Sigourney and Sally
I remember dancing on a coffee table to Creedence Clearwater Revival when I was about four years old. I knew I shouldn’t be up there but when I looked at my dad, his smile was the only permission I needed.
I was raised by a wonderful man that had a void in his heart and he attempted to fill it with alcohol. There were a variety of reasons for him to look for a message or an answer in the bottle but it never came so he eventually quit looking and put the bottle down.
In the mean time, and it was certainly mean; we moved from Alaska to Oregon, back to Alaska, then to South Dakota, then back to Oregon. I quit trying to make friends, I quit accepting the women that came into our lives, and I kept going back to music or escaping into a movie. I imagined that the mother that had left me when I was two could be easily replaced by Sigourney Weaver or someone like Sally Field. I imagined that this woman would be strong, loving, supportive and help my dad raise me. This woman didn’t arrive in my youth.
However, I was overjoyed to reconnect with my mother when we moved back to Oregon for the last time. I remember my dad seemed hesitant to let me go and stay a night at her house but I was desperate to be loved by the woman whose face I couldn’t recall.
When I got there, I took it all in. She was petite with medium brown hair, and the most beautiful hazel eyes. She said she had saved me an Easter basket and she was sorry that they had eaten some of the candy. It had been over a month since Easter and I remembered thinking the basket was never intended for me but for my younger half-brother that I had last seen when he was just a few days old.
I ate the stale candy anyway.
I was there for maybe a few hours when she told me that her and my step-dad would be out for just a little while and I would get to hang out with my little brother for the first time. We played with his Matchbox cars for hours, and I remember we were both hungry and resorted to eating the hardened stale candy until they came back sometime that night.
Her entire presence seemed changed now, her body writhed, her voice was gruff but she spoke in an excited manner, and her eyes were no longer hazel but now black and reminded me of a shark right before the big bite.
I felt uneasy and was relieved to see my dad the next day. I went back a few times before confessing to my dad that she made me nervous. Very.
I’m not sure what my dad had told her but it had apparently given her the impression that she was invited over to our home to deliver the message that price was no concern to her; she would have my dad killed. So, we moved and I finished third grade at yet another school.
I was overweight, I felt rejected from classmates, I felt sorry for my dad, I felt unloved by my mother, I wanted to live in a house and not a trailer in a park owned by my school bully’s grandpa. I still had music and I still had movies, and I was able to convince the librarian to let me borrow Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock books. I was always escaping into another realm when my dad would become involved with another woman who I knew would never accept either of us and love us the way Sigourney or Sally could.
During this time, my dad trusted my older half sister and half brother whom shared our mother’s bloodline, to pick me up and I would visit them (thankfully) without having to see my mom.
My sister was in her early twenties and had recently quit using the same thing my mother used to escape, which was methamphetamine. She told me stories of the mother I didn’t know and we would bond while smoking pot. My brother had also been raised by his dad and we bonded over the fact that we could never rely on our mom and had similar interests regarding movies and music.
I was twelve when I found out that he had a brain tumor and he was given a few months to live.
Afraid of abandonment, I retreated from visiting my brother so often and instead starting drinking and increased my pot use with my sister. I had to see my mom more often at this time until she had stolen her own son’s medicine, hoping to get high, and replaced it with cough syrup. She was then no longer welcome at my brother’s. I was there when he took his last breath at 3:15 am on my thirteenth birthday and I took it as a bad omen.
My dad was driving truck for a living and was unaware of how shitty my stepmom, at the time, was to me. I was given anti-depressants and this only caused me to feel worse and I eventually tried to swallow too many pills. I woke up late in the afternoon and felt like Scrooge, having been given another chance at life. My hope was quickly squandered when I was called lazy for over-sleeping by her and sent to do chores.
The kids at school began calling me when a loved one had died, thinking I could give words of encouragement but I didn’t really have any. I did however, continue to get too fucked up, too often.
I eventually realized I was becoming my mother, the one who’s blood I shared; not that of Sigourney or Sally. I quit drinking, smoked less weed, and made my dad proud by getting on the Honor Roll. My dad had recently quit drinking, divorced the awful bitch, and was kicking life’s ass as well.
I worked hard, moved out, and got into a string of regrettable relationships; including the one where I married my best friend from High School, who unbeknownst to me, was having a very expensive affair with heroin.
The depression came back.
I had no idea who anyone was anymore. In the four years since I had graduated, I lost six friends to meth, heroin, or painkillers. I lost one of my best friend’s when she died in a car accident a mile away from home because she didn’t have her seat belt on. Two years later, her two year old child and her former boyfriend died the same way. I didn’t want to live in the town that I finally began to feel like home in, my husband had betrayed me, and I felt very alone in my sobriety.
This was a good time to get a rebound and start drinking again.
I remember meeting this “man” before in the very small group of friends we shared. They warned me that he had a lot of problems but I felt he just needed to be loved just as I did.
He promised me the moon, told me he could get lost in my blue eyes as if they were waves, and swore he would love me until I died. I was pregnant within three months and was ecstatic. He showed signs of an abuser almost immediately but I just knew I could “fix” him. I talked less to my dad, fearing his disapproval of the “man” that I knew would love me forever. I had no friends I was allowed to speak with at this time and wasn’t even allowed to have a Facebook account.
After my beautiful son was born, his dad’s selfishness became more apparent. I was physically and mentally abused until I realized that I was going to have to accept that my son would also have to come from a broken family. Staying in the situation would have gotten me killed and my son would continue his father’s violent cycle. My depression worsened even more. I was terrified and would have to be on welfare and start from the bottom up. How was I going to make it through this when I didn’t even have a car, let alone a job?
Sigourney and Sally would never have had allowed this… Then again, IF they had no choice, they would have found a way to overcome all of this.
So there I was, in charge of a boy that I knew I loved but reminded me daily of his dad. I packed everything and drove a U-Haul over 350 miles away to feel safe and to get to know myself again. I got into another relationship with another man but ended it after he insulted my son.
I moved back down, repaired my relationship with my dad, and found myself feeling pretty similar to how my dad must have felt all those years ago.
I didn’t know much except that I loved my child more than anything. I would allow him to dance on the coffee table if I had owned one. I spent the next years somehow making it through; getting a car, working, getting my son into a good school. I have been rewarded with the best husband that my dad, my wonderful stepmom, and I’m sure my fictitious mothers would approve of as well. More importantly, my husband is a good example and my son’s best friend. I now have a complete family; I am not my blood mother, I am strong like Sigourney, I am gentle like Sally, I make my dad proud. I am currently being rewarded for my previous pain.
I now own a beautiful coffee table, blast CCR, and encourage my son to dance as much as possible on it.
