self-medicated. And nothing dulled the pain better than booze.
Together with her best friend from work, mother began to “run the roads.” It’s what she called bar hopping. There’s something lop-sided about this story that no amount of explaining will set right. Mother said that daddy was the one she loved like no other, and yet within two months she was out most nights, drinking, dancing, and looking for love. I don’t try to explain it; I just tell the story as I know it.
During that era, I don’t think it was unusual to leave children our ages alone at home. But maybe at night it was. Mother needed somewhere to go, to find companionship, and to have a few drinks to help her forget. The bars all had a Happy Hour, and although she never found happiness there, at least the drinks were cheap. Rather than leave us at home, she would take us to a theater to let us watch the latest movie, often a horror movie. This provided me with lots of reasons to fear the dark.
Before the years struck me so hard
A few years ago, I was talking with my sister (K) and mentioned all the scary movies we saw when we were kids like The Blob,
The Tingler, The Fly, and House on Haunted Hill. I remember sitting the theater, my feet on the chair tucked under my dress, clutching my sister’s arm, thinking that if I held on tight enough the monster couldn’t get me.
She asked me if I remembered what happened after the movies on those nights mother dropped us off. I told her I didn’t have a single memory of what came before or after.
Have you ever heard someone tell a story about an event that you were part of but that you have absolutely no recollection of? What she told me stunned me.
More than once, after the movie or double feature was over, we waited out in front of the theater long past the last showing. One of those times, we were still there when the lights were shut off and the last person left the building. Then mother would show up smelling of whiskey, cigarette smoke, and sweet perfume. Beautiful, lonely, half-drunk, working hard to forget her pain, and doing such a good job that she forgot her girls out there in the dark, lonely and afraid.
For my sister the horror show started after we left the theater. She was too young to carry so much responsibility, but she had no choice. I clearly couldn’t take care of myself. I think the fear I felt during the long wait in the dark was too real, the sense of abandonment too raw to face, so I transferred it to the movies and thought they were the source of my terror. My sister was the brave one and faced the darkness for both of us. And for all these years, she has had to carry the memories alone. I cannot remember. And that’s one of the reasons I love her.
Much of my childhood I lived under water; the people and events blurred and distorted. Light is refracted when you are below water, so things are recognizable but they don’t line up. I’d come up for air now and then, then dive back under. Some of it I understand; some I don’t. I know one thing: I cannot watch horror movies. They make me afraid of the dark. I know, too, that love is strong and can carry the memories we cannot bear ourselves. But even love feels lonely sometimes.
year-struck 
So simply told, so powerful.
This IS part of a developing book, isn’t it? Promise.
So far, only stories in my head, but the blog is helping me get them written down. A book sounds like another universe.
You definitely do have the talent, experience and expression for a book. I’d save up the pennies and buy it if you ever did write one.
What a powerful post. I could feel your emotions.
It made me feel lonely after I wrote it. And sad, for both my sister and my mother.
How precious is your sister! I’m reading yesterday’s and today’s, compare and contrast — the result is that I love both of you. I wish my sister lived closer to me so that we could share more memories face to face. I must have grown up underwater also…
My sister is a gift and we’ve grown closer as we’ve grown older. We are survivors of our childhood. : ) Aren’t you always amazed at people who have clear and vivid memories of almost every year of childhood? Where exactly was I during all those years!
So emotional – makes me feel like I had a very simple childhood.
A simple childhood sounds lovely, Annie. We forget sometimes how beautiful goodness is.
Your post is so powerful. Sisters are our last connection with the past, the only ones who understand how it really was. I’m glad you have that love. Cherish it.
So true, Myra. I have just one sister and my brother who share that past with me. We need each other to remember it all.
What could I possibly say? A picture may paint a thousand words but the right words can evoke so so much. Very moving.
I know it sounds strange, but I find a bit of myself when I write about my mother.
Don’t you dare rename your blog mouseburger. There is nothing forgettable about you, and I’m really angry with your mother for losing you in her despair.
Not to worry. Mother changed as she got older, and we grew very close. People are so complicated – good, bad, kind, indifferent, loving – all mixed together.
I feel so bad for your mother, yourself and the rest of the family. Losing someone you love, I think, is one of the worst experiences. Nothing fills the void. Your sister, how brave of her! I hope nothing too terrible happened to either of you during those waits, but at least you’re still here now :>. In a way, I think a childhood that isn’t rose-tinted is more desirable as you are under no illusions as to how life really is. Also, I love the caption under the photograph, ‘before the years struck me so hard’. I guess I never really thought about your username, ‘yearstricken’, in great detail until now. How powerful! Geez… I’m blown away, as always.
Thank you for your kind words. My sister was brave and she remembers waiting in the dark, I don’t. Stricken in years is an archaic way of saying “old.” : )
There are so many things to love about this essay— you speak so powerfully about the past and what you do and do not know; you really put us there, with you, in the dark, while leaving room for your sister’s and your mother’s stories to be told; and you avoid editorializing or trying to make sense of a series of childhood events that did not make sense then, and may never fit into the neat boxes that badly-written memoirs utilize.
I don’t know if you’re in the mood to write memoir, or something like a memoir, but for all the familiarity of your story, the way you tell it is honest and new and fresh. I can’t wait for more.
Thank you for your kind comments. I’m glad I found blogging so that I can tell these stories. The impulse to write and record is strong in most of us, I think. I’m glad I can put the words out there; and I’m glad I can read the words that you put out there on your blog.