Nice things

I've been feeling guilty all day at work thinking about my blog and the things I've been writing lately. After all, like my brother says, my dad could have given us up for adoption after biomom left. He didn't go that route, as don't the millions of women who go it alone after dear old dad gets up and goes, and here we all are.

To recognise my dad and stepmom for their good deeds, I will list the nice things they have done for me since I moved out of the house in 1990.

1. Let me move back home...twice...however briefly.
2. Take me out to a fancy dinner for my 21st birthday.
3. Pay for the removal of a wisdom tooth when I was 21. I was a poor college student with no insurance.
4. Transport me home from community college one night a week for one term because one of my classes let out after the buses stopped running.
5. Pay for tuition during my time at community college and textbooks at FSU. They also gave me $200 a month when I started FSU so I wouldn't have to work but stopped that one year into it when my stepmom retired.
6. Let me stay at their house one summer when I didn't take summer classes at FSU. The one thing I remember from that drive home with dad was that he refused to hug me when we got back to Largo and stopped at a shopping plaza that contained the bank at which he was working. Why? He said he didn't want anyone he knew or worked with to see and think he was having an affair with a young college student. Huh? It still boggles my mind, and I never got that hug.
7. Attend my college graduation. But they didn't clap or cheer when my name was called. Complete silence. Dad later said I wouldn't have ever finished college if it weren't for him. I quickly and angrily corrected him.
8. Pay for several dinners out during several visits home.
9. Loan me $1,000 when my boyfriend and I moved to NYC. Dad forgave the rest of the loan after I had paid back half of it.
10. Let me stay at their house a few times when I would visit home. The rest of the time, they wouldn't let me stay, so I'd have to get a hotel or stay at my brother's house or at my brother's office in a scary deserted industrial park. After awhile, I just stopped visiting.
11. Come to my wedding. And dad only complained a little about the inconvenience of it all. I'm a lucky girl!
12. Come to Tallahassee to see me one last time a couple of weeks before I moved to Scotland. My idea was to visit them for a long weekend, but they didn't go for that option as their schedule was too jampacked. So I got one night and one dinner, instead.

And the nice deeds end there. Since I moved to Scotland five years ago, they have phoned me only a dozen or so times. They have been sending cards for Christmases and birthdays, but that's about the only contact they have with me. I have phoned them a lot in the past, but they don't call back. Stepmom told me years ago that they didn't have an international phone plan so they couldn't call me but that we could certainly e-mail to keep in touch.

I'm wondering why I can manage a good international calling plan but they can't? I'm also puzzled because my brother told me that he told them how to dial me for free using his Internet? If money is the barrier, it's not adding up.  I'm also wondering why I would write long, detailed e-mails and then receive nothing in reply until weeks later when I'd get one sentence asking for photos of Elliot.

I really, honestly am not sure what they are expecting but it seems like they want me to make all the effort while they keep treating me like shit. Hm. That doesn't really seem to be working for me anymore.

Whistle while you work

Growing up, chores are a part of life for most kids. I think chores are a good way of teaching kids about responsibility and getting them involved in the daily or weekly care of the home. The completion of chores is also a good way for children to learn about taking pride in their work and allows them to earn money to buy some of the little extras they want that aren't supplied by the parents.

Though I think chores can be a positive thing for kids, I think the demands parents can make on their children can be unfair and damaging if taken to the extreme.

My story:

Whenever I tell people about the chores I had to do on a daily and weekly basis, they come away from the conversation comparing me to the same fictional character: Cinderella. I'm sure the evil stepmother in both stories aids with the comparison, but what was required from me (and my brother) was way over the top - especially considering the meagre compensation involved. I come away from the experience feeling like little more than cheap child labour, keeping in mind that my parents and I didn't have much of a relationship outside of the context of what was expected and required from me to keep them off my back. When my brother lived at home, the chores were just about split 50/50. When he moved out, all the chores became mine until I got a job after school at which time my parents hired a maid who worked one day a week for 12 years until she was let go with a note on the kitchen counter.

Daily chores:

• Make my bed (before school)
• Check the post and put it on the desk outside my parents' bedroom
• Empty and clean dirty ashtrays
• Empty coffeemaker of used grounds and put in fresh filter and grounds
• Boil teabags and make a pitcher of sweet iced tea for my parents, if needed
• Dry and put away dishes out of the dishwasher
• Clean my bathroom (countertop, sink, toilet, mirror)
• Set the table for me and TV trays for my parents for dinner
• Wash the dinner dishes and pots/pans and clean up the kitchen after dinner
• Brownie points were given for massaging my stepmom's feet (with lotion - cringe!)

Weekly chores (completed after school on Fridays):

• Dust my bedroom and my brother's old bedroom
• Clean my bathroom top to bottom (including bathtub and sweeping/mopping the floor)
• Dust the two lounges and my parents' bedroom
• Clean my parents' bathroom top to bottom (including shower and sweeping/mopping the floor)
• Windex all sliding glass doors inside and out
• Vacuum entire house
• Clean entire kitchen (including stove/microwave and scouring sink and cleaning under cupboards as well as sweeping/mopping the floor)
• Dustmop parquet entrance hall
• Sweep/mop laundry room and dust off tops of washer/dryer
• Vacuum back screened porch and dust porch table
• Empty and sweep entire garage and sweep out area housing outside garbage bins

Weekend tasks

• Fold and put away empty paper grocery sacks
• Help with dinner prep if needed
• Set the table for me and TV trays for my parents for dinner
• Wash the dinner dishes and pots/pans and clean up the kitchen after dinner

Plus, there was the immensely exciting Spring Cleaning Bonanza every year that involved lots of cleaning of baseboards and window blinds and closet louvered doors and tons and tons of daily hovering around the edge of the kitchen offering to help and being rejected while my stepmom loudly sighed and made it clear that she was so completely overburdened and why wouldn't anyone help her? And let's not forget all the holidays when the family would gather together, the women busting their asses in the kitchen and the men making jokes about women and black people in the living room and later watching football while the women cleaned up the entire mess. I was the only child/nonparent expected to contribute to all this misogyny/general unfairness.

I could literally go on forever. But I digress.

My stepmother did all the laundry and ironed their work clothes. They both cooked dinners and made meals on the weekends. My dad did all the yardwork (but I had to sweep the driveway and sidewalk after he finished the edging). Cars were taken to a carwash. As far as I know, neither one of them did a lick of housecleaning. How much was I paid for this hard, hard graft? Three dollars a week, an amount that never increased through the years. Our maid was paid at least $30 a week for doing the same or less work, and I was paid $10 a pop for helping my neighbour with her housework sometimes, a task that required far less of me than I was doing at home.

In my house, cleaning wasn't just cleaning. It was CLEANING. Lucky for me, my stepmother was (is) an OCD clean freak who pretty much reviles me. Any fingerprint on the phone or crumb on the kitchen counter was met with scorn and derision. Any drop of water left in the kitchen sink (it has to be dried every time it is used) was met with...I'm not sure. It just didn't happen. In my house, you were scared to move. You were scared to breathe. It might leave a mark.

Floors were mopped on hands and knees with a rag, and everything was cleaned to perfection or you'd be hearing about it later. And hearing about it. And hearing about it. And maybe, just maybe, she'd grab you by the back of your neck and push your face down to the countertop so that you can better see the crumb that you missed cleaning up earlier.

Really needless to say, my brother is a packrat filthmonger, and I live in a house full of wet sinks. I hate clutter and massive filth, but a light layer of dirt is nothing to get worked up about. I've got better things to think and worry about than dust. I wonder what I'm going to require of Elliot when she reaches chore-doing age.

I'm currently of the mind that less is more.

High school graduation

It takes a lot of effort to get from the first day of kindergarten to high school graduation. Given that I was generally an overachiever who chose advanced courses, it took an above-average mix of genuine hard work and sneaky cheating to get that diploma in my hand on graduation night.

The only memories I have of school before grade 5 are these: lying on a purple and white checked towel during nap time in kindergarten (pre-K?) and getting hit on the knuckles with a ruler in the early grades by a teacher who didn't appreciate me wearing my brother's mesh football jersey to school.

In fifth grade, I was one of the school's few crossing guards and spent a good amount of time sharpening my skills as a geek, loner, and general outsider.

By the middle of junior high school, I spent most of my time by myself and had very few, if any, friends. My grades were amazing as a result of this, and I was on a good track for college-level courses in high school. In high school, I continued my habit of being thoroughly unlikeable and completely unable to fit into any one social group. I was bullied and mocked, shunned and laughed at. I may have had one or two friends at any given time, but, by the end of high school, I spent my lunches alone in the library or smoking off campus with my boyfriend.

These great grades slipped mightily during my junior year of high school, the year I got both a job and a boyfriend and spent less and less time studying. I was working a lot - up to 30 hours a week - as a checkout girl at Publix, something I would never let Elliot do while she's in school. I was also becoming more and more aware that who I was required to be by my parents was not who I actually was and that who I really was was not going to be loved or even acknowledged by them. As I became more and more who I really was, I slowly disappeared.

It seems strange to say that I can't recall even one positive exchange between my parents and me from the ages of 16 and 18. If they weren't getting onto me about how I looked or my chores, they weren't talking to me at all. We didn't eat any meals together. We didn't have any weekly or monthly family events or outings. We barely even ever laid eyes on each other. During this time, I worked more. I smoked more. I spent more time with my boyfriend. I got more and more depressed. I started to realise how I was being treated - how I had always been treated. I cried a lot. I wished I was anywhere else.

My grades sank from the 5 As and 2 Bs I had gotten every grading period my entire life to a mix of Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs, without any comment or apparent notice from teachers or parents. Even though the last two years of high school yanked my 3.8 GPA to a final 3.2 and even though I failed an entire semester of physics (3 Fs on report cards and an F grade on my final exam), I happily and proudly graduated from high school in 1990.

On graduation day and in the weeks beforehand, nothing had been said about the end of my compulsory education, and no conversation had been had about my post-high school plans. Continuing the years of no communication, my parents were mute on graduation day as I got ready to go. I had left an invitation for my parents on the dining room table, and I had given another invitation to my brother, who moved out years before. That night, as whoever it was called my name, noone clapped and noone cheered. Noone in my family showed up that night, and as I reached my favourite teacher in the handshake lineup, I grabbed a hold of her and broke down crying and saying "Noone's here for me. Noone's here."

Years later, I asked my dad why he never showed up to my graduation. In true "my dad" fashion, he said he was probably busy watching something on TV. I'm this close to crying just thinking about it.

Non voyage!

The only time either of my parents ever mentioned anything about coming over here to visit was a few years ago when my stepmother talked about a cruise in May around the British Isles that was to dock in Invergordon for half a day. She asked how far away it was from our house and if we would agree to meet them at the dock and spend the half a day together. I said that would be great (half a day is better than nothing!) and kept the following May in my head throughout the winter.

Months went by and I hadn't talked to my parents, and, during a phone call with my brother, I found out the trip had been cancelled. I was a bit peeved that they thought to tell Brian that the trip had been cancelled but not me and, the next time I talked to them, I asked why they hadn't let me know. My dad was on one phone and my stepmother was on another. The three of us sitting there and my dad says he didn't know what I was talking about. That there never was any trip. A boat? Invergordon? What?

I said that mom had told me they were coming on this cruise ship that docked in Invergordon for half a day blah blah blah and stepmom just sat on that second line and never said a word while dad repeated that he had no idea what I was talking about.

Since then, there has been absolutely no mention of ever coming here. They don't even lie and say they wish they could or offer to help me travel to them. They can't even pretend they care about ever meeting their granddaughter.

They so better not be expecting a card for grandparents' day.

How to make the funnies completely unfunny

So many stories are running through my head this morning. I think I had a bad dream about my parents last night, so I'm feeling pretty down. The stories are battling for dominance. Which one should I tell this morning? Newspapers? Letter? Birthday? Grades? Graduation? Plays?

I'll just go with newspapers.

On weekdays, I didn't see my parents in the mornings before school. They would both be in their bedroom (my parents designed and had built the house I lived in from ages 10 to 18 and their ensuite bedroom was on one end of the house whilst our bedrooms were on the exact opposite end separated by two lounges, two hallways, and a kitchen) getting ready for work after downing a pot of coffee and reading the morning newspaper. On weekends, they would usually be mid-pot and mid-newspaper when I awoke, and I would stumble into their lounge to say good morning, procure the comics, and generally try to be part of a family.

On a weekly basis it was always the same and never failed to leave me feeling sad and awkward. I would walk into the lounge and say "good morning." I'm assuming they would respond with a "good morning" though I don't quite remember. If they - or one or the other - did, it was with a brief movement of the newspaper from the face but my memory is of being met with a solid wall of raised newspaper that didn't move. I would ask for the comics (god forbid me disturbing their precious newspaper to get it myself) and my stepmother would get them for me. I would lie on the floor in the same room and read them - again with no conversation from anyone. Finally, I would either leave the room filled with the same wall and the same silence or be left sitting there after they got up without a word and started their day of laundry or nail painting or bill writing or who knows what followed by lunch and sports on TV and a nap and more of who knows what.

Every day with Elliot, I stop whatever I'm doing and look her in the eye and smile and beam my good morning and give her a huge hug and kisses (if she'll let me) and ask her how she slept and whether she had any dreams and talk about what's going on for the day. On weekdays, she eats her breakfast in front of the TV and gets ready (mostly by herself) whilst I prepare lunches before we leave for nursery and work. On Wednesdays and weekends, I always involve her in plans for the day and nearly always make one or two plans just for her, things she enjoys doing and that we can do together.

I don't remember much from my childhood, but, from what I do remember (especially once my brother was older and never at home), I spent my weekends by myself listening to music, reading (a lot), throwing a basketball at the lightpost in front of the house or twirling the baton outside, or playing board games by myself in my bedroom. I was even alone at meals once my brother was out of the picture. We ate the same food at the same time, but my parents ate in front of the TV in their lounge while I sat by myself at the table in the dining area. Then I silently washed the dishes and retreated to my bedroom without any interaction or conversation once again. For years.

I guess that's probably how I ended up at age 15 having an affair with/being successfully preyed on by the 33-year-old married neighbor across the street. He was all too happy to give me attention, and he actually smiled when he would see me.

A place of my own

My first boyfriend was an abusive alocholic who raped me once when we were living together. Good times. Good times.

I was with him for about four years off and on between the ages of 16 and 20. We lived together twice. The first time it ended while we were cohabiting, he dumped me off on my parents' doorstep in the middle of the night. The second time, my parents came to get me one afternoon after he threatened to throw me out on the streets. Understandably, they didn't want me to be with him anymore and let me move back in with them the second time on the condition that I would go to university and never again get involved with the guy.

Fair enough.

Stupid me was temporarily wooed back by the idiot, however, and my dad saw us kissing from his office window near a shopping centre. When I was confronted by my dad, it was decided that I would move out, and my parents set about finding me a place to live while I was at work. At the time, I was working in fast food and couldn't afford much. What my parents found me wasn't much, either: a converted front porch with sloping floors, indoor/outdoor carpeting, no heat, no air conditioning, no locks on the windows, and a dodgy lock on the only door to the place. I moved in that week.

Things were OK there even though the conditions were quite crappy. I still dated the guy for awhile, but he treated me well, I'm guessing because I had my own place and relied on him for nothing. He didn't have any power over me anymore. I ended up dumping him not long after I got my own place, though. I guess I had finally decided for myself that I deserved better than what he had to offer. But not long after I stopped seeing him, I was home alone and it was the middle of the night and I heard an unfamiliar male voice outside the open window calling my name:

Julie. Get dressed and come outside.

I turned off the loud music and yelled out to the darkness asking the person who he was and what did he want, threatening with lies that I had a gun and would certainly use it. My handbag came flying in through the open window and landed on my bed. Whoever it was had been in my house, had maybe stood right behind me. I didn't have a phone. I was in my pajamas. I was afraid to run out of the apartment. I was afraid to stay there. I was afraid of some disembodied voice, what it might belong to and what its owner was capable of doing.

Eventually, the guy parted the curtains so I could see his face. He wanted to know if I really wanted him to go away. I yelled "yes" and he was gone. I turned off all the lights and crawled around on the floor with a knife. I got on my clothes. I shut the open windows and rifled through my handbag. Whoever it was had been in my house and gone back out with my handbag, looked at my ID and found out my name. He threw it back. He didn't take a thing. I was terrified.

The next day, I phoned my dad from a nearby payphone and told him the story. I don't know exactly what I was hoping for from him or what he could have done. But his response was as brief and final as it was strange:

"I have to go. I'm in the middle of dinner."

The midnight stranger made a reappearance some months later but my dad was never to hear of it. What would be the point, after all, when it was obvious he had more pressing things on his mind.

Home movies

Now that I'm an orphan, I'm going to be telling all the stories that I remember most vividly from my childhood and beyond, stories that play through my head like unwanted home videos I am forced to watch again and again, stories whose morals are that bad things happen to children who are born defective and that children who are born defective don't deserve good things from the people who are supposed to love them the most.

A friend of mine had her first child more than a year ago. This friend comes from a truly amazing family that has always had all the time in the world for her, is always interested in and supportive of her endeavours, and gives her all the unconditional love and attention that I desperately crave from my own family. I went with her one weekend to visit her family many years ago (such a warm and accepting and lovely family!) and was sad the entire visit and ended up spending at least half of it chain smoking in her front garden and thinking about my own parents who are so unlike hers, mourning for the family that I wanted and saw before me but never had and didn't feel worthy of.

Recently, this friend wrote on her blog that having her own child and realising all the hardships that come with the job has made her appreciate her parents all the more for the job they did with her and that she hopes she can be  even half the parent to her own child that they were (and are!) to her.

I feel quite differently, of course. From the time Elliot was born, I have grown more and more sad about my own parents and  my own childhood  and how I was always and am still treated by my family. I know how much I love Elliot and how her best interests are forefront in every decision I make. I know how much time I devote to her, how I take an interest in her personality and interests, how we talk and joke and sing and dance and laugh, how I bring her little surprises to show her that I love her, how I want her to know me as a person as much as a parent, how I never want her to feel alone.

If anything, having a child, and feeling the intense love I feel for her, a love that rivals no other I've ever known, makes me realise exactly what my father doesn't feel toward me. I asked him once what he thinks of me, and he hung up the phone on me and didn't talk to me for months. I think a normal person would find this behaviour to be completely bizarre, maladjusted to say the least. But I'm fucked up, and that's just dad.

I'm an orphan?

I haven't heard from my parents since our last phone conversation in January. The time before that was about a year-and-a-half ago. Not only are they not phoning me, but they're not even calling me back.

During my mid-life crisis a few months ago, I called and left several desperate, pathetic messages - the last of which featured me in tears and begging my dad to call me back - but have heard no word. Before that whole scenario, I left a normal-sounding message just asking what they had done with my grandma, who disappeared without any word. They didn't think it was reasonable to give me an answer to that riddle, either, apparently.

I didn't bother phoning, e-mailing or sending a card to my dad for Father's Day this year as it appears I no longer have a father. Truth is, though, I haven't had a father for a very long time, if ever. We were all just in the dysfunctional habit of pretending that I did and pretending that he ever gave a shit about anybody but himself.

Homesick

I've been really homesick lately, and I don't know what to do about it. There's no money with which to travel, and noone in my family is going to be coming here anytime soon.

I've been trying to get in touch with my parents. I write e-mails and don't hear back for ages. When I do hear back, it's only a one- or two-sentence reply, and they haven't called since Christmas. I've been calling them over the last few days, but there's never any answer, and they don't call back. I guess I'm good and truly well an orphan now.

Readers might say that I haven't spoken very highly about my parents on this blog, so why would I be so upset at not hearing from them. Well, the answer is simple. I speak on here out of frustration, a desperate thwarted longing to have the kind of relationship with my parents that I have never - and likely will never - have. Instead, I continually feel rejected, like they don't think I'm good enough or don't want to waste their time talking to me, don't want to hear when things aren't going well, don't want to be burdened by a daughter who needs emotional support when things aren't working out as planned.

I love and need my parents just like anyone else. But what's a girl to do when her parents don't seem to love or need her in return? I don't know what else I can do. I don't know what I did in the past to cause this. I don't know who I could have been to have made things turn out any different.