5
On a Zig, or Was it a Zag?
It's fascinating, isn't it, that we spend the first year or two, maybe three, soaking up information, putting together a picture of the world we live in and the society we are born into, but we don't remember those years. And then we begin to remember. Some say it's all in our memory, even the lost years.
Dr. Gabor Mate,' of Polish descent, said his mother called the pediatrician and said, "Little Gabor is always crying." The doctor responded: "All the babies are crying. They are picking up the anxiety from their mothers." Germany was about to invade Poland. Dr. Mate' believed that experience had something to do with his addictions. And they came from no fault of his mother. They came from her anxiety. And now, as a psychologist, he treats addicts, a specialty with the worst success rate.
As time passes in this writing endeavor, I remember little things like V-Mail. For years I had such a letter from my father when he was in the war. But after repeated searches, I believe it went with our wedding pictures when we were packing to move to Hawaii. You know how it can be; you put things away for safekeeping, and they are the ones that get lost? In the flurry of packing, having a friend help us, and a man there taking things to sell on eBay, some of our best things became lost in the shuffle.
V-mail is short for Victory-mail, and few know of it now. During the war, since mail was stacking up with letters from soldiers to home and from home to soldiers, someone devised a brilliant plan.
The sender would write their letter on a specified sheet of paper—it would only hold so many words. Hence, the writer needed to write precisely and large. A reader would check for secrets and, if found, black them out, and the letters would be on their way.
The plan was OO7-inspired.
It was microfilmed and sent by airmail.
When the mail arrived, it came as a photographed letter, about 4 or 5 inches.
With this method, they saved much-needed room in the airplane. Contrast microfilm to bags upon bags of mail. Online, it says they don't think they ever lost a letter using that method.
Over the years, I repeatedly read my two little letters from my dad. One was from Italy, "You thought I would only be gone for a while, didn't you?" He had beautiful printing and drew bunnies along the bottom of the page. And he called me Princess, although I never knew he called me that.
After her divorce, she got a job at the shoe factory where my dad had worked. It was across the street from the Horace Mann school, where I began my first grade. Across another street was a hamburger diner, and often, Mom would pick me up after school. We would have a hamburger at the diner.
I remember sitting on a counter stool munching a 5-cent burger while my mother had a larger 10-cent one. Mom liked Cokes, and I was allowed a Coke up to the waist of the she bottle, that squeezed in a portion of the bottle about an inch and a half from the bottom. She would fill the rest with water, or I could have it straight. I preferred straight.
Grandma joined us once and ordered a beer, the one and only time I had ever seen her drink one.
Mom usually went out on the weekends, for there was a troop of soldiers stationed in our town, and the girls and guys would mix at the RX, which I think it was called, where they danced to swing music. One of the songs she loved was Begin to the Beguine. I would sit on the bed and visit as she dressed and primped before going out. She never brought a boyfriend home until Mike, one of the soldiers. Maybe Grandma didn't like him because she could see what was coming. (And she and my biological father got along great.) After the war, Mike wanted to go home to Oregon, and Mom lived in Illinois. He praised Grandma's fried chicken to her and for years after. And while at our house, he made a rabbit hutch for me.
When my father came home from the war, he took me to a carnival in our little town of Mt. Vernon, Illinois. There, I had my heart set on a little horse statue from one of the games. I saw my dad bribe the Hawker to allow me to win it; maybe he won it and gave it to me; either way, I got the horse. I'm sure he didn't want me to know about the bribe, but it's an odd thing about kids—they know.
Adults try to hide things from kids, but we know of it and keep quiet, for we are not supposed to know. Like my mother, at sixteen, "had" to marry my father, and that is how I got here.
The strange thing is, while my mother carried guilt her whole life, I didn't care. Why would I fault her for giving me life? I was glad she had me, and I never felt I was a burden to her.
As a teenager, I suddenly awakened at night and heard my mother tell my stepdad, "I hope Joyce never finds out."
I suppose the Universe wanted to give me verification. Shortly before her death, I thanked her for having me.
Dad must have taken me to a horse race earlier. I remember that a jockey fell off his horse, and a girl had lockjaw and was holding a handkerchief to her mouth. I wondered why people were so fragile. I felt they were falling apart around me. There was a little girl on our street who wore braces like Forrest Gump did in the movie. I hope she eventually lost them, too, as he did.
Later, I thought of the jockey, "For crying out loud, a kid goes to their first horse race, and you fall off your horse." And I don’t remember seeing any difficult riding situation.
During our visit after the war, my Dad promised me a toy, a Pekingese dog made of yarn. Still, Mom didn't like him taking me anyplace without her. She feared he might want to take me, so that was the last visit. After we moved to Oregon, I hounded her for the yarn dog. It was not the most beautiful of toys, but I wanted one because my dad said he would get one for me.
As I wrote earlier, thirty-eight years later, I met him.
I played and drew that first year and a half of school at Horace Mann. I remember one room holding a huge doll house on a platform in the center of the room where kids could gather on all four sides. I remember that I was not in the school play, and to my way of thinking, it was because I stood head and shoulders above the other little girls.
Whether she was making it up to me or what, it appeared I was the teacher's pet, for I carried notes from her to the other teachers. She took exceptional care in exhibiting my large butcher paper drawings, about four feet by four feet, and taping them to the chalkboard like a series of comic strip panels. They were from the book Little Black Sambo, where Sambo outwits a tiger by having it run around and around a tree until it turns into butter.
My father was an artist, and either by genes or association, I became one after him, but never one of any note.
It was a shock when I met kids better than me. Biology drummed drawing out of me, for we drew so many microscope images it became drudgery. I love artists and am not jealous of their abilities or successes. Of course, when one paints a solid red canvas, and it sells for five million dollars, I get a little miffed.