Abandonment

In the middle of a Lower Mainland, BC summer, I was playing in the backyard of my grandmother’s house. The backyard was my world away from the world. I was sitting in my little mini pool filled with sun warmed water and talking to my friends who were in the pool with me. My friends consisted of a rubber Big Bird, about as tall as I was at the time, and a doll I lovingly named Casper. She was a blond haired, blue eyed doll who never betrayed a single secret I ever told her.

A strange couple with a baby in tote arrived in the backyard without announcement. I’m sure I was panicked as I’m told I was a desperately shy little girl. I was approached, greeted and forcibly picked up. My grandmother tells of a screaming young toddler, but even when I look back and try to imagine, I can never picture myself being that way.
My grandmother ran to my yells and unleashed a bitter tongue to my mother, who arrived with her new husband and newborn son, but after some reassurances and what must have seemed a familiar manipulative indoctrination, my grandmother invited my mother and her new family into the house. Later at dinner, my grandmother, who evidently had plenty of time to think about the previous two years raising her granddaughter, presented my mother with an offer; my mother would not refuse.

My mother was told that she had to impart all her authority as biological parent of her two year old daughter or my grandmother would see to it that Child Services took both of her children from her. She was ultimately viewed, as an unfit mother, incapable of taking care of the needs of a child she abandoned years prior.

My grandmother’s justification for not immediately seeking to have her grandson removed from my mother, was based on the notion that his father was apart of his life. This would forever haunt my grandmother, as it was discovered in later years my mother neglected her son on numerous occasions and his life would be forever plagued by dreadful decisions made on his behalf.

It seemed that after 21 years of servitude to her scheming daughter, my grandmother’s awakening had occurred and her downward control of her own empathy was underway. Perhaps my grandmother’s other children would not see it this way.

I’m grateful for my grandmother, who sacrificed her retirement, her life, to raise her daughter’s burden. My grandmother recalled to me, that as a toddler I was confused as to what to call her and her husband and after a number of years of referring to them as Mum and Dad, it was much easier to make it official, than to explain to a toddler the “whys” asked of them. It could not have been easy, but my grandmother and her husband made the occasion a joyful one, and legally adopted me.

I did not see or hear from my mother for many more years.

My grandmother told me, she raised me the same way she brought up her other four children. I remember being doted on especially, and in my teens, summed it up to being the first born granddaughter, regardless of the circumstances. I believe, my grandmother’s other children would never see me as more of the liability to their mother’s life and a waste of time and energy to her. They never expressed that to me, and choose to keep that as a private conversation amongst themselves, and so far as I was concerned, they were warm and affectionate to me. Something lacked.

I was not necessarily spoiled, but I was treated with enough difference that seemingly walked with me well into adulthood. I have never felt completeness. I have never felt whole. I have always looked back intensely, in an attempt to find that missing piece, but don’t ever remember finding it when I was at that age.

When I was eight, a neighbour friend invited me to join her family to go and see a movie at the theatre. I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was so excited because it would be the third movie I’d ever see. The first was Disney’s ‘The Fox and the Hound’, the second was ‘Nine To Five’ with Dolly Parton. My grandmother had wanted to see that movie and thought it would be a better idea for me to join her than to find a babysitter. Looking back, I’m sure I would have much rather sat with a sitter.

My grandmother dressed me up nice for this occasion. Always one to put good impressions with the neighbours, I would have to be on my best behaviour and make no fuss as this was my treat.
The neighbours picked me up on time and we arrived at the Paramount Theatre with spare time in order to find enough seats for her five-person family and the neighbour friend.

Half way through the movie, I asked permission to leave. The neighbour lady was quite annoyed with me that I would want to leave and to my grandmother’s regret, my fuss, of taking her away from her night out with her family. She would have had to sit with me in the foyer. But alas, this was not the case. She did not call my grandmother to come and pick me up. Instead, I spent more than one hour in the foyer alone, frightened at all that I had seen to that point. When you are eight years old, and are expecting to see a Disney Cartoon, ‘Poltergeist’ is not the movie to expect. Consequently, I would have to spend six months of my life seeing a child psychologist and to this very day, I have to close my walk-in closet door.

That same year, my grandmother’s husband died. For the event, my mother seemingly felt obligated to join the rest of the family for what would be another test of my grandmother’s fortitude. My grandmother told me about her husband’s death, at the same moment that my mother was telling her son about it. I remember her son sobbing uncontrollably from down the hallway. I also remember that I did not express the same feeling. What I wondered though, was why my mother’s son was carrying on so and why I was emotionless. As far I seemed concerned, it was just another day and at that point, I could not remember ever feeling a loss of any sort, let alone a loss of such permanence. How did my mother’s son know what to do on such an occasion?

My grandmother seems to have been consumed by consoling or coddling her children for years after her husband’s death. My mother in particular, appeared to take his death quite hard. Perhaps it was her conscience forcing the tears to surface or it was the greatest performance of her life, preparing for what lay ahead.

I was now the granddaughter of sixty year old single pensioner.

When I was twelve, and about to enter Middle School, my grandmother made an illogical and irrational decision. She had decided that it would be in my best interests to leave all that I knew; my home, my school, my peers, my life, and move to the small remote community of Vanderhoof, BC. Naturally, this pre-teen was mortified and making this situation worse, was its certainty. I was not permitted to plead a case. I was not allowed to issue a rebuttal. I was not allowed to fuss. I was refused permission to express myself. I was to remain, emotionless.
There were only two weeks left of the summer vacation, and most of my friends were missing, on their own family vacations.

I did not say goodbye.

I became lethargic, depressed, borderline anorexic and anti-social.

My grandmother’s attempts to create a new way of life for me appeared futile and it was expressed on more than one occasion that the apparent actions of bettering my life, were unappreciated at best. My grandmother’s biological daughter, whom we were living with at the time, lived a less than agreeable way of life, according to my grandmother, making the situation for myself, rather tedious. My grandmother’s daughter was of the opinion that “things” would be different for her, had she received the attention that my mother and ultimately, myself had always seemed to receive, and it was quite obvious to her that I was an ungrateful little snot., after all my grandmother sacrificed for me and my mother. Of course, what my grandmother’s daughter was referring to, I would later learn, was my grandmother’s other children. This was her sacrifice.

Within months, I appeared unapproachable. I was selective with my peer group and certainly closed off to my grandmother and her daughter. I was melancholy. It was, it appeared, the true beginning of my own awakening to what being alone represented.