This past Christmas, I put out some of your decorations and looked at them with a new appreciation for, and a renewed connection to, you.
Hair got in my eyes and made me cry. Then Dad would come home and yell at Mom, “Shit, Margaret, what did you do to her?” Which would make me cry more. (I never attempted to cut or trim any of my kids’ hair.) And yet, there was love, too. They seemed to love each other as much as they fought. There were lots of family trips and vacations, boating, barbequing and other adventures. My parents were very social and had lots of friends. At times, they were openly affectionate with each other. At other times, they were mortal enemies. If my dad criticized my mom, her modus operandi was to throw anything she had in her hand at his head. If he made a comment that his soft-boiled egg wasn’t soft enough, she would likely throw it at him. Or if the blueberry muffins were undercooked? Watch out! We often had to duck to avoid being hit by a flying muffin tray. That combination made for a real eggshell life for me and my siblings. Both of my older brothers left home as soon as they could. Our little brother was born after Jim and Jerry were already out on their own. My parents divorced about seven years later. I was sixteen. Mom’s rheumatoid arthritis was progressing fast, and by the time we moved to be closer to her sister, she could no longer work and had to go on welfare. That completely humiliated her. Dad got remarried six months later—to a woman who looked like Mom, only she wasn’t sick. I was pregnant by seventeen and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Shi, who died in an accident at my brother’s house when she was just nine months old. Within a year of my daughter’s death, I would lose my father and my mother too. In her New York Times article titled “Welcome to the Freak Show: Becoming an Orphan in my 20s”, Kelli Auerbach writes: “While losing a parent at any age, especially as a young child, is enormous and profound, your 20s are a particularly odd time to become an orphan. You’re too old to receive the structural support a child receives — no one finds you alternate parents or makes sure you have a roof over your head, food to eat. You don’t garner the same sympathy. But in some ways, you’re more like a child than an adult. Our teen brains don’t fully become adult ones until we’re 25
I am finally at peace. I hope you are, too. I love you, Mom. Someday I will tell you all about it.
My mother, Margaret June Lloyd, was born on June 27, 1921 to John and Julia Lloyd in Tacoma, Washington. She was one of six siblings. Growing up during the depression must have been hard on such a large family in a time when food and clothing was a scarcity. I remember Mom telling me that her shoes, handed down from older siblings, were lined with cardboard. I grew up in what I would consider a middle-class home in San Leandro, California, a once small, now large San Francisco Bay Area suburb. My dad, Bill, was an automobile service manager, and my mother, Margaret, was a homemaker with occasional part-time jobs. I have two half-brothers, Jerry and Jim, eight and ten years older than me. Their father died from a brain tumor at 29. Ten years later, my mother married Bill. Not long after, I was born, weighing in at seven pounds, 14 ounces. My mom chose to call me Peggi, which is supposedly a nickname for “Margaret.” I will never understand the connection. My grandmother Julie called my mom “Peggi” when she was good and “Margaret” when she wasn’t. Ten years after I was born, my mother gave birth to my brother Bob. She was 41. My oldest brother Jim postponed his wedding so that Mom wouldn’t be walking down the aisle in a maternity dress. My parents’ relationship was always a rocky one. There was a constant stream of intimate partner violence in our home. There was a lot of screaming, throwing, leaving and long periods of sometimes almost unbearable silence. I’m pretty sure that infidelity found its way in there somewhere, too. (Case in point: the lipstick on my father’s forehead that wasn’t my mother’s.) I realize, now, that alcohol-fueled all of it. One of my earliest memories was from when I was about three and my mom decided to trim my bangs which, thereafter, always sparked controversy between my parents. Mom had a difficult time making my bangs even and she would alternately trim one side, then the other, until all that I had left was about a quarter of an inch of hair running along the top of my forehead. I have pictures to prove it.
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