The Start of a Little Something

  The beeping continued, for hours, as I held her hand.  I didn't have much to say, I didn't know what to say.  The person that raised me was dying and I had not a word. 

She didn't know I was there, or who I was for that matter. I just sat there, thinking.  Thinking of times that we had together that were good times.  I know she thinks of those often and chose to forget the bad times. However, the bad outweighed the good, and I didn't understand how she could not remember those times when she did have her wits to her.  

 I could have flown to her, to be with her longer, but I didn't want to.  It was uncomfortable for me to be there.  I took my time driving cross country, thinking of childhood memories. You know the ones, the memories of running away for the first time, or when your mother told you that you can only call her yes, mother, no mother.  Momma, mommy, mom wasn't in the vocabulary.  Or what about those memories of getting to stay home from school because, well because of all the bruises on your face, remember those?  Just me?  Oh I know, the memories of how you were closer to your teachers, because they fed you lunch and knew what was going on, but back then you didn't interfere, I thought so.  These were my memories, and my memories only. 

Don't get me wrong, I think there were good times.  She had a few good cooking recipes up her sleeve.

We would go to the beach once a year. We would take the bus and spend two hours with transfers and a huge amount of crap to land at the lifeguard station at Pacific Beach.  Mom's first stop was the bathroom so she could change, I would just stand outside and watch the waves and breath so deeply it hurt my lungs.  I was home, this was my haven,  I was home. When I was older and had a penchant for running away, I would run, each time to the beach.  I knew what buses to take.  I would grab my walkman, a cassette and some batteries.  If I didn't have batteries I would steal them from the local store.  Every time I ran away, I ran to the beach.  It was my safe haven, though one time I went to the beach, I was being kidnapped. No matter how long it took me to get to there, or how late it was, I always gravitated to the ocean.  If my mom hadn't taken me there, I would have never known how it made me feel. 

When a couple adopts a child, they do it for love, one would assume. They can't have children of their own, they want a child to raise, to show love and affection.  That's what one would think.  I was adopted.  From birth.  My adoptive mother knew my birth mother, they were next door neighbors.  My adoptive mother couldn't have children and they were going through the adoption process with no success, getting robbed of a child.  A boy named Michael.  She had him for 16 months and she thought he was hers.  At the last minute the birth mother came forward and took him away from her.  California had some really rough rules back in the late 1960's and my mother paid dearly for them.  Having a child ripped from your arms and not being able to do anything about it, must be one of the worst pains imagined.  yet, that pain shouldn't be held against any child coming into the family. So I was adopted and I suppose everything was fine and dandy, until my father became a raging alcoholic and drug addict, beat the crap out of my mother on a nightly basis, put her in the hospital a time or two.  They divorced when I was around 5.  

Things didn't get any easier though.  My father never came to visit me, but I think my adoptive mother pushed him away from me and he just got high, drunk or whatever and allowed me to live with the crazy mother. 

Then of course my mother decided to bury her emotions into a vodka bottle, beer bottle and leave me alone a lot so she could go drink her sorrows away.  I remember being by myself a lot as well as a late night phone call with a babysitter calling my mother wondering when she was going to come home.  My mother didn't have money for babysitters I knew that and I think that was the only babysitter I had ever had. The bar she frequented was right across the street from where we lived.  I would watch her walk the dirt field to get her groove on and I knew I had so many hours to play and relax and watch tv and all that jazz.  There wasn't that much food in the house so I had gotten creative at times.  I would make sugar sammiches, kool-aid ices with the freezer ice.  I knew what I could and could not eat, or rather what I could eat and she wouldn't know about.  I would go through all of her pockets of clothes and jackets looking for coins and when I had enough I would walk to the 7-11 and get a candy bar or something. They were only ten cents back then.  Crazy.  

The abuse towards me I only remember when I was older.  As a younger child all I remember is being in bed while the sun was up, being grounded a lot (It helped her nurse her hangover since I wasn't allowed to come out of my room and was basically locked in there for the weekend.  There was a bathroom attached so no worries there. I had no friends growing up.  That was frowned upon only because then my mother would have to act like a mother.  I wasn't allowed to spend the night at classmate's houses and I later figured out it was because I would realize how a real normal family was and then have my mother reported.  I never knew about that kind of stuff.  They don't really teach you that stuff when your a child and no one hides notes of how to survive in coloring books or inside Barbie's that arms and legs didn't bend.  That was the extent of my Christmas mornings.  But, I was happy because I never knew anything different.  There was this one Christmas though, that was funded through an Alden's credit card and catalog.  I was in heaven and wanted to be grounded so I could play with all of my toys, There were so many toys.  I got a skateboard and skates, and Barbie food, and all sorts of cool stuff.  I was so happy.  Even if the peas in a pod were bigger than Barbie's head, I still felt like I was a winner finally.  While my mother recuperated on the couch I was able to teach myself to roller skate and skate board in the back of the apartments.  I stayed out there for hours.  She never once came to watch me. 

It was a sordid relationship.  I believe that she did the best she could with what she had.  As a person who just lost both of her parents, and a husband Im sure she was going through her own traumas.  Back then she wasn't allowed to talk about them.  She just buried them all deep within her heart and soul and would drink to numb the pain.

I am here to tell the story.

I am here to help her heal.

And maybe heal me a bit.