Tuesday: Red Headed Step Child
The Gathering
I really did not know how to respond when I received my invitation to join my father’s children for a reunion halfway across the country. It is hard to say my brothers and sister because these were children my father had before he married my mother.
It is not that they are not nice people, I just don’t really know them very well. My father was close to sixty when he married my mother. It is funny when I was a child he seemed so old and now I am older than he was when I was born. My mother and father had both lost their spouses and were left with children to raise. He had ten and she had three. So this marriage brought my mother into a household where she was the outsider and sometimes to some of my siblings the evil step mother. After two years, my mother became pregnant with me. Both my mother and father were shocked by the realization that another child was going to expand this already large family.
By the time I was eleven and my father died, all of my 13 half-brothers and half-sisters had grown and left home. Mother and I were left with each other as most of them were busy raising their own families. All of my parent’s children were kind enough to me but there was little we had in common. In many ways they were as unknown to me as a casual friend from church that was 10 or 20 years older than me so you can understand my concern about going to this gathering of strangers. What would we talk about? What would we have in common? Other than genetics I didn’t have a clue about who they really were except for stories told to me by my mother and those were not always the most pleasant of stories.
Imagine my shock when I arrived at the airport in Oklahoma and joined the only surviving children of my father only to be met by my brother John and his chauffeur driving a Rolls Royce. Well the times they had changed from when I was growing up where after Dad died Mom and I survived on her small salary of 15 dollars a week as a housekeeper or live-in nurse. As we arrived at my brother’s house he was the one with the housekeeper now. It is a funny thing, but I almost could relate more to the housekeeper instead of these strangers who carried the blood line as I.
I know that my brother John had arranged this gathering because he and the other two were reaching a time when death was growing closer just because of their age. It was strange to be the baby again in the midst of this group who seemed very close to each other with shared memories that I knew little about. As a my inner child peeked out from inside my sixty-year old body, I must admit I had fun but I knew this gathering was not a closeness but a realization of my alienation that I had felt all of my life.
As I look back at this moment in time, I realize that as a small child I loved to perform because all these grown ups that were my brothers and sisters would applaud and smile when I was clever and funny. I came to crave that attention and need the approval that was often fleeting. As I write this a great sadness fills my heart as I realize I was just part of a show put on so they could do their closure on their lives. I remember how Mother and I were always considered not really part of their family. I realized that while I was called sister that I was not really part of the “real” family. There is a saying here in the south about not fitting quite fitting in. When someone just isn’t part of the group or the family, he or she is described as: “The red-headed step child.” Maybe I will dye my hair today so I more reflect how I feel. Wonder how I would look as a red head rather than a blonde?
I really did not know how to respond when I received my invitation to join my father’s children for a reunion halfway across the country. It is hard to say my brothers and sister because these were children my father had before he married my mother.
It is not that they are not nice people, I just don’t really know them very well. My father was close to sixty when he married my mother. It is funny when I was a child he seemed so old and now I am older than he was when I was born. My mother and father had both lost their spouses and were left with children to raise. He had ten and she had three. So this marriage brought my mother into a household where she was the outsider and sometimes to some of my siblings the evil step mother. After two years, my mother became pregnant with me. Both my mother and father were shocked by the realization that another child was going to expand this already large family.
By the time I was eleven and my father died, all of my 13 half-brothers and half-sisters had grown and left home. Mother and I were left with each other as most of them were busy raising their own families. All of my parent’s children were kind enough to me but there was little we had in common. In many ways they were as unknown to me as a casual friend from church that was 10 or 20 years older than me so you can understand my concern about going to this gathering of strangers. What would we talk about? What would we have in common? Other than genetics I didn’t have a clue about who they really were except for stories told to me by my mother and those were not always the most pleasant of stories.
Imagine my shock when I arrived at the airport in Oklahoma and joined the only surviving children of my father only to be met by my brother John and his chauffeur driving a Rolls Royce. Well the times they had changed from when I was growing up where after Dad died Mom and I survived on her small salary of 15 dollars a week as a housekeeper or live-in nurse. As we arrived at my brother’s house he was the one with the housekeeper now. It is a funny thing, but I almost could relate more to the housekeeper instead of these strangers who carried the blood line as I.
I know that my brother John had arranged this gathering because he and the other two were reaching a time when death was growing closer just because of their age. It was strange to be the baby again in the midst of this group who seemed very close to each other with shared memories that I knew little about. As a my inner child peeked out from inside my sixty-year old body, I must admit I had fun but I knew this gathering was not a closeness but a realization of my alienation that I had felt all of my life.
As I look back at this moment in time, I realize that as a small child I loved to perform because all these grown ups that were my brothers and sisters would applaud and smile when I was clever and funny. I came to crave that attention and need the approval that was often fleeting. As I write this a great sadness fills my heart as I realize I was just part of a show put on so they could do their closure on their lives. I remember how Mother and I were always considered not really part of their family. I realized that while I was called sister that I was not really part of the “real” family. There is a saying here in the south about not fitting quite fitting in. When someone just isn’t part of the group or the family, he or she is described as: “The red-headed step child.” Maybe I will dye my hair today so I more reflect how I feel. Wonder how I would look as a red head rather than a blonde?
posted by Myriam Maytorena | 7:36 AM
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