Throwback Thursday: And Then He Kissed Me

It was May, 1969. I was 18 and he was 17 1/2.  We had just learned I was pregnant. Oh, dear yes I had tried everything in hopes it wasn't true.  Long hot baths to relax my body.  Crying.  None of the many hacks worked.  Simply yes; I was pregnant. 

I moved home so I could be closer to my mother while we fought. Yes, I was a terrible daughter. Yes, I was always trouble for her. Yes, I really did ruin everything all the time. Yes. That was me.

We can laugh about it now.

When we told his parents that I was pregnant, his father asked him--in front of me in the room--if he was sure it was his baby. Yes, I really was a slut. Yes, I wasn't being responsible. Yes. That was me.

We can laugh about it now.

The families decided we would be married. We were excited about it, even though it was too soon in our lives. We had thought a year later was a better time. But then again, I was pregnant. 

The date was June 14, 1969. It was a fast trip to Las Vegas and a short ceremony at the Little Chapel of the Chimes. We all stayed the night at Circus Circus, a newly opened casino on the strip. After the ceremony, the parents went out to gamble while we, who were too young, hung out on the outskirts and watched.

We can laugh about it now.

He and I had a room for ourselves! It had a king bed! Unfortunately when we climbed in, we found it to be two twin beds pushed together! I fell between the mattresses. 

We can laugh about it now.

We settled into our little duplex and became husband and wife. We were cute. We tried to be good, to do it right. We were playing house while we waited for the big event.  He got a job through my father's connections, learned how to weld. He was apparently too young to understand the responsibility of feeding a family and disappointed my father's expectations. He found another job.  He tried to be a husband.

But there were times when I frustrated him or made him angry and he would hit me. Yeah, hit me. Just reach out a punch me. Shocked, I just let him do that to me. I had never seen that before in any couple, let alone my own mother and father. I remember sitting in the nursery, holding my baby's Winnie the Pooh and crying, scared to come out even though he was no longer home.

I will never laugh about that.

After our son was born, we moved to Southern Oregon. He had always wanted to live in Oregon where a good friend had moved, so there we went. Our son was four months old. We lived in an apartment that used to be a motel. We had the head office. I was very lonely without friends and my husband not home often. We moved into a smaller place that we could afford; moved out the day before the house next door blew up from a gas leak that blew up our apartment.

We can laugh about that now.

We lived in Southern Oregon for three years. He went through ten jobs, mostly because he refused to work in the timber industry. The last job he held was trying to have a auto repair shop of his own. We lived on very little as his shop needed tools. I tried to make things work out for us. I learned how to cook inexpensive meals, how to bake bread, make granola, and can fruits and vegetables. I registered us for Food Stamps. He would come home tired and it was much easier for me to irritate him. The last time he hit me was when I went into labor with our second son. I was too loud and kept waking him up. After our younger son was born, he pounded the wall beside me instead of hitting me. He made sure I knew it could have been me. We had holes in the walls in every room.

I will never laugh about that.

He met my cousin in Portland and they hit it off. We moved north and he got a job at a VW dealership. We found a little house to rent and settled in. Our sons were one and three. Across the street from our house was a little store. I mentioned to the owners that we couldn't get our heat going yet and they loaned us a heater. The owners and the neighbors were good people.  I settled in with a bit of family around me. He mostly stopped hitting the walls and changed his attacks to verbal abuse. I was fat. I was ugly. I was stupid. I was useless. I was no better than the dirty doormat on the porch.  Yes. That was me.

He started heading to the tavern most every night. And then he often started staying away all night, coming home to clean up and change his clothes. I'd go into the bathroom after he'd leave and cry into a towel--didn't want to wake up my sons--and truly bang my head against the wall.

I finally asked him what he wanted--to be married or to leave. He said he wanted to stay married. I asked him why. I thought it was a reasonable question. He said, "It should be good enough for you that I wanted to stay." And then that night he didn't come home. When he did come home the next day, his stuff was packed and ready for him to hit the road.

I still laugh about that. 

When I was in college, I studied the social issue of abuse. I didn't remember that he used to hit me, abuse me. Somethings you just don't want to remember. During a Sociology class, the professor started a discussion about deviant behavior and a fellow male student said that women just asked to be abused. I didn't know where it came from, but I stood up and stated, "No woman ever asks to be hit in the face, the stomach, the back. No woman ever wants to have a man beat her up. No woman asks for abuse. No woman. Ever." and sat back down. The class looked at me shocked. And then the professor turned to the young male and replied, "But it seems like it sometimes, doesn't it?"

I will never laugh about that.

It was a year or more later that I remembered all the abuse during therapy I had started in my Junior year in college.  I was trying to understand why my current partner left me. When the therapist asked me about my years in Southern Oregon, I refused to talk about it. I always had a heavy house sitting on my chest. Something broke through one evening and I walked into her office, announcing I wanted to talk about Southern Oregon. That's when my real healing began.

Fortunately for me, I did get to college and learn some things about life and love and me. I had always been a free spirit in my heart...after my divorce I remembered that. I have had great friends and lovers, partners that have supported me, accepted me, built me back up. I have accepted things people have said about me and rejected things other said about me.  That is, rejected them unless I'm in great stress; those awful things people have said can jump right back. But that's what many people experience. I can accept that.

And since 1975, I have been living my life out-loud, skirt flying, my head flung back, all the while I laughing with the world. 

 

And so it goes
peace~~~ 

What's Hanging on My Design Board

I rarely have more than one project going at a time. I like to focus on that one and think about the person or people it will be heading off to.  But right now I have four! Yes, four.  No wonder I am feeling lethargic and lazy ;)

First on my list is a fun table runner we are making in my Introduction to Quilting class. We meet once a week on ZOOM and I'm teaching them how to put together a quilt. Mostly they are learning how to make blocks using a quarter inch seam, Half Square Triangles (HST) and straight piecing. Since quarter inch seams and HSTs are basic to any quilt pattern, they are important to know.  Once you get those puppies down, plus a scant 1/4" seam, you are good to go!  the students all are doing great and have some of the best fabric for their runners. Mine is sunflowers. Yea Summer!

Last winter I had made my niece a beautiful lap quilt--it was perfect for her--and someone stole it off her porch when delivered.  So I am making her a new one. A different pattern and style, but it is still her :) It is about 3/4 finished, almost ready to quilt. And yes, I learned my lesson.  I pay the extra couple dollars for a signature for all packages that I mail since then. It was disappointing that it was stolen.  I really hope they needed the warmth and comfort.

That reminds me that once I bought a bunch of wonderful things for my friend in New Zealand. The box never made it to the house! The post office found a mangled empty box along the route. Never caught the "thief." But we were all pretty sure it was the postman. Oh yeah and another time I sent the same friend a package of goodies and days later they found it in the woodpile out back of their house. Crazy kiwis.

The third quilt is a wedding quilt for my nephew and his beautiful bride.  They got tired of searching for a venue during COVID-19 so they simply ran off to Las Vegas and eloped :)  It is about 1/4th finished.

And today I just cut out all the pieces for a commissioned quilt. I have made these two wonderful people one other quilt and I put that one it off. "No rush!" they said.  Yeah I eventually rushed LOL  So, I decided, even though again they said, "No rush!" that it was time to speed theirs up.  All cut out and ready to stitch.

I also have three client quilt tops to quilt, waiting patiently out in the studio, and a second commissioned quilt for which I need to buy fabric. Those are not on my design board...not yet ;)

Off to play with fabric!

And so it goes
peace~~~

Throwback Thursday: She's Not in His League

I grew up in a house that my father built. The great part of the house was it was down a dirt road in the county. Mrs. Cooper's farm was across the street. There weren't many houses on our road and few children. I was quite happy playing in the summer shadows, dancing and singing, playing for the neighboring goats, riding my bike up and down and all around.

I shared a bedroom with my sister until I was in maybe 8th grade. Sharing the room was more difficult for my sister than for me as I was the slob and she was the neat-nic. The fact my bed was closest to the door and she had to walk through my stuff to get to her side made it doubly hard for her, I would think. We had to clean our room once a week. I often swept stuff under my bed to make the process go faster. The best for her in this sharing space is that she got the window over her bed.

I have always felt I was a lucky girl that I lived on this dirt road--the adventures created around the fields and farmland and orange groves. I had friends a bit away from me, but close enough to ride my bike to their houses. I loved there were no sidewalks and few fences, just free land yards.

Our elementary school was built right as I entered first grade. It was a small school built out in the county. Just the right size for our little enclave of baby boomers. We were bused out to Ontario for junior high. Only some of us from Howard School went out there--miles away from our homes. Others went to Montclair. 

But it was high school that we all came together again. We joined all those kids who had been going to school together from the beginning.  We were the "new kids" to their "oh remember that party at Mary's house when we were 10" lives. It ain't no thang to me; I kinda get along with all sorts of friends from all sorts of backgrounds. 

 

But then I fell in love. Junior year. Football player and part of that group. We all fell in together, going to games, dating, the whole teenage thing. I was the Ad Man for the school. We would paint posters before the football games and post them all around the quad, cheering the team on. We would have poster parties at different friends' homes. Only once did we come to my house because it was so far away from the others' homes. But we had a blast at the poster parties.

Understand this: I was always afraid I would never find a husband because I couldn't roller skate. I know. I know. But see, Mom and Dad met at the roller skating rink and I thought that was how you found a husband. Oh sure, of course I didn't believe that by the time I was in high school, but there was always that niggling fear that I would never find a partner. Cause I was very tall. Cause I didn't go to school with all those others. Just cause I was a teenager.

It was not long after the Junior/Senior prom that one of my boyfriend's friends took me aside and told me that I just wasn't in my guy's league. I wasn't good enough for him. That I should just walk away.  I never told anyone what he had said to me, but it kinda fell into place. Country girl. City boy. And truth was it wasn't long after that little conversation that my boyfriend and I stopped going steady. My first heartbreak.

King Willem I,
first King of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

I had never thought about "leagues" before and truth be told, I rarely thought about "leagues" afterwards. Oh yes, one man I dated off-and-on for a few years I considered "out of my league," but he was like hard candy: you should just let it mellow but you have this overwhelming urge to crunch on occasion. Okay, that was a really bad analogy, but I know what I mean.

Looking back, perhaps a prince or king might have been out of my league. I mean the backgrounds were just too different and I never learned how to use 14 different pieces of silverware when eating dinner. And face it; I'd trip over that long cloak. But a statement from a rude teenage boy shouldn't have had much leverage. But it did.

After some years of taking abuse from a husband who thought I was just a simple country girl, I wised up. I started dating better men, good men. And frankly, by now I'm happily in a league of my own :) 

and so it goes
peace~~~