Holiday vacation has begun. So now I guess we can get this series of posts really started -- on its sixteenth entry in the series. Hah.
I wrote here yesterday about what Christmas was like in the 90s -- likely the most formative years of my life. In the process, I mentioned but mainly glossed over the 80s. This is mainly because I was seven years old when the 80s ended and my memories of the 80s are nowhere near as clear or as sharp as my memories of the 90s. Don't get me wrong, some things are, but not most of them. It's just feelings, really, and strong nostalgia without solid dates/years I can place on a lot of it. There are many stories about my childhood in the 80s that I've touched on here before, from holidays to just general "what life was like for me then" things. I remember a good bit of my young childhood but as I get older, memories fade and/or disappear, details get blotted out or go fuzzy.
I remember very little about specific Christmases, but the point of this post is to tell some of those stories about what I do remember, so I'll start from my earliest Christmas memory -- has to be 1984 or so, after I'd just turned two. I remember going Christmas shopping with my parents, though I don't know where it was. They were looking to get some piece of furniture or an appliance or something along those lines. It was cold and snowy that night and I seem to recall the store we went to was like a warehouse-like store, or a big department store in a mall, something like that. I don't think they ended up getting what they went looking for, but I remember they got me a toy golf set -- plastic clubs and balls and a little putter-hole thing, and I remember I was in the back seat of the car on the way home. That narrows it down to either the old 1976 Dodge Aspen or my mother's new 1984 Pontiac Grand Am, if she'd already gotten it at that point, and I remember them fighting about something on the drive home -- just snapping back and forth at each other.
The next year, or possibly the year after (so, 1985-86; I don't think at this juncture I'll ever know for sure, but it's much more like 1985) is likely the biggest reason I wanted to write this post. I've told the story here before in snippets, but never in full, and I think it explains a lot about who I am currently even today in 2023 -- and why I do some of the things I do.
As a young boy -- and I do mean young, barely out of toddler stage; in 1985 I would have just turned three -- I had apparently told my mother that I wanted a cat for Christmas. I don't know why I wanted a cat. I don't remember ever telling either of my parents that I wanted a cat, showing them pictures of cats, drawing cats, anything like that. But, apparently, I did and it's what I wanted.
Some backstory, because you'll need it for context: during the daytime hours, when my parents both worked, I would spend the afternoons at my grandmother's house -- she would "babysit" me, so to speak. My mother worked in a doctor's office (she actually worked for my childhood physician for years on end) and that job was a 8-5 job. My father worked 3pm to midnight (something like that, I can't remember now) as a coal miner -- yes, actually down in the mines, mining coal -- he did this for about thirty years, roughly. So, it was rare for me to spend a lot of time with my parents when they were both together, all three of us as a family unit. I would wake up in the morning after my mother had already left for work, and would play in my bedroom/playpen/whatever until my father got up around 10. We would have breakfast and watch TV, and he would get ready for work and take me to my grandmother's before his shift at the mines started. I'd spend the afternoons into the evening with my grandmother and uncle (who was still living at home at the time) and then my mother would come pick me up in the evenings when she came home from work and I would spend the evening into the night with her, being put to bed hours before my father came home from the mines -- and then the cycle would repeat the next day.
To further set the stage, at this time, my mother was 24 and my father was 26. I turn 41 tomorrow, and mostly see people in their twenties as children at this stage of my life -- but it was the 80s and times were different then.
One night, shortly before Christmas -- it could have been my birthday, I don't remember -- I remember that it was very cold and the house windows at my grandmother's were fogged up/iced over. I used to watch for my mother to come home from work to pick me up, as she would arrive at my grandmother's house around the same time every day, roughly. My grandmother had seven children, all but two of them had moved out of the house and had gotten married at that point (in this point in time, my mother's marriage to my father was by far the most recent marriage in the family), but my youngest aunt and uncle -- uncle born December 1962, aunt born May 1965 -- would come and go to/from work and it wasn't uncommon for her other kids to stop by and visit as all of them lived within a 10-15 mile radius from the family homestead. My grandmother's house had a long, sloping driveway that took a dip from the main road, went down into a little valley, and then curved back around to come up to the bottom of the front porch stairs/parking pad area in front of the garage door for the garage that was never used for actual vehicles. For family gatherings and dinners, the cars would park behind one another like a line of ants.
I know I'm being long-winded, but I'm setting the stage.
Over the years, if a car pulled into the driveway after dark, I would be able to recognize who it was by the shape of the car's headlights. I knew when it was my older uncle's truck, for example, or my aunt's GMC Jimmy, by headlight shape even at night. For my aunt and uncle who lived at home, I knew what her 1984 Camaro's headlights looked like, as well as his 1970 Maverick. Likewise, I knew what my mother's headlights looked like for the Grand Am she drove. And that night, my mother had pulled off the road into the edge of the driveway, and had stopped dead -- headlights shining right into the windows about 80 yards away (I told you, long driveway). We didn't know what she was doing. She just sat there for a few minutes, as if she were talking to someone I couldn't see in the dark -- it was December, so it was dark anytime after 5pm, and my mother was not home before 6 on any given night -- so I couldn't see anything but the headlights.
Eventually, after a few minutes, she came down and then up the driveway, and came into the house. She was carrying a box of some sort. It appeared to be a pretty plain, nondescript cardboard box of small size. She explained to me that Santa Claus had stopped her in the driveway and had given her a gift to give me for Christmas, even though it was early, because he knew how much I wanted it. I sat on the pea-green carpet of my grandmother's house and the box was put on the floor in front of me. My mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother all gathered around me so I could open it. There may have been pictures taken -- if there were, you have no idea how much money I would pay to have those pictures in my possession today.
I opened the box -- I was told to do so slowly -- and in the bottom of it was a little black-and-gray furball with big eyes staring up at me. It was a kitten, a little long-haired female kitten with big eyes and long whiskers.
I have a feeling most of you know where I'm going with this by telling this story, but stay tuned because...yeah, it doesn't go well.
She was a Smoke Persian -- not the scrunched-up nose type of Persian, but a Persian nonetheless. She did not have a name. My aunt suggested "Percy" because of the Persian breed. I chose, out of the blue and very randomly, Priscilla. I don't know why. I liked the name. It didn't have anything to do with Priscilla Presley. I also had a decorative plastic pheasant that I named Penelope, so I guess as a child I just really liked exotic P names.
Priscilla was a very patient and sweet cat -- at least with me. I was the only person that cat loved, and it seemed like she hated everything and everyone else. She followed me everywhere, loved it when I carried her around and played with her (even roughly, which I remember being warned multiple times that I needed to be more careful with her -- since I was a very young kid). However, she was, as they say, a menace to my parents, mostly my father. My father couldn't stand her, and I remember he was not happy that my mother had gotten me a kitten. In retrospect, she was just a kitten and doing kitten things -- having the zoomies, jumping on top of things, knocking things off shelves, etc. My father could not stand that and would lock her in the laundry room when she was being "bad." Even at my young age she saw me as her protector, and I bonded very hard with that little kitten.
Eventually, after several months -- maybe a year -- of this, my father had enough. He sat me down and told me in no uncertain terms (I don't know if my mother was there or not at the time) that the cat needed to go, and he was going to find a new home for her. I don't think I believed him at first, or even really understood what he was saying. I also don't think my mother had really agreed to this or really wanted it. What I didn't know was that he had already placed/posted ads offering Priscilla up for sale -- Persians are exceedingly desired cats today, and were even then too, and can sometimes sell for thousands of dollars. My mother had purchased her from the pet store in the mall in Morgantown (I found this out many years later) and she was not inexpensive.
One morning, my father told me that someone was coming to the house to look at Priscilla and that I was not to say or do anything, was told to stay out of the way and to be quiet. He of course did this while my mother was at work. She came to the house and was a very sweet lady, but when I found out that she was trying to take Priscilla, I grabbed the cat and said "you can't take my kitty" and ran back to my room with her, crying. The lady, who had a conscience, told my father that she couldn't, and wouldn't, separate the two of us, and left.
My father came back to my room, angry with me but calm, and flatly told me something I'll never, ever forget.
"You cost me a lot of money today."
Sometime later, on a day I wasn't at home, he had someone else come to the house who he successfully sold Priscilla to, and she was gone. When I returned home and found out, I was inconsolable. My mother was very angry at him. I remember him telling my mother "he'll get over it" in reference to me and my feelings.
I have never forgiven my father for this and likely never will, even though he and I haven't had any sort of father/son relationship in over thirty years.
I do not have any photos of Priscilla. I don't know that any pictures were ever taken of the two of us together, and if they were, I have never had possession of those photos. I only remember what she looked like through the eyes of a very young child, and my memories have faded greatly with time.
I told Daisy the entirety of this story a few nights ago, though she'd heard most of it before, and prefaced it with "So if you wonder why I am always passively looking for Empress, it's because I already had her once and lost her, and her name was Priscilla."
Yeah, so...there's that heartbreaking story. Christmases in the 80s can only go up from there, right?
Ehhhhh.
I did have good birthdays and Christmases in the 80s, but a lot of it is marred with fallout of my parents' divorce. They divorced in August 1987, so 1986 was the last real Christmas we had together as a nuclear family unit. I remember that year was great -- I got the Power Wheels Bigfoot truck and a Transformers: The Movie sleeping bag, which I unzipped completely and used as a blanket for many years, all the way up through my high school days, before it completely fell apart. I also got the Lazer Tag set that had the sensors, Starlytes (the guns) and the baseball cap with a sensor on it. I still have one of the Starlytes somewhere, possibly even in this house. I don't think it works anymore, but still.
You have to admit, this thing still looks rad as fuck.
So after 1986, everything took a dive. I remember Christmas Eves before that time were spent with family -- sometimes my father's family. I remember little snippets of those times with my aunts, uncles, and cousins (some of whom are no longer with us) but only snippets, as I was very young. Afterwards I don't remember a whole lot for a few years. In 1987 I think we still tried to do some semblance of a family Christmas, despite the divorce, but it didn't really work out that well. I find it interesting that I remember more details of my birthdays than Christmas during the late 80s
By 1988 my mother and I were living on our own in a trailer in Morgantown. I turned six that year, and she wanted to throw a birthday party for me in our home -- likely it would also have functioned as Aa Christmas party too, but still. She invited all of the ladies from work (she was working in a dentist office by this time, and they all knew me) and some if not all of my aunts and uncles. She'd made a cake from scratch with chocolate frosting and red gel icing letters. The weather was terrible -- rain, turning to ice, and then turning to snow -- and one by one people called the house and told her they wouldn't make it. Nobody ended up coming to the party. I remember that I was sad and disappointed, but I also remember that she sat at the kitchen table and wept.
Those years were a struggle.
Christmas Eve 1989 I spent with my father, as he'd just remarried three months prior, to my stepmother. It was really the first time I'd spent a lot of time with the stepmother's family, and they gave me piles of gifts. I felt so lucky and surprised by this as I always felt ancillary to them for the most part. Once my father married into their quite large family, family Christmases and other holidays were spent with them. Sometimes I was there for some of it, but most of the time I wasn't -- and by a few years later, once my father had had two daughters with his new wife, I'd been extricated from the situation completely.
But at least he didn't sell me to some rando like he would a cat, right?
The 80s ended with a whimper, at least for me. My mother was seeing the man who would end up becoming my abusive former stepfather (she would marry him in 1990) so there's not a lot else to tell. I am grateful that I have become a mostly stable adult, mostly unaffected these days by the pains of my childhood -- but it was a rocky road to get here, as you've seen.
Tomorrow, I turn 41 -- with everything that entails. I'll cover it here as well, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment