Mermaids

Where I thought we might end up after the swimming pool episode.

When I was little we belonged to a country club.  It fit in well with my Dad's job as an advertising executive for KFMB TV in San Diego.  Stardust (yes, it really was called that) was a place to do business, a place to take potential clients for a round of golf or cocktails.  Very "Mad-Men"-esque (I've actually never seen the show, but from what I've heard about it, my dad would have fit right in with the cast).

Lyn and I on the golf course.

An added benefit to being a member of the club was that my sister Lyn and I got to go there to swim and to have the occasional Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers in the red and black velvet wall-papered lounge.  It was the height of "I may look like a kid, but actually I'm a very cool grown-up in disguise"-ness. Awesome.

One day Lyn and I got really brave at the club.  We were very bad indeed.  There was another lounge at the club and this one was strictly off-limits to kids.  It had a tank behind the bar that took up the full wall.  In that tank, actually a small, deep swimming pool with a glass side, women dressed as mermaids would do an underwater ballet-type show.  One day, when the lounge was closed, Lyn and I snuck in to the glass pool.  I remember thinking it was so dangerous and exciting.  We swam in the pool, did flips underwater, and put on our own show.  There we were, a teenage mermaid and her little sister, swimming behind the bar.  I remember how hard it was to hold my breath long enough to gracefully swim deep enough that I could open my eyes and see through the glass to my imaginary audience.  It was wonderfully dangerous.  I wish I had a picture.

Me, three months, and Lyn, 8 1/2.

Over the years, people who have heard some of my childhood stories have often ask me the question "How did you go through everything you've been through and turn out so normal?".  While I might argue with the "normal" part, I usually answer, from the heart, that I made it through because of the loving foundation my mother gave me in my first five years, and because of my sister, who has ALWAYS been there for me.

Lyn and I shortly after I moved in.

My sister invited me to come for a visit, which turned into forever, with her and her husband the summer before I entered fifth grade.  I was ten and she was 18 and her husband Mike was 21.  Eighteen!  Crazy.  Since then we've been through so many things together- five bouts with Cancer, three life threatening car accidents, the trials and joys of raising our combined total of 12 biological and adopted children-several of whom have had special needs and challenges, deaths in the family, multiple moves, separations, surgeries, heart-aches and holidays.  We don't see each other as often as we would like, but when we do, its like we never left.  We understand.  We've been there. 

Thank you, Lynie, for rescuing me, and for being my forever sister and fellow mermaid.

Ignore the glamorous Costco background.  I like this pic.

The Cinderella Years

Me, about age six

This is me and my Dallas friend in our
look-alike dresses and purses

My mother died the November I was five, and there was no way that my dad was up to putting on a Christmas for us so soon after her death. A friend of my Dad's realized this and flew my sister and I from where we lived in San Diego to their home in Dallas. Texas.  They gave me a dress and purse just like their daughter's, and I remember that it snowed just a few flakes while I was there  I had never seen snow before, so I thought that it was absolutely magical.  At the time I didn't realize what an amazing thing it was that this family I barely knew did for us.  Thank you, Dallas people, whoever and wherever you are, for giving us a bit of normalcy during a crazy time.


Soon the family settled in to a new "normal".  My dad had always been a "meet me at the door with a cocktail after work" businessman, but after my mom's death his drinking increased.  He also started dating.  It seemed like he dated a lot.  I remember once he took my sister and me along when he took a woman away for the weekend.  He bought us all new nightgowns.  The way I remember it I slept in the closet. Maybe that was a different time- it happened more than once.  Anyway,  I remember thinking it was fun.  I remember pretending that I had to live in a space that small forever, and thinking about how I would decorate it and make it work. 

Robin and I with her grandson on his
birthday.  I remember being jealous
of him and this cake.

About a year after my mom died my dad got re-married to a woman named Bessie Etta Hart. She called herself Robin, but I don't know why. She was from Mississippi, and had been married three times before.  My father thought that she was beautiful.  She had dark curly hair and light eyes (blue? violet?).  She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).  We had been Presbyterians before, but hadn't really been to church since my mom's death. I remember the first time I went to an LDS meeting.  It was a children's activity (Primary) and I was sitting in the front row quietly listening to what was going on when the boy next to me suddenly stood up and barfed red kool-aid and hot dogs all over the floor right in front of me.  Awesome.

Robin had the LDS missionaries come over and teach my sister, dad and I about the church.  We all decided to be baptized (I think that my dad mad the choice mostly because Robin wanted it).  I remember the day shortly after my eighth birthday when I was baptized.  I felt wonderful- warm, peaceful and so loved by my Father in Heaven. That feeling got me through many tough times in those years.  Robin was an odd member of the LDS church.  She didn't want to be married to my father in an LDS temple because she thought (just one of her very strange beliefs) that if she was righteous enough she would someday be married to Jesus Christ.  


Life with Robin was hard.  These were my "Cinderella and her Wicked Stepmother" days, at least in my mind.  Here are some "highlights":
- at least two hours of housework every day, including scrubbing the floors on hands and knees and moving all of the furniture and cleaning under it weekly.  Six hours of housework on Saturdays.
- no new clothes or toys .  I wore her daughter's (age 27 and tiny) very out of style and age inappropriate hand me downs. 
- six tablespoons each of cod liver oil and brewers yeast daily as a health food remedy for my dermatitis (it didn't work)
- being forced to eat ant-infested lemon bars that I left out on the counter (ants and all)
- being exiled to my bedroom for two days on Christmas when my dad and Robin had a fight because I didn't come when called to help with Christmas dinner. I had been playing with a toy Robin's adult son had given me.
- frequent discipline with a flyswatter on the legs.
- the bill for my orthodontia being posted on my door with a hand-written note that said something like :"We are paying all of this for you, what are you doing for US?"

I remember I didn't have a costume
this year, so I wore one of my sister's
old dance costumes.  People asked
what I "was" and I said
"a dancing girl". I felt stupid.

But the worst part, for me, was all of the time I spent alone. In the neighborhood where we lived there were two sessions of first grade- morning and afternoon.  I had the afternoon session.  To my memory I was alone every day until school started and was responsible for getting myself dressed and ready, making my lunches, etc..  Needless to say my outfits didn't always match and weren’t necessarily even clean.  Robin didn't want to be bothered with my naturally curly hair, so she cut it very short.  She wouldn't let me have a part in my hair because "Parts look like an Indian chopped your head".   We lived in a very upscale area of San Diego at that time, and I remember the kids at the bus stop stealing my stuff and taunting me until they made me cry because I was shy and so different.  My first grade year was the year when I think it really hit me that my mom was gone, and wasn't coming back.  I cried a lot. 

Lyn throwing the bouquet at her at-home
wedding.  She made her dress and I
think she made mine, too.

Being alone at night was even worse.  I used to check behind every door and the shower curtains to make sure that there were no bad guys in the house.  I remember taking ropes and trying to tie all of the doors closed so no one could get in. All of this happened when I  was between five and nine years old.



My sister was married the week she graduated from high school.  She was seventeen.  She was definitely in love, and is still married to her husband today, but I also think that she was very glad to get out of our house.  I missed her, though, when she wasn't at home with me any more.  So much.


Lessons learned during this time:  Kids need you to put your needs second to theirs, even when it isn't what you feel like doing at the time.  Kids need supervision, even if they seem competent and mature beyond their years.  And, don't forget, there are good people in this world and even when we feel alone we have a Heavenly Father who loves us.

Life goes on, and there are good times along with the bad.  
More about some of those good times next time :)

That First Pivotal Event

I love this picture- my mom looks so happy.  I'm the little cutie in the front.

My mother, Lillian Jeanette Rankin of Defiance, PA, died when I was five.  Five and a half, actually (that "and a half" is very important when you are five).  The story I grew up with about her illness was that she had thought that she had a hernia, but had put off getting seen for it until summer was over.  By the time she went to the doctor that fall it, that "hernia", in reality what I learned later was colon cancer, had spread to her liver. Her doctors said that there was nothing that they could do. 

Mom and I on our last Easter together.  

I was in kindergarten.  I remember coming home from school and seeing my mom on the couch waiting for me.  She would prop herself up, put her arm around me, and listen to the fascinating events of my kindergarten day.  I knew that she was sick, but had no idea what was really going on.  I have a picture (that unfortunately I can't find right now, but I will soon, and I'll post it when I do) that I treasure of her rocking me to sleep some time near that time.   I have a hairnet on my head to protect my "beautiful" naturally curtly hair.  My mom's hair is dyed its usual red, and she is wearing a mustard colored shirt.  If you look closely, you can see a little drool spot beside my sleeping face.  It's all very 1960's.  And I love it.

Then one day my mom had to go to the hospital.  Her sister, my aunt Kate, and my half-sister Glenda, who I had never seen before, and who I never saw again (she was almost 30 years older than me) had come to help out and be with my mom.  Back in those days kids weren't allowed in to hospital rooms, so I sat in the lobby when everyone else went to see my mom and waited.  It seemed to five year old me like forever.   I didn't really understand what was going on, didn't understand that my mother was dying.  My 14 year old sister Lynette (Lyn) got to go up to my mother's hospital room.  Fourteen was the magic age.  My sister tells how one day my mom asked her to read aloud The Lord's Prayer.  When she got to the line that said "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." my sister just couldn't say it, so she skipped it.  My mom pointed out that something was missing, and my sister just said that "this Bible must be one of those new revised editions."  They both knew that just wasn't true. 

When my mom could tell that her time was short, she made her nurses wheel her downstairs in a wheelchair to see me one last time.  They didn't want to do it, thought that it would be too hard, that she was too weak, but she wouldn't have it.  She was coming downstairs to see her daughter. 

I didn't realize that it would be my last time with my mom, that I would never see her again on this earth.  She looked really thin and pale and weak but she was my mom, and I loved her no matter what she looked like.   She gave me some hugs and talked to me a little about I-don't-remember-what, and then she was taken back up the elevator and she was gone.  How incredibly hard that must have been for her. 

I don't remember when I heard that she had died, I don't think that I really understood what was going on.  I remember all of the adults around me crying, and wishing that they would stop.  I remember feeling like they needed to stop, feeling like someone needed to be in charge.  Feeling like maybe if no one else was going to step up and be charge, then I needed to. 

It seems like they cried for a long time.  My dad especially.  During that time I remember having dreams that I had to drive the car, that we would be going along down the freeway and for some reason I would have to take the wheel and drive. 

I don't have that dream any more, but I often still feel the need to "take charge".  Mostly that need has served me well.  Its gotten me through some tough times.  I've also learned, and continue to learn, though, that sometimes as much as we would like, there are things that we just can't control.  Things that we can't fix.  But maybe, that's okay.

I still miss my mom, and wonder what it would be like to be able to call her on the phone just to talk, to ask her opinion on what color to paint my bedroom or other trivial things.  I wonder what it would be like to watch her age, and listen to her complain about it.  She died at 42.  I wish I knew her more- knew what she thought about things.  What were her political views?  I have no idea.  Did she date other people besides my father?  No idea.  How did she feel about her often tumultuous relationship with my father?  Couldn't tell you.  I don’t have a single thing that she ever wrote.

So, that is why I am writing this blog. I want to share my stories, some of the things I've been through, things I've learned along the way.  Life is busy, but this is something that I want to make time for.  For myself, for my kids, for whoever is interested.  I have no plans on dying any time soon, too many lessons still to learn :)