My cousin called me tonight. She had something to say to me, and I could hear the sorrow in her voice. I wasn’t alarmed, I had already heard the news she was going to share. I was just waiting for her to be ready to share it.
We grew up tight, me and my cousin Missy. Our mother’s being only sisters might have helped with the closeness of our families. Her daddy’s illness when we were tots threw us together and my mom would watch my cousins while my aunt took care of my uncle. Whatever the dynamics of our situation, we wound up growing up together. Missy’s daddy died when she was four and I was five. Childhood caught us like childhood does, and we grew up, loving each other.
I remember when Missy was going through her rebellious stage, dying her hair whore black, hating her step-father and all he represented, drinking, getting stupid with the boys. Missy was about 14 then, I would have been 15. I was quite a different kind of a teenager at that time. What some called a geek, I embraced my nerdiness and reveled in my parents love. Not a lick of trouble was I ever in, no drinking or boys, I was into playing the violin and doing crafts with my mom. I was earning badges as Girl Scout and writing poetry of the lover’s I might one day have. I couldn’t understand my cousin’s angst against life. I always thought she had everything going for her. Missy was beautiful, had a knock out body, and had a laugh that was quick and was so musical it made the angels giggle. I remember thinking that I didn’t know her at all during that time. We were so different. It was her dark period. Mine would come a few short years later and last a little longer, but that part of the story comes later.
Missy wound up in the Army after she graduated High School. I can’t say that I even know how she wound up there, but she did. Her decision may have been made by her mom, her life circumstances. Whatever her options were, she chose the Army. Before she went away, Missy and I spent a summer vacationing together up north in the wilds of Michigan. I remember Lake Kneff, blow-up rafts, Boone’s Farm and bikinis (hers). We had a wickedly wild evening on an Army Reservist Base. There were men involved but I remained a virgin to the surprise of even me. It was the first time I had visited what being naughty was about.
The next thing I knew about Missy was that she was married and going off to Germany. Missy had married a fellow Serviceman simply to get the heck outta Dodge so to speak. Period. She divorced him shortly after she hit German soil, and ran into the man who would eventually make my cousin a mother.
When Missy was busy getting married again and having a baby girl, I was busy spreading my wings and doing the rebellious dance that I had not experienced earlier in my life. I was a ‘late bloomer’ in my world. The year of 1981 is a very remarkable year in the story of me. It was this year that I learned that men will say anything to have sex. It was this year that I wound up pregnant and at the mercy of the world. I broke my parents heart, and was banished from them. I lost everything valuable to me in that year. I bounced around from family member to family member and finally my brother stopped the roller coaster ride for me. He took me home to face ‘it’ with my parents. I did. It was more than difficult. Inside me I had growing a child that was not wanted by anyone but me. I eventually got a little apartment in Ypsilanti and at almost 8 months along with my precious baby daughter, I went into labor. What was taking place inside me was not known until after it was too late to save her life. My system poisoned her. She lived only four hours, trying her best to cling to life. During that four hours decisions were made that would alter the course of my life. At a time in the world when death during child delivery was just about unheard of, I dangled precariously close to it. My mother was summoned to my side. She made on the spot decisions for me, that I have since forgiven her for. That was in September of 1981. I had medical issues afterward to deal with, but more pressing were the mental issues that threatened to drown me.
I was traveling and ‘finding myself’. What I ended up finding on Long Island in the summer of 1982 was a man whom I could have spent the rest of my life with. Now people shake their head at this, but I wound up pregnant yet again. It was by God’s grace I was pregnant. I was using a diaphragm, the spermicide that comes with that, the ‘Sponge" and a condom, EVERY TIME. He hated my sexual preparations, I wouldn’t go without it. A baby was OUT OF THE QUESTION! Or so I thought. God had other plans. I ran away from my love and never whispered the fact that I was carrying his child. He might tell me to get rid of the baby. I didn’t give him an opportunity to say anything to me for two years. I just slipped out of his life in the night. I came back home. To my parents. Again unwed and pregnant.
Turns out that baby saved my life. I grew up. I got on and became a momma. That experience mended fences that needed mending between me and my folks. I got real with what I needed in life so I could raise my son Scott. I eventually got married and had another baby daughter. And my life moved forward on a positive note. I took a round about course to make a family, but in the end, I did just that.
Missy was just as busy making a family for herself in Germany. A beautiful baby girl she named Mary Helen. Missy was a Momma! Then shortly afterward a bouncing baby boy she named Cheyenne. A turbulent marriage winding up in a second divorce for her left a custody battle of enormous proportions. Amazingly Missy’s babies grew her up, saved her life and she got real with what she needed in life so she could raise her children. She met a real man, who loved HER. Not for what she could do for him, but for how she made him feel, and he was monetarily responsible enough able to take care of her. I always envied that love she has with him, it is the one thing I want in life that has never found it’s way to me. But, because of him, Missy found a life with her children. Together they raised a family, and life moved on.
Missy and I got back together. We were changed women but in the end we loved each other, we were family. We raised our children close. We spent time together. We were up each others butts at times. Life was good. We both decided to go back to school. We both graduated. We shared our worries over raising children. There wasn’t much to hide between us. We carried on, hoping that our influences would weave our children’s moral fabrics. That the children we raised would become upstanding adults, free from the baggage she and I had drug into the creation of growing up. Only time would tell, and so it has.
Early teen years brought a world of emotional turmoil to my daughter’s life. My baby daughter fell into a quagmire of self loathing. She ran away, she searched for her meaning in life. She desperately sought a life of fulfillment. She needed to be needed. The torment I felt for my daughter was understandable. Then came the day that he was to be married. To a boy. A boy without a job or a pot to piss in. A boy who, it became evident to me, loved my daughter. The day that my daughter called me on the phone to tell me she was pregnant brought my world crushing down on me. My daughter couldn’t understand where my sorrow was coming from. "I thought you’d be happy for me." Eventually I would be, but for this moment in time I was grieving. I was grieving the dreams I had held for my daughter. I wanted her to have a life that was easier, and better than mine. I wanted more for her. In two little words, my dreams for her were forever extinguished. "I’m pregnant."
I needed time to say goodbye to the dreams I held for her, and took awhile longer to realize that just like me, her life will evolve into what it is meant to be. It will be what she makes of it. Not what I want for her, do for her, or demand of her. I still look back at that day I found out she was to be a momma and get a tender spot for the daughter I was going to have. I still grieve a little for that baby of mine that was going to grow up and be Someone Important! Someone of Value! Someone of Prestige! Some one of Degree! Now my Becca has her children and her husband. Turns out that those babies saved my daughter’s life. She grew up, and she got on and became a momma, and she is important, and valued. She is someone of prestige and degree. She is all that and more to me. I am so very proud of this baby girl I had a hand in raising.
Then my cousin called me tonight, and I could hear the sorrow in her voice. Missy told me she was going to be a grandma. I knew her sorrow. I felt it. I know where it’s coming from. Her daughter who is homeless, who is a recovering addict, who holds no job, is becoming a mother. Her daughter who was going to grow up and be Someone Important! Someone of Value! Someone of Prestige! Some one of Degree! Her daughter will find her own way in this world. And Missy needs to grieve the passing of her dreams. If life repeats itself like it did for me and my daughter, Mary’s baby will save her life. She’ll grow up, and get on and become a momma.
Missy? She’ll love being a grandmother. It’s the best thing in the world. Literally the best thing God has ever done for me. It’s the love you seek in life. The unconditional love that flows straight from one heart to another. Missy will bury the dreams she held for her daughter somewhere deep in her heart as all of us momma’s have to do at some point, and she will relish the new beginning she can make with her daughter ... and her grandchild. And life moves on ...
love me later~tj
