When Others Take Care of You ...

My Mom worked outside the home, and my Dad did as well until I was 12.   This meant we kids had to have someone else take care of us before we were old enough to go to school.  

Often times for short stints we were placed with Aunts or older cousins.   Mom mostly had relatives come and stay with us at our home, a place we were familiar with.  Where our toys were, where are beds were.  I believe that I enjoyed this much more than being drug to someone's home in an unfamiliar environment.  

The worst of memories I have was when my Mom sent us to some strange woman's house that Mom learned about from someone she knew.  I absolutely detested being there.  I was out of sorts, missed my Mom, and just did not care to be there at all.  I was 5 years old.   I believe it was this memory that etched something inside me at such a young age that I was not loved completely.  I did not understand why I had to be there.  This woman was not nice, did not play with us like my Dad did, and separated us when nap time came.  At home I shared a place with my sister, there I did not. 

My favorite caretaker was my cousin Kathy.  She was fun to be around, she took us on rides, took us out for Halloween while my parents had a party with the Aunts and Uncles.  She played cool music, she sang, she was just my favorite cousin in the whole wide world! 

I believe I always loved hanging around my relatives that cared for me, cause they were familiar.  I liked familiar.  I hated change, I hated new environments.  Maybe that was common for young kids to go through...as they learned to be autonomous and be in the world.  If that was the case, I didn't fare well through the rest of my formative years, cause things were never ever consistent in my life as a child and as a teenager.  My yearning to know how to be in the world would never go away.  I still have issues with that now at age 46, but with honest reflection back to those days, things were not out of control for me, I just didn't understand what was truly going on, and I think my parents weren't aware of how all this was affecting me.  How does a 5 year old explain fear of the mean ole babysitter?  How does a 12 year old explain how much she misses her Mom that left the brood to visit family in another state?

What is clear to me now is that not having some more information about what was going on and why, at key moments in my life, I had to create a reason in my head.  Often it was that no one cared about me.   How wrong I was......

                                    .....  stay tuned for the next chapter in this saga.