La Dame d’Obscurité

I mentioned in a previous post that we weren’t allowed to go to other people’s places or have anyone over to our place. I don’t really understand the reasoning for this, perhaps we would glimpse what life was like beyond the dark side? Maybe Mom couldn’t handle having more than two children around at any given time.
All I know is our “social circle” was limited to visits to our foster Mother’s relatives. Specifically Uncle D and Aunt W who lived on a farm somewhere out Brantford way I believe; Uncle B and Aunt M who lived in Richmond Hill and had grown children (Michael & Caroline) and my foster sister’s family which was the only one with children albeit they were younger than us.
Aunt W & Uncle D had a piano which I spent hours playing around on avoiding at all costs sitting down to a meal with them. Their dishes always had bits of food some previous meal stuck to the place which made my stomach churn. I get the creeps just thinking about it.
Aunt M had this beautiful halo of pure white hair. Apparently she went completely white after some trauma when she was a teenager or young adult. Uncle B would let me stand on his feet while he danced me around the room. The memory brings tears to my eyes. I really liked going to their house, guess I felt cared for. Now I’m going to bawl my eyes out. You know that deep sobbing that just takes over your whole body…that kind! ‘Cept I’m going to have to get control because the house cleaners will be here any moment. Oh damn, here they are. Get a grip!

My first true love! I just thought he was the cat’s meow! What an odd saying, especially if you find a cat’s mewl annoying! At any rate, I can’t even remember what Jeffrey looked like, but I do get a warm feeling in remembrance. One of the perks of living with the foster parents was that we weren’t to go to other people’s houses and no one was allowed to come to our house. Naturally that didn’t stop me from inviting Jeffrey to our house, hush hush, of course. He arrived as expected and I was thrilled to death and then Mom came out and shooed him away on pain of death. I was so embarrassed I wanted to sink into the earth. But I did learn to NEVER to that again! Probably landed in the bedroom without dinner again. Quel surprise!

I believe my foster sister was married before we arrived on the foster parent’s doorstep, though it may be that she was at home and left to be married after we arrived. She grew up seeing foster children come and go and learned early on that doing wrong could get you sent back. As a result, J was a princess. She did what she was told, when she was told, living in fear of being sent back.

Imagine being afraid that your parents will send you back if you do anything wrong.

Fast forward twenty years to the moment when J finds out that her parents are actually her adoptive parents. J’s reaction to this astonishing news, once she got over the initial shock, is relief. Relief? She was relieved that her DNA would not turn her into her mother, the harridan.

The woman (Mom) made her husband (Dad) climb up into the attic to fix something even though his state of health was so poor he shouldn’t have considered complying. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t defy her. J wonders if she was holding something over him, but it could be that he was the type of guy that just wasn’t bothered and went along to get along.

Fortunately J was able to connect with her siblings and her father who was a resident in a retirement facility at the time.

What a wonderful outcome to a surprising turn of events!

I confess that a small part of me wishes it were me that was adopted and had this happy ending. ‘Tis but a dream!

Just like the runaway story, I imagine everyone has a “you’re different from me” story. My sister and I grew up without brothers and had no idea they were built differently than we were until this one day! It’s inexplicable, that to this day, I still have some deep shame attached to this “incident”.
I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I was a few years older than the little boy who played a part in this discovery or maybe it’s just that anything to do with our bodies was considered “dirty”, or maybe my sister instigated this event, therefore it’s my fault it happened, I’m not really sure.
Somehow, I attached the notion that I was in a position of power when we asked this boy to show us his, therefore I’m to blame, hence I’m a badly twisted individual.
The thing is I wouldn’t have been more than 9 years old, my sister 7, so how this is all put together in my brain is completely messed up.

One of the magical moments in my young life was watching ladybugs move about both inside and outside my bedroom window. I could completely lose myself while observing “bugs”. I just loved ladybugs.
Then there’s the house fly which I always shoo away from my food, but never interfered with when they were walking across my limbs. I enjoy the tickle of their feet across my arms and legs. Watching insects moving about in their worlds always intrigued me as a child. I suppose in some weird way I could relate to being this small being in a world that could crush you with very little effort.
Perhaps that’s more an observation from my adult self!
Still, the expression “crush you like a bug” is one of my favourites when discussing going after large, global entities for payment or recourse!
Other insects that held my interest included walking sticks (in the States), ants, dragon flies (at the cottage) and butterflies.

Grade 2, Mrs. M is my teacher and I unequivocally hate this monkey-faced woman. She hovers; relentlessly reminding me that I am going to fail. “You’re going to fail, D”! Over and over again, ad nauseam.
I’m guessing it was grade 2 when my foster parents and biological father were informed that “she will never grasp the simplest concepts” and “she should be groomed for domestic service”. My bio Dad would tell you that I was backwards!
I was watching “Inside the Actors Studio” the other day; the guest was Jim Carrey and he talked about how we all start off with some intrinsic lie about ourselves upon which we build our personality. This was (maybe still is) mine.
I was 32 years old (1988) when I was asked to submit to the very same, or maybe similar, testing my son was undergoing as a result of my decision to have him assessed independent of the school system. We’ll get to that part of the story a little later on.
When I arrived for the appointment to review the assessments, I was told that I scored above the 90th percentile, if I remember the phrasing correctly. It was then explained to me that I am brighter than (the average bear) over 90% of the population. I asked the person to check the file to ensure she had the correct one explaining that my full name was D_________ G_________ A_________. She smiled and told me she had the right file.
I remember calling my friend, Linda, relaying this news and her response which further astonished me before breaking out in uproarious laughter was, “well, if you’re weren’t really smart we wouldn’t be friends.” Well, bully for us!
It took me quite awhile to process this information. I had been taken out of school when I was 15, flunked out of university in 1984 and by 1986 had given up on pursuing university studies. I was too “stupid” to manage academia.

It occurred to me that as I was writing the previous post that perhaps one of the reasons I have food issues may stem from all those days where I was sent to my room without supper. Plus, we weren’t allowed to eat whenever we were hungry. The fridge was off limits between meals no matter how hungry we were. At least I think that rule applied to us both.
It was very strange for me when we moved in with my biological father and his new wife. We were allowed to access the fridge whenever we wanted. We were practiced in always asking first which drove my new stepmother mad, both literally and figuratively, I think. That and the fact that we didn’t get the whole concept of letting her know when we’d finished off the last of something. Possibly because we were waiting for the axe to fall for eating all of “whatever” it was that was no longer.
Thinking about food, I can’t begin to describe how much I hated meat. As a little girl I could eat the vegetables and potatoes in our traditional English style supper, but the meat just wouldn’t go down. I would chew and chew and chew and eventually chew all the goodness out of the piece in my mouth. The piece would be so dry it was impossible to swallow, so it’d just get pushed around with my tongue, until I either excused myself to go to the washroom and spit it out or used a tissue to dispose of it surreptitiously. My foster mom would have freaked out if she knew I was doing this. Spitting out perfectly good food, some poor child in Africa, etc.
I would stuff the tissues with the dried out meat behind the buffet in the formal dining room. I imagine that was quite the surprise when they moved to their U.S. based retirement home. Imagine the look on their faces…what the hell!?!?!?
Makes me laugh out loud at this rather pitifully small payback.

I expect everyone has a “I’m going to run away from home” story. Mine starts out with being sent to my room, without dinner, again. My foster parents and my sister left the house and me in it. I would have been 7 or 8, I suppose. I decided there and then that I was going to run away from home. As I recall I didn’t have anything I wanted to take with me so I crept down the stairs, left the door unlocked (now that’s commitment) and then opened the “barn door” and ventured out briefly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anywhere to run to. With this realization I headed back up the stairs and returned to my room.
When my sister returned I swore her to secrecy and told her about my wild adventure and how I almost ran away from home. It was all very dramatic and hush hush!
Next day I was back in my room without dinner being punished for trying to run away from home. Yep, she told. I don’t know what possessed me to tell her in the first place. It’s not like I hadn’t already had years of experience in her betraying me or making things up and that no matter what I did I would land in my room without dinner.
Still, pretty funny anyway!

As the oldest of two, while living in the foster home, I was held responsible for my sister. My sister and I did not get along well together. I won’t say that we never had any fun together. There are moments I remember fondly where we are standing on picnic tables singing and dancing our hearts out, making up plays or playing out our own little dramas. We would entertain the veterans who came to make poppies when we got home from school.
However, we spent most of our time together arguing. This dynamic was set up by our foster mother. Recall that it was made clear to my father that they only wanted my sister, so I was treated as a second class citizen right from the start and my sister was the princess. She could do no wrong and if she did get into trouble it was all my fault for allowing it to happen or, alternatively, I was accused of having a hand in it.
If my sister said that I did something to her, like make a face or poke her in the ribs or some other sibling type thing, I would be sent to our bedroom without dinner. I can’t count the number of times this happened. Most of the time, I’d done nothing at all.
I was also called George and was treated like the big brother, rather than the big sister that I was. My middle name is Georgina, so you might think it a natural nickname and I’m reading too much into it. I wondered about that too, but then family members told me how poorly I was treated. My foster sister, who was married by the time we came on the scene, told me years ago that she and her husband would get into these awful arguments with our mother over how I was treated. Punishment for this infringement was estrangement for months at a time. That’s right, my mom wouldn’t talk to her own daughter for months at a time. I’m told this happened quite a few times over the nine years we lived with the foster parents.

I was talking about walking to Leaside Public school in my last post and there a couple of things that stand out in my memory; the beautiful yellow flowers on a bush beside the short bridge at the bottom of the hill, the old man offering me money, and the horrible storm that made it almost impossible to get up the hill.
The yellow flowers in the fall. Just thinking about them gives me calm. I have only come across these once, maybe twice in my lifetime since then. I just went off on a tangent to find the plant I loved so dearly as a child. Turns out it was a deciduous forsythia plant. Lovely! I am a sentimental old fool with tears in my eyes. I suppose because this is one of those split second moments in time when I was truly and completely deliriously happy.
Then there was the creepy guy who offered me money close to where my favourite flowers were. I have often wondered why I was so terrified by this man. I now understand that I have a gut reaction to people in general and there must have been something very wrong with him. I remember this overwhelming terror and running like the wind to get home.
There was another time though, when I accepted coins from a man in the park and then hid them in our room so our mother wouldn’t find them. I don’t remember that turning out well. As I recall there was quite the discussion about accepting money or candy from “strangers”, whatever the heck that is! Probably sent to my room again, though now I can see why!
I also remember walking to school with my sister one very stormy day and struggling to get up the hill. It’s a very steep hill covered in ice and we kept slipping back to where we started. My sister went back home probably in tears because we couldn’t get up the hill. I on the other hand persevered and eventually got up the hill quite possible with tears of frustration frozen on my face. My sister got a ride which must have taken a different route because I don’t remember getting picked up along the way or more likely I had already made it to school by the time my Dad returned home to drive her as my Mother didn’t drive.