Flower Power

I always loved running... it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs. ~Jesse Owens

My grandmother was born and raised in New York. At the age of 19 she was in Newark, New Jersey where my mother was born. My mom never knew her father... her maiden name was the name of a boyfriend my grandmother had at the time my mother was born. My grandmother would have four children in New Jersey by the time my mother was five years old - all had different fathers. Two of her children were given up for adoption, both girls, her second and fourth born. The youngest was given up at birth. When my mom was 5 was when my grandmother decided pack herself up and move my mom and her brother to California.

My mom has memories of her sister. She would question my grandmother when she saw her in photographs. She would simply say "that was your best friend." I know that friends seem to look like one another, but if one wasn't shorter than the other, they could be identical twins. Eventually my grandmother told her the truth and my mom asked her why she kept her and her brother. She said that she chose to keep the oldest and the youngest. My great-grandmother said that the baby girl was the youngest.

I asked my grandmother about my mom's father once and she said that he had chased her to California, robbing banks along the way for gas money so he could continue following her. She claims that he was shot during one of the robberies by the FBI. But this is the man my mother was named after. Why was he still around after my grandmother had children by three other men? My great-grandmother said this man was not my mom's father. I joke to those close to me that my grandmother must have been a hooker and that this man was her pimp.

My great-grandmother said she used to take care of the three oldest children quite often and so she grew attached to them. She was very upset when my grandmother took them and moved away.

So off to Hollywood, California they went. My grandmother claims to have been a hand model and my mother saw her proofs when she was growing up. So she knows that it is true. I'm not sure what she was doing there, but perhaps she went to Hollywood to be a model.

Shortly after, she packed up her kids again and moved to Eastern Washington where she met a man and married for the first time. He had a boy and a girl of his own and they had a son together. My grandmother showed me photographs of them and both their children. In one, my grandmother is sitting in a white Cadillac convertible. She said she paid for it with the money she made being a model. She told me that she owned quite a bit of land at that time and pointed out the land in the background that was then a corn field. The marriage didn't last and he left. My mom said he was a good man and she told me about him with fondness. She said he was the one that taught her to ride horses.

My grandmother said that my mother could break any horse and that she was a good rider. She won many ribbons and trophies in 4H and Rodeos barrel racing. I asked my mom if she ever got bucked off. She said she did once and she hit her head on a fence post.

My grandmother then met and married another gentleman and they had my grandmother's last child, a girl. She was born one year before me. Her father was the one who taught my mother to drive. She told me about a time when she went off the road into a ditch and got whiplash. My mom said he was a good guy too. I think she said he drank a lot though. He had lost his arm in some kind of accident. Farm equipment I think.

Shortly after my grandmother's last child was born, my mom ran away from home. She had wanted to run away a long time before but she knew her mother would have her arrested.

It wasn't being arrested that my mother was afraid of ... my grandmother was very abusive. My mom told me stories of my grandmother holding knives to her throat and hitting my uncles over the head with steel buckets. She was also mentally abusive. My mom remembers sitting at some sort of program and my grandmother was bored. She made my mom go up on stage and sing for everyone... my mom crying in embarrassment the whole time. My mother seemed like she was reminiscing when she watched the movie "Mommy Dearest." I know that my grandmother used her children for chores and my mother being the oldest got the brunt of it. My grandmother has had a variety of professions over the years, never exactly having what one would consider a real job. For a long time she bred dogs and had a kennel on her property. My mom used to hate getting on the school bus because the kids would all call her "dog face." I think my grandmother did very little as far as caring for the dogs. Her kids did most of it... feeding, cleaning out the cages etc.

So the day my mother turned 18, she ran away from home with her boyfriend, I think Idaho or Montana, I can't remember which. She was 6 months shy from graduating from high school. My grandmother says that my mother decided to be a hippie. She claimed to have caught her and her boyfriend smoking marijuana. I asked my mom about this and she says that it wasn't true. She either forgot about this incident or it wasn't true because my mom never lied when I asked her about something directly that I know of. She never tried to cover up the truth if I found it out.

[to be continued...] @};-