Filed under: fragments | Tags: Carmel, carmel woods, draperies, Monterey Peninsula artist, pillow covers, sewing, singer sewing machine, slipcovers, susan canavarro, upholstery
After Dad left that last time to get married to another woman, Mama, left with very little financial resources, had to find her own way. They had a bitter divorce over money and child support. Mama got half the child support, and the other half was deducted for payments towards the house. She had little work experience, but she could sew clothing; she knew how to use her old Singer treadle.
She worked odd jobs, sewing draperies and slipcovers for other shops, sold Diner’s cards over the phone, and eventually began her own decorating business, making draperies and Roman shades, slipcovers that fit so well they looked upholstered, and doing regular upholstery for Carmel clients. She made sandals, and fancy fabric linings for picnic baskets, tea cozies, and bun warmers. And like me, or me like her, she made throw pillow covers, only hers were more traditional than my bizarre creations. She could make anything with a sewing machine, and to my chagrin at times, even without patterns.
She worked only when she needed money. Many times, a large block of money went for something frivolous, like a chaise-lounge. I never understood her logic, until now. I know from personal experience of being a person without money, that holding a big chunk of money in my hands is very tempting and, like Mama, all I want to do is buy something frivolous and personal and fun.
Bill, gray-haired and old enough to be my grandfather, was a friend of Mother’s. He came to the same Monterey folk dancing group my sister and I attended. He didn’t dance, he just sat smiling and watching the dancers, chatting with Mother as she watched. It felt odd. I didn’t know what their relationship was. I didn’t know why he was there every Friday night, if not to dance.
When I was only 16, the year I started with the folk dancing and had begun my third year of high school, Mama asked him to buy a pair of shoes for me. He drove me down the hill to Holman’s Department Store in town where he bought a pair of sleek, shiny black flats for me. Wearing them, I felt grown up, but getting them from this old guy felt strange. Strange, and somehow inappropriate even though he was Mama’s friend.
He lived in the Carmel Woods area. A neighborhood of narrow roads winding around the forested hills and canyons with homes perched off canyon walls amidst the pines. In the early to mid 1900′s, the Woods was an unincorporated neighborhood of residents who settled in Carmel when it was a small inexpensive beach resort destination soon to become an artists’ enclave before it became a busy and gentrified tourist destination. Most of the people in this wooded area built their own homes, building codes probably non-existent at the time.
Before Bill’s wife died, they designed and hand created greeting cards. They had a very successful business. In their owner-built house in the Woods, they became old Carmel money. As they were in the arts, they knew some of the same people my mother and father knew—artists, writers and musicians.
When I was in high school, I heard that after his wife died, Bill was a humanitarian who supported several Monterey Peninsula Community College foreign exchange students, giving them a place to live, paying their tuition. I think Mother was hoping he would do the same for me.
One evening he invited us to supper at his home. When dinner was over, Mother got up to leave as if she was going to leave without me. She didn’t say, Come on Susan, it’s time to go. She just got up, put on her coat and started for the door, implying, and I remember thinking at the time, that I was to stay with Bill. Stay? Oh God, no. Stay?
The word lingers in the spaces and traces of my heart-pounding fear.
Mother! Wait! Where are you going?
It felt like she had made a deal—me for the shoes or possibly me for college tuition. At the time, I was taking all college prep classes; Mom had no money for college, no other resources but what Bill could offer her. Panic stricken, my heart pounding, I thought she was trying to give me to this old man, or worse, sell me to him.
Oh God, Mom, please don’t make me stay here. Please don’t make me do this.
To this day I do not remember how the evening turned out. The old man with the gray hair became my nightmare: a bad dream-wound that I can’t heal. Did that really happen to me? Did she really try to sell me? Or give me away? Was she that desperate? Was she really that nuts? Was she doing it for my benefit or for herself?
I don’t know.
It could be that I threw such a temper tantrum she had to take me home with her. It could also be my illusions. Like many memories, it could be just my illusions. I’m not sure any more.
© Susan Canavarro. All Rights Reserved.
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Susan I didn’t mean to make light of what you wrote and what you went thru. As we discussed a long time ago –your mother, mine, Marti’s and it seems so many others had mothers who were all very similiar. Very little cherishing, very little mothering, and not aware of most of their actions against their daughters.Their moments of trying often turned into horrors for the daughters on different fronts. As I pointed out a long time ago, it seems to be generational with women our ages and post war mothers who grew up in the depression…all sorts of reasoning and hypotheses can be made of why they turned out the way they did. None of which helps us individually with the hurt that we still feel. The sting lingers, the horrors linger, but on occasion we can have a cry or a laugh…as your book brought out. Keep writing, it is the best method of release and it also helps others.
Comment by jrwagenschutz August 21, 2011 @ 7:04 AMjrwagenschutz
Hi jacquie, I took no offense at all. I’m sorry if you thought I had taken offense. I’m feeling a bit irrascible and irritable these days. It bothers me that I have no clear memory of what happened, but I realize I had enough fear and uncertainty and unpleasantness with my mother to warrant that deep feeling of dis-ease and fear I remember so well. Susan
Comment by Susan Canavarro August 21, 2011 @ 7:40 AM…you started a mystery filled with intrigue, suspense, questions, and NO answers! Funny, but I am sure not to you.
Comment by jrwagenschutz August 20, 2011 @ 3:29 PMI do like your description of everything in this story, detailed enough to allow one to easily visualize everything from the houses to your mom’s sewing. And, you also sew wonderfully and creatively, having developed and learned from two great artists. Susan, your art is has no limits, it is boundless in what you can create.
jrwagenschutz
Mystery for sure. I wish the memory would go away. But I can’t ask my mother what really happened. What I feel now is real, and what I remember feeling then is real, and the important thing here is that our situation was so fraught with tension and adversity that something like this would even come near to happening is the sad or tragic thing. Parents should cherish their children. Respect their children as individuals, with desires and dreams all their own. This I know for sure. I’m living proof of not experiencing that kind of cherishing from my mother. But I also understand now that she was ill.
Comment by Susan Canavarro August 20, 2011 @ 7:07 PMOh, Susan, this is so sad. I can feel your terror, and your disappointment in your mother. I can also feel your mother’s desperation. She must have been trying so hard to provide for you. It’s also scary that you don’t remember what happened.
Comment by Jan W. August 20, 2011 @ 2:43 PMI think you are so courageous to face this by writing it down. In my view, this is a heroic act on your part.
Yes, I think she was desperate in those days. She had a way of pushing my buttons. It seemed many times that she did it on purpose, that she enjoyed watching me fall to pieces, that somehow it made her feel more powerful. And I think the dis-ease that I felt about that evening really has to do with that more than anything else. What stands out in my memories is the feeling of dis-ease, the emotional uncertainty, and the fear. I know she wanted me to go to college. I know she wanted to be able to support me. And she never made one demand that I find a job to earn my own money. But she also let me know how much she suffered. And more than once, she enjoyed my suffering.
Comment by Susan Canavarro August 20, 2011 @ 7:00 PMSusan,
Comment by Jack Remick August 20, 2011 @ 2:32 PMSpeaking as an old gray haired man who has never bought a young woman shiny black shoes in exchange for anything all I can say is I hope you threw the fit. Also, I have to say you found something dark an deep in this writing. More when you find the door to memory.
Most likely I threw a monstrous screaming fit, which is enough to make me forget the whole night. I’m not proud of my temper tantrums. My mother and I had a strange adversarial relationship. She seemed to enjoy pushing my buttons, watching me go off the deep end, and she never taught me self-control or how to deal with life’s difficult emotional situations. Maybe because she herself didn’t deal well with it all. And you have to remember that at age 16 any guy over 30 is going to seem like an old man, and this guy was in his sixties at the time!
Comment by Susan Canavarro August 20, 2011 @ 6:48 PM