The way it was

I grew up thinking our family and it's ways were  the best, most loving, and most perfect family around. That is what I was told and so I believed it.

Looking at life through that lens makes lots of things seem unlikely or unbelievable, but the farther away I get from that childhood story, the more it comes into focus.

What I always perceived as natural, or a problem with me, seems more likely to have been the result of my mother's parenting skills now. I mean doesn't everyone's mother throw antique chairs at the wall and break them? And doesn't everyone's mother throw a glass across the room and accidentally cause her child to have stitches? And isn't it natural for a mother to tell her teenage daughter on her first real date that if she thinks she's pretty, she's not? And I learned not to duck if someone startled me and made me think they were going to hit me in the face, because, as mom said, you must have deserved it if you ducked -- and then she followed through.

We made so many excuses for my mother's behavior.

She taught us to be passive aggressive as a way of coping with the world. Then she showed us how passive aggressive makes angry people explode and do crazy things.

Unlike two of  my siblings, I learned what I didn't want to be and do when I was faced with similar problems. It took years of work for me to totally give up being passive aggressive and just be straight forward and honest. Thank God I had my kids late in life or I might have totally passed on an inheritance no one wants.

My youngest brother had the advantage of  being a tail-ender and growing up when she was more mellow.  She was also more attached to her youngest child and, and this is no small thing, he had the advantage of  Uncle Ralph, a neighbor and second father to him all this life. A voice of reason helps immensely when you are trying to sort things out as a child living in bedlam.

The way it was, was not for my children, or my grandchildren. I've truly come a long way and I have worked hard to make sure it was better -- even if it wasn't perfect..