by Smith, T. L.
I guess I was too young to remember her not being around during her college years because I know she did stay on campus. Although the University of Mississippi was only 30 minutes away, it was unrealistic at the time for her to commute to and from school every day. My first real memories of my mom’s absence was around the first grade. By then she had moved three hours away to take a full-time job as an operator at Bell South.
Even back then, I knew that my mom loved me, and I understood that she had good reasons for her physical absence, but I often wondered why we could not be together. I longed for her to come and get me. I longed to be the apple of my mother’s eye.
When you are raised in such a large family, you are just one of the group. You just kind of merge into one big concern. We have to feed “the kids”. We have to get “the kids” ready for school. Make sure “the kids” get their homework done.When you have a family this large, the older siblings become caregivers to the younger siblings. By the time I came along, I can only imagine the amount of childrearing my 17-year-old mother had done.
I was much older before I overheard my mom retelling the story of how she and my grandmother discussed whether or not I should move with her when she left to live on her own. My grandmother advised her to leave me there so she could establish herself first. I must admit that hearing this story did bring me some relief that I wasn’t that easy to walk away from.
I couldn’t help but think nobody bothered to ask me what I wanted. I know that I was blessed to grow up in a loving family that willingly supported a young unwed mother. Many in her position probably would have been encouraged to have an abortion.
I do not hold any grudges against my mother for how things played out. This is just one thread of my story that helped to knit the fabric of my psyche. Growing up the way that I did instilled in me a resilience to stand in the face of overwhelming odds.
During the hardest seasons of my marriage, I remember fantasizing about how it would feel to just get in my car, drive away and never look back. These memories from my own childhood made me find the mental and spiritual fortitude to fight to stay with my children so that they would never have to experience any type of abandonment.
I also understand now that my grandmother and my mother did what they thought was best for everyone involved. My grandmother was raised by her grandmother, so I guess it was just natural for her to do the same thing for her daughter.
I appreciate that my mother worked to stay connected to me. She could have easily gone on with her life and never looked back, but she didn’t. We talked every Saturday morning. I remember the excitement I would feel when I got to go to her house to spend some private time with her. We would load the car and drive to Buchannan Hill in Holly Springs to catch the Greyhound bus to Jackson.
My mom lived in a one-bedroom apartment, literally around the corner from my biological father’s house in West Jackson. The one thing that stood out even then was the quiet. The Smith household was anything but quiet back then. I remember feeling so special spending this quality time with my mom.
We would go to the zoo and spend a lot of time at her best friend Dorothy’s house playing with her son. I remember the trips to the Metro Center, the mall that wasn’t too far from my mom’s apartment. Most of all, I remember basking in my mom’s attention. For those visits, I got my heart’s desire to experience what it would feel like to be alone with my mom.
I am especially grateful for the sacrifice my grandmother made. As a parent of two children, I can’t imagine the emotional toll of raising a family of this size. When you have a whole gaggle of children and a couple of grandkids thrown into the mix, I’m sure it was next to impossible to provide everybody with the personal attention that each longed for. There was always something to do around the house to make that whole operation work.
Doing laundry was an all-day affair on Saturday mornings, especially when you were using one of those old Maytag washing machines with the wringer at the top. The only dryer we had was yards of clothes lines in the backyard and the blazing Mississippi sun.
There were always meals to prepare, gardens to chop, quilts to make and children to whoop. The only time I remember my grandma really taking time for herself was to watch the Young and the Restless every day at eleven o’clock. That was the only time she insisted that the house was quiet so she could hear her stories.
I have such fond memories of the shenanigans that transpired in that house and the woods surrounding it. I remember listening for the sounds of my grandma stirring around in the early mornings on the weekends. I would jump up as soon as I heard her footsteps so I could steal some private time with her.
I would sit at the table with her, watch her read the Bible, and then we would talk and drink coffee together. Of course, she would give me milk with a splash of coffee, but it would still make me feel special. These were the few moments that I would manage to carve out some alone time with the lady who is still Superwoman in my eyes.
My grandmother has always been the one constant, grounding presence in my life. My grandfather was there too, but he was gone during the week because he worked for the railroad company and traveled with his job.
As wonderful as it was, growing up this way did make it harder for me to figure out my place in this world. My mom’s siblings each had a way to stand out. They were all super athletic and popular. And then there was me— the chubby, hypersensitive introverted nerd.
My aunts and uncles started collecting medals for baseball, track, basketball and football soon after they started walking. I was the type of kid who would lay around and read all day if allowed. Books became a way for me to escape from the chaos of a 1200 square foot house, bursting at the seams with four generations of people ranging from age five to seventy.
Privacy was non-existent. Every room had multiple persons assigned to it. Even the largest room—the girls’ room—contained a set of bunk beds and a full-size bed. There were generally four to five people sharing this room at any given time.
My great-grandma and my youngest aunt shared a room and the smallest of the bedrooms belonged to my grandparents. The boys slept in the living room (and sometimes the dining room depending on who lived there at the time).
Had it not been for counseling, I would still be hiding from the fact that I had fallen into a cycle of always performing in order to stand out from the crowd. I used my academic performance and being a “good girl” to carve out my place in this humongous family. I followed that pattern for years, earning academic accolades in both high school and college.
Don’t get the wrong idea: I am not saying that doing well in school is a bad thing. What I am saying is that one’s identity should not be 100% connected to how well you perform in anything.
Failure will come regardless of how hard you work or how good your intentions are. It’s a part of life. Not embracing failure as part of life’s process and striving for perfection gave me a superwoman complex, but I will share that with you later in this book.
Compassion: The Missing Element
My father was a student at Mississippi Industrial College (M.I.), one of the local colleges in Holly Springs, when he and my mother met. My relationship with my father has been complicated throughout the years. I remember running and hiding whenever he came to visit. In my eyes, he was a stranger and he scared me.
I remember seeing him pull up one time and me taking off running towards the woods. My uncle Bunny had to chase me down, pick me up and carry me back to the house for my “visit”. I was around six when the visits tapered off altogether.
As I was cleaning my bedroom years later, I remember running across a card that my father’s youngest sister had sent me. I had always maintained fond memories of my Aunt Cartella. She visited me fairly often. She too attended M.I., and my father would send her to check on me after he transferred to another school.
I took a chance and wrote her a letter to see if her address had remained the same and it had. Well, this letter started a chain of even
ts that led to a reunion with my father when I was sixteen. By then, Aunt Cartella had graduated, married and moved to Gary, IN. Since she was no longer close, she called one of their older sisters that lived about 30 minutes away to connect with me.
My Aunt Earlean lived in Oxford, MS—the same little town where my mom attended college. I began to spend many weekends with her and her family. Aunt Earlean had a son and a daughter close to my age. I realized, even back then, that I resembled my paternal family in physical appearance and temperament. Spending time with this branch of the family opened my eyes to these similarities and answered questions that my maternal side could not answer.
It wasn’t long before my Aunt Earlean invited me to attend one of Jackson State’s homecoming games with her family. The catch was we would be staying at my dad’s house. I remember struggling with the decision to go or to pass on the opportunity.
I didn’t know how or what to feel at the time. I finally decided to attend and I really enjoyed myself. I must admit, the initial meeting was somewhat awkward. The good news is that there was no crying and screaming and running into the woods.
I remember walking in and hearing my father tell me to come hug his neck. Honestly, there were so many people crammed into his house that weekend that one-on-one time with each other was out of the question.
I do remember him asking me to ride with him to the store. During those moments, he apologized for his absence and owned up to his “mistakes”. It wasn’t long after this trip that I began to spend more time with him and my other siblings.
My father had four children before his one and only marriage. Three children were born during this union, and my baby sister arrived some twenty years later. We spent many weekends during the summer and Christmas vacations getting to know one another. He even ventured as far as renting a fifteen passenger van, rounding up six of the seven children he had at the time and driving to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. My siblings and I formed a close bond and, to this day, we work to maintain this bond so our children will grow up knowing each other.
Things were really good for several years. My father even made the fourteen-hour drive, along with four of my siblings, to attend my high school graduation. Like with any family, the more time I spent with my paternal family, the more the skeletons began to fall out of the closet.
Although my father owned a club, a pawn shop and a liquor store, whispers of his real “occupation” began to emerge. My father had long since shed his “good old country boy” persona and morphed into a fast-talking wheeler and dealer—literally and figuratively.
He became engulfed in a life entrenched in fast money and even faster women. It was truly like he lived two lives. He maintained Gordon—the one he had at home when his children were around and G-Man—the one he had in the streets.
All was well until my father’s lifestyle finally caught up with him in the 1990’s and he had to spend time in the federal penitentiary. Even still, he used his connections to help secure my first job as a ninth-grade English teacher at Callaway High School in Jackson in 1996. I even lived with his girlfriend for the year I worked at this school. I ended up relocating to my hometown after one year there because I really didn’t like teaching high school.
It was during my second year of teaching that the bottom began to fall out of our relationship. After his incarceration, I worked hard to stay connected to my father. We talked on the phone regularly, and I visited him on weekends whenever I could.
One day, out of the blue, I received a call from my biological father. After some small talk, he said, “I’m coming to Memphis so you can take me shopping.” This was a major red flag for me. Why would a man who lived five minutes from a thriving mall that he rarely visited drive three hours north for me to take him shopping?
I responded, “If shopping is what you want to do, I will take you. If you have anything else in mind, leave me out of it.”
My father was a businessman who was willing to take risks—some legitimate, others not so much. He was in a financial bind yet again, which was the reason for the strange call.
The reality of the situation became obvious a few weeks later. I got a call from his live-in girlfriend. She told me to expect a call from an insurance adjuster because their car was stolen. Apparently, they had gone to a grocery store in a seedy part of town about 30 minutes from where I lived and their car was “stolen”. I politely told her to leave me out of it and hung up the phone. I thought stating my position on the issue would excuse me from the whole situation. Well, it didn’t!
My phone began to ring off the hook. I screened every call because I refused to become a part of one of my father’s get-rich-quick schemes. Naively, I believed if I ignored it, it would all just go away. Well, that didn’t happen either!
Imagine being a second-year school teacher conducting your daily English lesson, when your principal shows up at the door and tells you to report to the office immediately. I arrive to find an older gentleman, escorted by a deputy sheriff, who wanted to ask me a few questions about an automobile theft. You guessed it—the insurance adjuster.
Suffice it to say, I stood by my convictions. I answered the man’s questions honestly, but I couldn’t help but think about how disrespected I felt. There was also a level of embarrassment because the family drama that I had managed to compartmentalize had come spilling out for my boss and the entire office staff to see.
How do you tell someone exactly what your position is on an issue and still get pulled into it? After a while, it did just go away because no money was exchanged. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong!
I was bruised to my soul. My biological father and I didn’t reunite until I was sixteen. At this point, I was around twenty-three years old. Because I was sincerely at the point where I was trying to let his absenteeism go, I opened myself up to establishing a relationship with him. This was my opportunity to understand the portion of my being that my maternal side couldn’t explain. This was my opportunity to finally fill the void that had remained empty for so long, despite the love I was surrounded by growing up.
Now, at twenty-three years old, I felt deceived. I felt betrayed for a few measly dollars. What do you do when the very person you expect to protect you does the opposite? Why didn’t the relationship that I longed for not mean as much to him as it did for me?
I was livid because it felt like he was trying to terminate our relationship in its infancy. For so long I held resentment in my heart toward my biological father because I felt that he used my openness to manipulate me for his own selfish gain.
Hear my heart. The purpose of this account is not to accuse but to reflect. In the broad scheme of things, this betrayal could be considered mild in comparison to some of the things that other little girls have experienced at the hands of their fathers. The point is, I know there are many people who can identify with this type of pain.
I was a new believer when the offense happened. I understood that I was to take the hurt and anger I felt to Abba, lay it on the altar and leave it there. That’s not quite how it happened. I am the type of person who nurses wounds. I have to talk about it. I have to constantly think about it. I have to ask myself what I did to deserve such treatment.
I would internalize offenses. Rehearsing offenses only allows the roots of bitterness and unforgiveness to grow deeper. Rehearsing offenses allows the enemy to knit new offenses to all of the old ones so that the offended can accuse, try and render the offender guilty over and over again. Although I was in my twenties, I became that little girl sitting at the window again, wondering if I would ever be somebody’s priority.
As hard as I worked to purge my soul of this bitterness, remnants of this poison would still rise to the surface. I am forty-four years old at the time of this publication and, until I had to watch my own children struggle with these same feelings toward their father, I didn’t realize that I was simply perpetuating a cycle.
This bile bubbled up when my dad was in the hospital and I got
a frantic call from my aunt to make a life or death decision regarding his health. It bubbled up when I contemplated what would happen if one of his children had to take on the role of caregiver. I choked on resentment when I thought about how this mover and shaker couldn’t spare the time to take an active role in his children’s lives when he was younger, but could one day be at the mercy of those same children as he aged and struggled with his health.
My religious self would justify this anger with the adage, “You reap what you sow.” I rationalized this bitterness by saying he was simply reaping the reward for his absenteeism and selfishness. God challenged my mindset in early January 2018.
My pastor was conducting a lesson entitled Closing the Door to The Enemy. Embedded in that lesson was a scripture I had read dozens of times, but was suddenly accosted by one word.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant Matthew 18:21-35, NKJV
Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made.
The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with COMPASSION, released him, and forgave him the debt.
“But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’
So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt.