This is why my mom's generation was so messed up

I mean, not the only reason. Religion was part of it, too.

I was surprised while watching this, I actually remembered a couple of them.

Meme-ory Lane

Found a bunch of stuff hiding in corners of my computer.

I bought a Memory Board for my mom and my brother went and set it up this weekend.
I've been searching through my computer for photos to send to her and found a bunch of stuff.

Pretty sure none of these will make it onto her board, but they made me laugh.

I Take it Back!

My paternal grandma died in 1989.

She had a fall at home and laid on the floor for something like 14 hours before someone found her. The thing that happens to so many elderly people happened to her, she ended up with pneumonia and died about 10 days later.

While the whole family gathered at the hospital, my brand new at the time sister in law took care of the young people (my son was three, my nephew, four) and made sure we were fed.

She brought a fried chicken dinner for 14 people one afternoon and we all sat in the hospital cafeteria and had a good meal.

After Grandma died and it was time to find new homes for all Grandma's possessions that my dad didn't sell as fast as he could (and of course he kept every dime and wouldn't give us any of the things we asked for, none of which were terribly expensive or rare, we just got small things and it's not the things that are the point, you get that, right?) my parents thought Grandma's clock should go to my sister in law. It was an antique with music and a ballerina all encased in a wood and glass case.

We all agreed that she should have it, Grandma had treasured it and we wanted to keep it in the family.

So life moved on, as it does.

A few years later, my brother and his wife had two little boys. I had my baby girl. My other brother and his wife had another little boy, too. 

It was 1995, I think.

There was some, uh, marital strife between my brother and his wife and he moved out of their house over a weekend and got an apartment.

It's their story, and I won't tell it here, it's not up to me. 

I called my sister in law on Monday morning and told her that I did not need to know what was going on. That I loved her and I loved my nephews and that they were welcome in my home at any time.

She did tell me a little bit of what was going on, again not my story to tell, but I couldn't blame her for feeling how she felt.  

But my parents were furious with her. 
They didn't make any effort to find out what was going on, either. They just took his side against her, started trash talking. I was actually stunned at the vitriol and name calling. They called her a slut and a whore and suggested that the youngest little boy wasn't even my brother's child. My mom called me every day to say some other awful thing. It was really incredible. I saw a side of her I'd never seen, 'cause she sure as hell never brought out the mama bear side for me. 

I did make an effort to talk them down, as it were. Not that it did any good, they had decided she was 'just like Jezebel' and they hated her.

It was about a week later that my mom decided that Jezebel had to give the clock back.

Yep, she called me up told me that 'she has no right to keep that clock, it belongs in the family' and that she was going to tell her to give it back.

I know she called her and left that as a message, but I don't know what the response was. They ended up getting back together not long after (after seeing a pastor as a counselor which is like hiring a barber to do open heart surgery ) and suddenly my parents had nothing but nice things to say about Jezebel.

It was 'all they had prayed for' and 'guess gawd has a plan after all' and 'we knew it would be okay, gawd had given us peace'.

It was really weird, that sudden reversal. All the venom they'd been spewing was magically turned into sweetness. Suddenly Jezebel was wonderful and everyone was so happy they were back together.

Mom was constantly saying, "Thank GOD and I mean that literally."

She said it so often, and with the same exact inflection that I can hear it even now.

Mom had Jezebel come speak at one of her Women's Aglow meetings, which I secretly refer to in my head as simpering Jesus rallies. 
There's a whole lot of religious crazy in the fam. 

My mom really wanted me to come over and visit  so I could hear Jezebel speak!

Yeah, that wasn't gonna happen.

I've never told Mom I am an atheist, it would serve no purpose and would hurt her feelings. She would worry over it daily. It's not about what kind of person she is, it's about what kind of person I am, and apparently I'm not the type to make an old lady feel bad over religion. Although she's made ME feel bad over it more than once, ha!

But my sister in law still has Grandma's clock.
 
She and my brother seem to be happy, and whatever route that takes is fine with me, I don't have to agree with it.

Another weird episode from the past.
Geez.

Do You Have a Storage/Costco Room?

Because of the really odd ways money was handled as I grew up, it's the thing in my life that still causes stress for me. 

One of the ways it manifests is buying things ahead of time. 
Otherwise known as hoarding. Craft supplies and stuff for work.

I can say that I don't have as much stuff as I used to, and that I've become more selective about what I bring in. I've also consciously made an effort to use the supplies I have a million of instead of admiring the possibilities. I have given a lot away, too.

It's why I don't have to buy things when I want to introduce a craft project or art activity or science experiment. I have all those things and more.

I stock up on new things, too. 
Consumable goods, I guess.

In the cabinet in the hallway are things like bar soap, liquid hand soap, hair spray, shampoo. Q-tips. You know, hygiene supplies. I buy bulk packages when they are on sale. 

My mom infrequently visited us when we lived in California. Took her shopping with me once or twice. She had a difficult time understanding why I was 'buying such a big package' because there were only two of us. 

Just a little math is needed to figure that out, but all she could see was that the small toothpaste was a dollar less than the economy sized one. The four pack of toilet paper was a lot less expensive than the 12 pack. But per roll, it was less expensive to buy the large one.

The room that was Alyssa's is now our Costco/storage room. Big bales of TP and paper towels. Aluminum foil and baking parchment, laundry soap and garbage bags and things that belong to Mason and Alyssa that they don't have room for in their apartment and a TON of stuff for my job. We have shelves all along the walls (bought those at Costco, too).

It's also where the vacuum lives. My easel is in there for when I decide I want to paint again. It's been awhile and I love doing it and I just... haven't. Bins for my tie dye stuff. 
More craft supplies. Bulletin board edging and lettering, another thing I won't need once I retire.

My hubby hangs on to things as much as I do. He has good reasons, but his story is his. Let's just say his family could have done better for him and should have.

That stuff affected us both.

I picked up some cardboard boxes last week and am in the process of getting rid of clothing I no longer wear. I keep stuff until it wears out. Frayed sleeves and little holes don't make me stop wearing it. I always figure my jacket covers the sleeves and if I'm wearing long sleeves under my uniform t shirt and happen to get paint or ink or whatever on those sleeves, I don't worry much about it. I won't cry if I have to throw out a shirt I've had for 15 years because paint won't wash out of the sleeves.

So I'm getting ready for the last full year of work, I think. I may possibly work until December of 2027, depending on a few factors.

Hopefully I'll have used up most of my stuff by then, making it less of a pain in the ass when it's time to sell the house and move.

So do you have a Costco room? 

Mine looks kind of like this one, only smaller.

Making Connections

So I told you about spending my birthday money on a sweater for my mom. (Scroll down if you missed it, it's the next post).

And my brain finally made a connection that I've been searching for since June of 1976.
Took me a long time to get there, huh?

My parents occasionally decided we kids were going to 'earn' an allowance. This happened multiple times, and was always the same story.

It was going to be five dollars every month. For the three months or so they continued to pay the allowance for all the chores we did, they'd come back a day or so later and 'borrow' the money back from us.

Did they then pay us back?

So as you've probably gathered, I did not have an allowance or any way to get small amounts of cash as I was growing up. There weren't jobs for teens in our small town. Apart from the yearly birthday/Christmas money, I was broke all year.

Forget buying clothing, I couldn't even buy a candy bar on my way home from school.

In June of 1976, an acquaintance who'd graduated from high school three or four years earlier asked me to sing at her wedding. I accepted, and learned the song (These Are The Best Times from Walt Disney's Superdad) in a couple sessions with the pianist.

Attended the wedding on June 12th all by myself. 

The only other wedding I'd been to was my aunt Sue Ann's. I was 4 years old at the time and all I remember from that was a straight pin still in the waistband of the yellow satin dress they'd made for me as the flower girl. Damn thing poked me all afternoon and I kept telling my mom and she kept shushing me.

So when I arrived at the church to sing and an usher asked me which side, bride or groom, I had no idea what he was even asking. Funny.

Once he figured out who I was, he seated me in the second row at the end, near the  piano. Sensible.

So I sang my song. (link leads to a YouTube video) 
I still remember all the lyrics. 
The piano score was much nicer than the organ that's in the background on this version, but you get the idea.

After the wedding, the father of the bride was walking around handing envelopes to the pianist, the minister, the guy who had helped park cars. He walked to me and handed me an envelope, too.

I had no idea that I was going to be paid to sing. 
No one had told me.
There was a fifty dollar bill in that envelope.

That was the most money I'd ever held in my hand. 
It was a FORTUNE to me. 
I was stunned.

I was really excited because it meant I could have some new clothes to start school in the fall. If you've ever been a teenage girl, you can probably relate. Heck, if you've ever been a teenager you probably can. 

Later that week, as my mom drove to the grocery store with me, she asked me why I hadn't bought a birthday present for my dad. She told me that I had hurt his feelings when I was being 'selfish' by wanting to spend all the money on myself.

"Very selfish," she said. "I thought you knew better than that."

It was a weird thing, felt like it just came from nowhere. I couldn't figure out why he'd say that, he'd never mentioned us buying him presents before. Why would a parent even expect that?

But after writing the post the other day about spending my birthday money on my mom, I realized that my dad was jealous! He remembered that I'd done that only six months prior, and here I was with FIFTY dollars and it was his birthday and I didn't do anything for him! What an ungrateful brat, huh?

It was only 18 months later that I left home.

I haven't thought about the 'why didn't you spend your money on your father' story in a long time, but it's finally clear to me why that happened in the first place.

Huh.

A long time ago...

I turned 15 in December of 1975.

I've talked a little here about money and Mr. Selfish, aka my father, and not having decent clothes as a kid/teenager. I don't mean 'waaah, I didn't get the 50 dollar jeans' either.

Nope. I had two pairs. Both getting worn out between the thighs, getting awfully thin in the butt and I did my laundry every other night. ALL my clothes into the washer every other night. Two shirts, three pairs of underwear, two bras and two pairs of jeans.


I usually ended up having to use some of my brother's tube socks because I only had two pairs of socks, too.

They were multi purpose tube socks. 
When it got cold, we wore them as mittens.
Bonus: they were extra long, so when we outgrew our winter coats, there was still some sort of covering on our arms. Helpful when it's four degrees outside.

My mom didn't have a lot of clothes, either. The things she wore were things she'd been wearing since I was a little kid. The same dresses (most of which were purchased by my grandparents or great grandparents as gifts) and the few same shirts and pants.

She was working full time as a police dispatcher in our little town. She had mentioned more than once that she was chilly during the swing and graveyard shifts. The building wasn't properly insulated and the heating system was old.

So the year I turned 15, my grandparents sent me a birthday check for fifteen bucks.

I cashed it and went to the only clothing store in town, Quisenberry's.  A quick search told me there were a total of eight Quisenberry's department stores, and that one still exists in Ontario, Oregon.

So I wanted to get some new pants. That's why I went shopping. 

The Junior department was located on the left side of the store all the way in the back.

To get there, one had to walk through the ladies wear. On my way through, I saw some sweaters. They were the longer cardigans that had no buttons, instead tying closed with a little knitted belt. Can't call it a sash... sounds pretentious, don't you think? 

And I spotted a sweater that would be perfect for my mom. It was a dark blue and tan, with a vertical pattern of cable knit.

$14.99.

I had a hard time getting that sweater, I really wanted something for myself.
But I kept thinking about my mom sitting in the cop shop and shivering in the Eastern Oregon winter.

::sigh::

So I bought it.

When I gave it to her, she cried.
I didn't see it as a big deal at the time, and I didn't feel like I was being generous or philanthropic or whatever, either.

I really did want some pants, though. Haha.

So I was scrolling through social media today. 
Came across a pic of my mom playing BINGO at her assisted living facility.
And she's wearing the sweater.

I don't know if there's a moral to the story other than the quality of garments was a lot better back then.

 

If you enlarge the photo you can see the school across the street.
If you were to look into the first set of windows on the left, you'd be looking into my first grade classroom. We left that town at the end of my 2nd grade year and my visit in March was the first time I've been back since 1968.