Fighting Rita (to be continued)

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Rita was my mother. She passed late last century. She was seventy-three years old. She was an unhappy person who didn't love herself and, therefore, couldn't stand to be alone. She didn't even know who she was. Rita didn't love others because she didn't know how to love herself.

Rita was a stress case and it runs on her side of the family. I have some of that in me and sometimes I resent it. I know I shouldn't resent it as that just hurts me. It has no effect on her buried bones. My problem is I'm still living in the past and perhaps writing this will help me.

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Rita seemed pleasant enough when I was a small child. She was a stay at home mom so we spent a great deal of time together. She was fascinated with the houses I made with Lincoln Logs when I was three and four. Why didn't I become a builder of houses?

I didn't start this sentence with my mother's name. Anyway, Rita felt I was smart and she was proud of her little man. I was smart. I was good with puzzles. I enjoyed reading at a young age. Life was wonderful. My mother was my world. My dad was truly awesome too.

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At age five I went to kindergarten. It was just down the street. My mother walked me to school in the morning and my dad picked me up at his lunch time. Kindergarten was a half day. I remember it being fun. Afternoons were still for amusing myself with life's cool "stuff."

Life's cool stuff! It seems we grow up and forget how cool stuff is. The stuff didn't stop getting cool. We just grew up. Growing up has its down side. Anyway, my brother got cancer when he was young and I was younger. My brother was the oldest and the first boy. He died.

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I became the youngest of three instead of four. I remember I was given two weeks of school off. How kind. I now had just my two older sisters. The night my brother died was the only time I ever saw my father cry. I learned later in life that he felt guilty. Like he was being punished.

Punished? That was a different generation plus he was a serious Catholic. The big Catholic guilt can attack true Catholics just about anywhere. I don't believe in the nasty god of the Old Testament. God does not punish. I know this now. I wish I could have discussed it with my dad.

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5

I skipped a couple of years. They were uneventful (7 and 8 years old). Mom still thought I was brilliant. Years later she told me, at this time, that “they” were watching me in school. I was supposedly way ahead of most of the other kids. She was still proud of her little man. I hadn’t passed her intellectually yet.

My mother had insecurities around her education. She only went to school through the sixth grade. She was the oldest daughter of 8 children and was taken out of school by her parents to help take care of the other seven and the house. She also had resentments around this issue. Who could blame her?

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Later in fourth grade, after my brother died, I began to develop a rebellious side. I guess I was always rebellious but this time it was getting more serious. I had a friend at this time that didn’t help. He was hyperactive and crazy and just what I needed. I no longer wanted to be good. My brother was good and what good did it do him?

Rita was jealous of this friend. She had no patience for his hyperactive behavior. No patience for all the bouncing around the house he did, off the walls and so forth. I have a laundry list of crazy things I did from that day forward. It was all innocent mischief but still mischief. Mischief can be fun, can help one take life less serious.

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Around this time I also started spending more time with my father. He and I were already practicing baseball together and he came to all of my games. Now he was also helping me with my homework, mostly math, one of his strengths. Rita also became jealous of my father. He also coached me in my early running days. She felt she didn’t have much to offer so she took it out on people, mostly my dad.

My father was a good man, a hard-working man and a good provider. He deserved respect and compassion not jealousy and anger. Rita also drank and got nastier as the alcohol level rose. It rose and fell like the tides. She was an unhappy woman. She married my father for security not for love. I guess that happens all the time.

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