I can't speak for all generations but I have learned as I have achieved several decades of life, that all was not as it seemed when I was growing up. Not even for me. Was this because I was in fact a child and therefore did not have the ability to see clearly or moreover understand clearly the world around me, or perhaps it was because I was brought up fairly sheltered? I know that by today's standards, I was definitely sheltered to the ways of the world. In fact, I think most of us were back then. We watched TV, but not like it was our job. We had Saturday morning cartoons, after-school cartoons, and sometimes evening shows that were carefully analyzed and approved by the FCC. There was no gratuitous sex, murder, or bad language. Our view of the world through TV was definitely G-rated.
Most of our homes were two-parent (mother/father) homes unless one of the parents had died, and in that case, the living parent usually remarried quickly, as families had to be anchored by the two in order to survive and thrive.
Our days (as children), were school, in which most of us walked to and from even in our earliest years, and after school were cartoons, homework, and usually playing with friends until dinner time. Dinner was not dinner though. It was "supper" and it was a ritual where everyone sat at the same table, at the same time and ate together.
In the summertime as kids, we were up and out early. We ate breakfast (because it was the most important meal of the day), and then we were out the door. Whether we were cruising the neighborhood on our bikes, or on foot, we found our fellow neighborhood kids and we congregated in parks, fields or driveways, and front yards. We played games, found places we likely shouldn't have, to investigate and hang out, and still made it home when our moms called us for lunch. A bowl of soup and a sandwich later and we spent the afternoons much like the mornings until we were called for supper. Because the days were much longer in the summer, after supper, we might have to help with the dishes, but after that, we were out with our friends again until the street lights came on, which was our non-verbal cue to head home.
Our lives were family, school, our neighborhood, barbecues, and dinner parties (if you were middle class and your dad did anything having to do with clients and business associates).
Life looked pretty Norman Rockwell back then....at least on the surface. In fact, it looked so mid-century wonderful, that looking back, most of us bought into that being our true existence. We thought we had the perfect life growing up. We had no electronics or cell phones. There was no social media and very few broken homes. Our moms for the most part were always home. They cooked, cleaned, and kept our homes Better Homes and Gardens perfect while often wearing a dress, heels, and a full face of makeup. Our dads worked, wore suits, and hats, and many smoked pipes. They read the morning newspaper before work, the evening paper after supper, and on Sundays after church (oh yes, most all of us went to church) and before lunch, the Sunday paper was read. This was a big family production as we all sat around passing the paper among us, eagerly waiting for our turn with the Sunday funnies....except mom of course, she was cooking.
It has only been in the last few years that I have learned that we all had some version of this growing up, but most of our childhoods were the furthest thing from a Norman Rockwell painting. We were all more like a Jackson Pollock piece of abstract art with light and dark all melded together, trying to create something that was more beautiful than it actually was.
I have learned that friends whom I thought had literally idyllic lives with two parents (mine were divorced early on), money, cool clothes, and who seemed to be the center of the school universe, were in reality....suffering childhood in ways I would never have believed. Behind the smiles and cool personas were childhood traumas that ranged from living with alcoholic parents, pill-addicted moms, verbal, physical, and even in some cases sexual abuse. Some of these kids who looked so perfect on the outside were hiding physical bruises as well as deep emotional ones. We lived in a world where you were taught from your earliest existence that "what happens at home, stays at home." We were also taught that no matter what, if an adult tells you something, you listen and obey. This was the downfall of many a young child's innocence when an adult outside the home, took advantage of that mentality.
Hearing the stories that many of my peers who are now reaching their 60s are only in the last decade or so, comfortable enough to talk about, is heartbreaking. Often these kids never even let their best friends in on what was going on behind closed doors. There was pain, shame, and the belief that even if they told, no one would listen. What was even worse, is that some of these kids didn't even realize what was going on in their homes wasn't right. They honestly believed that everyone lived like this. It was a dark world and their only escape was the fake other world they created where their jokes, smiles, money, and cool clothes hid the pain. The world they felt safest in was school and their neighborhood of friends who they hung out with every chance they got. My heart breaks even when writing about this. The fact that these kids who are now grandparents themselves at this point, survived and got here without giving up or falling apart, is just a miracle.
It was hearing these stories that made me realize, that my life also wasn't the perfect picture of ideal childhood that I like to tell myself it was. When I started thinking about it, and really being honest, it was a rather bleak life at times full of chaos and drama where I mostly felt like the kid that never belonged or maybe never should have belonged.
I was the product of an affair between a young woman and an older man. My mom chose to end things the minute she found out she was pregnant. She was a Catholic girl with much Catholic guilt. The older man was married and had a family and being pregnant out of wedlock was more than she could handle. She simply couldn't add homewrecker to her list of sins too. This happened in a day and age when, if this sort of thing happened, women discreetly went to "stay with a relative" for nine months and then gave their "mistake" up for adoption. My mom, apparently by now having become a bit of a rebel, decided to keep me. She was a single woman, who was a nurse (back then, they got paid zilch), who had to rent out a room from strangers and rely on them to watch her newborn, while she worked. Because the paychecks were small, everything including food was scarce. Luckily I don't remember those days.
My first real memories were when I was about two. In fact, I remember my 2nd birthday with a lot of clarity, and by this time, Mom had an apartment for us, but babysitters were still a fact of my life. For the most part, they weren't bad, except for an older woman we will call Mrs. P, who drank from the time my mom left for work until she got home. Mom caught on fairly quickly to Mrs. P's daytime activities. While I spent my days playing with my dolls by myself in a closed-door bedroom, she spent her days in a rocking chair snoozing and chugging vodka. Needless to say, she was sent packing. Then there was "Judy" and her two boys. Even as a 2-3 year old, I still remember that Judy smelled. She came to our apartment to take care of me and I understood (without really understanding because I was...well...two) why, when she took me to her house one day. It was nasty, even by a toddler's standards. It smelled just like Judy and it was dark and awful.
Judy didn't like me and her boys incessantly teased and bullied me. Judy would bathe me in very hot water and then spank my naked butt when I cried. Her boys would take my food at lunch and eat it themselves, or try to get me to eat things that weren't food. I hated Judy and her brood but I don't think I could really convey to my mom what was going on while she was at work. I just didn't have the verbal capacity. Judy ended up getting fired though, not for all the atrocities that she and her hellions were creating against me, but because they were cleaning out our fridge and stealing everything they could get their hands on.
When my mom finally met my stepdad (I just called him dad), I was about four. It is obvious to me now that my mom had her own issues where men were concerned and my dad was one big red flag that my mom apparently couldn't see. He came complete with a girlfriend and mama's boy issues. He was a spoiled man-child who was no more ready to settle down and be a ready-made dad than the man and the moon, but my mom was gorgeous and he had to have her. I'm not sure what her attraction to him was, but in no time, they were married, had bought a house, and to his credit, he adopted me right out of the gate. His family was not pleased with any of it, and his girlfriend was especially unhappy over this turn of events.
In the years that followed, my mom got pregnant and spent the entire pregnancy very sick. She had been diagnosed with Lupus beforehand and although the Lupus went away during the pregnancy, she managed to have morning sickness, the flu, and strep throat one on top of the other. She couldn't take care of herself, let alone me, and my dad was not a fan of taking care of anyone but himself. My 6-year-old needs were then taken care of by an old school sitter who although kind, was not my mom and had no idea how badly I needed my mom in the midst of all the confusing changes going on.
I had latched on to my new dad, feeling that I had scored big now having a dad like the other kids. I also wanted the same kind of dad I saw other kids have and I could not understand that even though he adopted me and I called him "dad" he was not dad material. Because of this, I spent most of my life wondering what "I" did to make him not want to stay. To make him not want me. Kids internalize everything. I did so x2. I spent years rushing home after school just to see if his suit jackets were in the closet or if both them and him were gone again.
Once my brother was born, both he and my mom were very sick. After my mom delivered my brother, her Lupus came back with a vengeance and she ended up with Glameral Nephritis (a kidney disease whose onset was because of the Lupus). My baby brother was a fragile newborn and he was allergic to everything in the universe. At the time breastfeeding was believed to be unhealthy for both the child and mother and my poor brother couldn't handle formula. Every time Mom tried a new formula, he would have some horrible reaction to it and end up in the hospital. Mom was sick, my brother was sick, my dad was at his girlfriend's and my world was crumbling, so I did what every six-year-old would do when she was just an afterthought in a world of chaos. I began acting out. I didn't understand it then, but now, I realize that I just wanted to be seen. My poor mom was at the end of her rope and in a last-ditch effort to control this uncontrollable situation, she would threaten to send me to "boarding school." At the time I had no real idea what boarding school was, but I did know that it was a place where I couldn't see my mom, dad, or new baby brother and that in my little child's head, I would be by myself. While the thought terrified me, rather than calm the waters, it simply added fuel to an already raging fire. It was a rough and tumultuous time. What I as a child didn't understand though, was as sick as my mom and brother were, my dad was making the situation worse. He antagonized my mom with his extracurricular love life and only made occasional visits to our chaotic home, only to get up and walk out the minute the baby cried or Mom needed his help with something. She was miserable, my brother was miserable and I was coming apart at the seams because I didn't understand any of it, but I felt that somehow my dad not being there was my fault and that if he were just there, everything would be fine. My kid's math told me that I was the common denominator for all that was wrong and therefore it was all my fault. I think this was the beginning of a lifetime of self-dislike that only grew with time.
A perfect childhood? There is no such thing.
