A memoir--the very best of my childhood years

My sister and I were wearing poodle skirts in this 1959 portrait.  I was in fourth or fifth grade.

In 1957 when I was about eight years old and in the third grade, my family moved to Madison, Tennessee, for the best of my childhood years. We rented a house way down by the Cumberland River on Berwich Trail.

(As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago when I picked my granddaughters up from “school” at a Methodist Church in Inglewood, I said to them, “Let’s go to Madison [the next town down Gallatin Road] and find the house where Yaya [That’s me!] used to live when she was a little girl.” So we went for an adventure and found the house, looking even better that it did when my family lived there in the late 50s and early 60s.

The present owner had converted the screened-in porch to a Florida room, the attached garage into a dining room, and had built a matching brick garage in the backyard behind the house, but it was far to the right, so that the beautiful view of the river was undisturbed. It was a thrill for me to find that house and an owner who was very happy to share it with me.)

But let's go back to the 1950s, shall we? Let me paint with words this child’s paradise. First, the drive way to the house, as my father used to say, was “the length of several football fields.” The modest red brick ranch house sat way far back off Berwich Trail and to the right of the long driveway. Our immediate neighbor's house was to the left; we both used the same driveway. The big old Cumberland River was in the backyard.

The house’s “two” backyards were filled with tall trees--dozen and dozens of them. I say two backyard because there was the upper yard that at that time had a large brick grill to the right. And there was a lower back yard, which was down a hill, and of course, it butted right up to the lazy old Cumberland River. If you went a few back yards over in one direction to the left, there was a large, deep mud drainage ditch that emptied into the river.

Another really neat thing was that I got to ride my bike to Neely’s Bend Elementary School, which was probably a mile or two away from our house. Every morning biking up the drive way and right at Berwich Trail, I left my sister Lynda standing there, waiting for the school bus, which took her to Madison Junior High School, for she was in seventh grade when we moved there. I went down Berwich Trail and took a left onto Neely's Bend. There was a bike rack right beside the school building, where I parked my bike before I trotted through the back door and down the hall to my classroom.

I loved school. I loved my friends, the teachers, learning, and doing homework projects, and I loved playground and lunchtime. I could feel that the teachers liked me. My reward was that I got really good grades and positive comments on my report cards. In fifth grade, the big excitement was that I got my first male teacher, Mr. Davis.

As a twelve year old in the sixth grade, I was in a talent show, where I lip-synched and danced to a record and won! The song was called “Sweet Old-Fashioned Girl,” but as it moved along, the music got faster and my dancing got more “modern” or 60s, so that one could tell that the expression “sweet old-fashioned girl” was definitely tongue-in-cheek. I also had a boyfriend in sixth grade named Harry. I was just beginning to “bloom” into a teen.

But all that aside, what I remember most about living in Madison was that especially in grades three through five, I loved the great outdoors and couldn’t wait to get home from school or until the weekends to spend endless hours outdoors! My father had forbidden me to go near the river, but I played in all of the “forbidden” places--near the river, in the river, and near that deep drainage ditch. I climbed trees and swung on grapevines, trailing my feet into the river. I sat on the hill behind our house and studied and delighted in all of Nature, the change of the seasons, and the sun going down and coming up, and the moon and stars.

I loved animals, and my sister and I got baby ducks and baby rabbits for Easters. My mom had a parakeet named Luke in a cage, and I got guinea pigs and hamsters for my birthdays. We had a small indoor dog named Jose and a big outdoor black lab that we named Tippy. Daddy said that Tippy was not a very smart dog. One day as my mother, all dressed up in her Sunday finest, stooped down in our backyard to pick a flower, Tippy hiked his leg and urinated on her! She didn’t realize that he had done that until she could feel his warm pee soak through her slip to her skin. I didn’t like that dog, but I did like the little one Jose.

But I loved the hamsters the best; they were so small and warm and sweet. I had a particular hamster that I had named Hampy, who spent long hours in my hand being petted. I loved him especially and had had him for a couple years. Mostly I kept him in my room in his cage, but on occasion, I thought that he would like some exercise (besides his wheel), so I would let him run around the house, or if the weather was nice and I thought that he needed fresh air, I would let him run around on our back screened-in porch. Now the porch had these bottom flaps that lifted up so that you could sweep or hose the porch off. One spring day when I put Hampy on the screened-in porch, I did not realize that the bottom flaps had been left up.

When I went back to get Hampy, he, of course, was gone. I searched and searched the yard for him, and I cried and cried at his loss. Daddy said the same owl who had taken one of our ducks (which my sister claimed was my duck!) had probably swooped down and gotten Hampy, too. As I continued to grieve for him the next few days, one night a big rain storm moved in, and then I knew that Hampy was done for--probably drowned. The next evening as my family was heading out in the big Buick for a rare treat to Shoney’s for dinner, dad backed the car around to drive up the long driveway. He braked rather suddenly and said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” Caught there in the headlights heading back down the drive way to our house was a small, wet, bedraggled hamster. I jumped out of the car and ran to him, picking him up with both my hands, where he snuggled down. We immediately dubbed him, “the hamster who came home.”

The summer came and went and school started back, and I was ten years old and in the fifth grade. That winter was particularly cold and we got lots of days out of school for snow. My friends and I built snow men, had snow fights, went sledding down the hill in my front yard, carefully turning those sleds before they splashed into the creek. Inside the house in the late afternoons, after trying to find pure snow that Tippy had not peed on, we sometimes made and ate snow cream, and other times we drank hot chocolate with lots of fat marshmallows.

We had a tree-lined creek that curved around the immediate front yard of our house. That week the creek froze over solid, or so I thought. Daddy noticed it when he left for work in the mornings and told me never to walk on the ice because it probably wouldn’t hold me and I could drown. One afternoon after my friends had gone home for lunch, I was drawn to that frozen creek like Pandora to her box. Ignoring my dad’s warning, I eased myself out onto the frozen surface. Once I reached the center, very suddenly, I fell down, down through the ice into the freezing water. Luckily, somehow I flailed and flailed and managed to scramble out of the icy hole.

Long I stood and saw the damage that I had done to the creek’s otherwise smooth surface. Then near to freezing and so afraid of my father’s punishment, I went into the garage where my mother’s new washer and dryer sat and took off all my clothes, including my heavy wool coat, and stood there in the coldness of the garage, naked, and scared that any minute my mother was going to come out of the house, when she heard the noise of the dryer, or my father was going to come through the garage door, on his usual way home from work. Neither of those things happened. I climbed back into my warm, dry clothes, acting as if nothing had happened. The whole next week, until the creek thawed completely, I lived in mortal fear of my father noticing the hole in the creek and exacting punishment on me, but he never did!      

The only “bad” things that I recall happening when we lived on the river were when my sister, then my father, and then I had to go to the emergency room, with each incident getting progressively worse. One evening we were having friends over to our house for a barbecue on that large brick grill in our backyard, and my sister was in the kitchen cutting up onions for the hamburgers when she sliced into her finger. She had to be taken to the hospital for stitches. Then the next year, my father was teaching me how to swing a golf club in the backyard. He first showed me how to swing it with his arms around me, mimicking the proper stroke. Then he backed away and told me to swing, but he did not back far enough away, so that when I swung the club back, it made contact with his mouth. I didn’t even know that the club had hit him until I heard him spit out profanity and saw his hand held up to his bloody mouth. He had to be taken to the hospital for stitches and sported a slight scar above his upper lip for the rest of his life. Never again did he try to teach me how to play golf!

In this Easter snapshot of my dad and me, you can almost see the Cumberland River in our back yard. You can also see those little flaps on the back screen-in porch that Hampy escaped from. And there is our big new Buick; my dad loved Buicks and nearly always bought them. Because he was a big man, I think that he was comfortable in their spaciousness.

My trip to the emergency room did not involve an accident. It was mid-December, and I was in sixth grade. That morning as I was getting ready for school, I was brushing my hair with my mother’s hairbrush at her dresser. My parents’ bedroom was beside the kitchen, and I could hear the rest of my family in the kitchen. My right hand which bore the hair brush felt as if it had fallen asleep, like our feet sometimes do, so I was trying to wake it up by lightly tapping it on the dresser. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.

Here’s what happened as I have pieced it together: I had some kind of epileptic-like episode. When my parents found me, I was seizing with my eyes rolling back in my head. My sister was sent over to get the nurse who lived next door to us, and she recommended that a spoon be place in my mouth to keep me from swallowing my tongue. I was taken in an ambulance to downtown Nashville to Baptist Hospital, where I stayed for a week, having various tests, including a spinal tap.

The medical personnel did not tell the nurses or my parents that I had to be kept still after the spinal tap, or else I would get a headache that would last for days. I still have not forgotten that headache. But something worse happened for me during my hospital stay. It was 1960s, and there were definite visiting hours back then, even for parents. So I spent a great deal of my time alone at the hospital--devoid of family or friends.

This one particular night, with the headache still pounding away, I was waiting for my family to come visit me. It was nearly Christmas, and I was in a children’s ward, filled with dozens of other children of various ages in dozens of other beds, some separated by pulled curtains, some not, sort of like what I imagined an orphanage would look like. My little cubicle was up was against a corner wall. I watched and waited as the other children’s parents and families came in the door, all jolly, bringing them little presents of flowers or fruits. No one pays any attention to me.

Three long hours passed, and my parents and sister did not come. I began to cry, and the nurses became concerned about me and about my family. The other parents began to leave for the night. I felt so all alone and abandoned and frightened. Finally, my family swept through the door. My mother and sister, all stunned and quiet, and my father still in a temper and cussing about some Christmas parade blocking the streets to the hospital. They were able to stay for a few minutes past visiting hours, but because of my father’s rage, they could not be much comfort to me.

The hospital tests discovered nothing conclusive about my episode, but even eight years later, when I went off to college, my mothers asked my college roommate and best friend Linda Gillihand to please keep an eye on me. That is when I knew that she had worried all of those years about another attack.

We left Madison, Tennessee, when I began seventh grade. I left behind a budding romance with Harry, lots of friends, a beautiful landscape of a yard, lots of good memories, and my childhood. In our next move to Louisville Kentucky, things were going to be quite different in so many ways. Now as I think back, I wish that we could have skipped the years we spent in Louisville.

The 1960s in Middle Tennessee were the time period in fashion and modesty when skirts were always below the knees. I am wearing knee socks here, but they look like tights! Even in high school, we did not wear our skirts above the knees. When I began college in 1967, women were not allowed to wear pants on campus at MTSU! It was a very different time from today.

To be young and vital is nothing. To be old and vital is sorcery.--Carlos Castaneda

According to a book that I am reading The Second Half of Life by Angeles Arrien, many traditional societies believe that the four rivers of life sustain and support us and connect us to our natural gifts. If we fail to stay connected to these rivers, we succumb to "walking the procession of the living dead" and begin to experience soul loss, depression, and stagnation. Much of what I write in this post are excerpts from the book itself.

The metaphor of rivers appeals to me because I am a kayaker of rivers. I began canoeing and then kayaking rivers in my late 30s and early 40s when I was first getting out of my troubled marriage. The rivers and mountains gave me strength and wisdom and serenity and spirituality. 

Tradition has it that the four rivers of life are the rivers of inspiration, challenge, surprise, and love.

How do we stay connected to these four rivers? What specific things do we do to keep these rivers balanced and flowing throughout our lives? What do we do to feed and clean these rivers so that they won't stagnant or dry up? 

The river of inspiration reveals where we are in touch with our creative fire and our life dream. As long as we can still be inspired, we know that we are alive, refusing to join the procession of the living dead.

For me, inspiration and creativity come is several forms: writing, art (painting), and as of this coming Monday, I am beginning a quilting class! I will always look for ways to create art, whether in a DIY project here at home or in taking a workshop or a class. And always, I will write.

The second river, the river of challenge calls us to stretch and grow beyond what is knowable or familiar. This river always asks us to move past any fixed notion of what we can do. If we are willing to be challenged, to become explorers again, despair, loneliness, boredom, and indifference cannot come into our lives. This reminds me of Merlyn telling the young Wart (King Arthur) that "the best thing for being sad is to learn something." 

Besides learning something new and trying new things like quilting, when I think of the river of challenge in my life, I think of traveling to new places. This year I want to travel to the Grand Tetons in Jackson, Wyoming, and on to Yellowstone (I love national parks!) and then perhaps to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. 

(Since my retirement, I have taken a spring trip in 2010 with friends to San Francisco and Yosemite [Wow!] Then in the autumn 2011, I took a solo trip to New England, mostly to see the fall foliage and all of the places that I had taught about in American literature, such as Concord and Walden Pond, and to see Acadia National Park [again Wow!] in Maine. I travel often to NC to kayak, and I love the mountains and rivers, but it's time for another "big" trip! This time I believe that I will go on a tour of Wyoming.)

The third river of life, the river of surprise keeps us fluid and flexible and requires us to open to options and possibilities we may not have considered. The Inuits have a saying about it: "There are two plans for everyday, my plan and the Mystery's plan." This river keeps us curious, flexible, and trusting, rather than rigid or controlling. It shows us where our attachments repress the natural flow of creativity and energy and motivation.

Since I have been retired, this river has really been flowing more strongly than ever in my life. I wish that I had been more open to this river of surprise when I was still teaching, and especially early in my career. Back then, I felt that I always needed to be in control of myself, and of course, of my students and of what material we "covered" in the classroom. Back then, I generally did not like surprises! But now, I feel that I have the precious gift of time (which I always had) to change my mind or heart and follow my bliss--wherever it may lead me. Alice Walker tells us to "live frugally on surprise." 

The fourth river, the river of love shows us where we are touched and moved by life's experiences. Humor, joy, laughter, and love are considered medicines for the heart by some indigenous peoples. This river indicates that the work and service we love can make us happy. Teaching high school English for several decades definitely made me happy! Now I am transferring that love to my heart family and friends, to caring for my granddaughters, and to volunteering at Noah's Closet, a local clothing and housewares shop. Anywhere that I can love what I do and the people I am with! Kahlil Gibran reminds us of the value of service: "Work is love made visible."

I believe that I live best at the place where these four rivers of inspiration, challenge, surprise, and love intersect with one another. A place of stillness and presence. The rivers form a moving wheel in my life, a wheel of time, if you will, rolling on toward eternity. 

A memoir--the morning of my awakening

As far back as I could remember, my mother and father had fought verbally with each other. Sometimes these arguments would break out in public places, like restaurants, where I wanted to crawl under the table. Most often though these fights took place at night after we had gone to bed.

Unfortunately, my bedroom was next to my parents. When the fighting would wake me, I would lie sleeplessly in my bed for what seemed like hours, hearing their raised, muffled voices. My father’s voice was always the loudest and most rageful as it responded to my mother’s barely mumbled words.

The next morning at breakfast, their fighting would not be mentioned as if it had never happened, which made me feel a little crazy, but I was a “good girl” who had learned early not to tell anyone about the fighting in our house. It was one of our family secrets, and one of the family rules was to be loyal to the family by keeping its secrets. Hush, hush, don’t tell, even if my heart was too full with the aching.

So I blamed my tall, light-haired father for the fighting and felt compassionate toward my curly, dark-haired, petite mother. But mostly, I learned to feel ashamed and guilty about what was going on at home and to pretend that things at home were normal. I also thought that I was somehow supposed to fix their fighting--somehow felt responsible for it--even though what they fought about had nothing to do with me.

By the autumn of my sixteenth year, my only sibling Lynda, four years older than I, was away at college. My sister and I had never been close, nor had we talked about what was going on at home. After Lynda had left, the fighting escalated. Just as my older sister had escaped to college, I took to escaping my home life by spending as much time away as I could. Time away at school, in after-school clubs, with boyfriends, or with friends--anything to avoid going home.

Besides the big hair, what strikes me most about these last two pictures is the frown on my face. I know that unhappy expression to be more than just teenage angst.

One family in particular that I relished being with was the Gillilands. In contrast to my family, they were a fun-loving, large, and warm family with seven children from ages eighteen down to seven, and the parents treated me as lovingly as one of their own children. Linda, the second child in the family, was my best friend. We were both just beginning our junior year in high school where we were good students, well-liked by our classmates.

We had gotten a new puppy that year for Christmas. I have always loved dogs. But even she could not make me smile.

On this particular Sunday morning, I had spent another Saturday night with Linda and had attended early mass with her family. Later that morning, I wanted to take Linda to the little Presbyterian church that I had been attending by myself for a few months. Because the late September weather had turned chilly, I told Linda, “We need to stop by my house to get a sweater.” Thus began my ascent into a maelstrom.

As soon as Linda and I entered the kitchen from the back door, I could feel the thick tension still present in the house and knew there had been fighting the night before. A haze of stale cigarette smoke and the smell of booze hung in the room. My mother sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hand, nursing a cup of coffee and dejectedly flipping through the pages of the thick Sunday newspaper. From the ever-present cigarette dangling from her pale lips, a curl of smoke wafted above her disheveled dark curls.

Instinct told me to turn back around and run, but I had learned not to trust myself. The constant, secretive fighting had deadened my senses--most of all my intuition. So I cheerfully greeted my mother, giving her a kiss on the cheek. I explained that we had come in to get a sweater for me before church. She barely grunted a hello to me or Linda. She just sat there.

Linda and I headed down the long hallway of our brick ranch house to my bedroom at its very end. As I walked down the hall, Linda was a few steps behind me, so perhaps she didn’t see. When I neared my bedroom, my parents’ bedroom door loomed up into my peripheral vision to the left. I gasped ever so slightly as I noticed that the door had been brutally bashed in. Turning suddenly, I practically pushed Linda back down the hall toward the kitchen, mumbling something about not needing that sweater after all. Passing my stone-still mother, we made it out of the house and into the car without speaking a word.

I never mentioned to Linda or to anyone else what I had seen. Later that morning, as she and I sat in church, my mind spun in all directions, trying unsuccessfully to settle itself into a church-like serenity. But my questions to God that day went unanswered, “Why didn’t my mother try to protect me from the violent scene which had unfurled as I approached their bedroom door? Didn’t she care about me anymore? Didn’t she know that I kept the family secrets? Didn't my mother love me?”

My father’s breaking through their bedroom door was never mentioned. In my house, we did not talk about unpleasant things. When I returned home that evening as late as possible, there was a new door on their bedroom, and a few days later, I saw my father burning the old door in the backyard.

It’s been almost fifty years since that incident, but I know now that my mother’s betrayal and my father’s brutality and my sensitivity to both started me down a path that I could not avoid. That incident signaled for me an intuitive knowing that I could no longer trust my parents, something that colored the rest of  my young years. From that point onward, I felt lost and alone and unloved--set adrift on a sea that I didn't have the boat to navigate. I set about on my decades-long journey that eventually led me back to myself.  

Here we are again

On my desk I have a little plaque, given to me many years ago by one of my dear friends Brenda Boyte, who knows me quite well. It reads, "Oh God of second chances and new beginnings, here I am again." And here we all are again--at the beginning of a new year--2014! Wow!

Do you, like me, love new days, new weeks, new months, and new years?! Since I was a child and teenager, new beginnings have appealed to me. I do wonder if it's because I think that I've always screwed up so badly! Or is it the wonderfulness of that fresh clean slate for us to write on--literally and figuratively?

When I taught school, I also used to love new school years, new semesters, new roll books, new pages in the roll book, etc. Clean slates! I would stress to my students each year, each semester, each 6-weeks how they had clean slates. They could start afresh and try to do better. (Most didn't improve much--kept making the same mistakes over and over, perhaps hoping for a different result. Obviously, I didn't stress enough to my students that improving would take some effort on their parts!)

I used to make numerous New Year's resolutions religiously year after year. Now, not so much. As a matter of fact on a recent retreat, I decided to love what is, to love just who I am. To accept and to cherish myself, just the way I am. "Warts and all," as one friend puts it.

But that doesn't mean that I won't still get enthused over a new year! And that I won't still try to do better. I'll be 65 on May 30. That, I believe, is the beginning of old age. I'm excited about another new beginning, another new phrase or stage of my life! Thank you, Mother/Father God, that I have almost reached "old age."

In yoga this morning at Studio Mills in downtown Kingston Springs, we did a cool exercise for the new year. We sat in upavistha (seated pose) and slowly breathed fully in and fully out. As we breathed out we released the things that did not serve us well this past year, and we breathed in the things that we wanted to keep. What would you have breathed in and out?

These are some of the things that I want to release:

fear--In writing my memoirs I've realized how fearful I've been most all my life. It's time to let fear go, let it go, let it go . . .

illusions--any false beliefs about myself or others

critical judgements--of myself and others

envy--Yes, the green-eyed monster can still plague me sometimes and play havoc with my serenity. (Here recently, I've felt jealous of a 45-year-old kayaking friend posting pictures of herself enjoying winter paddling on the plateau. Winter paddling in white water is something I've had to give up at my age.)

sad memories--The more I write my memoirs and revisit some of those places in my life, the more I can let them go, let them go . . . Thank you, dear readers, for that release.

clutter--I want to be a minimalist and create spots of senseless beauty--especially atop my desk, in my kitchen and bathroom, in my art room, and in my mind.


These are some of the things that I want to keep:

love and trust--myself and others more

truth and self-confidence--knowing and embracing them deeply into my heart's core

kindness--Practice random acts of kindness.

fun--walking and yoga and kayaking

more fun--weekly writing of a blog post and painting (art) and quilting

healthier meals--more "homemade," fewer frozen meals

a budget--Inspired by my kids (Ellen and Nekos) who are following Dave Ramsey's financial wisdom, I want not only to write out a monthly spending plan (budget), but also to actually follow it!


On another, but similar note, we sang this song in church on Sunday, and I wanted to leave you with its words and sentiments.