white trash
i like to think my mother tries to be proud that she is white trash. there is an attitude associated with it. a don't take no shit from no one, don't give a shit what anyone has to say or think, workin' my ass off to keep things good sort of attitude.
she was raised by her single mother who worked everyday of my mother's childhood and managed to raise three daughters on the north side of atlanta in chamblee. there is nothing white trash about how my mother was raised, only about how she chose to live her life after she met my father. even then though, she maintained a relatively white-collar job that had her working in a field predominantly with men. only after they got married, or met, would she have truly encountered the red-neck, white trash that his family would have had to offer. based on my memories of his family, with their low country drawl and obsession with huntin', i gather that this is true. my mother grew up in the city, for the most part, traveling to alabama and south carolina for family. my father grew up in the country, tillin' the ground, plantin' crops to have food. he was born with epilepsy and prone to seizures. because of this, he was unable to drive a car up until he received a surgery that removed the damaged frontal portion of his brain, eradicating him of seizures. i'm still unsure of the story of how they could have possibly met. he would have had to have been in atlanta, which is possible, since, as far as i know, all of his working life was with the dekalb county school system as a painter (classrooms, parking lots, etc--before a competition with mexicans). along with meeting my father, my aunt leslie, now deceased due to an accidental overdose of OTC drugs, met and married a good 'ol rough neck and mechanic, tony. she had married another guy, who i know nothing about except that he had hemorrhoids, but they divorced. her marriage with tony stuck. he is a good guy. when i was younger he scared me because he was so tall and had long hair and wore boots and always had hands covered in grease with fingernails that never got clean. all of these factors combined lead my mother to discover her white-trash-ain't-takin'-no-shit-self, which on the surface might seem empowering. what they don't tell you though is that despite the attitude, for most white-trash women, there's not a whole lot of meat behind it. the attitude is the front, and behind that is a scared woman who feels there is never an outlet or someone to reach out to who bottles up emotions, rants to her friends, but ultimately doesn't take action against any problems. she found her white-trash self, dyed it blonde, tanned it, worked it in the yard for a bit, raised them kids a while...then finally got smart, or at least unhappy enough to leave.
unfortunately she did not do this sooner. her oldest daughter was branded with the vivid memories of yelling matches and anger, memories of the harshness of her inconceivably rude father who enjoyed whipping his son, memories of distinct favoritism of one child over another. her only son was branded with the anger that men feel, and the emptiness and lack of comfort a woman has to offer. he had serious anger issues with regard to school and a complete lack of value for education. her youngest daughter just grew up confused and utterly sheltered. they all grew up in a very limited world with few inlets for information, until the internet became available.
i will refuse to be that mother.
these thoughts have been in my head for a while, but lately i've been thinking about everything and decided i needed to write this down, to offer myself some proof that i might be able to look back on and say "that's right, i did what i said i would."
while the thought of kids scares the living shit out of me right now, i am comforted with the fact that at least now i have the opportunity to evaluate my own upbringing and decide what elements to keep and disregard should i ever decide to reproduce.
while i love my mother, i do not particularly like everything about her (which can be said for anyone, of course) but more importantly i am concerned with how she didn't really raise me, particularly in terms of setting morals and values. i taught myself the importance of being smart and showed myself the embarrassment of being an idiot. i taught myself about my own body, consulting a friend's mom every now and then. i taught myself the scares of sex and how to avoid them, along with a poorly taught abstinence-only sex-ed class. i taught myself work-ethic, how to balance a check-book, how to open a bank account, how to make a budget (...not so much how to stick to it...), how to love myself and be confident. my mother did teach me how to clean a house and, in one lesson, how to drive a stick shift, then i practiced on my own for weeks. what i don't feel i taught myself very well was how to value the relationships i have with people, how to stick to a promise, proper diet and exercise.
i will do better for my kids. i don't want them to have to put up with that shit. i want them to be active and proactive and involved with the world around them, not just because it will look good on an application, but also because it is the right thing to do.
perhaps i'm being hard on my mother. she did her best with what was available.
the most vivid memory i have during the divorce was one evening i heard my mother crying in her bedroom, so i went back to her. she was laying down bawling, so i sat on the other side of the bed and asked her what was wrong. she said she thought she was a terrible mother because she was putting our family through that mess, and her mother and grandmother told her she was making a bad decision and that she should just stay with him for the kids and that she was just messing everything up. i responded with, "you are a good mother." she hugged my neck, thankful to hear those words from her child. she was making the right decision.
she was raised by her single mother who worked everyday of my mother's childhood and managed to raise three daughters on the north side of atlanta in chamblee. there is nothing white trash about how my mother was raised, only about how she chose to live her life after she met my father. even then though, she maintained a relatively white-collar job that had her working in a field predominantly with men. only after they got married, or met, would she have truly encountered the red-neck, white trash that his family would have had to offer. based on my memories of his family, with their low country drawl and obsession with huntin', i gather that this is true. my mother grew up in the city, for the most part, traveling to alabama and south carolina for family. my father grew up in the country, tillin' the ground, plantin' crops to have food. he was born with epilepsy and prone to seizures. because of this, he was unable to drive a car up until he received a surgery that removed the damaged frontal portion of his brain, eradicating him of seizures. i'm still unsure of the story of how they could have possibly met. he would have had to have been in atlanta, which is possible, since, as far as i know, all of his working life was with the dekalb county school system as a painter (classrooms, parking lots, etc--before a competition with mexicans). along with meeting my father, my aunt leslie, now deceased due to an accidental overdose of OTC drugs, met and married a good 'ol rough neck and mechanic, tony. she had married another guy, who i know nothing about except that he had hemorrhoids, but they divorced. her marriage with tony stuck. he is a good guy. when i was younger he scared me because he was so tall and had long hair and wore boots and always had hands covered in grease with fingernails that never got clean. all of these factors combined lead my mother to discover her white-trash-ain't-takin'-no-shit-self, which on the surface might seem empowering. what they don't tell you though is that despite the attitude, for most white-trash women, there's not a whole lot of meat behind it. the attitude is the front, and behind that is a scared woman who feels there is never an outlet or someone to reach out to who bottles up emotions, rants to her friends, but ultimately doesn't take action against any problems. she found her white-trash self, dyed it blonde, tanned it, worked it in the yard for a bit, raised them kids a while...then finally got smart, or at least unhappy enough to leave.
unfortunately she did not do this sooner. her oldest daughter was branded with the vivid memories of yelling matches and anger, memories of the harshness of her inconceivably rude father who enjoyed whipping his son, memories of distinct favoritism of one child over another. her only son was branded with the anger that men feel, and the emptiness and lack of comfort a woman has to offer. he had serious anger issues with regard to school and a complete lack of value for education. her youngest daughter just grew up confused and utterly sheltered. they all grew up in a very limited world with few inlets for information, until the internet became available.
i will refuse to be that mother.
these thoughts have been in my head for a while, but lately i've been thinking about everything and decided i needed to write this down, to offer myself some proof that i might be able to look back on and say "that's right, i did what i said i would."
while the thought of kids scares the living shit out of me right now, i am comforted with the fact that at least now i have the opportunity to evaluate my own upbringing and decide what elements to keep and disregard should i ever decide to reproduce.
while i love my mother, i do not particularly like everything about her (which can be said for anyone, of course) but more importantly i am concerned with how she didn't really raise me, particularly in terms of setting morals and values. i taught myself the importance of being smart and showed myself the embarrassment of being an idiot. i taught myself about my own body, consulting a friend's mom every now and then. i taught myself the scares of sex and how to avoid them, along with a poorly taught abstinence-only sex-ed class. i taught myself work-ethic, how to balance a check-book, how to open a bank account, how to make a budget (...not so much how to stick to it...), how to love myself and be confident. my mother did teach me how to clean a house and, in one lesson, how to drive a stick shift, then i practiced on my own for weeks. what i don't feel i taught myself very well was how to value the relationships i have with people, how to stick to a promise, proper diet and exercise.
i will do better for my kids. i don't want them to have to put up with that shit. i want them to be active and proactive and involved with the world around them, not just because it will look good on an application, but also because it is the right thing to do.
perhaps i'm being hard on my mother. she did her best with what was available.
the most vivid memory i have during the divorce was one evening i heard my mother crying in her bedroom, so i went back to her. she was laying down bawling, so i sat on the other side of the bed and asked her what was wrong. she said she thought she was a terrible mother because she was putting our family through that mess, and her mother and grandmother told her she was making a bad decision and that she should just stay with him for the kids and that she was just messing everything up. i responded with, "you are a good mother." she hugged my neck, thankful to hear those words from her child. she was making the right decision.