It is sad that after all these years I finally realized that the little girl on Strong Street is still in there and still hungering for acceptance. I thought she would have learned by now, but she hasn't. The saddest part is that she comes out at the damnedest times and I have to talk her back in. Always craving acceptance and validation. I think I may have read somewhere that we have to confront and comfort the inner child before we can be a complete person. Maybe so.
The world sees the fascade that I present. I tell it like it is. I am dependable. The "go to person" when something needs done. I am honest to a fault. I would give you the shirt off my back (as momma used to say) and the last dime in my pocket. But under all that callousness and crap is still that skinny little girl back in Nickerson watching from the sidelines. While the other girls went to the parties and cheered for the boys on the baseball team, I stayed inside and drew pictures on the black board with the "nerds." We were drawing fins on Cadillacs before they were even thought of by the company!
I never doubted for one minute that my mother loved me. Dad was a different story. Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield loved me. They never kissed me or hugged me, but they fed me and smiled at me sometimes. Touching didn't used to be a big deal back then. I wonder why? Aunt Mabel and Uncle Goll used to come see the grandma's from Coldwater and Aunt Mabel would let me rub cold cream on her face. Once she sent me to Hinshaw's General Store to buy a towel so she could teach me how to do textile painting on fabric. When I got it home and opened it up there was a brown "shelf mark" on it. I wanted to take it back and get one without the "wear" mark, but she told me it was "good enough" for me.
And thus set the tone of my life was set. I married a man because he was the one who asked me. I stayed with him because that was what we did back then. I had babies because that was the way it was.
When I divorced and was a single mother with no child support I survived. And I married several times thinking that was the answer, but it was not. I came to Colorado. I divorced. I married. I divorced and then I met my last husband, Kenny. He did not know about my hungry inner child and he loved me for who I was. When I opened up enough to share my childhood with him, he laughed. And when I told him my first husband called me a "nickle bred gutter rat" he found that hilarious and began to call me a "gutter bred nickly rat." Life took on a new perception when I looked through his eyes. But now he is gone.
So here I set crying over some slight that happened at church, or not having someone to hold my hand when I go walking, or wanting to run an idea by someone, and no one is there. Nights get cold and lonely and very scary sometimes. That is when I close my eyes and feel the wool blanket against my cheek and hear the coyotes yip in the distance and sometimes, the lonely scream of a cougar down on the river.
I guess it is all coming full circle.
The world sees the fascade that I present. I tell it like it is. I am dependable. The "go to person" when something needs done. I am honest to a fault. I would give you the shirt off my back (as momma used to say) and the last dime in my pocket. But under all that callousness and crap is still that skinny little girl back in Nickerson watching from the sidelines. While the other girls went to the parties and cheered for the boys on the baseball team, I stayed inside and drew pictures on the black board with the "nerds." We were drawing fins on Cadillacs before they were even thought of by the company!
I never doubted for one minute that my mother loved me. Dad was a different story. Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield loved me. They never kissed me or hugged me, but they fed me and smiled at me sometimes. Touching didn't used to be a big deal back then. I wonder why? Aunt Mabel and Uncle Goll used to come see the grandma's from Coldwater and Aunt Mabel would let me rub cold cream on her face. Once she sent me to Hinshaw's General Store to buy a towel so she could teach me how to do textile painting on fabric. When I got it home and opened it up there was a brown "shelf mark" on it. I wanted to take it back and get one without the "wear" mark, but she told me it was "good enough" for me.
And thus set the tone of my life was set. I married a man because he was the one who asked me. I stayed with him because that was what we did back then. I had babies because that was the way it was.
When I divorced and was a single mother with no child support I survived. And I married several times thinking that was the answer, but it was not. I came to Colorado. I divorced. I married. I divorced and then I met my last husband, Kenny. He did not know about my hungry inner child and he loved me for who I was. When I opened up enough to share my childhood with him, he laughed. And when I told him my first husband called me a "nickle bred gutter rat" he found that hilarious and began to call me a "gutter bred nickly rat." Life took on a new perception when I looked through his eyes. But now he is gone.
So here I set crying over some slight that happened at church, or not having someone to hold my hand when I go walking, or wanting to run an idea by someone, and no one is there. Nights get cold and lonely and very scary sometimes. That is when I close my eyes and feel the wool blanket against my cheek and hear the coyotes yip in the distance and sometimes, the lonely scream of a cougar down on the river.
I guess it is all coming full circle.
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