Growing up my mother swore. My dad swore. My Grandma Teresa swore. Many of the adults I knew swore. But, children were not supposed to swear. My mother was very firm about that. I lived with this inequity until I was ten.
The summer of 1968, I spent a week with my Grandma Teresa in Olympia on the west side in a pathetic duplex on Mud Bay Road that was torn down about 20 years ago to make a brand new neighborhood with no trees.
Grandma Teresa was my mother’s birth mother. She was a wild character with a strange history. She was married and divorced four times. Before she died, she was working on her fifth marriage. She hitch hiked from Olympia to Texas and back during the 50’s. Early during the war (WW II), she drove an Army truck on Ft. Lewis. My mother told me she spent time in Western State Hospital during the period Frances Farmer was there some time between 1943 and 1948. My mother could never explain why. So, that’s a mystery.
Grandma Teresa and my Grandpa Joe got involved while Teresa was still married to her first husband, Henry Minnick. In 1935, Teresa got pregnant with Joe and had my mom before she had divorced Minnick. Teresa didn’t want my mother to be born out of wedlock, because that was considered a very bad thing then. So, she put Minnick as the father on my mother’s birth certificate. Later, my mom was hurt that Joe never officially adopted her. I seriously doubt she ever told my grandpa she was hurt.
Various people told me that Joe and Teresa were real partiers and drinkers. At the time, my grandpa was a logger and spent the week days up in a logging camp. My grandpa told me that while he was working in the woods he learned that Teresa was entertaining other men. I have no idea about the truth of any of it.
Joe and Teresa separated at the beginning of the war. During the years that Teresa was out of commission in the hospital, my mom bounced from one foster home to another. She hasn’t told me much about this time. I understand that she went from one abusive situation to another before finally moving in with Joe and his new wife, Lucille, in Des Moines, Washington. She was 11.
But back to my visit with Grandma Teresa, she swore like a trooper but I wasn’t supposed to swear. Later that summer, we visited my dad’s parents in Oklahoma. On the way back, we visited my uncle’s family in Myrtle Creek, Oregon. I got to stay with my cousins for a week. My parents would meet my cousins in Portland to pick me up. Their family included Aunt Hoda (Mahoda) and my cousin, Patsy Ann.
My cousins lived a bit out of town. We had three meals a day which Aunt Hoda said was farm life. You either showed up for meals or didn’t eat. No eating between meals. I had to go pick beans with them on weekdays for money. I’d never picked beans or anything else like that before. It was hard, boring work. I didn’t take to it too well. In fact, a couple days in, I got sick. Apparently, too sick to keep picking beans. I felt bad both physically and mentally, but picking beans was worse. The second day of picking beans I started swearing about damn this and hell that. In those days, swearing consisted of damn and hell. My cousins were surprised. They said, “We didn’t know you swear.”
I felt elated and responded, “I do now!”
I would stay up late talking to Patsy Ann and Aunt Hoda. I remember the talks being mostly about Patsy Ann’s love life. She was the oldest. Patsy Ann said, “You are such a good listener and you have good ideas. You understand beyond your years.”
My response was, “You’re damn right.” Both Patsy Ann and Aunt Hoda giggled. In fact, all my cousins laughed when I swore. The more they laughed. The more I swore.
I knew, though, that a reckoning was coming when I would meet my parents to go home. I was an honest kid. I didn’t know how to lie. I didn’t know how to keep a secret. My mind would be tortured by keeping secrets from my mom. But, I LOVED swearing and getting to let out my feelings.
We met at Jansen Beach, an amusement park in Portland, on Sunday at the end of the week. Reflecting on it over the years, it’s hard to explain just why I thought I had to tell my mom, but I did. I was so happy to see my mom. We were wandering around the amusement park. I was trying to stamp a coin in a machine with the right letters of my name and was frustrated. At one point, I blurted out to my mom, “I started swearing.” My mom looked at me, pursed her lips, and refused to talk to me for the rest of the day.
I was bereft. Here I had been away from her for a week, and she was giving me the silent treatment. I knew I shouldn’t have told her but I was conflicted. Eventually, she got over it. I swore I would never make my kid not swear if I was swearing. I also wasn’t going to lie to my kid about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. We could play the game, but I wasn’t going to lie to MY kid.
Fast forward twenty-four years. My daughter is five. Because we all swore in my house including Ronnie, Alex, and I, I didn’t think too much about it until Thanksgiving with my grandparents.
It was the first time they came to my house for Thanksgiving. I’m sure Ronnie did most of the cooking, because she’s such a good cook. Things were going along swimmingly until Alex got finished eating. She got up from her chair and calmly announced, “I have to take a shit.”
Startled, I said, “Okay, honey.” She left and I looked at my grandparents. My granny’s lips were pursed (Lucille). My grandpa’s lips were twitching as he tried not to smile. Ronnie was looking at me expectantly wondering just what I would say. I took a breath and did the only thing I could do in the situation. I shook my head and said, “I haven’t had the grandparents talk with her yet.”
Later that night, Ronnie and I began explaining to Alex that there were four places she couldn’t swear: in front of her grandparents, at school, at her friends’ houses, and in the grocery store line. The rule was reiterated many times. Alex didn’t have any problem following the rule. I got to live in an equitable home that enabled me to happily swear as much as I wanted. My daughter knew and followed the rules. And, my grandparents never again heard that my daughter had to take a shit for which I was eternally grateful.
Happy Thanksgiving to y’all.
Joceile
11.22.17
(Photo: My mom, Teresa, 4th husband, Jimmy. Circa 1948)
(Photo: My mom, Teresa, 4th husband, Jimmy. Circa 1948)
