A memoir--my first memories--in Chattanooga, of course

I adored my beautiful mother. We got to stay home together for three years after my older sister Lynda started school.

Some of the threads of the tapestry of my life have been woven by the twelve places that I lived as I was growing up. From Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, ere I was five years old. Early childhood was a happy time for me.

I do not remember South Carolina--not Charleston nor Camden--but I loved Chattanooga. We must have moved there when I was three or four. It was surrounded by those tall, misty mountains that I still love today. Constantly, I played outdoors there, sliding down the clay red hills. If memory serves me well, the neighborhood where we lived was even called Red Bank. Much to my mother’s dismay, my shorts’ and pants’ bottoms were forever stained red.

At four years of age, I rode my stick horse with my best friend and next door neighbor Marshall Cook. Actually my first boy friend, Marshall left me a big chocolate candy heart on the back stoop on Valentine’s Day that year. Back then, we kids didn’t get much candy, so I loved Marshall immediately.

This snapshot was actually taken in Richmond, VA, once we left Chattanooga. My sister was three and one half years older than I, but because she was always tall and I was always short, she looked even older. Here we are at six and ten. I had forgotten that my mom used to sew our clothes and dress us alike at times. We were all very proud of our shiny, new Buick.

All summer long I ran my heedless ways, but when my older sister and the other older kids in the neighborhood went off to school in the autumn, not even Marshall’s company could console me. Indoors, I would play paper dolls with my mom, and when she was busy with housework, I would set up all my dolls and teddy bears and play school, with me always as the teacher, of course.

But the outdoors would beckon me once again, and out I would trot to the red hills behind our house. One of the neighbors had a old swing in their backyard hanging from a tree--a swing on which the whole neighborhood played--and this one day, Marshall was not around, and I was playing by my lonesome. I had seen my sister and some of the older kids swing high and then when the swing was at its pinnacle, they would jump out and come back down to earth, landing on their feet! I thought that that was the coolest thing that I had seen them do.

It must have been in Chattanooga that I began to develop my love of animals. We got our first pets there, a couple of cats. Later we almost always had a dog. Our first one was a red cocker spaniel named Candy. Still later I got hamsters and guinea pigs. Mom even had a blue parakeet named Luke. Look at that little plaid suit that I'm wearing! My legs still look exactly like that!

I felt particularly brave that day, so I climbed into the swing and began to pump it as high as my short legs would carry me--which was higher than I had ever gone before! Then at the swing’s zenith, I screwed my courage to its sticking place, and I let go of the ropes and jumped down, down, down! There I stood on the ground and on my feet, and for a few seconds, I felt so proud of myself. Yes, proud for as long as it took the swing’s wooden seat to swing back around and strike me with its full force on the back of my head, for I had not noticed, or forgotten, that the older kids ran after their feet hit the ground!

The impact of the swing at least knocked me out of the path of its next circuit. Somewhat in shock, whether by my stupidity or the blow, I don't know which, I stood there and reached around to the back of my head and felt the warmth of the blood and then saw its deep red color dripping from my fingers--a color that rivaled the color of the red clay. Boy, I knew that I was in big trouble then! And I was afraid--petrified--not of my injury--but of my parents’ wrath!  They were going to be so angry at me!

I slowly made my way through several back yards and went up the stoop to our back door. I knew that I had to tell and to show my mother what had happened. The superficial head wound was bleeding profusely. Of course, when my mom saw me bleeding, she was frantic. It was 1954, there was no 911, and we had only the one car that dad had taken to work. On that black phone that sat on a small table in the kitchen, she called my father, who drove home immediately. They took me to the local hospital, where I got a shot in my head and a head full of stitches!

Apparently, my sister and I were still sleeping together at four and seven. I recall my mother converting her sewing room into my own bedroom in our next move to Richmond, Virginia, when I was six or seven.

And I never, ever even so much as got in any trouble that day! But it was soon after that experience that my mother enrolled me into White Oak Presbyterian church kindergarten (there was no public kindergarten in Tennessee in 1954), where she felt that I would be safer. It was the only private school that I ever attended, and it awakened in me a lifelong love of school and of learning.

Here I am nearly 60 years ago at a birthday party in kindergarten, looking quite much like the contemplative teacher that I would become! From kindergarten on, I pretty much loved school!

There I am in the middle with the plaid dress. Story time out of doors in kindergarten.

Ah! mountains, hiking, and white water kayaking!

It was the late 80s, and I was nearly 40. I had buried both of my parents that same year and ended a horrendous marriage. I had a friend who kayaked and another friend who wanted to learn how. I, myself, had no idea what a kayak was!

A most unlikely candidate for white water kayaking, I generally only exercised in a gym to stay in shape. The rest of the time I was dressed and made-up to look quite feminine. To look pretty, if you will. I wouldn't go out in public without my makeup, nice clothes, jewelry, etc.

But my two friends insisted that I go kayaking with them, first in the Harpeth and later to the white water of the Hiwassee in Southeast Tennessee. I was scared. I wasn't a swimmer, didn't like being under water, and didn't really know how to do much more than dog paddle. I didn't like being without my makeup; at first, I even wore eyeliner and lipstick on the river!

I had never camped in my life. And of course, white water kayaking meant camping beside the river. It meant a tent, a sleeping bag, and camp fire cooking. So many new things to learn all at once! I didn't take to camping right away, but eventually, I became comfortable with it. Though I still prefer a bed and breakfast most days, I can appreciate the stars coming out at night and the sun coming up in the morning and the river or creek running nearby and the quietude of nature all around that only "true" camping can give us.

And so I went and went and kept going kayaking (and camping). And eventually it got in my blood--white water kayaking. I was often afraid on the rivers, but still I kept going for some reason, and they and kayaking saved me.

Right before I got into kayaking, a marriage therapist had asked me, "What do you do for fun?" I was still married to my drug-addicted and philandering husband, still caring for our small child, still receiving long distance phone calls for help from my unhealthy parents, still carrying a full teaching load, and still trying to keep a perfect house and be perfect myself.  And I answered the counselor, "Fun? What is that?" Was life supposed to be fun? I never knew.

And so began my foray into kayaking in the rivers and hiking in the mountains of western North Carolina.

“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her,” Wordsworth tells us. I had been a lover of nature when I was a child, playing outside long into the evenings with my little friends. My mother would call me to come in for dinner, and I would guiltily pretend that I didn’t hear her. Still later as a preteen, when there was trouble at home, I would hide away in the woods, climbing up an old maple tree and sitting on my special branch, where I felt safe.

So in my 40s, I was rediscovering my love of nature. I was rediscovering fun!

On this latest kayaking trip to western North Carolina this past weekend, I met my old friend Bobby the first night at Lost Mine Campground in a campsite surrounded on three sides by a mountain stream, and we roasted hot dogs on the camp fire and caught up with each other. Then the next day we joined Paul, Dick, and Jonathan on the Tuckaseegee River. That evening we all gathered around for a delicious spaghetti dinner, with sauce filled with fresh green zucchini and yellow summer squash and baby bell mushrooms. Then the next morning onto the rollicking Nantahala River, where we enjoyed a spontaneous picnic by the river. Both days were the most perfect sunny September days, filled with friends and fun.

Some people love to go to the sea; they love the sandy beach and the salty waves. But I prefer the mountains and the trails and white water rivers that they create. I will continue to white water kayak and hike as long as good health and Spirit will allow me.

Nature is a wonderful teacher. A few of the things that she teaches us are to slow down, to be mindful, to accept the seasons (of our lives, too). Also she teaches us to live simply, for she never takes more than she needs.

Emerson writes in his book Nature, in nature we experience “the perpetual presence of the sublime.” Nature can “awaken a certain reverence” in us that allows us to clearly see the hand, the mind, and the heart of God. “In the woods, we return to reason and faith,” according to Emerson. In the woods, a person can “cast off [her] years” and become child-like again. In the woods, one can discover that child-like faith that Jesus speaks of, and one can have fun once again.  

A September Carolina trip to remember

I’ve just returned from an almost perfect week’s trip to visit relatives in South Carolina and to paddle with friends in North Carolina. (The only "unperfect" part was too much time on the road: I got lost in Asheville on the way to Bryson City [Next time I will have a GPS!], and then I had to detour all the way to Knoxville yesterday on the way home from Bryson City because of a truck wreck on the Ocoee road. I was just about 1/2 hour out of Chattanooga at the time!)

But back to the perfect parts of the trip. When I see mountains, I feel as if I’ve come home. I saw my first mountains on this trip as I head toward Columbia, SC. As a matter of fact, I stopped for my first night in the midst of them in North Asheville.

The next morning as I traveled on, stopping at Waffle House to get cheese & eggs and a waffle in a small town near Spartanburg, SC, I experienced true southern friendliness. The ladies in the booth next to me conversed with me the whole time as I ate, wished me a good trip, and waved to me as I drove away.

After getting lost in Columbia for a short time, I arrived at my Aunt Sandra's home. She had moved into a lovely place--a patio or garden house--with a screened-in porch and a perfect little piece of nature for a backyard. The cathedral window in her terracotta dining room looked out over the backyard, and even her spacious blue bedroom had a door that led to the screened-in porch. The beautiful guest bedroom reminded me of a bed-and-breakfast type bedroom with vintage furniture and a vintage quilt folded on the bottom of the bed. I knew that I would sleep well there, and I did.

Aunt Sandra (who is only four years older than I) and I spent the first few hours catching up and reminiscing. Sandra is the youngest of my father’s eight siblings. My father is the second oldest. There is this wonderful picture of all of the Drawdy children on her hall wall, with my father in his mid-twenties holding the then three-year-old Sandra in his arms.

That evening the Drawdys began to gather at Sandra’s for a dinner. There were Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Phil, both rather dapper in their middle and early 70s, and Aunt Ellen, amazingly young at 82 or 3. There were cousins Judi and her husband Lynwood and grandson Brayden, cousins Chris and Steven and Butch, all around Sandra’s dining room table for a SC barbecue. Delicious. But more than the food, I feasted my eyes on the people and enjoyed their conversations, family stories, and good humor.

The next morning Sandra and Bonnie and I went on a walk on the Congaree River greenway. It was shady and cool, and sun danced off the water. At the trail’s end, we sat for a goodish while, talking and watching the ducks and geese dabble in the water. I was realizing that this visit with my father’s family, like writing my memoirs, was healing. It felt comforting, and I did not feel like that odd man out, as I had in the past. Instead, I felt the genuine love and warmth and comradery of family, and understood, perhaps for the first time, the meaning of the word family.

Having worked up a good appetite on our walk, we returned to Sandra’s home for a lunch of those fabulous BBQ left-overs. And then with sweet memories of family in my heart, I drove back to Asheville, and on to Bryson City, NC, (another name for paradise!) for a weekend of paddling with friends.

To be continued . . . in North Carolina!

A memoir--someone to love me

If the tapestry of my life has been woven on a loom, with magnolia and pine and hawthorn woods on its sides, the wood from my sweet sugar maple maternal grandparents--Granddaddy Clark and his wife Etta, my step grandmother--would definitely have been on one side of that loom.

As you know maple trees are renowned for their autumn colors. They put on a display of oranges, browns, yellows, and reds every year. My Granddaddy Clark was quite a colorful character, and I knew him best in the autumn of his years.

As you probably also know an important product from maple trees is maple syrup, which is made from collected sap. One gets sap from these trees by tapping them. I believe that as a child I somehow tapped into the sweet love of my maternal grandparents.

Because my mother's parents were divorced in the 30s (shhh), I had two other sets of grandparents: my mother's mother Mama and and her husband Wassil, (who lived far away in New Jersey and were rather distant in their demeanor as well) and my father's parents Papa and Mama, but Papa was really quiet, and Mama Drawdy never seemed to pay much attention to me. She seemed to have eyes mostly for my cousin Butch, my father's older brother's son, who was one or two years older than I.

But I shall never forget the love of my Granddaddy Clark and Etta. Decades later in my life as I was trying to put the pieces of my life back together, someone said that it may have been their love that saved me.

It was the autumn of  1958, and I had just turned nine. My mother had gone to Columbia to visit her father in the hospital. He was 54 years old. The day before she had called to tell us that Granddaddy was doing better. We three, my father, my older sister Lynda, and I were "on our own," so I was trying to be particularly "grown up."

As I pulled my ballerina pink bedspread over my pillows that morning, my father with my sister trailing not far behind him entered my bedroom. He told me that he had something to tell me: that my mother had called late last night with the news of my Granddaddy's death.

So many emotions at once hit me--pain and sadness, yes, but also anger and resentment that my father had not awakened me to tell me the most important news of my life so far. I was shocked and devastated, but in my family, we kept up appearances. So I put on a strong front, as I had learned to do from the grow-ups in my world. I tried to act "mature"--as if his death didn't really matter that much to me. Though I wanted to crumple to the floor, I simply finished making up my bed.

Through a somewhat turbulent childhood I never once doubted that my Granddaddy Clark loved me--and only me--or so it seemed at the time. Everyone else seemed  to be more enamored by my other family members--my successful father and my beautiful mother and my pretty older sister Lynda. She seemed to have it all--she was the pretty one, the smart one, the best one--or at least that's how it came across to me back then. But ah! I had the love of my Granddaddy and Etta!

Granddaddy Clark was quite handsome with salt-and-pepper hair and the kindest brown eyes. And his wife Etta was beautiful, like an angel, with her gentle blue eyes and fluffy, soft white hair. Though they must have been in their mid-forties when I was born, both of them were already grey-headed. The one faded photo I have of them reveals them to be a somewhat short and stocky couple in their early 50s. But of course, it wasn't their appearance that mattered the least to me.

Indeed, they were ordinary people with no special talents, rather poor even for the 1950s. They ran a small, dark corner grocery store in a somewhat shabby neighborhood on a dusty, dirt road on the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina. My family would usually stop by to see them for a few hours during the summer--perhaps on the way back from my father's parents, who lived on a farm in Bowman, SC.

One of my fondest memories was Granddaddy and Etta's giving my sister and me small brown paper sacks and telling us that we could fill those sacks up with any kind of penny candies that we wanted. Back then, most all of the candy was a penny, and back then, we kids didn't often get candy. Our eyes would shines like full moons as we checked out the colorful assortment of candy offered in front of the cash register. Colorful jawbreakers, fat brown taffy suckers, and big plugs of pink bubble gum were some of my favorite delights. I always felt as if Halloween had arrived early that year!

But the absolute best thing about visiting my grandparents were the times that I would get to stay by myself for another whole week after my family had gone back home. Then I was indeed the princess of the hot, humid city streets and of that old country store with the living quarters behind.

Early in the mornings, I would awaken with the sun streaming through the window into my very own bedroom, relishing the fresh adventures that each day would bring. There would be meals prepared with all my favorite things. My grandfather taught me how to eat grits properly with bacon and eggs and lots of catsup on top, all mixed in together. There was plenty of conversation and lots of laughter. Unlike at home, my Granddaddy and Etta never got impatient or angry with me. I romped with their German shepherd dogs and played with the neighborhood kids, whose skin was a different color from my own.

When the afternoons heated up, I would explore the dark coolness of that old wooden store. I'd help Etta and Granddaddy with various customers, who came in several times a week for milk or bread or whatever--always making much ado about me and my visit to my grandparents. Oh, how special I felt then!

In the cool of the evenings after the store closed and while Etta cooked my favorite foods for supper--fried chicken drumsticks with mashed potatoes and biscuits with plenty of butter and honey--my Granddaddy would sit in his big rocker with me on his lap and read the newspaper. He would read tidbits of the news that he thought might interest or amuse me or Etta. Then pretty soon after supper, I would begin to nod off, and Granddaddy would carry me to my bed and give me a comforting back rub as off to innocent sleep and childhood dreams I went.

I knew that my father did not like my grandfather, but I didn't know the reason and didn't dare to ask. I just knew that he was not welcome in our home. There was some secret about him. One night after I had fallen asleep at my grandparents, I was awakened by some commotion in the front room. As I tiptoed out of bed to the bedroom door where I saw a light, I saw Etta trying to calm granddaddy down and get him to be quiet. He was not his usual self--seemed particularly loud and agitated and overly jolly. Then I remember those terrible words, "drunk" and "alcoholic" that I had overheard my parents say about my grandfather in one of their many middle-of-the-night fights. With the images of my grandfather's strange behavior still in my mind's eye and the words of my parents echoing in my ears, I slunk back to my tall, overstuffed bed, pulling the covers over my head. In the morning, my Granddaddy was back to good humored self, and no mention was made of the night before.

Always too soon that week, my parents would return to fetch me, and I would say my sad farewells to Granddaddy Clark and Etta. And they in their turn would stand and wave goodbye to me, or so I would imagine, long after our old black car had turned into the next dusty street.

Then my older sister Lynda would start whining about where the dividing line came for us on the backseat. And she would push me hard, bruising my arm. My father would lose his temper once again and swing his long right arm, slapping our bare legs to get us to be quiet. And my mother would start crying, and they would begin arguing again. All the way on the hot trip home, the tension would return. And I, trying my hardest to disappear in the back seat corner behind my mother's seat, would miss my Granddaddy and Etta all the more.

Still after all of these decades, what I remember most about him was my Granddaddy's love for me. I named my only child after him--Ellen Clark Mallernee. I never felt so safe and comfortable as in my grandfather's arms.

A memoir-- “The hell you say! You can't destroy me!”

One spring afternoon when I came home from my freshman year in high school, no one was home, and a neighbor informed me that my parents had gone to get my sister Lynda from college. No one would tell me what had happened. It was all a secret. Hush, hush. Don’t tell.

It took me months to piece together that Lynda had tried to commit suicide (had swallowed pills and had to have her stomach pumped) because she had not made it into a certain sorority. Later she admitted that she had taken the pills for attention, knowing that her stomach would be pumped. We also discovered that she had told people at her college that she was adopted and that her real father was a famous psychiatrist!

She returned to the same college the next fall, got pregnant, and got married, unbeknownst to us. Worry, tension, and arguments filled our house, but by now they were nothing new. When Lynda didn't come home as expected at the end of the spring term, my father had to call the campus police. They were the ones who told my father that Lynda had gotten married and left school. She had sent my parents a letter to tell them that she had gotten married, but the letter did not reach us until several days past the time for her to be home. Lynda would not admit to us that she was pregnant, but in November of that year, my niece Shelley was born. It was 1965, and I was 16 years old.

In this time, with my father's job, we had moved from Kentucky to Tennessee to North Carolina and on to Delaware. I attended four different high schools. By now, my parents argued constantly--mostly at night as I lay in bed trying to sleep. Sometimes even in public, in restaurants, their fighting would break out, and I would want to crawl under the table. My father came across as the more rageful of the two; he was certainly the louder, the one who lost his temper more quickly, the one who scared me the most. Lots of their fights were about my sister. They fought all through my high school years. I was glad to go far away to college--back to Tennessee.

The first time that I returned home to Delaware from college was Christmas of my freshman year. I shouldn’t have come home even then. My sister Lynda was back home with her two-year-old daughter, separated, depressed, and living with my parents. Christmas afternoon, as she and I were in the kitchen helping my mom prepare dinner, Lynda told her two-year-old to tell me that she hated me. I can still hear the little girl’s voice now, parroting her mother, “I hate you, Aunt Laura. I hate you, Aunt Laura. I hate you, Aunt Laura.” I knew that these were Lynda’s words, not the child’s, but this time I couldn’t take it anymore: I physically lit into my sister and began to strike her, saying, “Tell her to stop. Tell her to stop.” I think that I wanted to say to her, “Tell the abuse to stop--stop rejecting me. Stop hurting me!” I honestly don’t remember the rest of the holiday, but I do have a strong memory of its aftermath.

Returning to school, I suffered from severe insomnia. Worrying about my family, my grades dropped, but keeping the family rule about “always looking good in front of other people and not telling anyone what had happened,” I didn’t confide in any of my friends. Luckily for me, I had a kind psychology professor whom I trusted enough to confide in, and he told me the most freeing thing: that I didn’t have to go home for the summer.

And so began my journey away from my family--to independence, to solitude, to preferring to be alone. When I told my parents that I wasn’t coming home that summer, I don’t remember their being particularly upset or saying that “we are sorry," or "we shall miss you.” They must have been worn down dealing with Lynda and her toddler daughter and her drama. But my parents must have cared about me (or were doing their duty to me) because they came down and helped me settle into the YWCA in Nashville for the summer. A summer that I can recall in vivid detail--three months completely on my own at age 19.

Here I am after marrying Tommy Cooper, whom I had met in Nashville when I was a sophomore in high school. Though we had a rocky "courtship," we married after my sophomore in college. I married him to escape my home life, because everyone else was getting married, and because he was handsome. I knew nothing about love.

At that point, I had become the hero child, and the loner, in the family. My new rule for myself was always to be good, not to make any waves. At the end of my sophomore year in college, I married the current man in my life and never went home to live again. I was just barely 20 years old. Daddy said that now I would never finish college. So I finished, getting my degree to teach high school English, even though later mom told me that through all my college years she had thought that I was going to be an elementary school teacher. That pretty much sums up how much my parents knew about me by then and how little we communicated about things that were important to me.

Though I wanted my best friend Linda Gilliland (on my right) to be my maid-of-honor, my mother strongly suggested that I  make my sister Lynda (on the left) my maid-of-honor. She and her daughter Shelley were still living with my parents at the time.

To conclude this saga about my sister, which began two blogs ago, suffice it to say that through our 20s and 30s, Lynda and I pretended to be normal sisters who cared about each other. As I look back, I realize now that sadly I was still trying to win her love, her approval--by writing letters, having phone conversations, giving her special gifts, and keeping her daughter Shelley in the summers.

My parents would always call me to come and take care of Shelley when there was more drama with Lynda. She and Shelley had followed my parents to Kansas on their next move. Then on to Illinois. My daughter Ellen was born when I was 33 and Shelley was 17, and that served to complicate the family dynamic even more--more jealousy, more animosity, more fighting. A big brouhaha within my family split us up for a number of years.

In our 40s and 50s, after our parents had died, Lynda and I were on-and-off again sisters. Sometimes we didn’t see or talk to each other for months or years at a time. Luckily, we always lived in different states. I married twice, and Lynda married three times.

Once when my sister came to visit me in my early 40s, I took her with me to see my therapist. During the session, she said that she knew that she “could destroy" me if she chose to. I remember thinking to myself, “The hell you say! You can't destroy me!”

That night at home I stood up to her, perhaps for the first time, when she criticized my then 7-year-old daughter in front of her. I realize now that I had been afraid of Lynda for most of my life, but no more. That was the time that we separated for six years. I did not miss her. 

We did reconnect after that--off-and-on--for another 20 years or so, but it was a rocky relationship. Then there was one last visit from her and another critical letter from her to follow. Now we no longer see nor speak to one another. I don’t expect to ever see my sister again in this lifetime. I don’t miss her, but what I do miss is having a sister who I never had. Just that sweet illusion of a sister--someone who would love and support me, who would have my back and be there for me. I hate it when I see the quotations about sisters in catalogs--about how sisters are best friends. It was never that way for me and Lynda.

Later I diagnosed her as a narcissist. All of the pieces seemed to fit. I think that she would be impressed with herself that so much of my memoir thus far has been about her.

Lynda came to my parents' funerals, complaining about how much it cost her to travel there, complaining about the relatives, complaining about having to take the time to dismantle my parents’ house. In my parents' last years, my parents had become so alienated from Lynda that before their deaths my parents each told me separately that they did not want her at their funerals. I’m sorry that I was not able at the time to honor their wishes; I never had the guts to tell her what they had said.

Instead, I'm having the guts now, to say what I needed to say then, right now, where it's not too late to summon the strength and honesty that I always wanted to have. 

Let's set some things straight!

I have now written and shared with you  four "chapters" of my memoir. There will be several more. Writing them is turning out to be rather therapeutic for me, so thank you for reading them. To get my stories out in public, so to speak, has been somewhat cathartic. I had told several of these stories to a few close friends, but of course, no one, but me, has the complete story! That took me a long time to lace together with harmony and meaning.

Which reminds me of what someone said about my serial memoir, "I can't wait to see how it ends!" Well, all I can say is that it's not over yet! I guess that part's of the reason that I am finally getting my story down on paper and "out there" is because my parents both died when they were my age--both died before they turned 65, ten months apart. And no, one definitely did not grieve to death because of the other's death.

Ultimately, my writing and sharing my memoirs is about healing. I write not from a place of neurotic suffering or self-pity, but from a place of creative suffering. For the purpose of emerging into a more genuine life, to find what is real in me, and to break through to life itself. As Marion Woodman expressed it, "Real suffering burns clean; neurotic suffering creates more and more soot." Healing can come out of examining/exploring the wounds and scars one last time.

Another friend said to me, "Well, all families have their bad stuff," as if to imply that my "bad stuff" wasn't any different than anyone else's. But I disagree with her for two reasons: First, some families truly don't have much bad stuff; they are functional and give to each family member what they need to live a satisfied life. And secondly, as Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." My memoirs are about my family's particular "bad stuff" and especially about how it affected me.

Still a third friend said to me, "When is the change coming?" He said that the story was just too sad; he could hardly bear to read it. I guess he is asking, "Where's the turn in the story or its climax?" Well, not yet, there will be some more crises first. As in most stories, the climax doesn't occur until near the end.

Also his saying after only reading four of my memories, "When is the change coming?" reminds me that we are a society of immediate gratification, that some of us always want to "hurry up" and fix things, but most truly important things in our lives don't get healed that fast, and sometimes not at all.

And one more thing. About my memoir from last week. Why did I call it “a fatal wounding”?

Because my believing that I was ugly wounded me in a huge, somewhat fatal, way. It killed my confidence. It made me too self-conscious and caused me to look at the world through crooked glasses.

One of the main messages that I got from my family of origin was that appearances are everything. That’s why we were to keep the secrets of what my sister did in college and later, of what was really wrong with my father, of my mother’s drinking problem, of my parents’ rage at each other and their vicious fighting.

We were to appear to be a "normal" family. Another message was to be loyal to the family and keep the secrets. And that silence nearly killed the heart in me.

The other messages that I got from my family were that my mother was beautiful, that my older sister was pretty, and that I was ugly. Not plain. Not average. But ugly.

It’s amazing what we will believe about ourselves. If, as we are growing up, our family says or implies that it is true.

Perhaps I was particularly sensitive. Surely my mother and father did not mean to give me the impression that I was ugly. But they did nevertheless. And of course, my sister was there to tell me directly that I was “ugly,” just as I was beginning that perilous journey into teenhood.

And so unfortunately, I took their assessment of my looks to heart. And their judgment affected the rest of my life in so many significant ways.

Now if I had come from a different family or a different society, then perhaps my thinking myself to be ugly would not have affected me as it did. But my family religiously watched the Miss America contest every year on TV, commenting on the beautiful women, and we watched the beautiful Lennon sisters sing on the Lawrence Welk every week, commenting not on how well they sang, but on their good looks. And I got the message: To be pretty was the most important thing of all.

Because my family was not physically demonstrative nor verbally affirming, eventually I equated my thinking that I was ugly with being unlovable and unloved. Still later I thought that if I could just be perfect. Bottom line is that I thought/felt that if I were pretty or if I were perfect, then my family would love me. I did not know, until decades later, that they had their own issues to deal with, which had nothing to do with me.

The delusion of my ugliness perhaps wouldn't have mattered so much if I had been told that I had some good traits, such as intelligence or hard working. Perhaps then the looks issue wouldn’t have gotten so blown out of proportion in my mind. But actually, though intelligent, I felt intellectually inferior to the rest of my family. After all my father was an electrical engineer. I was somewhat (though certainly undiagnosed) dyslexic. My mother and sister would make fun of my spelling. Making good grades in school was expected and was nothing that I got praise for. Actually, I don't remember getting praise for anything. What I was overly sensitive to was the criticism: I recall my mother telling me one time that I was lazy. My father once said to me, "Laura, you are not slow; you are just deliberate." I had not known until then that anyone thought that I was "slow."

And so this thread of my thinking that I was ugly runs through and affects the rest of my story in major ways. I now see it as the tip of the ice-berg of my l-o-w self-worth issue.

Because of what had gone on and what was going on at home, the first couple years that I spent in college before my early marriage were some of the worst years of my life. As a matter of fact, it was there that I developed a lifelong habit of insomnia, of worrying about my family, of feeling incredibly inferior. But that's another story for another day.