The world I know started when I was three. The happy new Lewis clan lived in a giant red and white, two-story colonel house on a giant hill overlooking a rural mid-western town. Inside the house, each room was very unique. The living room had psychedelic red and gold fuzzy wallpaper. The television room had black and gold animal wallpaper with a black leather couch. My room was turquoise blue and purple with large fluffy flowers on the wall.
The yard was always green with a small whispering stream and a large apple tree growing in the front. The back yard was open to the towering mountainside and nearby horse ranch. In my memories, the flowers were always blooming.
Daddy always had time for his little girl. There were plenty of afternoon games of catch in the yard or riding a tricycle in the driveway while dad worked in the yard. Every time we sat down for a meal it was playtime, with daddy pretending to sneak the food away from the unsuspecting girl.
Daddy was a junior high teacher and basketball coach. His little angel often went to classes with him. They would cut to the front of the lunch line, go down to the office during class for him to get a soda, or she would be the school mascot with the cheerleaders during the basketball games. Life was perfect.
Oddly enough, I have no memories of my mother. I think she stayed home with me for a couple of months and then she went back to work at the IRS. Our town only existed because of the jobs provided by the surrounding government instillations. I’ve seen pictures of my childhood that show me my mother was there. She always made sure I had a lavish Christmas and birthday and we went on family vacations and trips to the zoo – like any normal middle class family, but I don’t remember it.
I don’t remember any extended family either. Daddy’s parents died long before I was born. He was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters and supposedly they were my first babysitters and would often come over for family parties, but I don’t really remember them. My mother was the oldest of three children and her parents were still around. Everyone in her family talks fondly of the time Grandpa gave me my first sip of beer when I was two. (Who in their right mind would give a two-year-old beer?) I have the scar to verify the story that when I was three my mothers sister, who was sixteen years her younger, (the admitted family mistake) put me on the front of her handle bars and took me for a bike ride when we promptly crashed leaving a hole the size of a pea in my eyebrow. Yet again, I don’t remember any of it.
However, I do remember daycare. I spent more time there than I did at my actual home and the daycare building looked very similar to our house. It was a red and white two-story colonel building only it was longer. Children’s World, it was called. Grilled cheese sandwiches were served for lunch. During recess we would find the little round flower weeds in the grass and pop the bulbs into our mouths like m & m’s. One day during recess when I was four years old a little boy named Chris and I pretended to get married. We even made ourselves little grass rings. We sat across the room from each other in reading time and stared at each other shyly. I guess it was my pretend marriage that started all the trouble. The teachers at the daycare thought our marriage was cute and shared all the details with my mother. When she was talking with them, she appeared to think it was cute too, but when we got to the car it was a completely different story. I received my first lecture on the evilness of boys and how I was never to talk to Chris again.
Later that night I was downstairs playing in the unfinished basement trying to pretend that I didn't her my parents arguing about my pretend marriage earlier in day. Craaaash! Hearing a loud noise rumble the basement floor, I came running up the stairs to Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom. “Whasa madder?”
“Mommy and Daddy are talking; you need to go outside and play. NOW!”
Sitting on the curb, playing with whatever rolled by in the grimy water in the gutter, I knew something was wrong. Sitting on that curb that afternoon is my first clear memory from childhood. A memory I can claim as my own. It is not a story handed down to me from someone else. I was four years old. Shortly after, my mother and I moved out.
We moved to another city about an hour away and now I only saw my father when it was convenient for my mother to take me back up to see him. I always wanted to live with Daddy. I can’t explain it. Maybe it is just every little girl’s Oedipus complex, but I don’t think it was. My daddy was the nicest guy in town. Everyone knew him and everyone loved him. Everywhere he went someone always stopped to say hello.
My last childhood Christmas with my Daddy, all alone in the big house on the hill, is one my most precious memories. The house was devoid of furniture and curiously quiet. It was the last time I was ever in the house. There in the dining room, sitting on a solitary chair underneath the crystal chandelier, was a huge brown teddy bear with a huge red bow. The bear was almost as big as I was. It was at least a year before that bear ever left my sight. Although it may be out of sight today, hiding on the top shelf in the closet, the bear has never left the place in my heart.
After every visit with my father there were lots of fights. Mommy always wanted to know what Daddy was doing, whom he was with and what he said. Daddy never asked about her. I wanted to live with Daddy, and when Mommy found out, the fights got worse. More and more I felt torn in two, caught on both sides. I couldn’t understand why Mommy wouldn’t let me stay with Daddy.
Then as if to make things worse, Mommy gave me a book for Christmas entitled, “Why was I Adopted?” This was how I found out. Crouching in the fetal position, I hid in my closet for hours and cried. I can't remember what was running through my mind. I am sure some of it was anger because I didn't like this mother and I wanted a different one, but I think I probably felt that this explained why my mother didn't love me as much as other mothers seemed to like their children. When my mother, Ann, from now on, came to get me out of the closet, I screamed, “You’re not my mother. I don’t have to listen to you! Go Away!” Eventually I came out of the closet on my own, but that wasn’t the last time she would hear those words.
One weekend Ann went out, so she dumped off her child baggage at her friend’s house. After calling Daddy and begging one more time to go live with him, I got sick. Lying in bed for what seemed like hours I was serenaded by the lonely whistles of the trains. Where are they going? What do they have inside? Why do they keep bowing their whistles? The serenade drifting me off to sleep in the middle of the night. It was pitch dark when I awoke. My sleep interrupted by frighteningly odd, black bearded man towering over me. “Honey, I’d like you to meet Elliott. He is going to be your new father and we’re moving to Arizona.” We took everything we had, even our cat, and left.
Time moves differently to a child. It wasn’t until I was adult and realized that the time between when we moved out of Daddy’s house and when Elliott moved in was only a couple of months. As a child I was unaware that my mother had been unfaithful to my father. I didn’t know any better. I just knew there was a new man who was supposed to be called Daddy now. My mother was somewhat ashamed of her choice and that was why we moved to the new city, to hide. She hadn’t even told her parents about the divorce. Months after the separation my father took another woman out to dinner one night and ran into his ex-in-laws and that was how they learned about the divorce. For years, they assumed it was my father who had cheated on my mother and blamed him for everything.
I’ve met a few adopted children in my life and I am sure I am not the only adopted child whose parents divorced, but I am the only one I know. It just seems wrong to me that two people who desperately wanted children just four years earlier after waiting for years to finally get that chance - who agreed to be the life long protector, teacher and parent of a young child could just up and go their separate ways. They had been married seven years before they adopted me, maybe a child was supposed to fix an already troubled marriage? If so, why didn’t the adoption agency catch it? Didn’t they feel any obligation to be my family? I was only four years old and I was losing my second set of parents? Was something wrong with me?
No comments:
Post a Comment