When I was growing up, I was the second oldest of nine children. Our house was small by the standards of that day, tiny by today’s standards. We were a little cramped, but we were a family. Dinner was on the table every evening. The house wasn’t always clean; (you try keeping up after nine tornadoes every day) but it was safe, and comfortable. We were a family, firmly ensconced in the low-to-middle end of the Middle Class. My parents sometimes struggled to get the bills paid, sometimes struggled to keep us in clothing and shoes, and to keep enough groceries around for the pack of constantly growing, ravenous critters they called theirs. But we never knew real hunger, never spent a day wondering where our food would come from, never went shoeless, or dressed in rags. And we were wealthier by far than many children in the world because we had our whole family together, all of us, a complete unit: both parents, all the kids, pets, and with the bonus of a pair of wonderful grandparents right next door. We also had a history. We grew up in the same community, in the same neighborhood, in fact, as my Mom. We had a sense of belonging that kids who move a lot miss out on. We played with other kids whose parents had played with our mother, or at least had grown up with her, and knew her.
I recently had a neighbor who told me he had a plan to move every three years. The plan was quite elaborate, and included estimates of his upward mobility in his career, his wife’s position in her career, the needs of their children, etc. It projected moving to a better house, in a better neighborhood, each time. The home he lived in at this time was a 2,300 square-foot, three-bedroom home. Why he felt he needed this constant improvement in circumstances escapes me now, I’m not sure if he ever tried to explain it to me, but I remember feeling sorry for the kids. Every time they began to feel settled among neighbors and friends, they were to be uprooted by a family plan that was designed with their betterment in mind, but neglected to provide for their emotional security. Today, we are a mobile society, and I am convinced that the lack of this “sense of belonging” has contributed, in no small part, to our societal decline.
The main focus, as I reflect on this upbringing, is not so much the setting, and I don’t think I could have had a better one, but the activity. My mother was tried to the outer boundaries of her personal and emotional resources; the envelope was not only stretched, but shredded. Sometimes, when I consider what a fiasco it can be just packing a couple of kids in a car for a trip to the supermarket, I marvel anew at the sacrifices Mom made for us. She was committed to making sure that we were not deprived of happy childhood experiences just because we belonged to a large family.
When we were young, quite young, Mom took us trick-or-treating on Halloween. That meant getting all of us dressed in costumes (I was a pirate!); she even dressed up herself, and herding us around the neighborhood like a pack of wild cats in a windstorm. Things wouldn’t have been too bad, except for one warped neighbor in a bear costume, a very realistic bear costume (at least to a six-year-old), who thought it would be funny to open his door quickly and shove his head out with a huge roar. Unglued, or unhinged, or perhaps both, would be words appropriate to describe my reaction. Did I mention that he lived in a second floor apartment? Did I also mention that I happened to be the one standing right in the doorway when it flew open? His door was at the top of a long stairway, in a creepy, dimly lit hallway. I’m not sure, but I think I set a record for getting myself down those stairs (and right out into the middle of the street; thank God no cars were coming) an event more like a steeplechase than a footrace, since I had to go over the heads of a couple of adults, even as I alternately passed under the skirts of a few others. In the end, there were kids running out of the building in a panicked mass exodus, screaming and tearing off into the streets, while anxious adults, some of whom had shoe marks on their scalps, or had had their most personal privacy rudely violated, were trying desperately to pull themselves together and collect their children before further mayhem could ensue. Me? I was trying to catch my breath, and feeling my heart racing like the motor of an Indy race-car. And what did Mom do? She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, said something about not even being out of sight of the house yet, and continued trick-or-treating with her kids. What a woman! What a Mom!
Over the years we took trips to the beach, to the zoo, we went on picnics to state parks, to the drive-in movies, visiting with friends of hers and their children, even took family vacations. In other words, we did all the things other parents do with their children but with way more of us. I can, almost with a certainty, tell you that there is a story, similar in its own thread, to the trick-or-treat story, connected to every one of these trips. And I will never fail to appreciate the depth of commitment, the grand scale of fortitude, and the sheer perseverance it took for one overwhelmed woman to keep her commitment to give her children a great childhood, as secure in its foundation as it was rich in experience.
Thank you Mom; you did a magnificent job.
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