My mother had refused to allow us to take swimming lessons despite our requests to learn. A two-time veteran of WWII, twice drafted and twice honorably discharged, our father had been an excellent swimmer, according to our mother.
He had even taken her
Of Swimming Lessons, Jupiter Conjunct Neptune, and Aquarius, The Water-Bearer … Read More »
My brother continued pleading to attend the sports camp.
Two days prior to his fellow teammates and coach leaving for the summer sports camp, my brother made a final plea for my mother to allow him to go.
Irate and frustrated my mother held her ground,
Of Sports Camps, “Beloved” and Fears … Read More »
My brother also liked to play sports. He played on the school softball team.
At the outset of summer when the school year ended, his enthusiasm for playing softball extended to the desire to attend a camp at East Carolina State University. The camp lasted two weeks and several boys from his baseball team would be going.
On telling my mother he wanted to go,
Of Softball, Vacation, and East Carolina University Read More »
The day my brother died was a hot July 3rd in 1976, approximately one month shy of the year and a half that had passed since when my father had died of a heart attack.
It would be our first and only trip as what remained of our family, me, my brother and our mother. We had never taken a trip with our father. It is hard as a farmer to go away. Land, crops and livestock need continuous tending.
My mother, brother and I
Of My Brother, Old Williamsburg, and “TV Guides” … Read More »
My mother had no tolerance for my crying.
“If anyone looks at Anjuelle, she cries,” was how she described me.
She wanted to instill in me a mental toughness–what she had.
I was not going for it.
And so I cried.
I took
Mental Toughness, Girl Scout Badges, and Du’as … Read More »
In that a memoir, and the structure of any narrative, consists of scenes, I must write various scenes of my life, those that most depict my suffering for which I offer forgiveness and hold compassion for my mother.
This is hard. Not simply because I am writing of my mother, and about myself. The challenge lies in my lack of certainty, the ambiguity of my mother’s actions, and thus my ambivalence.
Perhaps what
Of Narrative, Scenes of a Life, and Brimming With Fear … Read More »
Despite all that I endured with my mother under her care, or lack of it, I was never ambivalent about my ability to love.
Even in the worst of times during my childhood, and while undergoing the nightmare of relationship with my mother, it has always seemed the easiest thing to love, the hardest to mistreat and push away, speak harshly to.
I cannot imagine being to my children as my
Of Ambivalence, Epiphanies, and Sonnets of Compassion … Read More »