Month: June 2009

+HOT OFF THE PRESS

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Link to new Brother 1965 story:

*RED ROBIN

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MY RESPONSE TO MY BROTHER’S STORY:

This reminds me of a time maybe 25 years ago when I was shopping in a small local grocery store in the northern Minnesota town I then lived in.  I had intuitively noticed something happening like a drama between a man, a woman and a small boy of about 4 years old. I had seen the three of them in the store together earlier, only now as I passed through the checkout line I noticed the mother was against the store wall to my right, the father was standing near the exit door to my left, and the little boy was walking around alone with his little arms wrapped around a large blue plastic ball.

At first as I watched him I thought he had ‘lost’ his parents as he moved back and forth between the ends of the isles and end of the lines of people at the check out.  But as I watched I soon understood I was watching an entirely different kind of story unfold.

I moved through the line, paid for my groceries and was leaving when I noticed the mother still inside the store, the father holding the door open, the mother was giving hand signals to the little boy.  At the perfect moment he ran out the door, the mother slowly followed him after a count of 5 seconds, and the family reunited and meandered across the parking lot to their car.

I swear I stood inside that store with my mouth open dumbly, not believing what I had just witnessed.  Those parents had brought their child into that store for the direct purpose of teaching him how to steal.  I awoke from my trance and yelled at the cashier closest to me, “Those people just stole that ball,” as I pointed out the front window.

No, they knew that ball hadn’t been paid for, and out the door after them raced the store manager.  I don’t know what happened next but those people didn’t get away with their ball this time.  How many times previously had those parents given that boy their lessons?  How many times afterward?  Did the ‘getting caught’ part create any break or intervention that might help that little boy understand there’s nothing good about stealing?  Or did they all become just that more determined to learn to steal better?

I don’t know, but it was an eye opener for me.  I wondered what chance of a good life does a child like that have if that is how his life is at the beginning?

I know that if I were faced today with a scene such as you are describing I would at least take down that man’s license plate number and call 911, describing to the police exactly what I had witnessed.  Unfortunately the system itself is not what it could be, but it is the best that we have.

Very disturbingly research is now showing that for all the efforts being made to stop physical assault against children, the effects of a child’s exposure to VERBAL abuse alone can cause more long term harm to a child than does any other single form of abuse — and the physical marks don’t show.

We need to know what we are looking at when we see these wounded children. There might be times that we can look into their eyes, times when we might be able to say a word to them, spend time getting to know them in some safe way, some way to let them know as soon as they are old enough that they can report to adults themselves what is hurting them out of sight of others.

Of course there is controversy about the ‘correctness’ and stringency of laws against abusing children.  But if we think about it logically, would we ever say it would be OK not to have any laws against killing other people because, who knows, sometimes the dead person deserved to die?

+SIBLING LINKS

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**Cindy’s Letter to Mother 1994

**CINDY’S BLOG POST on Mother (060409)

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**FAMILY TIME – by Brother (1965)

**SELLING THE HOMESTEAD

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Please refer back to this section of the blog as time goes on for future writings by my siblings:

MY SIBLINGS’ COMMENT PAGES

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+INNOCENT TARGETS FOR MY MOTHER’S RAGE

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Trying to write the story of my childhood in a logical, chronological, coherent way is an almost overwhelming task.  As I’ve said before an inability to tell a coherent life story is perhaps the MAIN symptom of an insecure attachment.  This dis-ability to either live a coherent life or to tell the story of one’s own life in a coherent fashion manifests itself by degrees of damage in accordance with how insecurely attached a person is.

These degrees of damage move down the scale from being slightly insecurely attached to extremely insecurely attached.  For those of us like my mother and myself, the most severe insecure attachment pattern, that of disorganized-disoriented, means that we are not even securely attached in our fundamental relationship between our self and our self.  As a result, we cannot possibly either live a coherent life or tell a coherent story of our life.  That is what the disorganization and disorientation of our insecure attachment pattern, formed into our early developing brain, did and does to us.

Our condition is a direct result and manifestation of living through traumas at a very early age that built themselves into our developing brain, body and mind.  I understood very early in my own research about the reality of my condition that what is known as ‘peritrauma’ is key and central to my understanding of a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern.  Peritrauma is what happens in the middle of the experience of a traumatic event during what the experts call the Acute Trauma stage.

I suspect that we will gain far more information about how the experience of trauma affects us when we begin to connect what the medical profession knows about how trauma affects the physical body with what the psychiatric profession knows about how it affects us psychologically.  At this point in time I find that descriptions of peritrauma are mostly contained within the Acute Trauma medial realm as it relates to the physical body as if our physical body can be separated from what happens within the brain and mind.

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I always use the online Websters dictionary to find definitions for words I require so that my findings can always be consistently tracked back to this one main source of information for the Modern English I use in my thinking.  Yet not even Websters seems to contain the word ‘peritrauma’ or ‘peri-trauma’ within its data banks.  I see this as further indication that we have not yet as a culture put the most important information about what truly creates disaster in our lives into the collective data banks of our own thinking.

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Dictionary: trau·ma   (trô‘mə, trou‘-)

n., pl. -mas or -ma·ta (-mə-tə).

  1. A serious injury or shock to the body, as from violence or an accident.
  2. An emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis.
  3. An event or situation that causes great distress and disruption.

[Greek.]

traumatic trau·mat’ic (-măt‘ĭk) adj.
traumatically trau·mat’i·cal·ly adv.

From : http://www.answers.com/topic/psychological-trauma

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I discovered this link through my efforts to connect physical trauma to mental trauma.  I can think of no more of an accurate place to begin to think about the effects of peritrauma as it relates to child abuse than this one:

[PDF]  Psychology of Terrorism

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
pressure to define terrorist behavior in terms of psychopathology, and he clearly suggests …… peritrauma and posttrauma risk factors, are central …… Webster’s New Collegiate Dic- tionary. Springfield, MA: G & C Merriam Company. …
bourbonandlawndarts.googlepages.com/Psychology.of.Terrorism-0195172493.pdf –

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Acute trauma is the physiological stage we are in while we experience any trauma.  Acute trauma affects every possible aspect of who we are as human beings with bodies — including our brain-mind.  Peritrauma is the ongoing experience of being in an acute trauma experience as we are enduring it.  Post traumatic stages are the result of not completing the acute trauma stage adequately so that it can be ‘passed through’ rather than NOT ‘passed through’.

In my thinking, it’s that simple.  Either we experience the acute trauma stage and come out the other end having completed the trauma cycle, or we don’t.  If we do not complete the trauma cycle this means that aspects of the peritrauma we experienced AT THE CENTER of the acute trauma stage are carried within us in our bodies, brains and minds.  We have not, therefore, re-stored ourselves to the state we were in before the trauma happened.  We have not re-covered our previous state.  We have not re-membered the being that we were before the trauma occurred.

We are left fragmented within ourselves and will not be able to tell a truly coherent story — not even to ourselves — of what the experience was like for us because we are actually still in it.  When we are left with unresolved, uncompleted traumatic experiences within us — in the form of continued and ongoing peritraumatic reactions that originated during the acute trauma experience — trauma will continue to live itself through us.  We are therefore correspondingly robbed of our own ability to live our own lives free from trauma.  It owns us.  It possesses us.  And it can consume us.

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If severe traumatic experiences happen to very young infants and children, the traumas so build themselves into the fabric and structure of the early developing brain-mind that the peritraumatic spectrum of these experiences can never be later extricated.  They instead determine how the survivor will process information about being in the world for the rest of their lives.  Dissociation, I believe, becomes the operating system of these brain-minds because the ongoing peritraumatic experience of the traumas were integrated into the brain-mind itself.

This is how a brain-mind built in, by and for a malevolent world continues to operate as it knows and is forced to always remember that the world is not only unsafe, but is also a disorganized and disorienting place to have to survive in.  It will never be able to re-member itself as having lived before in any state other than a peritraumatic one.  This kind of malevolently-formed brain, created in a severely traumatic early world, can never re-store to or re-cover back to a state it never knew in the first place.

As a result, the disorganization, disorientation, incongruity, and incoherence (and dysregulation) that is by definition a part of the peritraumatic experience during acute trauma will continue to operate through an insecure attachment system within the body and brain-mind of such a survivor for the rest of their life.  Organization, orientation, congruity and coherence, if they exist within such a brain-mind at all, will be limited to certain sections of a person’s life.  These separate sections might contain large fields of related experiences, but these fields of experience will not themselves be healthily connected to the survivor’s ongoing coherent experience of life.

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Trauma triggers create a shift in the ongoing experience of such a person’s life.  This shift is automatic and unconscious, and happens at the speed of light because the electrical communications between the cells of our bodies, including our brain-mind, happen that fast.  For severe childhood trauma survivors, both the trigger as stimulus and the automatic reaction to the trigger, directly stimulate their disorganized-disoriented dissociative core foundation of who they are in interaction with life.  We should not be surprised, therefore, that these people continue to surprise us.  If they COULD become conscious of their patterns, they would even surprise themselves.

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I want to give you a simple and seemingly innocuous example of how my mother’s self was so easily disconnected both from her self as a self and also from the reality of those around her.  My sister, Cindy, pointed this out to me after she read this part of my mother’s June 5, 1959 letter ( *1959 Alaska Letters transcribed 060309 (not filed)):

“Oh, we looked funny when we got to town – me with boots, levis etc and all of us looking – well just like homesteaders!!  I hadn’t been ‘out’ for a week and hadn’t had a real bath since then!  We took showers at the women’s dormitory on the base – and all got dressed up in summer cottons!  My, we felt good!!!

I had packed our things in a suit case but had forgotten soap, shower cap and bobby pins and comb!  I couldn’t do a thing until I had them and even refused to go to breakfast until we were cleaned up.  I went over to the shopping center on Govt Hill and he opened up the store early (he was cleaning it) and I purchased the things.  Oh, I hated to be seen that way.  Once you’re in the city it’s just like Pasadena or any city and you feel out of place not dressed up—

Anyways later I found my shower cap and wanted a refund of 39 cents on one I’d bought so returned it and I was sure he’d never recognize me BUT he did!”

As Cindy points out, my mother often described her country-woman self by using her first name, Mildred.  She described her town-woman self by using her middle name, Ann.  Were it not for the inside information that we have about the condition of my mother’s brain-mind, we could believe that these designations were merely playful.  Yet the words of her letter indicate that she honestly and genuinely was completely amazed if not shocked and stunned that an outsider who had seen ‘Mildred’ would recognize her as being the same person when she later met him as ‘Ann’.

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Her interaction with the shopkeeper was not a significantly traumatic experience for my mother, yet her experience of the interaction demonstrates a key and central aspect of her brain-mind’s organization, or more accurately, of its disorganization.  At the instant she realized that this man actually DID recognize her, some aspect of her inner disorientation affected her.  This illustrates only a tiny drop in the sea of my mother’s ongoing disorganized, disoriented, incongruous, incoherent interactions within her own life.

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I believe that my mother’s deepest taproot of being-a-self-in-the-world was embedded in unresolved early peritrauma.  On this day, today, I would add Dissociative Identity Disorder to the long list of suspected diagnosis I might attach to her.  This list would, in my thinking, run the range from paranoid psychotic, to manic depressive, through Borderline Personality Disorder, some form of schizoid personality disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  She was a very dangerous ‘piece of work’.

Yet all of these patterns nicely fit within a framework of disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment.  As untrue as it might be, and as hard as it might be to accept if it IS true, I would say that just as my mother did not choose the malevolent conditions that formed her early brain-mind including her connection to her own self or her connection to the world around her, I do not believe she had the conscious ability to choose her later reactions to anyone or anything that happened in her life, either.   That includes even her reactions to a shopkeeper’s reaction to her.

She was therefore no more capable of responding appropriately to the world around her, which included her mate and children, that would be a rapid dog.  Anything about her that might have ‘appeared normal’ was simply a part of one ‘larger field of related experience’ or another.  These ‘related fields’ were glued together, organized and oriented around particular patterns and themes such as ‘looking good in public’, ‘taking care of the house’, ‘having well behaved children’, and/or ‘homesteading in Alaska’.

These ‘fields’ were only tenuously and fragily connected to the taproot of one version of her self or another that had managed to form in her early childhood and to survive into her adulthood.  These fields were not solidly and coherently either bound to one another or to her ongoing self-in-the-world.  This allowed ongoing triggers of early traumas to evaporate, on any given occasion, any semblance of ongoing order (or of reasonality) that her fragile psych might periodically be able to construct and maintain.

I imagine these fields as they might exist on floating islands, separated from one another and from the self that creates them.  They are incomplete dissociative realities, but in most cases they are the best that a survivor manage to create in their lifetime.

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Life with our mother occurred in the same active peritraumatic mine field that existed within her own self.  None of us were able to know ahead of time exactly what would trip the wire that resulted in one of her mines exploding.  Her various states of mind and states of being were dis-organized around the ongoing peritrauma that filled her.  There was no healing of these toxic-filled gaps and no way to predict their explosions or to protect ourselves from them.

What I do know is that whatever happened to my mother during her early childhood, she came out of it mad as hell, full of uncontrollable hatred and rage, mean and fighting.  In some cases, ‘hell has no fury like a scorned child’.  Unfortunately my mother’s children were targets of her madness.

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+OH, I REMEMBER THE SMELL OF THAT CLEARED EARTH

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It came to me today while I was again working on transcribing more of my mother’s letters that after my 1980 treatment program for alcoholism, the one that identified that I was a victim and depressed (first time news to me in my world), when I called and tried to talk to her about how she treated me in my childhood — before she became so defensive and I hung up on her and whopped and jumped for joy at my own audacity — I also had asked her if I could help her write her homesteading book.

She said to me, “That’s my book.  Bill and I were the homesteaders, not you.  I don’t want your help.  If you want to write a book, write you own.”

She never wrote hers.  I can’t write it for her, either, but I can put in the hours and hours and hours it takes to transcribe these letters.  I am emailing parts of them to my siblings, and through my one sister to her granddaughters — not about the abuse, but just about some of our childhood experiences that are interesting, that are a part of our family history and herstory.

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I still struggle with my own position in my mother’s reality, knowing it was running consistently behind the scenes and between the lines within many of her letters.  I know that in the 1959 early days of first arriving on the mountain homestead life was a special kind of good, a magical kind of good.  Hope abounded as did the thrill of this new adventure.  Life there had not had enough time to sour yet.

I also know that my mother experienced a lot of happiness if not actual bliss during those early months.  I know that some of her happiness meant I was spared trauma during that time.  I have clear memories of trying to please her.  I remember rolling up all of our sleeping bags every morning and being thanked.  I remember being a part of the family in the newness of this new life.

And yet I know the shadow of trauma was not far from me even then.  I am just blessed to not know about it specifically during those early homesteading times.  I am grateful for that.  Yet I also feel today like a page torn out of a story book, that sometimes can get stuck into the story and the rest of the time is removed and just plain missing.

My page was stuck in the story at the time of our early homesteading beginnings. I got to be one of the birthday candles on the cake of our new life.  Everyone was thrilled and excited.  No other party could have been that grand.

If I was placed in my outcast scapegoat role during these times, I do not remember it, nor do I want to.  I want this happy, included time.   It remains most precious to me, no matter what happened after the party was over and the sorrows began again.

I remember my father clearing the land.  I remember crawling through tunnels and into caves the tree trunks and roots made as my father scraped the land and piled them in the sweet, damp, soft earth windrows.  I have never smelled anything else that good in my life — but I smelled it then.

I would not trade those memories for anything.  I would not even have given my suffering away willingly if that would have meant I could not be with that land.  But this is for my future stories.

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This is an example of how my mother talks about the homestead in her letters to her mother in 1959:

“We had one rainy day this week & I couldn’t let the children out all day – nothing seemed nice then – but oh, today – how I wish you were here to share it with me.

I’m writing this letter to you while sitting on the cot outside in the sun.  There’s a very slight wind & the leaves & trees are rustling & the sound of it & the creek & the river sounds [like] the waves of an ocean!

Oh Mom, I hardly dare to love this place so & love it I do.  I am in love with it – just as Bill was.  It’s Shangri-la & I must share it with you each & every summer – now Mom, if we get title this winter & we must & I’ll never rest until we do!!  THEN now, I am serious – plan your summers here!!  Or at least 1 entire month every summer – but there’s so much room here you could have a little place all your own!  Now you write & answer me!!  No fancy trailer idea – no, no, no – a small log house or a tiny 26-ft trailer like ours – because after all, you live outdoors all summer here!!

Every time I look around I wish to run & shout with glee – oh, such beauty – I’ll never want again for anything —  I’ll wait & wait & wait only this land, only this land!!!  I love it, I love it, I love it – our homestead & we’ll live here for ever & ever & ever!!

…. I sound love sick & I am!”

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I read in today’s letters as I transcribed them over and over again my mother begged her mother to come up and visit.  Over and over again, and YES it got BORING transcribing those parts.  Yet I did, and I’ll leave her words of pleading to her mother alone for now though they will probably be edited out of any later published collection.

Right now I am just plowing through these papers and recording what my eyes see.  I imagine I’m like an earthworm as it digests garbage and craps out something better than what went into it in the first place.  For there will be crap within these pages, even if I can only sense it between the lines.  But these letters are still a story of lives lived, if only from my mother’s very filtered point of view.

But we were there.  We were her children and we were there.  For good or for bad (as my mother might say in a letter), how many people actually have this kind of a record of their childhood on paper?  And how strange it seems to me to be the one doing this work, the invisible one, the one mostly torn out of the book of the ongoing fabric of my family’s life except during these early homesteading months.

The one that was frozen on her childhood bed for days and days and days, standing frozen in corners for what seemed like eternity.  The one beaten and shamed and blamed and hated is the one with the ‘pen’ now.  And I still have stories of my own to tell.  But for now, I will let the time line of my childhood unfold itself as I sort out and order these letters while time remains — both for them and for me.  (Neither of us are getting any younger.)

What remains of the stories of our childhoods?  Who holds those stories, both the visible and the invisible?  Capture them.  Write them.  Tell them.  Share them.

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In the end, is there anything left BUT the mystery of it all?

+LINKS TO 060309 NEWLY TRANSCRIBED ALASKA LETTERS

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Before Alaska:

*1957 PRE-ALASKA TRANSCRIBED 060309 (not filed)

Our first summer on the mountain:

*1959 Alaska Letters transcribed 060309 (not filed)

+LINK TO 1961 ALASKA LETTERS TRANSCRIBED 060309 (not filed)

060309 transcribed

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1959

June 5th, 1959

Dear Mother,

My how time is flying.

“Oh, What a Beautiful Morning – oh what a beautiful day!” & oh, how blessed I feel this morning to be here on our gorgeous homestead instead of in the crowded, stifled Govt. Hill Apts. I passed yesterday. Oh, Mom, I do love it here. I just wish you were here with us!!!

Please do plan to come in Aug if at all possible – or better still July – while it’s still warm!

Poor Bill before yesterday he came home the nite before last so happy because he had been able to drive the tractor all the way up from the trailer without stopping! It only took ½ hour!! That seems so short to us now but just think, on L.A. freeways it took ½ hr from LA to Pas ONLY – never mind – it’s worth it & Bill’s face shone with happiness. Then the next nite he came home so miserable & pulled out his pay voucher & for sure I thought he’d been fired – he’s been out so much & late so much – my heart fell! But to him it was almost as bad – his pay, Oh Mom, now of all times, was 250 short!! A catastrophe for sure.

He had kept track of every day he’d been out & thought all was fine BUT in his tiredness & all so mixed up he had entirely forgotten 2 weeks taken in Feb. & he lost pay for recent time taken off to try so hard to get us straightened out up here! Oh, Mom, I never felt so sorry for him – even when he has come in dirty, wet & tired. Well, not a thing we can do about it but eat beans & pay interest only this month.

We had one rainy day this week & I couldn’t let the children out all day – nothing seemed nice then – but oh, today – how I wish you were here to share it with me.

I’m writing this letter to you while sitting on the cot outside in the sun. There’s a very slight wind & the leaves & trees are rustling & the sound of it & the creek & the river sounds the waves of an ocean!

Oh Mom, I hardly dare to love this place so & love it I do. I am in love with it – just as Bill was. It’s Shangri-la & I must share it with you each & every summer – now Mom, if we get title this winter & we must & I’ll never rest until we do!! THEN now, I am serious – plan your summers here!! Or at least 1 entire month every summer – but there’s so much room here you could have a little place all your own! Now you write & answer me!! No fancy trailer idea – no, no, no – a small log house or a tiny 26-ft trailer like ours – because after all, you live outdoors all summer here!!

Every time I look around I wish to run & shout with glee – oh, such beauty – I’ll never want again for anything — I’ll wait & wait & wait only this land, only this land!!! I love it, I love it, I love it – our homestead & will live here for ever & ever & ever!!

*

I sound love sick & I am! Speaking of love do you realize soon we will have been married 10 years – Bill wanted us to go out somewhere fancy but we’re not gong to spend one penny. I secretly plan a B.B.Q. steak celebration here on our place, but I must admit it would be such fun to get dressed up in my white dress you gave me before I left Calif. – we haven’t been out together since Jan – New Year’s Eve & that is not right.

I never seem to see Bill & now we don’t even sleep in the same bed & of course, have no privacy. The children go to bed the same time we do. Several nights ago he brought their beds up – 2 sleep in 1 bed – 1 on each end in sleeping bags but at least they’re finally off of the floor!

Each little thing that comes up here is so wonderful!!! [she has a half page drawing here of yard and inside of hut showing furniture – where she is showing that they were going to put trailer on end is not where it ended up] Our 16 X 18 hut now looks crowded! See? Now it’s getting to be quite comfortable & very nice for now once we get the trailer up.

Mom, Mom please come, please please come up. Not to sight-see or visit like last year – Just to be with us each day & month is so precious. Couldn’t you get someone to look after things – Oh Mom, if we get the trailer up soon & leave the bed in there or you could sleep in the front room & it’s so warm & cozy & private! Would you come for the rest of the summer now that we have the tractor.

You could write here & I’ll spend the entire summer relaxing, organizing & writing!! Please, we could pay your fare back late Aug – please a 1 way ticket – oh Now, now, now Answer me now!!!!!

The road in to Pollards is pretty good now – it’s fixed up, still bumpy but dried up!!

By the way Mrs. Bockstahler says you could have their cabin where we stayed last summer. I said ‘no’ too alone in case you needed someone! Mrs. Pottle said for me to invite you to stay with them!

Now I’m serious Come now – take the summer off – could you close the house up for the summer? Your food here would be free, no rent & you could pay your flight up & we’d pay it back! Then I bet by devoting all your time to writing up here all summer then we’d both make enough to pay for your rent.

Last nite’s paper said Holiday Life, Outdoor Life etc. are all coming up with Alaska articles next month!! [line drawn with large words answer now!!] [Linda note: this is getting really boring!]

Tell Charlie again & again we think of him & appreciate the temporary loan! Without it we’d be walking & even hauling water –!! [we did that anyway, I guess she means we’d haul water walking]\\Well, it’s 6:30 now – I keep doing things & each time I sit down in the yard I’ve added notes. ** YOUR LAST LETTER WAS ONE OF THE SWEETEST I’VE EVER RECEIVED. Your marvelous understanding & such sweet thoughts. Mother, thank YOU for being YOU. I too, am grateful for C & C – so very grateful. I am so happy to know they are there. BUT I want you some time summer & all summer if possible!! Much, much Love & take care of yourself! Love, US ALL

My hand got tired so I took awhile to rest! I just took my plants off a shelf Bill made in the tree & put them in the garden for more sun. Each child has several plants in old cans. They tore off the labels, punched holes in the bottom & put small rocks 1/3 way up. Today we were all thrilled to see that they have sprouted & truly what’s more thrilling than to plant a seed and watch it grow? I love gardens and can hardly wait until we’ve cleared and cultivated our land – I can just picture our place ‘someday’. Sometimes it startles me to imagine it all so clearly and look out and see just wilderness. But it will happen!

Yesterday, I read in the Sat. Eve Post about ‘pony clubs’ being started all over and by next summer our 2 youngest will have ponies – and will all have horses. If you have a chance read the article.

We just had a picnic lunch. I cleaned up the Jamesway and honestly with wild flowers in vases (we can afford the luxury of giving them drinks now that we can haul water!) and our few things in there – except the canvas is so dirty and the floor so ugly! Oh well, all in good time – I get overly anxious.

Anyway then I made a pan of fudge (We had ½ for dessert and then we were walking around and I looked back and Smokey had eaten the other half!!! __ Oh, I was mad. We had Kool Aid, pnt and jelly sandwiches and cookies. I packed a basket and took a blanket and we took off.

Believe me, we’re still not brave enough to go to far but we did go out-of-sight of the hut to a grove of birch and spruce. Hum – sniffed so nice. The wild flowers are all in full bloom now and so beautiful. After lunch the kids climbed some of the sturdier birch trees – it was a change and fun!

** Well, it’s 5:00 now and I better finish the letter. I wanted to tell you all about yesterday! I had to go to town to sign house papers with Bill and take care of some plastic business. I finally let the other dealer take the bookings for June and July and I am thru except for a few more pkg etc.

We had to get up at 4:00 A.M and bundle up very warm. The top mt. peaks were covered with snow – it snowed there while it rained here – the valley was a bed of clouds and more clouds hovered over surrounding mts. We can watch them float by . We were going to town and ride in the 2 wheel trailer behind the tractor, put, put down the hill to the jeep to get there. One thing we can really appreciate the scenery like that. We all piled in and the marvelous tractor took off.

Oh, how I wish you could be with us. It’s so darned hard to describe it all to you. The 1st part of the road is fine – the first mud hole is hardly recognizable – but then we leave the road and travel in the ditch – just ride enough, barely for the tractor – that ‘the operator’ made for the water to go down. The dirt is piled up on the side of us, some places 5 ft. high and in the ditch the water races down – dripping and draining continually from the sides of the bank. The water plus the tractor have got the ditch down to the gravel and rocks so it’s more like a creek bed, so amazing to me the tractor put puts right along in the water!!

As we progress we come back up to the high road – (other places he will come back and fix the high places into a road when it dries out) _- and then on the side of us the water runs in a narrow ditch and looks just like a creek with water falls BUT oh Mother, there it isn’t in the road any longer!

No doubt about it he has already accomplished the impossible!

Oh, we looked funny when we got to town – me with boots, levis etc and all of us looking – well just like homesteaders!! I hadn’t been ‘out’ for a week and hadn’t had a real bath since then! We took showers at the women’s dormitory on the base – and all got dressed up in summer cottons! My, we felt good!!!

I had packed our things in a suit case but had forgotten soap, shower cap and bobby pins and comb! I couldn’t do a thing until I had them and even refused to go to breakfast until we were cleaned up. I went over to the shopping center on Govt Hill and he opened up the store early (he was cleaning it) and I purchased the things. Oh, I hated to be seen that way. Once you’re in the city it’s just like Pasadena or any city and you feel out of place not dressed up—

Anyways later I found my shower cap and wanted a refund of 39 cents on one I’d bought so returned it and I was sure he’d never recognize me BUT he did!

We had so much to do wash to be done, pkgs at PO and to be delivered, all done just in time to meet Bill at 5:00. I’ll be so glad when we can just go in for fun.

(1 or 2 more times and I’ll be done) Anyways I’m so glad we can take FREE showers there and it’s so clean and nice. Remember when Bill first came here and stayed at ‘the barracks’ well, that is what this is, only it’s the women’s barracks! They all work during the day and so nobody cares whether or not we used the facilities. So that problem is solved!

On the way home, I stopped to see Mrs. Bockstahler a minute. She’s so nice. She has really fixed up the shop and has added fur things, Eskimo and native art, ivory etc. Of course, all very nice! They decided to keep the front house for themselves. He broke down and bought a couch and with the furniture he makes it surely looks nice. She’s so pleased and happy. They’ve rented the back house to a woman and her 19 yr old daughter on a year’s lease. Mrs. B’s aunt is coming up for a month and then his father will be up for the rest of the summer. She wants me to work part-time and I’d love to but just don’t see how it’s possible!! She remarked “I didn’t look like a homesteader” I told her why!

After we left her we turned homeward. It’s getting hard to know what to buy for food. We’re all sick and tired of canned meat. Yesterday in town I bought an enormous sack of potatoes at a roadside stand for 1.50 and some nice fresh vegetables – including our 1st corn on the cob 6 for 1.00. I bought some corned beef to go with cabbage I bought (like buying a dress to go with earrings (ha ha)) But I didn’t dare buy anymore meat without refrigeration .

*

We changed clothes at foot of road and once again climbed into tractor. Oh, to think we didn’t even need the clumsy boots and all we were wearing. We chugged to the top. Each bad hill I thought – “oh how hard that one was to make and so a rock [?] and remembered Cindy and Sharon pleading “Let’s rest Mommy” – and how my heart had ached! [when we were walking up it before]

We rode in our convertible to the top of the Mt. – oh, what bliss. Only it doesn’t convert in case of rain, snow and all. But oh, so marvelous.

I had trailer half loaded with boxes and today had wonderful time [putting] pretty things in place!!

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post marked June 19, 1959

Thurs Eve LATE

Dear Mother,

Where does the time go? I’ve meant to write you all week but I get terribly frustrated because there’s so much I want to write & keep waiting until I have time to write a long letter but Bill has been bringing up load after load & I’ve been sorting etc all week!

Tonite I’m trying to straighten out some last Holliday mess to take care of in town tomorrow so must make this really a note & promise to get another off over week-end.

Really hate the bother of going to town tomorrow but must get showers, do wash etc.

No. We still can’t ride * up in jeep – how I wish we could. You seemed to think we can. We ride in 2 wheel trailer hitched to back of tractor. It’s rough, bumpy & oh, so terribly dusty!! I hate it. Consequently, I don’t go out unless I have to – I do wish every once in a while to go out & visit but how? I always am covered with dust after 1 mile & jeep is dirty & dusty too! Oh well, some day!

Golly you’re excited over Buttner’s place & you know there’s nothing I’d like better than to have you up there – 1 mile away BUT oh Mom, it really, I’m afraid, is impossible. Yes. You would have to file in person on it & then mark land off – Bill could do it. But you not being a veteran would have to live there for 14 months continuously & then only clear 10 acres (instead of 20 like us) or live there 7 months for 3 years & then can only be broken 3 X in 1 year — & clear 20 acres – 10 (1 yr) if so desired & repeat 10 next year & 10 more 2nd year. Comprehending? There’s no getting away from winter. Even with us we can’t escape winter months!

See it snows here in October & Nov is really bad – usually – of course it depends. But will have to winterize our place to stay here til Nov – as much as if it were for all winter. So I don’t want to leave. We’re heaving such a job getting settled & can’t bear the thought of ever doing it again. Only time will tell what we will do – come Nov.

As far as Buttner’s place it isn’t much & is only a tiny valley & cottonwoods all rest is Mt. side. Of course enough for you. But 1 mile of this Mt. is a lot & supplies & all. Oh dear Mother I’m afraid it would be too much.

Settle for a cabin on our place. You can be on our level or above & privacy but no bother of land clearing etc!!

It’s all very hard & you mustn’t do it. At any rate I am planning on your coming in Aug. – Please — & will show you it then. Meanwhile rest & take care of yourself for us!!

I love you for your pioneering spirit – you’re truly a WONDER!!

John had a nice Happy Day. We celebrated it last Sun. with a hot dog roast & cake outdoors on our redwood set, which we finally got up!

Even Pollards couldn’t get their tractor up last Sun. – had promised Buttner to get their gear out — & had to walk up to our place. I guess Bill will take it out I guess this week-end. Pollard’s tractor was too wide!

We’re still having perfect desert weather. I am tanned – really brown. I can’t recognize myself! First time in my life & to think got it in Alaska. I live out-doors – between jobs inside –

Kids are fine. Tanned too. We put their play tent from Calif. Up & they have had lots of fun.

Bill clears land every nite until 12:00 A.M. It’s light enough at mid nite to weed my garden. It’s all up & I am thrilled to death. Each child now has a veg. Garden too!

Must close. I love you. Will see you in Aug. Wish Charlie Jr. could come with you!???

Love, Mildred. You mustn’t drive. Fly

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July 15, 1959

Dearest Mother,

Have thoroughly enjoyed your wonderful letters about your vacation – wish I’d been there too & John is ‘agog’ – about gold mines. So very glad you went! Got such a kick of reading about you in tent!

— Oh, see here it’s about midnite & Bill is returning from clearing – now it’s quite dark – dusk really out — & getting darker every day. Colder out now & has ‘feel’ of autumn – oh, please, not yet – “so much” to be done.

We take absolutely no time out — & I’m always bone tired – I think lifting water cans, gathering wood & all – I use different sets of muscles. How Bill stands it I don’t know – He’s truly a wonder – he goes, goes. Remembering – we used to wonder how he’d do it? He gets up at 5:00 & goes to bed at 12:00 – or later. Day in, day out –

I’ve been waiting to write hoping I’d have news! Pollard was to do road work this week-end for people that took over Buttner’s place – they did take it & are building a cabin from the Cottonwood grove up there – green, undied [sic] wood! She’s fun – quite a character!! [five underlines] Just the couple, both work & 18 yr old boy who will go to college this fall!

Anyway Pollard was to try to get trailer up – well it poured (naturally on week-end) & road got muddy. Well, he didn’t do anything & now says this week.

On 4th of July I worked for 1s time at Bockstahler’s & guess what? I worked 25 [percent] of comm.. & got 34.00. I bet he’ll never recover – or hire me again! She had wanted to pay me 1.00 an hr + comm.. & I refused — & then made that. But from 9:00 to 9:00 Bill stayed in watching children in car so I was glad. [Linda note: we spent 12 hours in car waiting??] I gave it all to Pollards on his work & now him 95.00 & she hated taking any more when he’s never gotten trailer up. The road is now too narrow for trailer. It’s empty & our ‘hut’ is really crowded.

Oh Mom, so many big & little things to tell you & already bed time & bed is loaded with laundry to put away.

Day before went to town for 1st time in almost 2 weeks. We stayed overnite at Motel for only 12.00 for 2 rooms & kitchen. It’s a remodeled house & nice. New sheets, pillows, blankets etc. I went to bed at 8:00. Did laundry in afternoon, we all showered & I ironed next day until 2:00 – closing time.

Then I took kids to see salmon boats coming in. Man gave me a fresh salmon!! I gave half to Bockstahler’s & his Father who’s visiting them cleaned it etc for us. Last nite we had steaks & oh, how I thought of YOU!

Oh Mom I must see YOU if only for 2 weeks – 2 yrs would be too long.

I’ve so hoped & prayed that I could write you trailer was up but can’t. We finally (or I did) put linoleum down here – we were waiting til had plywood down so it wouldn’t crack but couldn’t stand these awful floors. I could write you 10 pages about time I had getting it down was an awful job with all stuff we have in here not! Looks so much better but is cracking.

Let’s wait & see if trailer gets up? You can sleep on roll-a-way in with us but it’s so crowded but there’s room between kids bunk beds! Tis hut is warm – in fact too hot when fire is going. It’s up to you – I want to see you so badly.

Mrs. Pollard’s mother is with them until school opens. Her 85 yr old grandma was up here & her cousin – they left.

I want you here – we must be together, Please! We can wait for $ but our time together, I feel, is most important. Our whole family has a trip due us now to Calif. & will come next!

Now I want to know – I wrote 1 long, long letter & thought it would be waiting when you returned. I mailed it several days before I heard you were on vacation — & didn’t write since because I knew you were gone & thought it would be there when you returned & as I said I hoped I could write you trailer was here. Also I mailed 2 sets of recent road pictures & of John’s Birthday!! & asked you to return them. I wrote detailed descriptions & notes!! Did you get these! They were sent air mail. I won’t rest until I know. Golly did both letter & pictures get lost?

Must close now – Bill is washed & can’t get to bed until I clear it off. Got Sharon’s card & check today – oh, you must see her & others!!

I’m quite sure I’m going to have a nursery school in our old log house – more later – lease would start Aug 15th & you could sleep there.

Love & write

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+HIDE NO LIE FROM BEFORE OUR EYES

alchemynow3 Comments

Eerie.  That is the feeling that surrounds and fills me as I sit at my computer deciphering and transcribing my mother’s letters that she wrote during the time of my childhood.  The letters came into my hands after her 2002 death.   They were in boxes, stored, moved around, and stored some more for nearly 50 years.  They are still in their original envelopes with post marks, written by my mother to her mother with the request that they be saved for the ‘Alaska homesteading book’ my mother planned to someday write — and didn’t.

There are letters here from my father to my mother as well (many are already posted on pages under MY MOTHER’S ALASKAN HOMESTEADING WRITINGS ), and more will be added as I resume my work on them.  There are also letters written by my grandmother to my mother, but I have a very hard time reading her handwriting and will probably save those to work on last.

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The following words are among the few that I have found so far that directly touch upon the source of the eeriness of my task.

In the PS at the very bottom of this letter June 15, 1957 letter (posted  in *1957 Letters Added (not filed)), these words were written by my mother to my father:

““Out of all bad comes some good” or “Everything is for a reason.”  You know, I believe this – I really do, now.  I also feel washed, cleaned & know I’ll feel more & more that way as time passes.  Darling, the mask is slipping & soon will be gone.  I feel more like the girl you married than I have in a long, long time.  I feel pity & compassion for all the neighbors left on Walnut – fussing, bickering, quarreling, jealous – I want no part of it & they are.  I told Kathy F. they’re like the tigers in black Sambo & soon will all turn to butter.

Darling, we must believe in ourselves & the power of our own conviction, even if in time we’re proven wrong.  There’s so much, so very much I would like to tell you.  but most of all is that we have a million dollars.  No wonder people are inclined to be jealous of what we have & they don’t know anything about.

LOVE, LOVE.

Love for each other, our children & trust in God & love for the good things in life.”

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These words in particular stand closest to being the true words of the woman who was my mother that I have discovered in her letters I have been working with today:

“I also feel washed, cleaned & know I’ll feel more & more that way as time passes.  Darling, the mask is slipping & soon will be gone.”

She is writing about all the people in southern California whom my mother and father counted as their dearest friends before they moved to Alaska.  Even after the move these people were referred to as their ‘California friends’.  Yet in these words as she wrote them in her letter we can see that strange twist of ‘paranoia’ and ‘delusion’ that enabled my parents to really be one another’s co-conspirators as they supported the fable that was our homesteading family.

These people she is referring to are ‘real people’.  I have no reason to believe that any of them ever abused their own children the way my mother abused me.  Nor did they create and maintain a chaotic reign of terror within their homes that caused my siblings to experience a childhood nearly as bad as my own.

If my mother, and in some strange way my father, also, as he came to increasingly participate with my mother in their strange ‘individualism’ (as she also talks about earlier in this same letter), could form a wall and a barrier between themselves and ALL other adults — they could carry on their own bizarre life and lifestyle with impunity and justification.

My mother seemed to believe that she was different from and therefore better than, anyone else she knew.  While she seems to talk at times about her Alaskan acquaintances in a ‘normal’ way, when the letters are read closely enough the daggers appear.

My mother — and my father by association with her — justified their choices and their actions by the rules that pertained only to them in their ‘special, different, unique and individualistic’ world.  They created a universe all their own, one that did not include anyone else but us.

In so many ways the move to Alaska and the chaotic persistent illusion-delusion that the mountain was our ‘home’ basically left us as homeless wanders (even though we always had some roof or another over our heads) without ties to family, friends or neighbors.  Homesteading became the impenetrable ‘blanket’ that covered our family in secrecy and seclusion, that hid the truth of what went on for us as victims within our family, that prevented anyone else from ever knowing the insanity that was our life.

Being ‘Alaskan homesteaders’ became the giant rock under which all the creeping, crawling bugs hid, festering and multiplying out of the light of day, the light of reason, or the light of accountability.  Nobody ever lifted up that rock.  Nobody ever even SAW my mother — the mother behind the mask she is referring to in this snippet from her writings.

Nobody saw her, and nobody stopped my mother.  Homesteading was her perfect cover, keeping even the truth from making its way to her.  There was nothing in our lives but change, chaos, turbulence, trouble, and stress and distress of unimaginable creation.  The homesteading facade was what the public could ‘know’ about our family, though none found us.  Within its fable every difficulty could be accounted for, justified, explained and therefore ‘understood’.

When my mother writes about how their California friends did not ‘understand’ our family’s decision to move to Alaska, nobody had to look at the fact that they could not understand Mildred, period.  While she was, herself, beyond reason, the reason was contained in participation within the fable itself.  The family and the homestead-homesteading could not be disentangled.

And for all the burdens that the ‘Alaskan adventure’ created within our family, those burdens were hiding the worst of all possible worlds, and at the center — so far out of sight that there was no hope of anyone ever finding ME — was Linda.  I appear in a few words in a few lines of a few of her letters.  (I will be highlighting those in my pages at *CONSTRUCTING TIMELINE OF MY CHILDHOOD).

What happened to me was like pressure at the core of what was wrong with my family, wrong with my mother, wrong with my father.  What happened to me was invisible.  I was invisible.  The eeriness of working with my mother’s letters comes from the fact that I am searching for the invisible within her words.  My younger brother says of my own writing that I am working on a forensic autobiography.  He is so correct.

That is what identifying the realities of the crimes of child abuse is all about.  It is about making the invisible visible.  We have to name the invisible crimes.  We have to name the invisible criminals who commit those crimes.  We have to let something appear into visibility that lies hidden behind closed doors, that lies hidden under the great stones all abusive parents use to cover up what they do to their children in private that they would never do to them in the light of public view.

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That is what my mother is describing in the above writing from her letter.  She is letting the mask slip away that she had to keep handy as she interacted with this social group of ‘friends’ before we left for Alaska, my grandmother included.  Once she was ‘out of their sight’, separated from their field of vision and their watchful eye, there was no more possible protection for her children.  The mask was no longer necessary to her, but it had been necessary for us, for me.

We must never forget how devious my mother’s kind of mental illness is — and was for us growing up with her.  Only the most trained eye, the most patient observer, the most skilled assessor of human behavior will ever be able to detect the kinds of lies families such as mine are capable of living.  Our parents were ‘lucky’ in being able to participate in one of the greatest fables of our nation, that of homesteading a frontier piece of land to make a home.

WHAT A JOKE!  What a terrible, tragic, malevolent joke.  When the ‘wool’ can be ‘pulled over’ the public’s eye all manor of insanity is left to torment innocent children and nobody even knows it’s happening.  How do we identify these lies?  They are carefully crafted, as within my family, and run from the light of day.  They take disguises and hide themselves.  We are tricked.  And some of us are tortured.

+LINKS TO MY MOTHER’S NEWLY TRANSCRIBED LETTERS PRE-ALASKA AND ALASKA

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Link to letter my mother wrote to my father while we stayed at my grandmother’s house prior to mother and kids joining my father in Alaska.  My mother and my grandmother were evidently NOT getting along!

*1957 Letter to Dad from Grandmother’s House

*1957 Letters Added (not filed)

Link to Alaska letters my mother wrote to her mother:

*1961 Alaskan Letters from My Mother to Grandma

Link to newly transcribed letter my mother wrote as she drove alone with little money and 4 children south to an unknown destination.

*1963 Al-Can Highway Letter (Alaskan Highway)