Honest and Unvarnished

As I have become this advanced age--I find my mind mulling over what I HONESTLY think about my past life.  HONESTLY is the operative word here.

My honesty, not yours, not anyone else's, but mine.  Most of you have probably never had these thoughts.

In spite of the emotional and physical abuse from my father, I honestly look back on a happy childhood.  I can only thank God for my grandmother, mother and an aunt who thought I was a pretty neat kid.  

A lot of women I know, look back on their school years, especially high school, and didn't much like it.  I LOVED my school years, ESPECIALLY high school.  I wasn't much of a student, my teacher's weren't overly impressed with me--I graduated school in the midst of a class of 30 kids.  But the other kids, my peers, the ones who really mattered, thought I was a neat person.  If I could have, I would have stayed in high school for a lot more years than the allotted four.

It wasn't until 6 years later, when I went to college that I realized I had a brain and was smarter I.Q. wish than I ever thought I was.  

As for marriage?  It was what was expected in the late '50's.  It was security for women.  We didn't work outside the home.  We got married, had children, kept the house clean and supper on the table when our husband, the provider and boss of our life, walked in the door from a hard day at work.

I wasn't a very good mother, not as good as my friends, by the looks of it.  I was an only child for a long time.  I didn't have the opportunity to watch how my mother would handle a house full of kids.

I had no idea what a mother was supposed to do, other than the example I had from the older women in my life.  I did what they had done.  I was faced with more difficult problems than they were however.  I had teenagers in the 70's.  Long haired kids that wanted to be rebels, smoke pot and drink.  Skip school,  run away from home or call, "come get me", from the county Sheriff's office.  I had no idea how to handle those situations in the best way.  Their father was the working man of the family, I was the mother and it was me who was supposed to discipline and not bother him with such matters.  He wanted to take their clothes and put them out on the lawn and not allow them back in the house.  I was the one who had to reason and tell him he was responsible for them until they were eighteen.  He told me to "handle it" and "I don't want to hear about all this after I've worked all day."

Honestly?  I liked my kids a lot more when they were newborns and up until about 6 years old.  I thought it would be a good idea to put them in a cage somewhere, until they reached age 20, and then take them back out to join the family.  Military school for the son, and some sort of parochial boarding school for the oldest daughter.  It sounded good to me, but there were none in our State.

Then, somewhere along about the time I hit 40, I became very disenchanted with life.  I can thank Gloria Steinem for all that.  She kept telling me that I was unfulfilled as a woman because I stayed home and was a "housewife"--that ugly word.  I needed to "get out in the world", get a job, find my true self.

There I was.  3 out of 4 children grown and away from home.  Living with a husband that was rarely home, who informed me that he still gave me my weekly grocery money allowance, I had a roof over my head, so I should be grateful(?).  When he was home, he rarely spoke to me, fell asleep in his chair every evening around 9:00 and slept there most of the night and hadn't said, "I love you" since our wedding night.  One time, when I asked him, he said, "I told you once.  If I change my mind, I'll let you know."

The day of our 25th anniversary, when I asked him if he would change his life in anyway, he replied, "Well I can tell you...I'd never get married and have four damn kids!"

The next day, I told him we should get divorced.  Oh sure--then he wanted to "work it out".  We tried, but he just couldn't.  He was too ingrained in how he had lived his life for twenty-five years that he was incapable of changing it and still being happy.  In fact, if he couldn't be at the golf course, every summer night after work, or at the race track three nights a week in the winter, he was really quite miserable.

18 months later, we sat in the hallway of the County Courthouse, holding on tight to each other's hands and crying.  I felt closer to him on that day than I had in the 31 years I had known him.

Honestly?  I regret that day.  I wish I had just stayed.  I see my friends that had not so great marriages, still together and have become "friends" with each other or at least can tolerate each other a lot better than they did in the early years.  

Honestly?  If his wife died, I'd probably do everything in my power to get back together with him.  He's quite different now.  I doubt he'd quiz me on how much I spent at the Wal-Mart.  

We'd be a family again.  The kids would come visit us.  We'd do family get-together's.  Or at least, that's the picture that my old, addled mind conjures up.

Out into the work world I went.  Was I fulfilled?  The first job, maybe.  It was exciting.  I got awards and rewards for my ingenuity and..........there were men!  Men, all over the place.  Who wanted to date me because I had such a brilliant mind?  Such an entertaining way of talking?  Tall and slender and blond--I looked good on their arm?

No.  I had long legs and big boobs

but--that honesty will have to wait until tomorrow.  This honesty thing wears out my mind!