In the year 2000, I learn that Uncle Pippi is going to be recognized by President Clinton at the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War.

“Jeanne, guess what? You’ll never guess what LaLa told me today! The government is picking Pippi up by helicopter, and flying him to Washington, D.C.! Can you imagine? My own brother! You know, he was a hero in the Korean War,” said Mom.

We’re in my kitchen. The room is decorated in baby highchair décor, accented with an over-flowing laundry basket, a wire basket stiffly holding overdue bills, dishes precariously stacked in a mountain-shape in the dish drainer, remnants of a fried egg glued to a breakfast frying pan, dog toys and little girl toys underfoot.

Mom is here to help, as she has been, consistently, for the past eight years, helping me love my children.

“What? What are you talking about?” I think that she doesn’t have the story straight, because, in the forty-one years of my life, I’ve never heard an inkling that Uncle Pippi is a war hero. It’s a fine line with Mom, and always has been. She’s either giving it to me straight, or exaggerating her way, manipulating my thoughts to get me to do something for her. I am glad that I recognize this at this point in my life. In this way, I can love her.

“True-blue,” said Mom.

On a lucky, summer day, Aunt LaLa hands me the big, black, metal scissors that rest in a kitchen drawer.

“Go outside and cut some zinnias, Jeanne,” she says, and hands me a shallow, wide-handled, ash basket to hold the flowers that I will make into loose bouquets to bring home. She’s great at keeping me and my three sisters busy with little chores around Nanny’s house.

“No, Ida, no, she can’t use those! Are you nuts? She’ll get cut. Give me strength!” screeches Mom, frowning darkly at us as I take the scissors. Mom refers to Aunt LaLa’s Christian name, Ida, when she gets mad at her. A divorced woman raising four daughters on her own, Mom is highly overprotective, usually in unimportant instances, such as when it came to me, at twelve-years-old, using scissors.

My shoulders hunch down as I draw my arms tight, cross them against my chest, the scissors tensely held in my hand. Mom’s harsh, cold words ring out and ricochet from wall-to-wall in the warm, turquoise-colored kitchen, then ricochet right through my head, down to my feet. Her voice is unbendable, hard, and reproachful. I feel as though I’ve done something wrong and take the blame, hard on myself for getting Mom worked up.

“Dummy! I should’ve known she’d get mad! How I wanta cut the zinnias!” I push my elbows into my sides to stop the shaking in my stomach, the tremors of fear in my head. Even my below-the-shoulder, brown hair is quivering in its brown, plastic barrettes clipped at each side of my head, and tears are starting to sprout at my long-eyelashed, brown eyes.

I don’t know what it is, but one thing like hell I do know is that I don’t want to get Mom angrier. She thought I could hurt myself and didn’t want me to end up an unfortunate victim by way of the scissors. She didn’t know how to say this in a kind way, just her way.

“Oh, Marie, you’re so fussy! She’ll be fine. I’ve shown her how to use them before, and besides that, she’s watched me use them plenty of times. She’s not a baby,” says Aunt LaLa. Mom’s mouth shuts as she falls silent. Aunt LaLa will not take Mom’s shit, and Mom will not argue further with her.

“Go on, Jeanne. Don’t worry about it. I know you’ll be fine,” says Aunt LaLa, then shoos me out the door with a big smile. She knows that the more you cut, the more the zinnias bloom.

“Marie, you’re so stubborn! You’d better watch it. Jeanne is fearful of her own shadow. It’s tough to get two words out of her. She can’t go through life afraid of everything, including a pair of scissors.” Aunt LaLa’s words push at my back as I escape before any more of Mom’s words stop me.

“They don’t like each other when they get like that. Sisters!” I think, happy that Aunt LaLa controlled Mom just then, but miserable that I had to feel their coldness. I didn’t have to make a self-sacrificing move, give up the scissors, or anything else, in order to please Mom. I didn’t have to try to keep things flowing in a happy direction for her, but continued in the happiest direction, away from Mom, to the zinnia bed.

“Be careful with those big scissors, Jeanne! Watch the bumblebees! You don’t want to get stung! Make sure Barbara doesn’t get stung.” Mom calls out, having to get the last word of control. It’s a warning, with conditions, limiting my actions. My younger sister, Barb, jumps off the slate steps of the back porch and follows me to Grandpa’s zinnia bed, just a few feet away from the backdoor.

“Oh, Marie! Come and have a cup of coffee,” tsks, tsks Aunt LaLa, as she closes the screen door.

During the summer when I’m ten-years-old, Mom takes us for a walk while we’re visiting at Nanny’s house. This is kind of unusual, as Mom didn’t take many walks with her four girls. At Nanny’s house, Mom spends her time indoors, chats it up with Aunt LaLa, Nanny, and, more often than not, Cousin Lucia, and Great-Aunt Lizzie, who trails whispery smoke from a cigarette as she walks across the street, up the path alongside Grandpa’s zinnia bed, her flowered housecoat hanging loosely on her soft, round form.

Mom was good at nagging about walks. She rarely gave us rides, sometimes due to the break-down of the car, sometimes not. We walked to school, from school, to and from church, the park, the beach, the grocery store.

“When I was a kid, I walked everywhere,” she said.

Never mind if you just didn’t feel like walking sometimes.

Her tone suggests that because she suffers, we must suffer. So, since she walked, we walked.

This particular summer, Mom led the way, Indian single-file style, on the grassy area that surrounds Uncle Pippi’s garden, along the gray-weathered split rail log fence and the paved roads. The garden was on a plot of land shaped like an island, surrounded on all sides by three roads. The neighborhood had been chopped up by the addition of the I-95 Turnpike in the 1950s, cutting off Linden Avenue along one side of the island.

“Girls, your Daddy and I are getting divorced. We won’t be living with him anymore.” said Mom.

I pull a long piece of grass out by its roots and stick it in between my teeth. It twitches nervously, shivers in my mouth. I wonder if Nanny is watching us from her house across the street. I don’t want her looking at us. At me. I don’t like to be looked at, to have any attention turned on me. I don’t want to look at my own feelings.

“Are we going to live at Nanny’s?” Donna asks, relief in her face, round eyes wondering. She is relieved that we are finally leaving Daddy.

“No, Donna, we’re moving to our own apartment,” said Mom.

It was as simple as that. On the outside of the garden, looking in, the end-of-summer decay of garden plants, as they wither and dry, turning in for the winter, the last of their old life dusting down to the dirt of Dear, Sweet, Jesus’ earth.

College days; I am twenty-years-old, in 1979. I consider my Journal a friend, therefore, I write as though to a friend.

Journal,

There is just no time to be alone, there is no place to go. And, if there is a moment, it is only there to clear my head, to think, to sleep. I was having problems with school, and I was frustrated. I couldn’t write. It just got in the way of my school life.

My family and friends think I am artistic. I know I’m not. I wish I could make a fortune in ceramics, and writing, and embroidery. Those are the three things that I do that make me feel like me. They make me feel wonderful.

And, those are the three things that I hardly ever do. Why? Because school vacation is here, and I have to live at home, where there is no room for my art supplies, where there is no clay, where there is just work to see when I wake up in the mornings.

Home is where there is yelling, where there isn’t a quiet corner. After I work, I go out with my boyfriend. I am always helping others. I supply the needs for my manager, I supply the needs for customers, I supply the needs for my mother. When I do housework for my mother, I don’t have to hear her yell at me. There is hardly any love here.

I supply the needs for my boyfriend on weekends and weekday evenings. I never supply the needs for myself. I am going crazy. Can you feel it? Can you feel how hard I am writing with my Wearever medium pen? The intensity of the ink flowing across the paper is tremendous.

I let out a long sigh. It is all coming out. My anger is draining out. There’s so much more inside.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for burdening you with my anger. I’m not going to stop writing until it is all drained out. Even if it takes years.

I have to find Jean. She is there, somewhere. She is a happy person, she is funny, and pretty, and she loves painting, and going to school. She loves it, even if it is hard, so hard, to live through life. Her life is hidden by anger now, but someday, someday, I’ll find her.

I am eighteen-years-old, in my first semester at college. I consider my Journal a friend, therefore, I write as though to a friend. Two of my classes are Drawing and Social Problems.

Monday, November 28, 1977

Journal,
I am thoroughly confused. Emotions in my mind. Daddy called LaLa’s or Linda’s – I don’t know which one, on Sunday, and left a number for me to call him. I talked to Patty, Jackie, and Mark about it. They all told me to call him. I called him this morning, after my Drawing class. Sarah came home after I talked to him, so I was alone when I called him. I gave him my address and telephone number. I am kind of mad at myself and scared at the same time. What’s going to happen?

I feel so sorry for him. For myself. My family. What is wrong with having contact with him? What is so wrong? After I talked to him, I hung up the phone, went into my room, and started crying. I got so mad at my parents for making me feel so torn, so mixed up. Confused, I hated them for a moment. I should have written my feelings down then.

I love Mother so much. I wish she could understand. I just have a deep urge inside to find out about my father. I wonder what life is like with a father. I want to see what I am missing. I need their love. Mother and Daddy. Damn. How I wish life was different. Write later. Have Social Problems to read. So ironic. We are just starting a chapter on Alcoholism. Shit.

MAY, 1979, JOURNAL ENTRY (I am Twenty-Years-Old)

My mother is another problem, but she will always be a problem.

I came home with Mark and Mike last evening, to get Barb, and to change before we went to NYC. As soon as I came in, she started bitching about me going out every night. She doesn’t like that. She thinks it’s wrong. She doesn’t like my style of living, and if I don’t do what she wants, I’d better get out.

I have been kicked out of my house millions of times, verbally. I have been called a whore, a bitch, and any other filthy word you can think of.

I know my mother hates me. We get no pleasure out of each other. I am a burden to her, and she probably prays for the day to come for me to move out.

Once, when Mark called twice in one day, she yelled at me, “Why don’t you just marry him and get out!”

She says this crudely and harshly, and I try not to cry. Her words hurt. She doesn’t know how to talk rationally, like a human being. I think she is insane at times.

Of course, it is not all her fault. I must have done something wrong. I can’t figure it out, though. I clean my room, and I do the dishes in the morning, since I’m the last to leave. And, I do the dishes at night. I try to make life as easy as possible at home. I never talk to my mother. I have given up trying because all she ever does is argue with me.

She yells at me in front of my friends. She yells at them. I hate that. She doesn’t have any right to do that. They are human beings. They are people with feelings. They care. They love.

I guess that’s why they are my friends. I need people like them. That’s why I go out every night. Because they have feelings, and so do I.

The following piece is from my journal of 1970, verbatim. I was twenty-years-old. Recently, someone said to me that my father was worth more to me and my sisters when he was dead than when he was alive, because we collected Social Security payments on his behalf. Cruel statement. I forgive because it is not my truth. When we forgive, we have to let go of our own feelings, our own ego, our own offended identity, and find our identity at a completely different level — the divine level. I don’t think it is possible to know God at all — outside of the mystery of forgiveness.

In some ways, Daddy’s death brought new problems, including this story with his Social Security money.

Note: Mom took the lock off the bathroom door so we could not lock ourselves in the bathroom to escape her rages. The following scene takes place in the kitchen on Noroton Avenue (subsidized housing), with Mom, Donna, and me.

MAY, 1970, JOURNAL ENTRY
If you only knew the misery of it all.
“I don’t know what you kids were doing yesterday, drinking or what – but you all came home whacked out,” she bitches.
“Mom, can I have my $50 Social Security check? I need it to pay for my doctor’s bill,” I ask.
“No. I have to pay bills. I have to pay your expenses,” she bitches.
“What expenses?” I hurt saying the word. I feel anger.
“Look at the phone bill,” she bitches.
I look at it lying on the radio, and find that the long-distance calls do not belong to me.
“None of these belong to me. That check is my money. And, if you want me to pay board, I will.”
“Donna, you have to give me that money back so I can pay bills,” she bitches to my sister. She had recently given her her check because Donna needed it to pay for her loan or something. And, of course, Mother gave it to her. Donna gets anything. Mother’s favorite. We all know that she says this to Donna just so I will be quiet. So I won’t bother anymore about a check.
I feel hurt. Tears flow down my cheeks, and I hide them from everyone by turning my back and washing dishes. I think of my mascara. I bang dishes. I finish and leave the room, and go into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. It doesn’t even lock. I look at myself in the mirror and laugh. My mascara has run down my cheeks, leaving tracks where my tears slid down. Rubbing it away with a wet washcloth, I feel relieved. Crying always makes me feel better. I have cried because of my mother, and I have cried because I am tired of living.

Hey, I’m not preaching religion, just sharing a quote that I came across in my research this week. How we can change life just by the way we view things!

“Jesus commanded us to love; so we know love is not just a feeling, since we cannot command feelings. Love is mostly a decision.”

What kind of woman will I turn out to be, as I reflect upon my fights through childhood, struggles through young adulthood, to the time of a responsible adult? What will make me do things and take control, be responsible of situations, if I ever have, or will do in the future, and show my personal courage as it slowly grows up, as a seedling through the dirt, in my garden to the sun? Through this reflection will I be able to succeed at change, to act on people, situations, things that get in my way, instead of them acting on me?

I have decided I’ve had enough of feeling stepped on. When will I stop reflecting on long-ago times of being stared at, analyzed, made fun of? The memory of emotional turmoil outbreaks of Darien’s exclusivity, mentally thrown at me, a society too pretentious to notice a poor teenager living in a token plot of town land, in subsidized housing. The poor and the rich, live side-by-side, in a rich man’s town. The adults try to do the right thing for society, however, they just don’t get it. It is one thing for a society to create subsidized housing, but it is another thing for people to treat one another on an even scale when income levels blend into thoughts, words, actions. Teenagers tie their parents’ money to their social attitude toward the poor. Teenagers see themselves bigger than they are, more important than others, as their exclusive lifestyles suck into their brains and control how they act towards others. Teenagers hurt teenagers that are stuck in a place they can’t get out of.

Why do people think that their thoughts, their financial situations, their exclusive positions in society, their lives, are any better, more important, more deserving of enrichment, whether by money or by love, than any other person? Are we not deserving of all of the same things, alive, or dead? Shouldn’t a dead man’s wishes, desires, wants, be followed through? If a man has money and wants to give it to someone in particular, shouldn’t we as a society, be responsible to process his plan that he has written on paper, by the might of his workhorse hand? If a man decides to leave his money to someone in particular out of love, shouldn’t we be responsible to let his love continue after his death and follow his wishes?

Death. Forgiveness. Responsibility. Wishes. Desires. Wants. Reflection, reflection, reflection.

When Daddy decided to abandon his children, to abuse his wife, to make nothing of his life, and took no action, let things happen to him, and wallowed in the pitfalls, the outcomes of his lackadaisical attitude blamed the Johnny Walker Red whisky bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, do I blame him, abandon him, stop loving him? Or, do I ask DEAR, SWEET, JESUS the reason why he was so? Do I charge the nakedness of mankind and the disabilities of the brain as it renders destruction to lives?

I study old photographs for answers, hoping the subjects will turn, look at me, speak to me. There’s one of Daddy and me. He sits on a lawn chair in Nanny’s yard, his back to me, under the great maple tree that Mom’s Uncle Mike planted. I would give him another chance in a heartbeat to love me, even if this hurt Mom. I take his pose as a sign that change is hard to come by, and will not happen to him. He turned his back on Mom and my sisters and me, however, he is a connection to us. As I scrutinize the image, I silently plead with him to turn around, smile at me, say, “I’m so sorry, Jeanne.” Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.

In the black and white photograph, I’m about three-years-old. I sit cross-legged on the grass, close to the camera lens, head tilted in hand, elbow on knee, looking up, serious as all heck, a furrowed frown frozen on my dear, sweet, little face. Ever-pondering me, unusual to be photographed without a sister next to me. Whatever am I thinking about? Am I feeling the affects of an argument Daddy and Mom had that morning? Mom’s sweating stress filtering through me as she rushed about, readying her three, young daughters, pregnant with her fourth child. Worrying about how the day at her Italian family’s gathering might turn out, if Daddy drank too much. I wear a gingham-checked dress with embroidered tulips on the front. Donna’s hand-me-down, Easter dress is a little too short, as my plump thighs peek out.

I don’t see the black and white image though, I see the colors. I know the check is powder blue, the tulips pink, yellow, white, with green leaves, stitches tight on the smocked front. The colors are stuck in my mind. Today, the little dress sits in a box, a saved memento of the past. Responsible me collecting the sparse, family mementos that I could catch, remembering wishes, desires, wants.

So serious for a little girl, trying to control an uncontrollable situation, trying to deal with a responsibility placed upon me, much too young to handle. I wish, desire, want, the little girl to take her head off her hand, her elbow off her knee, get up and run over to Daddy, jump on his back, beg for a piggy-back ride with his strong arms holding her tight, her laughter filling the air as it races up through the spring-green maple leaves, past the white clouds in the Easter sky, her soft, brown hair falling back, as her mouth opens up freely to the world.

I wish the little girl would turn from the photograph and talk to me. I’d tell her to beg Daddy to do everything he possibly could, so she wouldn’t have to grow up as a teenager, in Darien, in subsidized housing. I’d tell her to beg him to love Mom. I’d tell her to beg him to figure it out, to get it, so she wouldn’t have to reflect on this interior journey of self.

I am not preaching the Catholic religion. I am just sharing a small prayer that is getting me through recent days, as I contemplate those who judge me.

Lord, righteous Judge of the living and the dead, in order to prevent the condemnation of the world you allowed the world to condemn you. By your condemnation, free us from the sentence our sins deserve. Give us the grace to be patient with those who judge us, and free us from proudly judging the people around us.