My Weirdly Poor Childhood with Lots of Crap

As always with my posts, content warning! Discussion of mental illness, disability, and drug use.

When I look back at my childhood, I think of myself as poor. But when I get to talking with other poor kids, I had LOTS of STUFF that they just didn't. Contrariwise, when I tell people about the condition of my childhood home, they are often aghast. It's bizarre explaining to people that we worried about food or the electricity or water access or dodging creditors, but I had a motherfucking waterbed and a horse. 

This is because my parents had absolutely no life skills whatsoever and, coupled with my mothers' mental illnesses and my dad's pride, I had a very bizarre upbringing, which is putting it mildly. 

I like to say that I was raised by the world's biggest tightwad and every salesman's dream, and I saw those extremes and landed somewhere in the middle. I learned so much about life by watching those two and doing the opposite. 

To understand my parents, you have to understand their childhoods. Let's start with my dad. My dad was raised in true poverty. His grandparents immigrated to southern California in the early 1900s and built a tiny one bedroom house. My grandma was born and raised in that little house and, because her husband was such a loser, my dad and his siblings lived at first in the house's detached garage (which was basically a shed) and then eventually moved into the house (I'm guessing when my great-grandparents died?), where all the siblings crowded into one room. 

My dad's family. I think this is maybe 1953?

My grandpa was an alcoholic and bounced around jobs and unemployment, in between beating his children. My dad was the baby and was mostly shielded from the physical abuse, but his big brothers passed it on down and beat him up regularly. My grandpa died when I was 2, but I have one memory of him. He had this carved clown that hung on the wall and if you pulled a string, it laughed. I, of course, was terrified of that thing, but my grandpa loved nothing more than to pull that string and laugh at me while I screamed. That's all I remember: him laughing at my fear. 

They had nothing and my dad had no familial support whatsoever. Like, he started smoking at like 11 or 12 and never stopped and nobody really cared back then. College wasn't even a consideration, so my dad worked after high school and was drafted to Vietnam in 1969, when he was 22. But, with the GI bill, he was able to go to college and, turns out he's really fucking smart and he got his degree in physics. 

Incidentally, he was the first person in his family to go to college, the only in his generation, and I was the third after one of my cousins. I also didn't get my degree until I was 27 and took on a mountain of debt to do so, which I do absolutely regret. I got a good education, but was it worth that price tag? I doubt it. But who in my family knew how to navigate that? Nobody! 

Because of his background, my dad hoards what little money he has, but doesn't really know what to do with it. He didn't learn about money management, because they never really had any! How do you know how to deal with something you never ever had? He worked two jobs most of my life, as a chemical analyst in a cement plant lab (and then forced into management) and also as a part-time firefighter. I suspect the second job was both for fun and to get away from my mother (which I can't blame him for), but also to pay for my mother's spending (more on that later). He probably even made decent money for a while, but lacked the skills to manage it and my mother of course spent and and all of it.

He also loathes hiring anyone to do or fix anything, which means a lot of shit went unfixed in my house and a lot of clunker cars clunked along or finally just sat nonworking in our yard. 

This is why there was no bathroom sink in our home. When it broke, my dad said he'd fix it and just never did. It's why we had no heating, no oven or stove in the kitchen, a barely working septic system, a pit in our backyard (more on that later), a kitchen door that was nailed closed when the hinges broke, and a showerhead suspended from the ceiling bu a wire hanger, or when the back door was slammed and a glass pane fell out, cardboard went up - permanently. We slept in the living room in front of the fireplace in the winter and just did without the other amenities in general. And before you say, it's California! Yes, but it's the desert. We had scorching summers and freezing winters, with wind that could tear your eyelashes off (not really, but it felt like it). It was fucking cold in my house half the year.

More on my house: it was an unreinforced brick house built sometime in the 40s I think. My parents got it for a deal, I think, in the 70s, but refinanced that thing so many times over the years that, just under a decade ago, they finally let the bank have it. Back to unreiforced brick, that means that our Southern California brick house would likely crumble around us in a big earthquake. I grew up watching the cracks get bigger and bigger, waiting for it to fall down. It never did. 

Me in front of our house, maybe 1982?

Wait! I almost let this post get away from me without talking about my mom. Ahhhhh my mother. I hardly know where to begin with her, because there's a lot there and it's complicated and, well, her version of events can't really be trusted, but here's my best go from what she said and what her siblings told me. 

They were also poor people. My mom was the second to youngest of 5 and, with the exception of the first two kids, they were all born 5 years apart. My mom spent her first few years in a cabin in the mountains of Humboldt county in Northern California, with an outhouse and a bull my mom was scared of. I've never seen this land, but my cousin has. It's country. I don't even think there was a road on the property. 

My mother's dad, who was in the navy, abandoned them when she was 3 I think? Around 1952. After that, my grandma had one more child with literally the mailman, and moved most of the family to SoCal, except the eldest who had run off by then. She was a single mom and worked as a waitress and moved the family around through Hollywood, then San Bernardino, then finally the Mojave Valley. I don't even have a photo of all of them and I don't know that they've even taken one, not even at a wedding. 

My grandma in 1938 with her first baby

Now, I'm wonky on the timing here, but I'm fairly certain my grandma then committed some kind of disability or social security fraud? My aunt thinks so anyway, and my mom believed her mom to be truly disabled (this is really hard to know for sure, but definitely feeds into my mother's neuroses), but what my mom describes doesn't align with any real malady. But it was the 50s! Who knows?

Needless to say, whether she was disabled or not, they were poor and my grandma was fucking tired of parenting. I'm not sure how old she was when she started having kids (and my cousin probably knows this better than I), but she was a single mom of 5 kids all spaced apart and I think that must have been hell. She did have my "Auntie Elta" to help out, who was her mom's best friend, but to be honest, I think she and my great-grandma were partners/lovers. 

My mom only attended one semester of college when, as she tells it, her absent dad stopped paying for it. Her sister says she quit because she was flunking out. Who knows which story is true? Maybe both? Anyway, she never did finish and came close to completing community college, but never did. I'm unclear on what all the siblings did. I know my Aunt Joy and Uncle Chuck never attended, but my Aunt Paula might've, before she passed away. I know my Aunt Julie, the youngest, did go back and finish as as adult.

My mom in high school

Anyway, I'll talk more about my grandma in another post, because I think that she informs a lot about my mom, but for this post, suffice to say, they wee poor, and while my grandma always found ways to provide, she was probably not the most attentive mother. Thus, and this is simplistic assessment, my mother equated having things with attention and love. 

If you're a first time reader, my mom is a narcissist. She isn't, in my POV, really capable of real love, because she is and has to be the center of her own world, but I think she does try to love or try to approximate that feeling and tries to garner love for herself through objects, things, gifts. This means I, the only adopted child of a narcissist who couldn't birth children of her own, had lots of stuff growing up. 

I had toys galore. I had cute outfits. I had one pair of LA Gear shoes. I had that fucking waterbed that I never asked for and never wanted. I had a horse, who had been neglected by his previous owners and bought for steal at auction, and it's not unusual to have horses in rural areas, but still. I had STUFF. I never wanted for pretty things. I had all the things. I had an unstable house with no heater, but I had Cabbage Patch Kids and My Little Ponies and Rainbow Brite dolls and Barbies and She-Ra dolls and and and...I loved them all. 

Me, but not my horse. I'm on my cousin's horse Star

And, honestly, because I never received real love from my mom and because she was so abusive, I did prize my things greatly. I blocked out entire chunks of my childhood abuse, but I can remember every toy with astonishing clarity. I can remember the feel of the plastic (especially if there was a nice place I could rub my thumb as a calming technique) and the smell most of all. I could tell you about each collection and how I lovingly played with them. I could tell you about my childhood outfits, about what I was wearing in important memories or special occasions. 

It's no wonder that I have so much intense nostalgia for the 80s and early 90s, because those things, that aesthetic, were my happiest of memories! Whether playing at home or with my friends and cousins, that's when I was happiest. I try not to put a premium on stuff as an adult, but, still, buying new clothes or a new plant or whatever still makes me really really happy. And don't get me started on ebay. I'm seriously flirting with collecting 80s toys, but don't want it to get out of control. 

Now, as my mother's mental illness progressed (and there were traumas pushing and accelerating things for her), that meant her reckless spending increased, our debts increased, and the house crumbled more around us. 

There were deaths in the family and my mom would just take all that person's stuff and pile it in our house. She treasured the things deeply, but they just piled up and then were forgotten about. This is when her hoarding ramped up and our once cluttered but fairly clean house became a hoarder nightmare. 

Before my mother became disabled herself (long story), she did work, but I don't think she ever made much. She was a pool manager and swim teacher and worked in preschools as well as in my school briefly in the office (I think to pay for my tuition? I'm not sure), and then later as a theater teacher at a magnet school, but lost that job, which I'm fairly certain went against the ADA, but it's not like my mom had the resources to know that or how to fight it.

We also had extremely high medical bills for her (thank you, American health care) and then her prescription drug addiction, which meant she was now in her recliner all day, which led her to discover TV shopping. She was in a drug haze and watching QVC and HSN all fucking day and who had her debit card on file and she just ordered shit allllll dayyyyyyy long. Boxes would arrive at the house daily with who-knows-what in them. She'd give unopened QVC boxes as gifts with no clue as to what was inside them. 

By my teens, my choices for my birthday or Christmas (and I hated Christmas the most, but birthdays with my mom were a close second) were to get a QVC mystery gift or take her debit card and buy something for myself. Kind of ruins gift giving, if you ask me, when it's just about the crap and not about making a gift personal. I'd rather get nothing, to be honest.

Then in my senior year of high school, our house flooded in a storm and a lot of that crap was ruined, old toys, clothes, heirlooms and photo albums, even my box - which was a file box with documents from my adoption and notes from my social worker and foster mom, all ruined. Everything was now relegated to junk, from the actual piles of crap to the important stuff mixed in. Who could tell what was what? What was there to save?

I wish it would have all burned down instead of having to sift through piles of moldy ruined gunk. We were temporarily homeless while we sifted through it and staying with friends, which should have been traumatic, was such a reprieve from the hell that was my home. 

I moved out as soon as I turned 18 and had to learn those life skills the hard way. At least I can figure out how to fix things around the house. Thank the gods for YouTube.

Anyway, my mom's shopping never abated until years later when my dad finally closed their bank account and opened a new one without her name on it. I can't believe it took him that long, but he was always her doormat. They moved out and are in a rental now. I have no idea how they handle that now and I don't really want to know. I realize it will be my problem one day, but I can't think about that now. It's their problem. 

And that's the reason I was a poor kid with lots of stuff. 

 

Whew! Thanks for sticking around for the whole ride.