Entry #18: VOODOO DREAMS

My earliest memories are nightmares. My childhood before kindergarten is mostly a blank, but I remember specific nightmares.

When I was born, my parents moved to a bigger house. Instead of converting the room next to theirs into a nursery for the new baby, they made a home office for my father. No sweet decorations, no adorable wallpaper, no musical mobiles or princess furniture. Instead there were books up to the ceiling, a desk, a lamp with a low shade, filing cabinets, and a twin-sized bed for when my father wanted to escape from my mother. Oh, and a crib against one wall.

I remember nightmares I had in that crib. A parade of crazy animals once came marching out of the wall and terrified me. Another time my father's books ballooned to enormous sizes, swelling out of the shelves and burying me. I had no words, but I still remember the pictures.

So I grew up in an office. It was a dark and serious room, and I stayed there until I was old enough to manage the full flight of stairs that led to the bedrooms on the second floor. Then I got kicked upstairs with my brothers.

I remember lots of nightmares from my bedroom upstairs. I would have the bejesus scared out of me, and I would wake in the dark, too afraid to move. Often I would be sideways or upside down in bed, and I would lie there and look for light from the windows until I could figure out where the hell I was.

I remember trying to call for my mother, but I was so scared no sound would come out. I sounded like a baby bird. Eventually I would muster up enough courage to make the long march down the stairs, past the scary front door, past the darkened living room, and down the hall to my parents' room. Their door was always closed. I would stand there forever, trying to get up the nerve to knock. I knew I would be in trouble for waking them up, but by then I was too afraid to go back upstairs by myself.

After a lifetime of nightmares I've sorted them into four categories:

STRESSMARES are exhausting and endless - you can't find the right classroom, you're on the wrong train, your pants have disappeared, that kind of thing. They are semi-related to events from real life. They can be heart-pounding and unpleasant, but they aren't usually very mysterious.

NIGHTMARES are terrifying and random. Although in my daily life I avoid anything violent, scary, or occult, my nightmares are filled with everything from flesh-eating monsters, to evil ghosts (they look like multi-colored vapors), to being hunted down by guerrillas. These nightmares are vivid, detailed, and horrifying. Often I have to turn my head or cover my eyes in my own dream to avoid seeing something especially grisly or unspeakable. I have no idea where these horrible images come from.

NIGHT TERRORS are nightmares on steroids.  I get covered with goose bumps and my heart pounds so hard it feels like it will crack a rib. If I ever appear to "die peacefully in my sleep," it will actually be because a night terror polished me off. Night terrors are hyper-real, all-consuming, and almost impossible to escape - plus they often come back. They feel like your brain has been hijacked by terrorists.

There is one more important category, and that is MESSAGE DREAMS. I believe there is a lot we could learn from our dreams if we only knew how.

Before I was diagnosed with uterine cancer I had three very specific, urgent dreams that something was wrong with my abdomen and I had to find a doctor. So I did.

For the last year or so I was plagued by recurring nightmares about being stuck with hundreds and hundreds of pins and needles. I'm a human pin cushion. My feet are studded with the flat, round tops of dozens of pins. My throat and mouth are filled with cross-crossing silver needles, so I can't breathe or speak. I pull fistfuls of pins and needles out of my arms and legs and throw them to the ground the way Pigpen shed dirt. Everything hurts.

I knew these dreams were message dreams, but the symbolism escaped me. Did the multitude of pins indicate a cellular problem? Maybe a blood disease? Diabetes?

Then it hit me like a blinding flash of the obvious. Voodoo. I was a human voodoo doll. The pins were attacks - a lifetime's worth; every incident of physical and emotional abuse and neglect, plus every insult, slight, and under-cutting word or deed. And I was frantically trying to pull them all out.

I have no doubt that in another culture my mother would have been a malevolent Voodoo queen. Not all Voodoo is malevolent, but - despite her convincing "poor little me" act - she was one hell of a powerful, vicious, destructive woman. She was like an insect that lived by sucking the nectar of joy out of the world, replacing it with rancid poison. It's easy to picture her with three primitive little dolls representing her children, who were nothing but aggravation and disappointment to her. She didn't want children; she wanted little robots that would perform on cue to make her look good, and then go back in their cages.

I don't pretend to understand the mind/body connection in health, but I know there is one. To me it seems quite logical that if your own mother spends every year of your life resenting, insulting, and disdaining you; neglecting, molesting, and abusing you; being jealous of you; and wishing you would go away and stop bothering her; this constant onslaught of hate has to have an effect. 

If you read Entry #8, you already know that my oldest brother took my parents' wishes to heart and decided to make them happy by removing himself from the planet. My brother and I struggled with the same questions. Should I fulfill my mother's fondest wishes and just die? Or, in spite of her contempt, do I deserve to live?

For me, the Voodoo curses of a lifetime seem to be constantly doing battle with the forces of good, because I keep getting sick, but I'm not dead yet. I should be healthy. I have good genes. I don't smoke or drink. My cholesterol is perfect. I eat organic, non-processed foods, and drink only spring water, or lemonade made with fresh lemons. But I'm a wreck. Why?

•. As a toddler I got tonsillitis several times a year all through grade school. I lived on penicillin.

•. That turned into chronic strep throat as a teenager.

•. That became abscessed tonsils - a constant infection. The doctor recommended that I have a tonsillectomy, but my mother would not allow it. (In college I finally made my own arrangements to have my tonsils out, and stayed at my boyfriend's house.)

•. I had mononucleosis twice by the age of 20.

•. By age 23 I had shingles - an old people problem!

•. At age 30 the chronic migraines started after I had an epidural during childbirth. (I still get migraines 30 years later.)

•. I developed gall bladder disease, which the doctors missed, and eventually had emergency gall bladder surgery.

•  I got Cushing's syndrome from being prescribed too many steroids for the migraines. The doctors missed that, too, until I was half dead.

•. I got uterine cancer because the Cushing's made me fat and knocked out my immune system (among other things).

•. The arthritis in my back is now so painful that I can't walk more than a few feet, and I need a wheelchair to get around. 

•. Oh yeah - my teeth are ridiculous because my mother never took me to the dentist, and I'm paying for it now.

These illnesses could be chalked up to bad luck and bad parenting. But I also believe that abuse sets up survivors for a lifetime of emotional and physical difficulties. I believe Voodoo and ill intent can make another person sick, especially when the victim knows they are being cursed. That is a heavy burden. 

Fortunately, I now know that this is not the whole story. 

Researchers have tried to study the effect of prayer on health, but without a lot of success, because they asked random people to pray for random patients. For some reason, no one seems to have studied the effect of receiving moral support from friends and loved ones. I am positive that when friends, acquaintances, Facebook buddies, and even health care providers send good thoughts in your direction – encouragement, light, love, prayer, or whatever makes sense to them – their personalized good intentions can do a world of good.

Sick people were asked the single most helpful thing you can do for them, and the answer was: send a card. That’s it. Just let them know you are thinking about them and wishing them well.

Good thoughts can beat bad juju. How do I know that? Because I am blessed with wonderful friends who keep pulling me back from the brink. Thanks, guys.

Entry #17: RESTAURANTS

My parents were born without taste buds. OK, maybe not. But their idea of fine foods included orange-and-red port wine cheese, Philadelphia's finest scrapple, canned Old El Paso refried beans, and premium wine at $5 a bottle. When choosing a restaurant, more thought went into the bar than the food.

My mother had several alcoholic tricks. The first, of course, was to get drunk at home before she even got in the car. Drinking began every day at 11:00 AM. If we had to go out to lunch, the early start would fortify her until we reached the closest cheap restaurant, where she would stop at the bar to get a drink on the way in, then carry it with her, rather than waiting to order a drink at the table.

Refills after that were ordered from whichever waiter or waitress was being punished by God that day.

All drinks were straight up, because "ice took up too much room in the glass." Once she gave the waiter instructions for a martini ... with no olive and no Vermouth. He said evenly, "So, what you want is a glass of gin?"

"Right," said my mother.

I had to explain alcohol to my kids early on, so they could understand the dynamics, and why Gamma kept wishing everyone a Happy a Memorial Day when it was Labor Day. My son once asked my mother with a cute little innocent face, "Whatcha drinking, Gamma? Iced tea?"

"Whishkey," she intoned as if it were a serious life lesson. "Whishkey."

My mother always made a big fuss about ordering Canadian whisky (spelled with no "e"), as if the restaurant might not be educated enough to carry it. In fact, Canadian whisky was known for being a piss poor choice - like insisting on Velveeta instead of Vermont aged cheddar.  At a high-end restaurant, she once insisted on "Canadian Red," and the waitress was frantically trying to figure out which expensive brand that was. It's not a brand - it's shorthand for "very bad, cheap, blended Canadian whisky of no particular name." 

My mother favored imitation quaint restaurants - Olde Inns, Taverns, Pubs, and so on. The food was irrelevant. She had no patience whatsoever, so it was important to find a restaurant that was empty. Usually a bad sign in a restaurant.

Going out to eat with my parents was utterly humiliating. My mother would endlessly torture the waitress, and my father did not believe in tips. I once intervened and added a 20% tip, and when my parents realized what I had done they insulted me for being stupid and profligate. I thought the waitress deserved much more.

All her life my mother had been called to meals at certain times, and food prepared by The Cook was immediately served to her by The Maids. The concept of waiting for food to be ready was utterly missing from her brain. She did not have the smallest modicum of patience or politeness. Once at a restaurant, she harassed the wait staff mercilessly from the moment she sat down.

I think the most memorable dinner was a family reunion at a restaurant with a name like Beak 'n' Claw, or Hoof 'n' Feather, or maybe it was Scales 'n' Tails. Unfortunately there was a large party going on in a separate room, so the kitchen and waitstaff were very busy.

Our table comprised my parents; my brother and his three young daughters; and my husband and me with our two young children. My brother and my father were down at one end of the table pontificating with each other and ignoring everyone else. My brother's girls were lined up next to him, littlest first. My mother was at the opposite end, with my family.

We were seated directly across from the shiny swinging doors that led into, and out of, the kitchen. Wait staff would suddenly burst forth with dinners for the party in the other room, narrowly missing waiters and waitresses on their way in.

Our waitress arrived and my mother ordered another drink while still finishing her first one - like chain smoking, except chain drinking. Already her face had gone slack, and her movements had taken on an underwater quality. She would reach for her glass slowly and with great concentration, as if moving any faster might startle it.

The waitress returned with her drink and my mother was already restive. This was going to be a long, difficult meal.

We had to order everything all at once, in a hurry, in order to get our food as quickly as possible. My mother always asked the same rude questions that suggested the restaurant was trying to kill us ("Is it fresh?" "Did you make this a week ago?" "How old are these eggs?"). Ironically the restaurant could have served her frozen mastodon burgers and she would not have noticed the difference.

My mother's salad took too long to arrive. She harassed the waitress, who said she was doing the best she could. The salad finally arrived, but battle lines had already been drawn. Where were our meals?

The waitress tried to explain they were busy, but that was a waste of time. My mother demanded to talk to The Management.

An older woman came over and tried to calm down my mother, who was beginning to have an all-out meltdown. "We've come ALL THE WAY FROM NARRAGANSETT," she said imperiously, adding, "THE CHILDREN NEED THEIR DINNERS."

The kids looked surprised, since they were all perfectly fine - except the littlest, who was being completely ignored by her father. She was starting to pick fights to get attention.

The hostess looked at my mother in surprise and said, "Narragansett? That's not very far!" And in fact it was not. "Can I get you something else while you wait?"

"NO!" shouted my mother, deciding to turn on the crocodile tears. Her voice escalated. "We've been waiting here for HOURS!" 

It might have been half an hour, tops. My youngest niece, taking her cue from my mother's behavior, turned to her father and socked him in the arm has hard as she could. 

While my niece was getting yelled at, my mother stood up shakily from the table and set her eye on the doors to the kitchen.

My young son sensed immediately what was about to happen and exclaimed, "Somebody poke my eyes out! I don't want to see this!"

Sure enough, my mother set a course straight through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The rest of us sat aghast and immobilized, half expecting her to be thrown out like a drunk cowboy from a saloon.

I think she may have been the first customer to actually show up in the middle of a busy kitchen to complain. I imagine her standing there, confused by the profusion of cooks because she was no doubt seeing double by then. I doubt there was anyone standing around waiting to listen politely to her concerns.

She made it back to her seat and I kept pleading with her to stop picking on the staff. If you deliberately choose a godawful restaurant, you lose your complaining rights.

There was not enough bread for the table because they had to "thaw out some more." Our meals finally arrived, and no one was more relieved than our waitress. I don't remember if I had the beak, the claw, the hoof, the feather, the scales or the tails - it was all awful, and the children were not allowed to order dessert because they did not finish their horrible dinners. Really my mother - the doting grandmother - just didn't want to pay for any ice cream.

In the car home, my mother sat angry, silent, and slightly at an angle. She would take to her bed immediately, annoyed by everyone. Since this whole exercise gave her so little pleasure, I wondered why she bothered. 

Then I remembered. My mother actually existed in a parallel universe, where she boasted to her friends about these occasions to prove that she WAS TOO beloved by her family, and we all had SO MUCH FUN together. After a few glasses of straight gin, the reality was irrelevant. All that remained was a hologram in her brain of a lovely dinner that never actually took place.

Entry #16: PETS

PETS

Once upon a time a friend came to visit my mother, bringing her a beautiful blooming African Violet as a gift.

"Let's take a walk down the street to see Shirley," suggested my mother. "We can bring her this plant." And they did.

Aside from being jaw-droppingly rude, the point of this story is that my mother refused to be responsible for even a single house plant, and got rid of it before it even hit the dining room table. God only knows how she handled a baby, since she found a house plant too much trouble. My mother was an addict, and all she really wanted to think about was getting her next drink.

Occasionally pets had been added to the household when I was young, but they usually lasted about as long as that plant.

My mother often spoke fondly about white rats she'd had as a child. Apparently she was allowed to keep many of them. I'm sure one of the maids had to feed and water the rats and change their cages, because caring for another living thing was not on my mother's list of abilities.

My mother claims that she wore the rats on her head like a crown (could this possibly be true?), and that she brought them to school and hid them in her desk (very likely).

Because of my mother's rats, I was allowed to have hamsters when I was little. They were stinky little things, but I adored them and let them run around my waist inside my shirt. The mother hamster had babies, and I came downstairs one morning and was casually informed that she had eaten her young. I was aghast. I had never heard anything so disturbing in my life. I have since learned that this is a sign of severe maternal stress and bad hamster care. But doesn't it figure I would get the Cannibal Mother Hamster?

The hamsters were either Houdini masters with their little paws, or perhaps someone accidentally on purpose left their cage door unlatched, because one by one they disappeared.

After the hamster debacle I was allowed to have two guinea pigs. My mother named them Lester and Lanin, after the society bandleader. (Years later I attended a debutante party where one of Lester Lanin's bands was actually playing. According to the New York Times, "Mothers would book him for coming-out parties as soon as their daughters were born.")

I liked Lester and Lanin because they wiggled their noses and squeaked. I don't think they were well cared for, either. For their food, my mother retrieved old, slimy lettuce that had been thrown out behind the A&P.

Lester and Lanin came with us to Rhode Island for the summer, and apparently my mother decided she was no longer going to deal with their cage. She got some flimsy pieces of cardboard and set them up  on the concrete as an enclosure by the back door, then released Lester and Lanin into their new makeshift home outside.

By morning they had been savaged by the neighbor's dogs, their bloody corpses strewn around the yard. This caused something of an uproar in our small town, and my mother was angry at the neighbor who owned the dogs. But really - who leaves guinea pigs loose outside at night?

We also had a cat when I was little, but it must have been somewhat feral, because I don't remember enjoying or curling up with it. I'm sure it never went to the vet - that would have cost money. I know it pooped in my uncovered sandbox - a lot. My mother fed the cat raw hot dogs, glistening and pink, straight from the refrigerator. The cat also sometimes got canned cat food that smelled absolutely delicious to me. My mother was such a godawful cook that cat food seemed like a better option than anything she prepared - so I tried it. It was execrable. I can assure you it tastes nothing like it smells.

One day a man yelled to us from the street, "Is this your cat?"  I wish someone had kept me from looking.

In high school, I adopted a kitten named Oliver. He was a lovely black-and-grey tiger cat, and I took care of him myself. Ollie, too, came with us to Rhode Island. The day my mother drove back to Philadelphia at the end of the summer, I had to be somewhere else. This turned out to be very unfortunate. My mother stopped by some woods somewhere and threw Oliver out the car door. When I returned home, looking for my cat, she shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

Losing Ollie was such a betrayal, and so brutally unkind to both the cat and to myself, that something broke inside me. Ollie was no mere rodent. I regarded my mother as a murderer, and sensed that this time she had not only played her hand but also revealed it. I saw that she had no empathy - not for me, not for the cat, not for anyone. I realized that she never had. Evil was not characterized by hatred, or rage, but indifference.

I am happy to say that the minute I got away from my parents, Artiste and I adopted a tiger kitten from Maine we named Miso. After that, one cold night Artiste was followed down a snow-covered road by a tiny mewling kitten who appeared out of nowhere. That kitten cleverly found the only people in Michigan who would pay to fix up a stray with fleas, mites, worms, too many toes, and a broken tail that was bent at a 90 degree angle. We named him Plutarch. Miso and Plutie became our substitute children for years, and were still around even after we had real children.

When my son was in high school, we finally relented to his pleas and got him Cosmo the Corgi, the smartest, handsomest, barkiest dog you could ever meet. They bonded as only a boy and his dog can. After that, my daughter asked for a rescue greyhound, and the beautiful Lily entered our lives. Both kids moved on - and the dogs stayed with us, of course.

I had never owned dogs before and was never a "dog person," but today I can't imagine life without them. It's amazing how much a dog adds to your life without being able to say a word.

The rescue organization was going to give us a large male dog named Lance, but then they called and said they had selected a different dog for us because I worked at home. They said she could not be alone, that she should have another dog for company, and she should not be around small children. She was afraid of thunderstorms, unable to use stairs, and oh by the way, she refused to be crated, ever. It also turned out that Lily had recent scars from the racetrack, that she was not housebroken, and she was afraid of men - particularly their feet, from getting kicked. She was afraid of wires, afraid of her leash, and afraid to go to the bathroom anywhere except in an enclosed yard. I once stood outdoors in the rain with her for an hour pleading with her to pee - to no avail, of course. Lily ate like a wolf, had never seen a dog treat, and had no idea there was a concept called "playing."

From Cosmo she learned how to chase toys, how to whine for treats, how to bark rudely at other dogs, and how to pee like a boy. She took over every sitting surface in the house, and rotates from filling up the entire sofa to occupying one or the other armchair. Greyhounds get cold easily, so she has her own wardrobe, and in the winter she sleeps on down quilts on our bed. In summer she sleeps in air conditioning in her own bed. Cosmo lies in the doorway, protecting us.

The amount if money we have spent on dog food and vet bills is staggering. Cosmo got pancreatitis and diabetes and almost died. Lily had to have oral surgery and lost several teeth. Cosmo developed ileus and almost died again. Each time we do whatever we have to do because PETS ARE FAMILY.  You do not toss them out of car doors. You thank them for warning you that the dangerous brown UPS truck is nearby, or reminding you that your cell phone is ringing, or waiting for hours inside the front door for you to return home. 

There's a prayer that goes: "God, please help me to become the person my dog already thinks I am." Dogs love us unconditionally and give us the opportunity to be our best selves. Pets - whether dogs, cats, gerbils, chinchillas, ferrets, fish, llamas, or horses - allow us to open our hearts and experience the opposite of evil indifference, and that is love.

Entry #15: CLOTHES

I hope clothing was not a big deal for you when you were growing up. I hope you had enough of it, that it kept you warm in the winter, and that it was decent-looking.

As you might expect by now (if you have read any of my previous posts), clothing was not handled by my mother in a normal manner. There were a number of factors that converged to make a Perfect Storm that produced a Clothing Catastrophe.

First of all, my mother disliked wearing any clothes at all. She was an exhibitionist and nudist at heart. She slept naked, swam in their pool naked, and walked around the house naked. When she accidentally walked in on my brother in the kitchen stark naked, he was so horrified I thought his head was going to explode.

This is her favorite joke, which she repeated 24,000 times:

What is honeymoon salad?

Lettuce alone without dressing.

You're welcome.

My mother preferred to wear a minimum of clothes - for example, her bathrobe with no belt. She also had an ongoing war with under-garments. The under-garments always lost, except on very special occasions. She was well-endowed and needed to wear a bra, but she disliked feeling constricted. Her compromise was to put on a bra, but not fasten it in the back. It looked exactly as you would expect. She also disliked zipping up her pants. The overall effect was that her flesh went swaying in different directions and seemed to be trying to burst out at the seams. Nakedness threatened.

When my mother was very old, my daughter paid her a visit to introduce her wonderful boyfriend. Leaving the boyfriend safely in the kitchen - she was no fool! - my daughter found my mother on the porch wearing a short, ill-fitting, unfastened shirt and an adult diaper. My daughter suggested that she and her boyfriend wait in the kitchen while my mother got dressed.

"Oh, nobody cares about those things any more," my mother scoffed, shuffling into the kitchen.

My daughter was horrified - but not as horrified as her boyfriend, who had to be polite to a saggy, wrinkly, half-dressed, cuckoo old woman wearing a loose diaper. Poor thing - he saw too much. He was so traumatized he never went back.

I think it's pretty clear that my mother had absolutely no interest in her daily appearance. She generally looked like a bag lady, and did not care AT ALL unless there was an occasion that included men to whom she was not married. One of her friends once told her, "It's obvious you are rich, because only a wealthy person could afford to look as awful as you do!" She was quite proud of that. When I was young I attributed all her peculiarities to being drunk, but I later read that disregard for personal appearance can be a symptom of a personality disorder.

My mother generally wore misshapen old clothing that often was stained. She loved to wear a cheap white tennis hat that was covered with obvious black mold spots. She went out to lunch in a pair of matching flannel pajamas I had given her as if they were suitable attire. Adding a brooch did not make them appropriate. She looked insane.

My mother loved to think she was fooling people by not spending money on the correct clothing. It was her own little way of feeling smarter than everyone else. She felt superior to the other women, who were fools for wasting their money on expensive clothes while she cleverly wore pajamas instead of pants, or a long nightgown instead of a formal dress - just the way she hung cheap polyester quilts in the windows instead of buying real curtains. She fooled no one. I was mortified when the other women wore lovely floral, fitted Middle Aged Mom bathing suits from Lily Pulitzer, and my mother would come out of the ocean in some cheap, unlined jumper made of the wrong material, her boobs swinging, everything under-supported and over-exposed. There is a reason why bathing suits were invented.

It follows that my mother certainly wasn't going to waste money on clothes for her three children. I remember going with my brothers to a discount clothing store the size of an airplane hangar and searching through heaps and heaps of dark pants. She also took us to a tacky shoe store named Flocco's, where she bought boys' shoes for all three of us.

I was cursed with wide feet. (A doctor once looked at an x-ray of my foot and said, "Hmm... dainty.") There must have been shoes somewhere for girls with wide feet, but my mother simply bought me boys' shoes. I remember a pair of particularly hideous black penny loafers in fifth grade. I was thrilled to get actual penny loafers like the other girls, and I even put shiny pennies in the slots on top - but nothing could disguise their grotesque dark color and their boy-like clunkiness next to the cute slippers of the other girls. It was the dawning of my awareness that my clothes were... different.

If you grow up eating purple cabbage for breakfast, then purple cabbage seems normal to you because that's all you've ever known. Eventually, however, you're going to find out that other kids are eating pancakes or cereal or eggs and bacon, and you will begin to harbor secret doubts about purple cabbage. But the subject is never up for discussion, and you are told to be GRATEFUL for your purple cabbage. Nothing else is on the menu. You're not old enough to buy your own breakfast. So you keep eating purple cabbage until it becomes pretty clear one day - based on the reactions of other people - that purple cabbage really is not normal. And then you realize... you're a weirdo.

I wore hand-me-down clothes from my brothers for years. Occasionally my mother would buy matching mother-and-daughter dresses, just to emphasize further that I was supposed to be her mini-me. (She had already given me her exact same name at birth, which would later confuse the Federal Income Tax greatly.) At best I looked like a tomboy, and at worst like something out of Deliverance.

Public school was academically a breeze, but in third grade we were given an exercise in which we were supposed to circle all the bad things that little Billy did. For example, he woke up in the morning and put on the same clothes he had worn the day before. Nothing wrong with that - I did it every day. Billy also neglected to brush his teeth or change his underwear, and went to school without eating breakfast. All standard for me. I didn't even understand the point of the exercise.

I remember very clearly going over this exercise as a class. I had not circled any of Billy's bad behavior because I simply had not recognized it. All the other students clearly knew things I did not. For the first time I was introduced to concepts like clean underwear and fresh clothes every day. They were a revelation. I often wonder if the teacher handed out that exercise just for my benefit.

I remember in sixth grade wearing my black boys' loafers with one of my brothers' old plaid shirts and contrasting boys' plaid pants. The other girls had pretty dresses with matching bows in their hair, pastel-colored sweaters, sweet white blouses with tidy skirts, and so on. I had a vague feeling something was not right, but the person in charge of my well-being - my mother - was completely unperturbed and was not making any changes.

I was like a weed that had grown up wild. No one bought me pretty clothes, or taught me how to wash my hair, or gave me breakfast in the morning. I gave myself a bath occasionally, while my mother would be downstairs drinking. Other than telling me to say "thank you" and to sit up straight - threatening to stick me with a fork - my mother had taught me no manners or social niceties. I had no idea that society had conventions to use for any occasion. I had just been winging it for 11 years, completely unaware of normal standards for eating, clothing, and behavior. I seldom went to anyone else's house, so I was not aware that other girls did not draw on their bedroom walls, and that they had four-poster beds with pretty coverlets and matching curtains instead of a mattress in a metal frame with six extremely heavy wool blankets and bare windows.
My Aunt Alice decided I had better go to private school. I was given an admissions test at the Misses Shipley School, which I thought went rather well. Later, my mother informed me I had been accepted.

"I thought I would get in," I confessed happily to my mother.

"I didn't," she answered cruelly, without explanation.

Why did she think there was something wrong with me? I was going into seventh grade. My anxiety and self-doubt deepened, and my isolation increased. It was impossible to be comfortable around other people. I was too busy observing their behavior and trying to find out what was "normal." I came across as creepy and detached.

It's a good thing I attended Shipley, but it was like being thrown to the wolves. My mother refused to buy me new uniforms: green tunics for different seasons, white button-down shirts (preferably starched at the dry cleaner's), green knee socks, and puffy green bloomers. Instead she took me to the Shipley Thrift Shop, where she bought the old, discarded uniforms of other students.

The uniform included brown lace-up shoes, obviously referring to a type of expensive ruddy oxfords made for girls. Somehow my mother located lace-up shoes the color of baby poop in the far corner of Sears. Within the first ten minutes of my new school, another girl looked at my feet and laughed. "You're wearing Girl Scout shoes!" My fate was sealed.

The other girls had already attended Shipley from kindergarten. They all knew each other well, and had honed and refined a distinct preppy look that was so much more than simply clothing. It suggested the right address, an easy athleticism, summers on Nantucket, and special blessings from God that included shining hair, perfect skin, and a bred-in-the-bone unshakeable self-confidence. These girls were the future debutantes of the Main Line, and they were being groomed for life in High Society. They could spot imitation Top-Siders from fifty paces, and within the restrictions of wearing a uniform they had their own set of greater restrictions, such as removing the "fairy loop" from the back of each white oxford shirt, or wearing only a particular brand of raincoat, or sweater, or shoes.

On Fridays we were allowed to wear normal clothes - but I didn't have any. The other girls wore Pappagallo flats in a rainbow of colors, blouses from Talbots, skirts from The Villager, beautiful Fair Isle sweaters, luxurious heavy-wale corduroy pants, even wool pants suits suitable for taking the Concorde to Europe. I wore my old green tunic and looked like an idiot.

I started fighting in earnest with my mother about clothing. This was a matter of survival. VERY grudgingly, she took me back to the Shipley Thrift Shop and bought me a skirt of large black-and-white houndstooth. and a lime green blouse. I knew perfectly well that these clothes were the hand-me-downs of another student. They did not even match. But they were something.

Standing in line one day, I was passed an anonymous note that read, "Why do you always wear the same clothes?" I was mortified. But I was also trapped. I had no money. I couldn't drive. My mother refused to buy me anything. Where was I supposed to get clothes?

Just then, an enterprising classmate started her own business sewing bathing suits. I don't remember why she was raising money, but orders were brisk. She brought in different Butterick patterns and fabrics and let students design their own bathing suits.

She saved my life. I started sewing my own clothes. My mother even bought me the smallest, cheapest Singer sewing machine available. I detested sewing, but finally I had skirts and pants to wear. Later I moved on to beautiful hippie dresses made out of bedspreads from India.

Eventually, when I learned how to drive, I negotiated a tiny clothing allowance each month. It wasn't much, but it meant freedom.

When it came time to dress my own children, you can be damn sure they did not look like weeds. I got out the old sewing machine and made them little outfits and sewed Halloween costumes. I knitted them hand-made sweaters. And yes, I bought them actual clothes. They did not get anything fancy, but they were allowed to be reasonably stylin'. My mother was outraged by my extravagance.

A multimillionaire neighbor whose son was friends with mine, and who knew we were poor, also took me to task. "Honestly," she said with the denseness of the very rich, "I just don't know HOW you dress your children in L. L. Bean!"

I said nothing. But I wish I could have said everything you just read.