“Fat, lazy, asinine,” were my mother’s most common words about me to me. I had no idea what she said to others about me, but I couldn’t imagine it was good. From the time I was two, she demanded that I do some of her work and taking care of her. These jobs increased as I got older and our family got bigger.
The summer I was 13, I was put in charge of my two younger brothers, meals for us and our father, the large garden (we canned 150 quarts of green beans that summer and ate at least as many at meals, picked and prepared by myself), the chickens and their eggs, as well as the assorted dogs and cats. I was glad that summer that we didn’t have any hogs. This was just week days while my mother was out of town attending a college summer session. Her sister had worked hard to persuade my mother to attend. My aunt had wanted to give me a break from my mother and that was the most she could do. It was the most pleasant summer of my life. When the summer session was over, my father put me on a tractor to farm with him. I farmed with him until he died, then I left home for college.
Even after that, my mother still expected me to do work for her, but not nearly as much. In all this time she never thanked me or said I did a good job. If a task was not perfectly done, she demanded it be done over. Finally, the year I was 50, I managed to force her to say, thank you, for the very first time. She thought it was cute; no, I was desperate.
There was one bright spot in the midst of her abuse. I was in high school and bought some small, mundane item, I have no idea what. The clerk, who was a bit older than me, was bored.
“Thank you, sir,” she automatically said when the transaction was completed.
SIR?! She called me SIR! Like a real person!!! I was stunned as I walked out the store.
I knew she was bored. I knew she didn’t care anything about me, yet, still, she called me by a title that was one of respect, not the negativity that was normal at home. I was a person in her eyes.
It gave me hope. Someone, even not interested, felt I was worth at least that bored bit of respect!
WOW!!!