Appendage

Sometimes I look back on my life, trying to figure out why I did what I did, felt what I did, became who I am.

Today one very important thing hit me. I was brought up to be an appendage. To my mother who needed an oldest daughter to help out with the other children, the house, her scapegoat and whipping boy. To my father who wanted to make my mother happy more than anything else on earth.

They prepared me to be a wife and mother. That was their highest aspiration for this child of theirs that they felt was pretty average and maybe a bit less so in the looks department. I was considered beautiful until about age three when it became apparent that I would not be small and delicate. Then my sister became the family's only hope for beauty because, at least, she was small.

My curiosity was indulged. Having a wide range of interests would make me a better wife and mother. But it all ended there. There would be no big university, or professional degrees. A wife needed to be able to follow her husband and make his life what he needed it to be.

It wasn't until my marriage ended that I realized he had not been brought up that way. He was not raised to make me happy the way I had been groomed to anticipate his every need. I resented that, but little by little I learned to make myself happy. I wish I had figured that out thirty years earlier, but instead I had translated my behavior as my primary purpose for everyone I came in contact with, throughout my world. Hindsight is only good for learning. It doesn't justify, it merely teaches.

My curiosity has served me well. I have learned to live with myself and mostly enjoy it. I can do for me what I was brought up to do for others. It simply took a while for me to think of doing that, try it out, brave the discomfort and then own it.

I've had a lot of help, a lot of teachers both good and bad, and I am pretty sure I will continue to process all this for the rest of my life. In Popeye's famous words, "I yam what I yam." The trick is to embrace it: success, thorns, mud and all.

Turning my baggage into an appendage for myself has taken a life time.