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How do I remember them?
I remember my Mom making me my birthday cake. She taught me how to do a back bend and how to brush all the knots out of my hair. Sometimes she sang “Home home on the range” and sometimes when she was happy she danced a goofy little dance. I remember watching my Mom curl her bangs with a hot curling iron and put on blue eyeliner with a little pencil.
I also remember her hitting my bare skin with a flexible switch from the magnolia tree. She taught me that I was wrong, and she was right and that I had no power, no right to protect myself from harm. Sometimes she made me hold up my own skirt while she spanked me, sometimes if I moved she hit me again. I remember watching my mom break an orange spatula on my sister’s bottom.
How do I remember them?
I remember my Dad making us omelets on the weekends. He taught me how to tie a knot and let me watch while he changed a tire. Sometimes he gave us a piggyback ride up the stairs to bed and sometimes he got out crackers and spreadable cheese and shared it with us. I remember watching Dad kiss my mom in the hall and bring her flowers for no reason other than he loved her.
I also remember his calm cold voice as he told me I must bend over and touch my toes and hold perfectly still while he spanked me. He taught me that he was bigger and stronger and more powerful than me and that I deserved to be hit when I made mistakes. Sometimes he squeezed my arm really hard to hold me in place while he hit me, sometimes he made me hug him afterwards. I remember hearing him spank my sibling again and again and wishing they would just say what they were supposed to say already, because I knew my dad would never “let them win”.
How do I remember them?
I know my parents love me. I know they did good things for me. I know they worked hard to care for me and provide for me. I know it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to them. I was just a child after all, and what child enjoys being punished? I sometimes wish I could forget the bad, but I can’t help the way my back tenses if they use that tone of voice. I can’t help feeling somewhat panicky whenever they don’t agree with me. I can’t help but worry about leaving my kids with them. I can’t change the many memories of conflict, I can’t erase the fact that they are the ones that hit me for the first 16 years of my life. I can’t change how wrong and bad they made me feel. And I can’t change the fact that they don’t think it was a problem.
My painful memories have greatly overshadowed my good memories. I am glad you still have your good memories.
ReplyDeleteThe pain definetly clouds the good. I hope you are able to create good memories today, that in the future you can look back on. (((Hugs)))
DeleteI remember being spanked longer because I couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees. That really made me mad. It was so unfair and I still can't do that today. My mom took every inability we had as an act of rebellion. She still has a hard time accepting any ways in which we differ from her, in emotional or physical ability.
ReplyDeleteYes! That failure to recognize any differences, and punishing them instead really cripples relationship. :(
Delete"I can’t help but worry about leaving my kids with them."
ReplyDeleteI was brutally abused as a child in the name of godly discipline, and now that I'm pregnant with my first child, I have come to a couple of realizations: (1) that I cannot let my father babysit, and (2) that it's time (or will soon be time) for me to tell him why. My therapists have counselled me over the past several years NOT to confront my father over the beatings I received UNTIL I reach a point in my personal processing where it no longer matters to me what he says in response. I believe I'm at that point now. I don't need an apology from him, and I am quite prepared for him to bristle with denial and indignation, even try to justify the beatings.
But my primary duty now is to my baby daughter, and here is the line I have resolved to draw: regardless of whether he would ever try to spank his granddaughter (which I think is unlikely), I cannot and will not leave her in the care of someone whom I know to have committed egregious acts of child abuse, and who to this day remains in denial about the scope and moral repugnance of those acts.
Sometime in the short weeks left before her birth, or in the first couple of months afterward, my husband and I will tell him so. I can't change what happened, and I can never receive "justice" for it, but I can take a stand for my own family.
Yes. I huge part of my realization that I did not want to hurt my children anymore, was the realization that my parents had hurt me. They have demonstrated that they feel that a child can be deserving of that treatment, that they are justified in hurting and shaming a child, and have even lost control enough times that I am made nervous by the idea of leaving them alone with my parents. Like you said, we can't change what happened then, but we can stand up for our children now.
DeleteIt's the last sentence that's the hardest for me... that my parents don't see that it was any sort of problem. I'm 42, and I still freak out if I think I've done something my parents won't like.
ReplyDeleteIt's nuts, it really is.
It is. And the fact that they just want us to say "it could have been worse, therefore it wasn't that bad" just compounds it.
Delete"I can’t help but worry about leaving my kids with them."
ReplyDeleteThis is the line that resonates with me the most. I have/had wonderful relationships with my grandparents and I want that for my son but I will not let my mother be alone with him for fear of her hitting him for some minor transgression.
I hate that my brother has carried on the legacy from my mother and hits his son.
I didn't think that the relatively few spankings I received had such an impact. Clearly they did, as I sit is weeping and promising myself again that I will never strike a child of mine.
You do an amazing job of depicting the dichotomy between the loving, kind parent and the one that shows up when it's spanking time. It's like a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, and there's always the fear that it will happen again. Even in adulthood, this colors my relationship with my parents.
ReplyDelete