In tribute to my mom here is an epigraph she would love:
From Radio Preacher Jonah Turner: "No matter what mistakes you've made, the rest of your life is still ahead of you. Get on with it."
My mom named me Daisy because it was the name of an MTV video DJ from the '80's she admired and whose life she planned on emulating one day. Also, a daisy was my mom's favorite flower for a couple of reasons. One, she would never like a froufrou flower like a rose or an orchid because she is not complicated. She likes simple things. Two, she is quite old-fashioned and sentimental and corny, and the name Daisy is all those things. My mom brought me home from the hospital in the same outfit my Nana Gail put her in 20 years before. My Nana Gail is sentimental too, but she is tough and this is where my mom gets her toughness from, though she got a little more mouth than toughness. Being tough does not come naturally to my mom, though she does talk a good game.
My mom is human and has her flaws. She is stubborn, so stubborn my Nana says when she was my age she walked seven miles one time carrying a bucket of strawberries because she was mad at her sister and wanted to ride in the front seat. When she didn't get her way, she started walking down the highway lugging a bucket of strawberries. I get my stubbornness from my mom.
My mom is religious, but she does not go to church. Instead we listen to Jonah Turner the preacher at the First Baptist Church in Pilot on WPAQ early Sunday morning. My mom likes his teeth and the way his blue eyes twinkle when he smiles. How do you know he has blue eyes and a pretty smile I asked once, and she said for me to listen close and I could see them too. So that's the way I try to picture him too. She likes what Preacher Turner has to say, which is what she says is universally what people need and want to hear:
We are all in this together. Heal thyself. Love thyself. Love your neighbors. Take the high road. Be a peacemaker. Don't look back. United we can. Dream and dream big. God wants to answer your prayers.
People like to listen to Jonah Turner because he tells us what we really already know:
First: Get your ass off that couch.
Next: Let it go and move on.
Then: Go get what you deserve.
Last: Praise the Lord!
Jonah's word is God's word delivered by a man with a pretty smile and good teeth.
My mom believes in God's word and that cleanliness is next to godliness. My mom is a clean fanatic and an organizer. She is not what people call OCD, but she cleans like she is going to wipe the nastiness out of life and make order in the world, as if a dozen Clorox wipes on Saturday morning could suddenly erase the horror of the night before. Some people hoard canned food, water, and batteries for the coming nuclear or zombie apocalypse or a viral outbreak threatening mankind. My mom hoards cleaning supplies. If Armageddon comes in a filthy, moldy, germ-infested cataclysm, my mom is ready. I don't know what we will eat or drink or how we will make a call, stay warm, or get medical attention, but we will be pristine survivors who smell like honeysuckle or buttercream frosting, her favorite scents.
My Mom is also the luckiest, but unluckiest person on earth. You know, she wins on a lottery ticket, but it is 3 dollars or a free ticket. Just lucky enough. It is like she only wins what she thinks she deserves.
My mom is opinionated. So opinionated her old boss once introduced her at a big meeting as, "This is Candi. She is very opinionated."
It hurt her feelings at the time and embarrassed her, but she said after she thought about it, she considered it a compliment because mostly her opinions were about taking up for someone else wronged, though she seldom gives herself the same courtesy. "Besides," she said, "In my opinion, it is stupid for people to have their self-worth determined by their job. It is what I do, not who I am."
I get my opinionation from my mom.
How did an opinionated, stubborn, semi-tough woman end up with an alcoholic husband who beat her at least once or twice a month?
My mom was lonely after my dad died. I knew this because I saw her tear up when she saw couples holding hands. Every woman wants a hand reaching for hers. I was a young girl and I knew this. And, let's not forget her luck. Darrell was the most handsome man ever seen when she met him, but even I know looks can be deceiving. Sometimes looks and a crooked smile make a man invincible and irresistible. And, besides the looks, as I said earlier, Darrell was a charmer and not always completely evil. Remember, things are seldom black and white. My stepdad was a mean drunk and he never held down a job for long, but when he was not drinking, Darrell was a likable enough fellow. Other people liked him even when he was doing something stupid, and I suspect my mom loved him.
Darrell was kind at times. When I was six, he fueled my belief I was a cowboy by buying me an outfit only a lover of all things related to the West would wear to school twice a week (and more if I could sneak it in). The outfit was pearl white. The skirt was to my ankles and was trimmed in white fringe with red lasso accents and shiny, diamond-like decorations, and it looked like what my Nannie Jo called, "Something straight out of Porter Wagoner's closet". I did not know Porter Wagoner. Nannie Jo said Porter launched Dolly Parton's career on his TV show. The Dolly reference was why I took her statement as a compliment rather than the insult it was meant to be.
Darrell did try at times, but the demons from his past included his nasty mama.
Darrell met my mom at a dance when she already had a steady, hard-working boyfriend who adored her but who was as dull and unexciting as he was ordinary looking. Darrell was lovely with jet black hair, dimples, and blue eyes that twinkled like the light caught them. My mom was a sucker for blue eyes, especially if they twinkled when you smiled.
I was in love with Darrell myself because he looked like my favorite TV cowboy, James Stacy. I was a big Gunsmoke fan in those days and James Stacy played a cowboy on a couple of those episodes. I also watched James Stacy reruns of his show Lancer where he swaggered on screen in a pair of black pants with silver buttons down the side (these pants are called calzoneras , I learned later). I only loved James Stacy more when my Nannie Jo told me about his tragic, real-life accident. If you want to know why me and my mom fell in love with Darrell, watch James Stacy in a TV western. You'll fall too. Only thing is, if you read more about my favorite cowboy and dig deeper, you'll find out Darrell had more in common with James Stacy than beauty and charm. Turns out they both had a dark, dark side.
Three weeks after they met, my mom and Darrell married over Christmas. It seemed like a fairy tale for my mom and me. It was a fairytale all right - full of hobgoblins and wicked step-relatives.
It was not long before my stepdad was blaming my mom for all his problems. When he spent all night out with the boys, it was my mom's fault for nagging. When he got drunk and lost all his money in a poker game, she was to blame for buying the couch he tripped over when he came home penniless.
Despite making my mom what was wrong with him, my step-dad remained charming through the marriage even when he beat my mom. He apologized and begged her to come back, and he was so good to her, I believed he was a changed man. He courted my mom during these times. Brought her flowers, took her out to eat, all the things a man does to impress. But, those times were few and far between. Otherwise, Darrell was always busy hanging out with his buddies and giving them the attention and devotion he owed my mom. My mama was lonesome.
My mom fell in love with sadness and despair. She was despondent and war weary from unwinnable, grown-up battles. She became to expect the worst and accept it. She grew up in a chaotic home and this felt normal. She was living the life her mom lived before her. She was intelligent and wanted out, but she did not know how to walk away or how to take the first step out the door.
My mama kept a dream book in those days. A dream book of her perfect house with kitchen cabinets she liked and color swatches to paint the walls. Colors she imagined would be the colors in a dream home. She took more magazines out of the bin at the recycling center than she ever put in, and she cut those magazines up and pasted them in a scrapbook she kept under her bed. There were flower books too, full of gardens and tips on maintaining perennials and mixing organic chemicals so as not to hurt the environment. Flowers were her dreams too because she often said that she inherited Nana's brown thumb. She could not keep a plant alive. My mama longed for a garden she could sit in and read, and she dreamt of cut fresh flowers for the vases in the kitchen window. Right before we left Darrell and right before things got the worst, my mama threw her garden books in the the recycling bin and put her house scrapbook in the fireplace and burned it. My mom figuratively and literally threw her dreams away and watched them go up in smoke.
I asked my mom about her dream book and why she burned it. She said it was time. Time to act, not sit around praying for something or someone to change or someone to save her. Time to get moving. Time to quit dreaming. Time to make a stand.
"God helps those who don't sit around waiting to be helped," she said.
Boxes. That is how I knew my mother was making a plan to leave my step-dad. She started saving boxes. Shoe boxes and paper boxes and other boxes of all sizes. They were stuffed in closets and under beds. Even Darrell, who was oblivious to most of the workings of a household, noticed the boxes, but my mom dismissed them by talking of the yard sale she was going to have.
When my mom got pregnant, my step-dad got a new job and worked there for five months before he went out with his softball team one Friday night and came home mad because his dive head first into 2nd base was called out. My mom was smart this time though. Since he was working and paying some bills, she put some money back along with the boxes. My Nana Gail, who lived nearby, also saved and plotted for years, just in case she needed to help my mom. My Nana Gail was an advice giver who did not practice in her youth which she preached now, but in her later years she knew one truth - love and handsome were not always good for you. Nana was packed and ready to go too.
After my mom lost the baby, we stayed one night at the house and the next day when my step-dad went to work, we vanished.
On the day my mother left, she apologized to me. She said she would never put us in that position again as long as she lived. We would never be afraid again. Not that Darrell cared we were gone. We found out later, it only took him two weeks of "looking" for mom before he shacked up with a waitress at his favorite haunt.
While my mom says we are safe now, it does not escape my notice that she still has a collection of boxes she keeps hidden in the back of her closet. Maybe it makes her feel safe. That, and the gun she has in the drawer beside her bed.
Author's Insight: I have a lot in common with Candi. I too hoard cleaning supplies and toilet paper and let me say, when Covid hit and 409 was gone from shelves, I almost lost it. I hoard boxes too, and once had a dream book I threw away in a moment of despair. Also, I was once introduced at a big meeting as "opinionated" and let me say, that still hurts my feelings.
It's funny how pieces of us slip into our stories.