Abandonment seems to be the word of the day. It has certainly been my son’s issue, and I have been trying like Wonder Woman with her metal cuffs, bracelets of submission, to protect Tin from people and situations who would trigger it. However, through his healing, I’ve learned about my own childhood abandonment, and how it presents itself now. I was the youngest child of six, and my parents were wrapped up in their own thing and seriously not into parenting by the time I came along. My sister and I, the youngest, were summarily deposited at my MawMaw’s house in Franklinton, Louisiana or my Tía Luna’s house in Brooklyn, NY.
I remember a time when we were at my MawMaw’s house where my sister ran away – as in went to the road and hid in a bush ran away. I couldn’t understand my sister then (and don’t now). (Another story.) I remember times with my MawMaw and being in her house with her love and kindness that went deep. The memories come together to present a cogent view of where my confidence came from (a question my mother always asked me) and where my love of nature began and where I learned true love.
My grandmother’s house was on a dairy farm. It had a wide hallway with bedroom rooms on either side. Until I was much older, her house did not have an indoor bathroom. There was an outhouse my Aunt Sue would walk us to that was just far away enough from the house.
A giant tin tub would appear in the kitchen area to bathe my sister and me, with warm water poured over our sweaty, dirty hair.
There was a deep front porch with a porch swing, but the side porch held more allure as that was where the deep freezer was located. The one where we would take a glass and skim off the shaved ice.
My MawMaw had a feather bed, and we slept in it with her.
There was a black dial telephone in the hallway that my MawMaw would never use if it was storming.
There was a garden, steps from the porch, where sweet watermelons grew along with other vegetables that were not nearly as interesting as a watermelon.
There was a big barn with hay in its loft where mama dog tunneled her way into have puppies, and my sister and I tunneled in to see them. It was summer and sticky hot as only Louisiana can claim, and the hay was prickly, but the smell of milk breath drew us to those little creatures.
There was a pond we would walk down to with Aunt Sue; she was only a decade older than me so she felt more like a big sister than an aunt.
There was a creek we would ride over to with my cousins, who once caught an otter and skinned it. Blech. I don’t remember why.
There was a brown horse we shampooed with a fluorescent green tube of Prell. I can still smell that shampoo, so harsh yet surprisingly clean smelling.
While I speak of abandonment – where my parents would go off for the weekend and leave me alone in the house. Or where my father raged and my mother drank, and everyone checked out. Or when my mom would leave us with our nanny Sally. Or when we were deposited for the summer at either my MawMaw’s house or my Tía’s house in Brooklyn on Van Sicklen Street. I don’t speak about how these two icons influenced my life for the better.
Truth to tell, those women were who I wished to model myself after because I thought of my mother as weak (read: I didn’t know everything). My MawMaw took care of kids, babies, dairy cows, and a garden BY HERSELF – she was and is a great love of mine. My Tía was the matriarch on my father’ side, after my abuela died, she cared for her brothers, their children, her husband, and her own brood like a boss not to mention an apartment building. I’ll add my Aunt Sue in this pantheon of great women. These three women have shown me great love and attention, and they are for me the woman I hoped to become.
Sometimes abandonment has a silver lining.
