Survival

Someone asked me the other day how I survived with mom and my answer is simple; my dad’s aunts, Uncle Ben and Aunt Evelyn and my beloved Aunt Dot.

Today, though, I was thinking of Uncle Ben. I wasn’t allowed to meet him until I was seven or eight and then we would go out to dinner every couple of months. He would order drinks, including a Shirley Temple for me, and then he would ask the waitress to “Bring my niece a toasted ravioli dish”. I was the center of attention! They asked me about my week and bio mom never came up. At any meal in public with my mom, she had to be the center of attention or she acted out, embarrassing everyone. Also, at Uncle Ben’s and Aunt Evelyn’s there was food. I didn’t have to ask. My mom worried I would get fat and, often, withheld food. If it was just the four of us, (Aunt Dot brought me there.) I was free to talk and play and interact. I needed that.

When he passed, mom forbid me from the funeral. My dad and my grandparents weren’t allowed to take me and I now understand why. I would have met my cousins and other aunts and I’m very sure I would not have gone home. I would have finished high school in another home. The degree of abuse and neglect was obvious. I was just over five foot and my weight was about 80 pounds. My face was sunken and my eyes, for anyone who looked, showed fear Mother was entering a new campaign of terror and I was her target. She couldn’t let me go.

My senior year of high school, the year Uncle Ben died, mom became the sociopath that had been just hiding under the surface.