A long-time friend and former co-worker asked, “Why was your mother so horrible?”
She wasn’t always horrible, and had some good qualities. But she was not a good mother, and not always even a good person.
She was born in 1933 to a father who didn’t want her and ultimately left when she was three years old. Her mother had such a bad pregnancy that she was sterilized either when Mother was born or shortly thereafter. So from the start, Mother would always be an only child. And when her father left, it was just my mother and her mother struggling to survive as the nation recovered from the Great Depression. I don’t know if it was deliberate or even conscious, but I have no doubt my mother grew up knowing (or feeling) somehow responsible for her mother’s life being hard. And there would be no siblings for Mother to confer with and see if they were really the problem or maybe Grandma was living out her own frustrations onto her child.
After I got divorced I was talking with my grandmother (Mother’s mother) about my kids and I mentioned something about paying child support, and my grandmother asked, “Why do you have to pay any money? The children are her property now.” So, I’m guessing that when she and Grandpa Mac were divorced, she was not awarded child support, but that’s only a guess. I don’t know what laws were in place or how well any laws were enforced.
So with a young child to raise, my grandmother went back to school and got her teaching credentials. There weren’t many opportunities for women back then, and even fewer for divorced single mothers. But she managed. I don’t know when she met her second husband, but they were both working in the Santa Barbara school district. He was a math teacher at Santa Barbara Junior High, and she was a Home Ec teacher either at one of the junior high schools or maybe Santa Barbara High School.
Anyway, they met and married, so Mother finally had a stepfather, and at some point she started using his last name, as that was how she was listed in her high school yearbook. What I do not know is when Grandma met Grandpa Walt, and when they actually married. From what Mother told me, they lived across the street from the high school while Mother was attending there, but at some point Grandma and Grandpa bought their land and built their home up on Calle Boca del Cañon. That’s where they lived when Mother finished high school.
Side note: Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Boca del Cañon was up a slightly winding very steep street, facing downtown and all of Santa Barbara. Grandma told me that while they were building the house and planning the foundation and floors, she had them put up a ladder where the kitchen would be. She climbed up the ladder to where she could one day look out the window as she washed dishes and have a full view of the harbor. From their big plate glass windows in the living room and dining room they had a full panorama of all the city lights and up into the foothills. I truly loved that house and would live in it even today if I could.
Anyway, Mother resented her father leaving. I don’t know how often he saw her when she was little, but as I got older he only came around once or twice a year and usually on his way to take his mother from Tucson, AZ up to Mt. Shasta for the summer. Mother and Grandpa Mac didn’t have a close relationship, very superficial. His second and third wives resented Mother because Mother grew up as a troubled kid and only reached out to her father when she was in trouble or needed money or something. Grandma Lucy (Grandpa Mac’s third wife) actively disliked my mother.
By the time Grandpa Mac retired he’d been the head of Martin-Marietta before it was bought and became Lockheed-Martin. From what my brother told me, Grandpa Mac got a very sweet retirement deal. And Grandma Lucy had been an executive at CBS. So they were very well off, proper, social, and so forth. His wayward daughter didn’t fit their lifestyle.
After high school Mother tried to go to college and ended up at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. She lasted maybe a semester, maybe two. I have no idea why that didn’t pan out well for her but I suspect she got in trouble for drinking and smoking and generally not meeting expectations for a young woman in university.
So she went back home to Santa Barbara and ended up working at a civil engineering firm called Penfield & Smith. I’m not sure her initial role, but she ended up running the blue-print machine. That’s where she met my father, who was already a well-seasoned civil engineer.
My father was born in 1923 in Santa Barbara, had grown up and finished school there, then started college at Berkeley, CA until he got drafted into World War II. He took civil engineering training and did that while in the Army. When the war ended he came back home and found work with Penfield & Smith, where he was a rising star. He got called back into service for the Korean War, although I don’t know for how long. When he came home again, his job at P&S had been held for him. Then he met Mother.
The way Mother told it, they had their first date parked in his car at Ledbetter Beach. When Grandmother asked her the next morning how the date went, Mother said, “It was fine, we’re getting married in two weeks.” Or something like that. Whatever he offered in his back seat, or whatever she thought she found, she was bound and determined to latch onto that and latch on fast.
She was 19, he was 29, if my head math works right — my brother was born February 25, 1953, so they were married in June of 1952. Yes, Mother always swore Scott was “two months premature.” Yeah, okay. Whatever. They honeymooned in San Francisco, and because she was now a “grown-up married woman” she wasted no time drinking whenever she could.
Now, my dad was the youngest child of four. With three older sisters and a domineering mother, dad learned to keep to himself and out of the way. His father was some sort of lay minister, and both his parents were quite devout in their Christian faith. I think one or two of Dad’s sisters took up smoking, but Dad was a smoker and a drinker. A family of dark-haired non-drinking religious people had to quickly get used to the fact that their youngest child and only son was quite suddenly marrying some blue-eyed blonde smoking and drinking sinner. <*gasp*>
So, you remember Mother was an only child. She really got excited that when she married, she would have three older sisters to look up to. Yeah, well, that didn’t work out so well. With the sharp contrast in lifestyles, Mother was not welcomed with open arms. Dad’s oldest sister Mary already had some kids and some “life experience” of her own, so it seemed Mary and Mother got along well enough.
Mother was NOT a good financial manager, didn’t seem to have a lick of sense about where money came from or how to use it wisely. I think that comes from being bailed out of her shenanigans by both her mother and her father.
Early on in their marriage, Dad was doing well. I sense he’d grown up somewhat lower-income, but during my parents first marriage he owned a large lemon grove in Hope Ranch and was doing well. But whatever money Dad made, Mother seemed to drink much of it away. Part of their divorce settlement included selling off the lemon grove, which pissed Dad off enormously. It would have been worth a lot even back then.
So they got divorced when I was 3 or 4 years old. Mother took us to Hollywood where we lived in at least three different apartments that I can remember. I don’t remember her having any work during that time, so I’m assuming either my Dad was paying her some alimony and/or child support, or perhaps her parents were supporting her.
Dad ended up marrying Charmaine during time. As it turned out Charmaine was also the blueprint operator at Penfield & Smith. I have no idea if she was there when Mother was there, or when Charmaine came on board, but that’s where Dad met her. Charmaine was already divorced and had a daughter about a year younger than me.
At some point, Mother has casually dating now and then. I met one or two of the men she dated, but I don’t really remember any of them. At one point, probably around February or March of 1962, she got pregnant.
We didn’t know about the pregnancy at the time of course, but one day seemingly out of the blue, Mother packed us up with some clothes and told us we were going to go live with our Dad– he’d just gotten married and they’d bought a nice new house and things would be better for us.
She got a cab and took us to the Greyhound bus station, bought us two one-way tickets from Hollywood to Santa Barbara. Mind you, I was 7 and Scott was just barely 9. Travelling alone, not really understanding about time and distance. But we got on the bus and I vaguely remember waving good-bye at Mother as the bus pulled out.
Next thing I remember we were off the bus and waiting toward the back of the bus station in Santa Barbara, wondering if Dad was going to come or not. They did finally show up, Dad and Charmaine, and neither looked particularly pleased, although of course they were glad we were okay.
Mother had made sure we got on the bus. Great. Then she went back to the apartment on Las Palmas, probably had a drink or two, and then (only THEN) called Dad to announce our impending arrival. There had been no plans, no arrangements, no preparations. Mother just put us on a bus and then told Dad we were already on the way.
This is already far longer than I had expected, and I have other things to do, so I’ll continue this another day soon.