In all the years since the Years of the Locust ended, Mama has never mentioned her contribution to that miserable era. While I would gladly lay all the blame of it at the feet of the Stepfather, I know within myself that Mama was quite enthusiastic, herself, about imposing that suffocating lifestyle upon us, her family. Indeed, she was the more passionate advocate of the two in some areas, specifically clothing and the frowning on higher education.
I always assumed that Mama was not proud of her role during that time and was thus reluctant to bring it up, but she recently said something to the effect that her intentions were pure on the way down, implying that hence she was free from blame.
As if the meaning well of a parent negates the internal damage inflicted upon a child.
I bristled a bit and went on to recount some of the ridiculous inflictions she had laid on me as her nearly-grown daughter, and then she said, well, if it was so bad, I could just have left as an adult - adults are responsible for and accountable to themselves.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had never been allowed to become an adult - my parents wouldn’t let me. Up until the day I left home at 21 I wasn’t allowed to think for myself or to make any decisions.
I don't think Mama grasps how bleak that time in my life was. We kids weren't allowed to have personalities. We daughters, although the four of us are vastly different from each other, were meant to be clones, all never working outside the home, all living at home until our father approved of a man to marry, all to pump out the maximum amount of kids possible and homeschool them and raise more clones to do the same thing.
How could Mama possibly understand how damaging this was for us? She had a normal, happy childhood. She had a healthy social life and was permitted, even encouraged, to follow her interests. I find it sadly ironic that her parents had such a happy marriage and yet she and Big Jim wanted something better because her parents and his were “unbelievers.” That experiment went well...
Since being back home I have made various comments to my mother, feeling around, striving to get an accurate idea of how she feels about those years. I have said, "Do you remember when you told me I couldn't sing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'?” or when she inquires, knowing I am a John Grisham fan, whether I've read his Skipping Christmas and was surprised when I told her I had not and that in fact she had not permitted me to read any John Grisham before. She didn’t recall any of it - they were random rules with no principle. How can she have been so dictatorial to me and not even remember what she did? I haven't told her about the time she forbade me to go see a production of Ragtime in which my voice teacher was the star and invited me to - I have been listening to the score lately and Mama thinks it's gorgeous inspired stuff.
All of my books were censored. I couldn’t read The Hunchback of Notre Dame because there was a brief sex scene in it. Shirley Temple’s autobiography was anathema since it “dwelt too much on Hollywood,” and the same went for a book about the making of The Sound of Music. We didn’t watch many movies, but the ones we did could only be PG.
Mama was also the one more concerned about modesty - usually. Big Jim would randomly pronounce an item of clothing immodest for an obscure reason, and then he had this thing with collar bones and necklines - he always said the Lord had given us collar bones as a guide to how high the neck line should be. Apparently the collar bone of a male was useless since this applied only to us girls.
But Mama was the hard core enforcer of modesty. Whenever one of us girls would acquire a new article of clothing, she would make us parade up and down the hall under Big Jim’s male gaze to be sure that nothing was clung to or any skin above our shins exposed. We would bend over to make sure that nothing fell out. Only if it passed inspection could we then wear it.
The resentment that festers deepest within me, though, is how wretchedly guilty I was made to feel because I was naturally bright. I had a insatiable appetite for all things academic. Most parents would have proud to have produce such a child.
Not mine. A intelligent person, you see, was naturally inquisitive and would be more likely to question the order of things - my overt love of learning was viewed by Mama and Big Jim with suspicion. They attempted to provide appropriate outlets for my energy. Mama signed me up for a correspondence course on herbology which was actually an extremely unprofessional setup and which I did not enjoy. Mama was also intent on one of her daughters taking on the profession of a midwife and took Melody and me to midwifery seminars. Anyone who knows me at all will agree with me when I state that I could never have been a midwife, but since we children were expected to turn out in a specific manner and weren’t permitted to have personalities, this hardly mattered. The ideal female would learn a profession which she could conduct from home and later carry on into married life as a “ministry.” Melody’s long-time interest in massage was thus encouraged since it happened to fit the criteria.
My interests, not so much. My classical education pretty much ended when I was 16 since most everything thereafter would be useless in the future that was expected of me. I begged Mama to let me take geometry since I had loved the last math I had taken, algebra, so much, but she said no, firstly because she had never used her high school geometry in her practical life, and also because she had disliked it and didn’t want to check it.
But I kept on rebelling. I checked out books on Spanish and trigonometry from the library and tried to teach myself. Of course I got no where.
Someone once marveled to me how incredible a job my mother must have done at homeschooling us kids since I did so well, scoring high on the ACT, testing out of math in college. I felt like howling with laughter and informing them that I went to college in spite of my mother. My parents were an obstacle to my later life. I cried myself to sleep, oh, so many nights because I could not for the life of me figure out why, why if I never to go to college, God wouldn’t take away my burning desire like I’d pleaded with him to.
I can’t even fathom doing that to my child, denying her, not only her dreams, but her very instincts, forbidding her to even be herself.
Which is why I’m amazed at how unmoved my own mother is by her having done it to me. I adore her and she’s so brave and strong, and I know she loves me. It perplexes me.
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