How it was for Me

Chapter three

Going Home

Sitting in my sunny yellow kitchen enjoying my morning coffee I pause from writing the check to the electric company  to watch the birds flying back and forth across the window and listen to their bickering over the plump fruit of the service berry trees that are growing over the side of the deck. Lately I find myself distracted and gazing out of windows lost in thought. The lightness and peace that I had experienced during my Healing Touch treatment a few days ago has stayed with me and the $300 electric bill just doesn’t seem that important anymore. I am uncharacteristically calm. Normally my agitation would mount with each bill I would pay and my family would disappear one by one predicting the eventual climax of ranting and raving.

“I told you guys to turn the lights out, why is the Visa bill so high this month?”

And, when the checkbook total goes negative I go ballistic,

“Everyone has to stop spending money!” I would yell to no one in the room.

Turning back to the electric bill I sign my name at the bottom as thoughtful interruptions continue to rise up like bubbles in my mind, popping at the surface exploding with forgotten memories of childhood innocence and simple pleasures.  Replaying the Healing Touch treatment in my mind I can feel Susan’s hand on my stomach.  I actually feel like a child again and a vivid memory of Granny comes to mind.

 I had woken up from a bad dream and she was there leaning over my crib in her white nightgown like a guardian angel in the dim light to comfort me. Her hand gently resting on my chest she cooed, “Poor dear had a bad dream. It’s ok dear go back to sleep.”    Peace radiated from her hand and my thumping heart calmed as I gazed up into her kind blue eyes. Hypnotized by her loving presence I put my thumb in my mouth, drowsy, sucking, and fell back to sleep. 

   Cradling my coffee cup in my hands I pause in my thoughts to take sip and feel the comforting liquid going down and radiating back up with calming warmth as I re-live the peace of that simple time.  I am basking this pleasant memory of Granny and I wish that she were here to comfort me and make everything all right again.

As a child you don’t plan how you are going to feel it just happens. As an adult my days are meticulously planned including my emotions. How many times have I planned for a moment of peace; when the boys get on the bus I’ll have a few minutes of peace, if I can just get that raise I can relax.  And, in my allotted minute of peace I would think about and plan all the things I would have to do in the next day or two. Healing Touch had flipped a switch and gotten me back to a moment where, like a child, I could just feel without thinking about what worry the next moment might bring.

I grab my coffee and step out on to the deck that runs across the back of our house. I lean against the railing and look out over the aqua kidney shaped pool as the birds fly off in tandem scattering into the woods behind the brass iron fence that surrounds the yard.   At one end of the pool looms an ancient wild cherry tree rising tall and stately out of a cool forest of ferns and hostas. It’s wide spread branches lovingly shade the yard and rain delicate white flowers in the spring. Taking in a deep breath I can smell the promise of fall in the air.

Never in my wildest dreams as a child could I have imagined living in this affluent suburb north of Detroit, miles away in distance and cultural class from my childhood home in Taylor.

The winding streets of our neighborhood are lined with Maple trees that blaze yellow, red and orange against clear blue skies in the cool, crisp air of autumn in Michigan. The large stately homes sit on perfectly landscaped lawns with manicured  ornamental plants, trees and shrubs. The grass is green and lush and exactly 3” long. Everyone has a lawn service and a snow plower. Our one third of an acre lot is dwarfed by our 3,800 square foot; two story clapboard and cedar shake home with three full and one half baths, built on a hill with a walkout finished basement. Turning around and looking up at the house I am awed but not surprised that this is all mine. I had planned it, I worked for it and I got it; a secure marriage, two sons, a great career, a dog, a cat and a beautiful home.  I have realized my dreams of getting out of Taylor and making a better life. What surprises me is that in my determination to get out, I think I left behind more than I thought I would care to take because I have never felt as alone and bereft as I do now.

Maybe I should have stayed in the ramshackle shack I grew up in and married a factory worker. Maybe I would have worked in a factory. Would it have been so bad? What was the point of my struggle to get here?

Looking back at the ancient cherry tree I think surely it must have some wisdom to convey out of its countless rings of time nestled in its massive 6’ diameter trunk. You would think its roots running so deep into the earth would tap a spring of old sage advice allowing it to flow freely to the surface. Maybe if I climbed to the very top I would see clearly what I need to know. My eyes follow the thick branches as they taper up to the very top where I am struck by the beauty of the leaves tossing gently in the breeze. Then I realize it’s the roots I have to get to, my roots.

Suddenly I get a strong desire to see the old house I grew up in and decide I’m going, now, today.  Pushing the door wall open I rush back into the house with a strong breeze on my tail scattering the bills and paperwork across the kitchen table and setting into flight a tall pile of flimsy cash register receipts. I grab my car keys and my purse off the counter as I head out the garage door leaving the windswept receipts falling like autumn leaves on to the hard wood kitchen floor. 

Driving down the Southfield expressway I recall my first memory of the house on Syracuse Street in Taylor, which is also the first memory I have of actually being alive.  It was the summer of 1958 when I walked into the house for the first time and seriously and enthusiastically exclaimed, “It’s beautiful!”  Not only was my exclamation a little startling coming from a two and half year old, but also because that house was anything but beautiful.

I somehow sensed that moving into this house was a new beginning for all of us, my mom, Granny and my brother Jamie and my sister Denise. It seemed safe. Especially since Granny was there.

Our neighborhood was called Taylor Center Little Farms, was built in the 1920s and was made up of tiny homes on large lots with dusty dirt roads and swampy ditches.  Everyone who lived there was pretty much in the same boat, dirt poor.

I remember my mother pulling into the dirt driveway which ended at the wood post and wire fence that surrounded the yard. My brother and sister and I were standing up in the back seat of the rusty old station wagon anxious to get out and see the new house.

Our ramshackle shack was a little square box, 624 square feet, plunked down on a quarter acre lot with no walkway up to the house.  Granny took my hand as the four of us carefully picked our way around the piles of dog poop in the weed choked grass up to the cinder block porch.

I entered the front door directly into the living room still holding Granny’s hand and, surprised by the stucco walls painted valentine red with a matching linoleum tile floor, made my unusual exclamation.   Straight ahead was the bathroom and to the left were two bedrooms. The kitchen was basically a hallway with no room for a table so we ate on the coffee table in the living room. The kitchen sink was made of wood and rough plywood cabinets were painted white, haphazardly placed on the wall, full of cob webs and dilapidated. There was one space heater in the living room and no basement. The bathroom had a small sink a toilet, a bathtub and no shower.

My mom and Denise shared one bedroom, my brother slept on the couch and I shared the other bedroom with Granny where I would sleep for the next 11 years.  At first in a crib that was placed next to her bed.  When I outgrew the crib I moved into Granny’s old Jenny Lynn double bed with her. It was big and springy with a raggedy thick comforter and an electric blanket to us warm.   I slept next to the wall and on sleepless nights I would study the peeling wallpaper with the ferns on it, picking the loose edges to reveal a red floral pattern underneath.  Sometimes I would venture to the end of the bed and move the blinds aside to look out the window. In the winter I scratched at the fern-like frost formations growing and glittering out across the glass formed by the cold drafts whistling through the gap where the window rested askew in its frame.  On hot humid summer nights with the window wide open the chirping crickets mingled with the baritone blasts of the trucks blowing their horns on Telegraph Road.

I was safe and sound sleeping in the bed with Granny.  I would slide over up next to her warm back, wrap my arm and my leg around her, put my thumb in my mouth and go to sleep under the electric blanket surrounded by peeling ferns.

Granny was my mother’s mother. She was Irish and good natured and robust. She was nurturing, kind to animals, forgiving, patient, and jovial and loved a good laugh. She liked a nip of whiskey now and then and a cold beer on a Friday night.

She could be bigoted, she didn’t like the French, French Canadian that is. She would say something like, “That’s the dirty French for you.” And, she wasn’t too fond of men in general. She didn’t trust them and she criticized them all the time.

 “That’s a man for you. What a damn looking article. He should have is head examined. G.D. S. O. B.”

To me she was a saint, and I mean that in every sense of the word. She sacrificed the last 25 years of her life to help my mother raise us kids. She stood 5’8” and weighed about 180 pounds. Her hands were large and rough from a life of hard work but they were gentle in the bath, brushing your hair or cleaning a cut.  She had an honest to goodness Irish twinkle in her baby blue eyes and dark brown hair, which in later years turned a pretty silver white. Granny was a devout Catholic and marched us all to church every Sunday and to catechism every Saturday. She prayed to the saints and said her rosary every night. Her clicking beads in the night were a familiar and comforting sound for all of us.

Everyone in the neighborhood loved her and they all called her Granny. Most people didn’t know her real name, Mabel Beatrice McKay DeRoch.

 I recall waking one morning to find Granny gone and scampered across the bed, onto the cold floor followed by three steps into the living room.  Denise and Jamie were sitting on the couch having their toast and tea on the coffee table.  I stood in front of the space heater for a few minutes to warm up as the comforting aroma of warm toast floated in the air.  Granny peeked around the corner of the kitchen door and said, “Well now look who’s here!” as if I was the grand prize for the day. I could feel butterflies in my stomach that fluttered up to my face and tickled my cheeks into a happy grin.  I ran over to the couch to join Denise and Jamie and Granny put my toast and tea down before me. My tea cup was clear green Depression glass, inscribed with raised letters that read, “A Good Girl.”  It held a heavenly brew of steaming tea, milk and three teaspoons of sugar. Buttered toast lay on a chipped and crazed white china plate with a scalloped edge and a riot of rose buds running round.  Two slices, one on top of the other, cut vertically into three sections creating six long narrow strips just right for dipping and leaving tiny butter oil slicks floating in my little sea of tea. Granny stood leaning in the doorway of the kitchen watching us eat and smiling.

If Granny hadn’t come to live with us God only knows what would have happened to us. I don’t remember anything from our previous house on Trafalgar Street where I lived for the first two years of my life and where the chaos of my Mother’s life began. I was either too young to remember or more likely blocked it out. Granny recounted the story to me many times of how my Father abandoned the family leaving my Mother with three young kids aged one, two and three and a mortgage she couldn’t handle. 

Marie, the babysitter, was allowed to live with us in exchange for babysitting while my mother worked as a teller in a bank.  It was a good arrangement since my mother couldn’t afford to pay. Except that Marie was a bad babysitter. Her method of “watching” us was to lock Denise and Jamie in the basement and me in my room while she watched TV and slept all day.

Granny came over one day to find the house dark, Marie sleeping on the couch and Denise, Jamie and I nowhere to be found. Denise and Jamie had managed to escape from the basement and were in the back of the yard playing.  I was nowhere in sight in the chill twilight of early evening.  Granny frantically ran up and down the street calling my name when a neighbor pointed to a house down the street. She found me there in the back yard sitting alone in a sand box.  I was wearing only a diaper that was wet and caked with sand.  It was at this moment that Granny took my hand, walked me home, and saved my life.

She gave my Mother a tongue lashing when she got home and Mom said “Don’t yell at me and tell me what to do unless you want to help me”.  Right then Granny decided to move in with us even though Granddaddy was still alive and living in their house in Dearborn. Marie had nowhere to go and refused to leave so the police were called and she was escorted out.  Shortly after the house on Trafalgar was foreclosed on by the bank. Just in the nick of time Mom found the house on Syracuse and bought it on land contract from a friendly woman who was sympathetic to Mom’s situation.  The payment was $60 a month.  Mom got a job as a secretary for the township of Taylor and her paycheck was $25 a week. We subsisted on toast and tea and government food. But we were safe in our own cozy little hidey hole in the boondocks of Taylor.

Thirty five minutes later I am parked across the street looking at the house I haven’t lived in for 25 years.  There is a rough looking man in the driveway working on a beat up car. He looks up with a scruffy beard and grease smudged hands from under the dented hood and stares at me suspiciously with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I am the stranger here now and the journey back was much more memorable than the actual destination. Self consciously I pull away as a dark cloud of the reasons I left here settles over me.