My Journal

MIDWEST GIRL

Chapter 2

By Abbe Willner

Copyright 2001 Abbe Willner

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"Abbe has such a remarkable Zest for life!" my kintergarten teacher included in her comments to my parents about me. Was it the red pants with orange tops, or my unique way of seeing things?

I treated everything and everybody that I encountered as my friends. Because I thought they were. It was the furthest thing from my mind not to be kind, fair, and nice.

A remarkable zest for life…

I didn't fully comprehend this phrase's meaning until I recognized that it was gone. I used to think I was special. I used to think I was important, I used to think I was worthy of happiness…..At what point, exactly, did this all change??

 

The Gellers' lived to the right of us. Everyone in their family played classical piano, and practice sessions were taken very seriously. It was not unusual to hear a continuous stream of music for anywhere from 4 to 6 hrs daily. Lisa and I had been playing in their driveway after school before dinner.

Lisa's time to practice came, and she went inside. I was still sitting on the driveway happily playing with whatever was occupying my mind at the time, and my sister rode her bike into the driveway.

She was riding in circles around me, getting closer and closer each time. Then she said, "Move; or I will ride into you with my bicycle." As I was telling her to go around me, she rode right into me!

 

She hit me right between the eyes. Blood was everywhere. My mother was in the bathroom (where she usually was, dad has a funny story about that). I ran in and said, "Cathy hit me!" She cleaned me up and then, it was time for dinner….

 

I fully expected that there would be some admonition to my sister by at least one of my parents about her willfully hurting me. I wanted to be protected and righted. And, all thru dinner and then dessert I waited… None ever came… and, since the act had passed, it was never mentioned again.

There were a lot of things we never discussed again. …

My mother was pregnant, and for some reason, Cathy, Dad and Me went to Florida for an, "indefinite" amount of time. When our time there extended 4 or 5 weeks when everyone else had gone home, suddenly, we were to go home…

"What happened to the baby?" my sister asked. " It died" was the response. end of subject, do not discuss again is how this read to me.

As a child, not only do you not ask pointed questions of your parent, I found out, but also, you are supposed to accept whatever answer they give you. And then, it is a "closed subject."

This was never exactly stated, but from the tone in their voice and the look they gave you as they were responding, you knew it to be the case, or, at least I did.

 

Once, when my father was visiting me I asked him, " You and mom are so different, how, in the world, did you two ever meet? "I was the best man at her first wedding." As if I should have known this….

Of course, she characteristically, she denied this. "Your father is crazy and a liar.". " But, I 've since met people who were at the wedding…

It's really none of your business, and really, except for them, chronically logically speaking, why is it important….but still, I thought it was a reasonable question.

A few years later, when I was braver, I asked my father, " Did you leave the country because of the mafia?". His response: "No.

I wanted to get as far away from your mother as I could."

And then he included the only story he had where he truly felt threatened by the mafia. It was a totally different time then, and his reason for deciding to quit the newspaper was also rendered. And, I understood.

 

Dad graduated from a school of Journalism. My Mother's first husband was a fraternity brother of my fathers.

Again, a few yrs later I learned that the reason I was born to my father and mother was that, one time, when dad visited his fraternity brother and his wife, my mother, she said to him, " let's run away.."

They did, and two yrs later there was a knock at our home. The Gentleman appearing at the door served my dad divorce papers from her still current husband, his fraternity brother.

 

Sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it???.

But… you soap fans…, this isn't the best ….

It turns out, that my mother had and just let be adopted the baby produced by she and a very well known soap opera star.

 

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