Moments

All of us have moments that define us or people. Things we regret, decisions, haircuts. We all say what if this what if that, we all wonder about if we did take the job, or if we waited. Even me, as I sit here in my bed, I wonder about the decisions and moments over my seventy plus years that lead me here.

Why? Well don’t we all reflect when we’re at the end of our lives? I’m no different. As I sit here I’m reflecting on those moments. I think I’ve lived a pretty good life, and I feel like I’ve lived a life I’m pretty proud of and one where I have little regret. I’m also thinking about love… in my life aside from my children, I’ve had three great loves in my life. They were three that defined me, three that stuck with me through the years.

They also led me to write this, to write about my life, the ups the downs, leave it for someone, a piece of me left for those I love. For a long time I’ve thought about this, I’ve started this more than once, hell I even dug up my old journals to help me remember. And well at the end of your life when is a better time to write about it?

And now I’ve figured, I might as well start at the beginning. My name is Evelyn, my mother used to call me Evie, god rest her soul. When I say I’m starting at the beginning I don’t mean my birth, but before that, with my mother.

1929, that was the year she was born, the eldest daughter of seven kids, her parents were extremely religious, Sunday school bible study, all of it. And in a small town where everyone knows everyone you would need to be careful what you say and do. My mother was the ideal child from what my grandparents said, she did her chores, helped out with my aunts and uncles. She did all she was told to do, she followed the lessons taught in sunday school and eventually at sixteen she married a man a few years older however, shortly after they were married my mother got pregnant and the man went off to war.

He never returned. My mother was widowed though it didn’t last long, not even a year later her uncle introduced her to a man that was already once divorced with two children, this man was my father. This man was my mother’s abuser, this man was a monster, but still my father who treated me well despite it all. Of course many of you know, many abusers can hide it well, and those abused become afraid to leave… so they stay. And my mother, she went straight from her parent’s house to her husbands, standing on her own was hard especially with a young child so she easily deluded herself into a second marriage. And so in June 1947, that’s when I was born. My mother had me and my four siblings back to back all while suffering but still she stayed and cared for us.

“My greatest joy in life is all of you,” those were the words she’d always say to us. No matter what she went through she endured. “God will never give you more than you can handle,” or “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.” These were the repeated lines she would say when we asked why, when she covered her wounds or hid and cried out of sight. And she stayed with that man.

Even at the end of her life she still never cursed him. She didn’t think ill. Perhaps its because he took care of us all well, because he cared for my older brother despite him not being the biological child. This we’ll never know, but this was my exposure to love. And this made me never want it. It was a world in which love meant enduring fist, and venomous words. Love meant drunken slaps, being forced to do what I was told like a dog in fear. It wasn’t like the stories you read in school, in my life, love was cruel, love was hate, malice and pain. Love was bruises and lonely tears, love was worse than death. Yes I had grandparents who were happy but the love they had wasn’t constantly in my face, it was a once or twice a year affair at holidays and birthdays.

Now don’t get me wrong, to me my mother was strong. She was willing to endure what she did for us, she did her best to minimize my father’s ire, she did her best to shield us from it, to teach us not to emulate it. But still I’d wished she’d thought of herself first. I wished she’d have left to find her own happiness rather than suffer for ours.

It’s important that I lay this all out. It’s important that I speak of the greatest influence in my life because she made me who I am, as did my father. It showed me what not to want in life, it taught me to be selfish. It taught me to be cautious, it taught me to be reliant on myself first so I could support myself first.

Even though she was amazingly strong in my eyes for staying, I wouldn’t fall into that. I wouldn’t be incapable of leaving. I wouldn’t be without a way to survive on my own. These years truly hardened and shaped me, I knew when I grew up I wanted to help people like my mother to help people in general but I was still young and didn’t know how.

As for my father, his so called love led me to think ill of most men. And that lead me to my first great love. It was one no one was ready for and one that disappeared with as fast as it appeared.

They say first loves are special, that you always remember them. That I also agree with. I found a love in those precious younger years that I wasn’t expecting, one that took me by surprise but I wouldn’t be able to keep.