I became a compulsive truth teller in reaction to the power of my mother’s expressive confusions. Her lack of being able to tell her truth because of fear found me lacking.. I must have observed it, she also held over my brother and I the fear of loss that she carried on; only to be understood later. My brother was 17 and became the new man in my mother’s life. When I would think he was my father's replacement, he only wanted just to be a teenager. My sense of craving attention among the men at the rifle range was gone when my father passed. I see it now, Daddy as I called him and the attention and the other men; gave me a sense of entitlement. That has carried me through my life, within this base of how I developed, men and a doting father had been lost with a teenage brother who was not taking both my mother and being a father image. Within a year he barely got out of high school, he was wanting college and he had received a college scholarship for Basketball. All that was out of the question. He started working to help my mother and me. She took in foster babies to add to the loss of my father’s income. He was only 45 years old and his career and sense of party spirit left our home to be paid for by only Social Security. In today’s world he would still be alive because of the advancements of medicine.
My brother was gone a year later drafted into the Army in hopes of going to college. I was home with my grieving mother, not yet 5. I was unable to go to school yet, so my mother couldn’t work outside the home. She became a Foster Care person for income. This would also add to our income and be there in some sort of temporary fashion. They were babies and my playmates until they would leave. Grief found itself another home within me as each of the baby's short stay, lost me a playmate until they were adopted. This was a brief bit of financial assistance till I got to kindergarten, where I began what was a different form of attention. I visually can still remember two cribs in our dining room in my mind. This was another bit of attention gone. So soon to have my brother leave for the Army, going to Korea, and my fathers death. It was then my mother and I. Continually knowing and watching her embellishments and manipulation her surroundings; because of her pride. She would not take public assistance. Her farm girl would control her circumstance at whatever the cost to me. None of this is meant as a poor me statement, just a building of who I became and she as my female model. She taught me resilience, however lacking in character development. I now say she raised me to be a character not to have character.
