Curiosity

I got to thinking recently about my incessant curiosity as a child.  While I was growing up, our encyclopedia became dog-eared.  I made good grades because I read everything I could get my hands on.  I wanted to become a librarian until I discovered that nobody can live on that salary.  Even though I continually sought facts in books, I seldom found anything revealing what I really wanted to know.

My thirst for details came from a childhood during which the only matters the family discussed in my presence were this year's cotton crop, those uppity niggras, and the Communist threat of the Cold War.  Heads between your knees - everybody!  And heaven forbid I ask any questions about my parents. [see Queen for a Day]  My brother & I had different fathers, and I was unaware of this until my Auntie Mabel cleverly let it slip into conversation while I was in the room.  When I was fourteen years old, fer God's sake.

I was raised by my Grandmother, Ava.  I called her “Mom”.  Auntie Mabel was Mom’s sister.  Being pretty clueless about picking up on vibes back then, I didn’t sense the tension in the air when Mabel suddenly remembered she had something to do, and backed out of our driveway in a cloud of dust.  Mom was still holding her hand over her heart as she sat down with me to do some explaining.

I had known since early childhood that my parents died when I was two. I was only told that my dad was killed in a butane explosion and my mother died soon after from breast cancer.  The end.  No more questions please.  It was like a memorized litany, which I repeated to others when asked.

The following details I unearthed for myself decades later.  I did some creative Googling, found some newspaper articles and, amazingly, Johnny and Kathryn’s death certificates.

Kathryn was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery when I was barely one year old.  The following summer, in May, Johnny was cleaning his warehouse floor with butane-powered equipment.  It somehow ignited, causing an explosion.  He died the next day from his burns.

The following July, Kathryn lost her life to the cancer.  This was 12 days after my second birthday, and 9 days after my brother turned 12.

I was too young then to recall anything about these folks later on.  Not the sound of their voices or the look in their eyes - nothing.  I do not see anybody that looks familiar when I view their photos.  

But I do recall another event with cinematic clarity.  Mom (Ava) takes me inside a portrait studio to be photographed.  The photographer uses a Mickey Mouse in an airplane to coax giggles from me.  I’m wearing a little yellow sun-dress with ruffles, and I complain about the fact that it has a serious side-boob problem.  Mom is annoyed that I waited until we were driving there before I voiced my discontent, and it was too late to go back home.

Mickey totally cracked me up with his airplane, and my wardrobe malfunction worries vanished.  Much later on, probably in my teen years, I mentioned this memory to Mabel and Mom.  Their jaws dropped in shock.  My experience in the studio took place only days after Kathryn’s funeral.  Huh.

My family had been devastated by their loss.  Mom had lost her only daughter.  Kathryn’s brother, my uncle, was heart broken.  I suspect this is why I felt I wasn't allowed to ask many questions.  It made people cry.  Or it pissed them off.   One of my first learned instincts was to keep my curiosity at bay.  Somebody at some point implied that it was naughty to make such inquiries, that it was an invasion of privacy.

I became sneaky, roaming the house at night when Mom was sleeping, looking for “stuff”.  Anything that might tell me more.  I came across a few intriguing items, but was caught before I could examine them.  I was never, ever punished physically, but cried hysterically upon being discovered in the act of disobedience.  I was so terrified of reproach, of the idea that my family would be "mad" at me.  Of that steely look in Mom’s sweet blue eyes.  I've always wished I had a color photo of her.

So I was a good kid.  I mean, an exceptionally good kid.  I didn’t want to make anybody more sad than they already were.

Mom was as kind as anybody could imagine, and her deep love for me was obvious.  My Uncle was gentle and totally compassionate.  It seemed that the most surefire way to bring about their disapproval was to “meddle” in my own past.  So I became more discreet in my futile searches for clues.

We had an exceptionally quiet existence on this three-acre cotton farm.  Mom was widowed before I went to live with her, and with my brother’s long absences (he went into the service when I was only seven) it was usually just us.  Most of my classmates lived in town, so my summer months were seldom spent with friends.  Nobody in the family ever raised their voices.  Yelling was reserved for the Dallas Cowboys.  We didn't do that sort of thing, at least not when I was around.

Rainstorms where the sky would darken and become black in the middle of the day.  Dust storms with silt piling up in the window sills.  We didn’t have Doppler back then, and we were the only farm around with a storm cellar/bomb shelter.  When things started to look tornado-like, families from two other farms would crowd into the cellar with us.  We had fold-out beds and everything, so we’d all just sleep there.  It was very exciting for me.  Oil lamps, candles, deafening thunder.  The foregoing is the highlight of my more dramatic memories of life on the homestead.

I overheard people referring to me as a “strange kid”.  I think my school teachers agreed.

Now does this look like a child who would gaze out the window, missing salient points of classroom instruction?

Mom and I got along quite well.  We were comfortable hanging out together.  She had been an English teacher.  Her mother and grandmother had been English teachers.  Kathryn had also been an English teacher.  We had a huge library of books, including primers.  After I turned five, Mom and I sat in the hallway floor in front of a long bookcase, and I learned to read.  See Tom Run.  We didn’t have kindergarten in our tiny little community, so when I entered first grade, I was the only kid who already knew how to read.  My teachers were aghast when I came to school with a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea”.  I didn’t understand the book very well beyond finding it dark and sad, but I felt that carrying it gave me an air of early maturity.  During reading period for my class, I trotted down the hall for third grade phonics tutoring from the wife of my late father’s best friend.  Phonics, with a little Latin thrown in.  Highly valuable early learning that few kids received back then.  Thank you God.

My great-aunt Mabel came around a lot.  Mabel was single, never married, and quite “worldly” in her life of traveling and socializing.  The tongues that wagged over my parents’ partner-swapping improprieties, (Glen left his Queen and moved in with Alvina...) got an additional workout due to the controversial lifestyle of my rebellious great-aunt.

Mabel's eyes twinkled with mischief.  Never married, had a number of boyfriends, consorted with strong, confident women.  Mabel’s staunchest ally seemed a little too masculine for the sensibilities of the town watchers.  I admired her bravery.

Shockingly, Mabel drank wine openly, even in her old age.

My great-aunt was the first woman to hold public office in her county.  She had friends who were authors and artists living in Santa Fe and Taos.  She was often asked to house-sit for one of them while they traveled to Europe or wherever.  These were Nice homes.  After I reached the age of 13, I sometimes accompanied her, spending a couple of months at a time in opulent surroundings.  At all times, I was admonished to tread carefully.  There was always some comfy bay window where I could curl up to read, or a deep arroyo behind the house to explore.  Mabel had never had kids, had never wanted kids, and possessed little tolerance for their behavior.  This woman might want to yell at me when I acted like a child, but instead she usually got massive tears in her eyes, her lower lip would tremble, and I’d feel oh so guilty.  I spent some time with an artist who lived in the basement of a place we were house-sitting.  He tried to teach art to me, and finally threw his hands up and said I had “no perspective”.  Good to know.

Mabel was the only connection I had to the world outside of West Texas small town mentality.  She introduced me to culture, museums, American Indian history.  Mabel understood my family’s reluctance to talk with me about my parents, and she grudgingly went along with their secrecy.  She finally blew their conspiracy wide open when she casually mentioned that my brother had gone to see...his father.  Hearing this revelation had the effect of seriously unhinging my grasp on reality.  As kids will do, I had long nurtured a fantasy that perhaps my parents were really alive, and for some bizarre reason, I’d been sent to live with old ladies.  I vaguely remember conversations wherein Mabel was telling Mom that it was time they loosened up a little with the information.  Out came the scrapbooks and many boxes of photos and news clippings.  Nobody wanted to look through them with me, so I shut myself in my room and pored over them.  I lovingly put every item in a scrapbook, labeling each one.  I still have them.

Mabel is on the right.  Mom is the one in drag.  Little wonder they didn’t like to discuss the past.

And here we have our duo fondly recalling their glory days.

I will be forever grateful for Mom’s stabilizing influence on my perceptions.  My uncle and his wife were devout members of a popular Bible Belt church.  No dancing, no musical instruments in worship services, no drinking, no tolerance toward the ideas of others.  Their doctrine was firmly rooted in the belief that anyone worshiping differently than them would go straight to Hell.  During one service, the pastor talked about divorce.  He claimed it was an unpardonable sin to divorce and remarry, unless one or the other of the partners committed adultery.  Otherwise, there was no possible forgiveness to be had, and the sinner was hell-bound.  No redemption.  I wasn’t too clear on what adultery meant, but I was pretty sure one or both of my parents was in big trouble.  I don’t recall who I spoke to after the sermon.  I imagine it was one of the elders who was friendly with my uncle.  I went up to this guy with tears in my eyes, asking in a trembling voice if this meant my mommy and daddy were in Hell.  His face went florid and he began stammering.  I got home after church, hysterically telling Mom what I had learned.  Mom was not one to ever set foot in church.  This day, she explained why, and I was comforted.  The God of my understanding does not set such harsh terms.  From there on in, I dutifully attended church.  It was safer to placate the wife of my Legal Guardian, lest she think me to be a Godless pagan.  As long as my immortal soul was safe, my aunt was less likely to urge my uncle to interfere in the relaxed and mutually trusting relationship I had with Mom.

Now I understood why Mom sometimes drove to another town to catch a movie on Sunday mornings.  She and Mabel once picked me up at church after seeing “Lolita” at the Granada Theater in Plainview.  Scandalous information, which she trusted me to keep under my hat.
I didn’t even have a curfew.  Mom could count on me to be home at a reasonable hour, and I always was.  As long as we flew under the radar, all went well.

Delighting my aunt with the transformation, I was baptized at the same age as all my peers.  After the baptism ceremony, I was expected to stand in line with a bunch of kids whose heads were similarly soaked, shaking hands with parishioners as we received congratulations.  I drew the line at that bit of theater.  Right after I was yanked to my feet, drenched and sputtering Baptismal water from my nose, I toweled myself off and walked briskly through the evening air to the car.  I was listening to The Four Seasons telling me that Big Girls Don’t Cry, Chubby Checker doing The Limbo Rock, The Shirelles longing for their Soldier Boy, and The Surfaris, uh oh Wipe Out - here they come.  It’s my Aunt and Uncle, and they look grim.  They were mortified by my daring dash out the side door in view of the entire congregation.  What would Deacon Jim Bob think?  I replied that I had a headache and was about to throw up.  This explanation always worked.

Mabel, Mom and I traveled to Carlsbad Caverns, Santa Fe, Taos.  These two elderly ladies and a young girl, enjoying the hell out of ourselves.  We played cards a lot, took long walks, talked and laughed and told jokes.  Ate many slices of Sara Lee All Butter Pound Cake.  It got to where we treated each other pretty much like friends, and we had great fun.  For circumstances to have started out in such a dysfunctional manner, my home setting eventually morphed into a decidedly healthy, if strange, upbringing.  We just all had to get used to each other.  When I came home for my first weekend back from college, Mom got out the blender, produced a bottle of Absolut from under the kitchen cabinet, and made us a pitcher of Tom Collins.  Now there was an item that my childhood snooping had never turned up.

I celebrated my 21st birthday with Mom, Mabel, and my uncle in the house where I grew up.

The following November, Mom passed on at the age of 80.  Less than a year later, I left for Colorado, and a not so stellar career in the music biz [It’s All Right Now].  Mabel and I hooked up now and then, either in Plainview or in Santa Fe.  We exchanged literally hundreds of letters up until a few years before she died at the age of 96.  During all that time, I continued to resist asking questions of her.  My sense of awkwardness with family was still ingrained.  Everyone who remembered the people that I never knew, are gone now.

But I remember Mom and Mabel.  These two kept no secrets from me about who they were, and it satisfied my curiosity about family in general.  When I think of them, I smile.


RAM