The Childhood Home: Part One, The House that was Earned

The house was inherited from my great-grandmother, left to my mother along with 23 acres of land. This was not a gift. It was earned.

My mother lived with her grandmother for years.  Not because her parents were gone . . . in fact, they were just down the road.  She lived with her grandmother because the old woman was a demanding bully who always got what she wanted.

I have been told that at some point, I'm fuzzy on the details, she informed everyone that she would never lift another finger to do anything at all for anyone, including herself. For some crazy reason, everyone allowed this.

I have no idea how this happened, especially during a time when women were basically treated like servants. I guess she must have have cult of personality spades. Anyway, when my grandmother married into the family, she was informed she would be doing things for my grandfather's parents. And by things, I mean, everything.  Cooking for them, washing their clothes, driving them places. It was like having to managed two households but with no perks at all.

Oh and to be clear, the old woman wasn't nice about this. She didn't thank anyone or compliment what they did. No, she was a deeply bitter person who never saw a positive aspect to anything. My grandfather paid for her house, but it wasn't good enough. He paid for the upkeep, for the redecoration. He did the painting on it, made sure the yard was mowed. But none of it was ever done to her satisfaction.

Instead, the old woman lived in a fictional world where she knew best about all things and was burdened to be around people who lacked the skills or interest to live up to her expectations.  Her life was a state of perpetual misery. She made sure everyone else's was as well.

After her husband died, she informed my grandfather that she would not sleep in the house alone.  My uncle was sent to to stay with her for a while, but then he left for college. At that point, my mother was sent to stay with the woman.   Keep in mind, my mother was like seven years younger than my uncle.  She was just into her second decade when this madness began.

No one living knows what happened during these years. I know that my mother would only say the woman was "evil. Pure evil." I know that my grandmother, til the day she died, regretted sending her there. She knew she should have said no.  My uncle told me that one time he came home and found my mom hiding behind a bush, weeping and begging not to go back. My aunt told me that during these years, my mother was on "nerve pills" but didn't know what kind.

When I look at pictures of my mother as a little girl, she has a sweet smile, very bright eyes and so much light to her.  By the time I was born, when she was 19, all of the light was gone. It was replaced by chaotic electrical darkness and spiraling madness.

During the time I knew her, my mother was driven by two goals.....to be loved and to be numb. Love was looked for in a series of progressively worse men. Numbness was found in liquor and drugs and drama. All of it stemming from this old woman and her actions.

So while I know that my grandparents saw giving my mother the house to be just compensation for all the years she put up with the old woman, I wonder if it really was. Now that I am an adult, and live in a house with the ghosts from my teenaged years, I know how much the past stays in the walls, even if you try to make them your own.

Mom loved that house, loved that house, and saw it as her own.  But this was also the house where she was tormented, terrorized, and quite probably abused. In many ways, giving her that house was cruel.