What Do I Think I’m Doing???

I’m sure I’m not that much different from most people. I had a crazy childhood filled with crazy people and dysfunction galore. So has most of the world, in varying degrees.  However, in the last few years as I’ve attempted to explain certain aspects of my life to friends and the occasional acquaintance, I have discovered that people are either fascinated or horrified by my experiences. Recently, the common mantra among these people has been “You have to write a book!” My response has always been to laugh at them because it seems absolutely ludicrous that my wacky stories would interest anyone enough that they might want to read about them.  Yet, just the other day my general practice doctor told me that she wanted me to write a book and that I should give her 1%  of the royalties….hmmmmm….Maybe there is something to the interest people have, I don’t know, but what I do know  is that I’m  not ready for a book so a blog will have to do for now.

If you are bored stiff, I apologize and beg your forgiveness, but if by some chance you enjoy what you read……WHEW!……I don’t have to change my name and move to India.

How it all began….

My grandmother truly felt entitled to tell the world, including me that I was her daughter. In her warped viewpoint, custody was nine-tenths of the law and since I lived with her and called her “mom” she had the right to plant a flag in my ass and claim me like a piece of property. The problem with this thinking was this….My mother was looking everywhere for me and had never meant to give me to anyone…especially my grandmother. I’m ahead of the story though…. Let’s go to the beginning…..

My grandmother was the wife of an Airforce colonel. My grandfather who I called Papa and my grandmother, who I called “mommy” or “mom” were stationed in Germany. My father was in his early twenties and decided to live and work in Germany so he could be near his younger brother and sister. At some point in his exploration of Germany he met my mother, Francesca, a young gypsy woman who had two children from a previous marriage. My father and Francesca fell in love and were married soon after. I don’t know much about those early days together but I have one sweet photo of the two of them together on a balcony. They looked happy.

I was born in 1966 and given the name Laura Lee, sweet enough story so far right?….hang on it’s about to take an ugly turn.
For now I’ll just explain that my father, decided that he wanted to return to the U.S. He convinced my mother that he would send for her and that it would be faster for her to get a visa if he went home and took care of the paper work first. He also convinced her that since I had some health issues (asthma) that he should take me with him to the states and my mother could join us when her visa came through. Naturally, my mother trusted her husband and agreed, a decision she regrets, even today. What happened next is incomprehensible to me, especially now that I have my own children. My father brought me back to the United States and someone changed my name to Lori rather than Laura on every single legal document there was, except my birth certificate, and then he filed for divorce from my mother.

In 1989, when I finally found my mother, she shared with me that she had no prior warning that my father was unhappy in the marriage or that he wasn’t planning to send for her. She explained that, in fact, he had been sending money each month to help support my half-brother and sister and her unborn baby. That’s right, my mother was pregnant when my dad left her.

one day, my mother went to the mail box to retrieve the mail and was excited to see a thick envelope in the box. She was elated because she thought it was her Visa and that she would soon be reunited with her husband and daughter, but when she opened the package she was shocked to find divorce papers instead. Divorce papers that accused her of abandoning me.

In Shock, my mother tried desperately to locate me. She was alone, broke and pregnant. She was trying to support herself and my half-brother and sister by working long hours doing menial jobs but in her spare time she still tried to find me. She sent letters to my grandmother begging for information about where I was and sending pictures of my brother when he was born.( A brother I wouldn’t know existed until I was in my twenties.) No one replied to her letters, even though I was living there. To add insult to injury…within a year of brining me back to the United States, my father gave full custody of me to my grandparents….I didn’t see him again for ten years.

My only full brother, Bruno, was born in March of 1967. He grew up knowing about his missing sister and promised to find me one day…ironicly, it was his missing sister who finally found him…:-)….More about that later.

My Grandmother is my Mother and my Father is her son!

Stop rubbing your eyes, you read it correctly and it’s the truth…sort of.

My Grandmother raised me, the reasons why are too numerous and lengthy to go into in this blog posting, so I will just explain that for most of my young life I believed my grandmother was my mother. My earliest memories include her and until her death in 1989 she was refered to as “mommy” or “Mom” As a youngster I had no reason to doubt her credibility…Of course, as time went on there were a few in the family that knew the truth and tried to clue me in but this always sent me running in angry indignation back to my ” “mommy” to complain that “Aunt _____ told me that you aren’t my mommy!” and then for reassurance, to ask ” Are you REALLY my mommy?” The answer to this question was always the same “If I am not your mommy, who is?” She had me there…..I had no idea, in fact, other than a very vague and hazy memory or two I didn’t really know who my father was either…so her indirect and slightly dishonest answer was good enough for me.

So it went for years and years….until my father came back into the picture when I was twelve. His reappearance in my life must have been quite mind-blowing to my grandmother…I don’t think she ever expected him to come home and want to establish a relationship with me….but he did, and now I knew who my father was and I was starting to get curious….My curiosity came to a head when I decided to look for answers in a forbidden box under the basement staircase…I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but I knew there had to be answers in that box and so I went snooping. As I was digging around I came across an old photo. There, smiling back at me was a dark-eyed beauty holding a blonde baby girl. I flipped the photo over and read the back ” Laura Lee one day old, I am so happy!” I realized that this woman was certainly not my grandmother and at some level I knew she must be my mother but I also knew that to confront my grandmother with my suspicions was risky at best. Since my father’s return on scene, my grandmother had gotten quite irritable about everything that involved me. Birthdays, holidays, school events…..all of it was suddenly a reason to remind me that she was my mother and to keep my loyalties to her…With this knowledge in the forefront of my mind I decided not to mention the photo but it somehow made me feel happy inside so I put it in my purse and carried it around.

A few weeks later I came home from school to an icy reception. Apparently I had left my purse in the bathroom and somehow (someone went snooping that’s how!) it’s contents had spilled out onto the floor. The contents that included the photo of the woman I suspected to be my mother. My grandmother was furious and the guilt trip began….I’ll save you the details of that ugly scene but suffice to say that from that moment on I filed away the fact that certain details of my life made absolutely no sense and that the best way to deal with that fact was to simply ignore it and pretend as if it all made perfect sense!

Fast forward to my first wedding…..(yes there have been a few….don’t judge, I had issues…) I can only imagine that my wedding plans were rattling my grandmother’s world… She had spent a great deal of time and energy trying to keep “the secret”. I was not allowed to ask questions about “the secret” and god forbid I share “the secret” with anyone else and my grandmother find out about it….I suppose she had some shame or maybe it was just fear about carrying on such a lie for so long. She must have been starting to realize that her friends were going to be in a room where all of her lies could be exposed in a most embarrassing way……Then again this is the woman who was engaged to three different men when she died and wore all of their rings at the same time…so maybe not.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I wasn’t giving ANY of this any thought. There was no concern on my part about the way things might look when family, friends and future in-laws met and were introduced. I can’t be one hundred percent sure because it has been so long ago but I believe our wedding invitations actually said that my father Duane….etc together with my mother Corinne…ect requested the presence of ……blah blah….blah… I also have to add here that many of the guests, and the ladies who were handling much of the reception were co-workers of mine. You see, at the time I was a pre-school teacher and a proud member of an Assemblies of God church, the church where I was in fact being married. If this wasn’t a recipe for complete disaster, I don’t know what was! Picture it, A sanctuary filled with guests who in different degrees either knew the truth, kind of knew the truth or had no idea… me, who knew the truth but was afraid to acknowledge the truth, my dad who knew the truth better than anyone else could but was trying to keep a balance between a sense of indebtedness to his mother for raising me and a desire to be a father to me, and of course my grandmother who didn’t want to face the truth and certainly didn’t want to be confronted with the truth…Whew, what a clusterF%#@(

I can honestly say, that I don’t remember much about the wedding or the reception. Therefore,what I share now, is actually, accounts of what those who knew the truth, witnessed. These stories were shared with me much later, when it was safe to do so (After my grandmother died) and have provided me with more than one good chuckle!

Evidently, I walked around and introduced my father and “mother” without any hesitation, offering no explanation for the obvious difference in age. According to these reports there were numerous confused expressions and polite smiles that were followed with a nudge or a whisper…but nothing overt. Everyone managed to stay well-mannered. However, whatever they were presuming at that point was about to pale in comparison to what they were about to presume next! You see, again, according to witness accounts…things were under control until two things occurred. The first being that my dad, at every opportunity referred to my “mom” as “mother” and the minister, who happened to be my Uncle also refered to the woman I called “mom” as his mom and refered to himself as my uncle rather than my brother. This coupled with the fact that my step mother was in attendance and so were my young brother and baby sister, who called me “sissy” certainly had tongues wagging ….The controlled confusion and polite smiles were now replaced with gasps,…and according to one account…a prayer circle during the reception! Of course I was completely oblivious to all of it and even if I had noticed it I am not sure I would have understood the implications being made. What I do remember is what happened when I returned to work after the wedding. One of the lovely church ladies who had taken me under her wing sat me down and asked some odd questions. Questions that I can only appreciate in their entirety today….

Minnie O : ” Sweetie, when did your daddy remarry?”

Me: ” He married my stepmother in 1978″ (that might be incorrect, I can’t be certain now.)

Minnie O : Now, I’m a little confused, “Is he your mama’s son?”

Me: Yes…

Minnie O: “Ummmm, okay…and he is your daddy?’

Me: “Uh-huh”

Minnie O : ( after closing her eyes for a moment…likely in prayer) …”Sweetie,… how can that be?”

Me: (Finally sensing that there was a strange misunderstanding going on)….”Oh, my mom is my grandmother…but she gets angry if I call her “grandmother” so I call her mom”

Minnie O: ( after slumping back in the chair and whispering “thank you Jesus…thank you Jesus“)….” Well isn’t that nice…The Lord truly does protect his flock doesn’t he? Are you coming to Joy Fellowship On Wednesday?”

Me: ( wondering what the hell just happened) “Uh-hu”.

…..The marriage lasted less than a year but I bet the scandal it almost caused lasted a lot longer!

Ankle Socks, Leather Chairs and the Gynocologist

Me with my four children, two dogs and best friend/ husband. Proof positive that I had no lasting effects from my "Gyno" trauma.

Have you ever done something that was absolutely crazy in retrospect but at the time seemed perfectly normal? After realizing that you had performed such an act do you suffer from idiots remorse? I assure you that after I share this incident with you, whatever it is, no matter how humiliating, it will pale in comparison. So, read on and ease your mind….I got this. You can thank me later!

I grew up in a home where my Grandmother raised me as a Christian Scientist, sort of… I say that because there is some speculation as to whether my Grandmother, actually believed in the doctrine or whether she used it to save herself a few bucks in medical expenses…but that isn’t important, as far as this story is concerned so for the sake of argument we will assume that I grew up in a devout Christian Science home. At the age of eighteen, I had never so much as set foot in a doctors office. In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to watch television programs that might have a “medical” theme. Soap operas were off limits for the same reason,and dramas such as “Emergency, and St. Elsewhere were all banned from our home. It’s important to point this out, because the story I’m about to relate might seem absolutely impossible without that bit of back story…

Having never seen a doctor of any sort, my step mother decided that when I turned eighteen she would take me to see a doctor, a gynecologist to be exact. Since this would have been strictly forbidden by my grandmother, my step mother took care of the arrangements secretly and when I went to spend time with my father she drove me to see Dr. Derby. Dr. Derby was a balding, little old man, who was probably in his early sixties at the time. He had delivered my younger brother and sister, so he’d been around awhile.

I don’t remember being particularly nervous as we entered the dr.’s office. I suppose having no frame of reference for what I was about to experience would explain that but in retrospect I find it amazing that I wasn’t quaking in my boots! Anyway, after the initial paperwork a nurse led me down a hall to a room. I remember my Step mother asking me if I wanted her to come along but I told her that I’d be alright. The nurse made small talk with me and I can remember telling her, “this is my first visit to a doctor.” and being surprised that she wasn’t surprised. She simply, handed me a folded square and said “Get undressed and Dr. Derby will be in to see you shortly.” I took the square, and set it down on the paper covered examining table. Now, I have to stop here to explain something. Although I had never seen a doctor and I’d had little if any exposure to medical themed television or movies, I did have friends and I had heard them talk about visiting the doctor, so I was aware that part of the process involved being undressed…but that is ALL I knew. I remember that I was not concerned about taking my clothes off. I removed all of my clothing, including undergarments, except for my white ankle socks. To be honest, the decision as to whether I should remove the ankle socks or leave them on was, one of the most difficult decision I made while I got undressed. To remove my socks felt entirely TOO naked, but would he think I was a weirdo if I left them on? Then again, would Dr. Derby find me to be completely clueless about dr. patient protocol, if I mistakenly removed my socks and I was expected to leave them on ? Eventually, I opted to leave them on, because my feet would have been cold…no other reason. So there I was stark naked standing in the room looking around….I certainly didn’t want to look like some “gyno virgin” for gods sake, so my next move was to figure out where to sit? My first choice was on the examining table. I jumped up and sat with my legs dangling over the side. However, I was acutely aware that the longer I sat, the more “used” the paper beneath my backside was getting. This certainly couldn’t be okay…What if I wanted to stand up to shake his hand? OH GOD NO!…That would be HORRIBLE! With that visual in my head, I jumped off of the table and glanced back to look at the paper…WHEW, nothing there!

As I surveyed the room again I noticed that Dr. Derby had a desk against one wall with a Wing Back chair beside it. In a basket next to the chair were some magazines….I put two and two together and deduced that the chair must be the appropriate place for me to sit and wait for the doctor, and so I sat down. That’s right, I sat my tiny 18 year old, adorable hiney on his, who the heck knows how old, leather, Wing back chair and waited. “Hmmmmm”….I felt odd just sitting there, I didn’t want him to think I was nervous or uncomfortable or heaven forbid, COMPLETELY FARKING CLUELESS….So I, in order to look as though I had done this whole thing thousands of times before, grabbed a magazine, crossed my legs and read.

“Knock, Knock”….

Me: (Chipper and relaxed …utterly and completely unaware that something was amiss) “Come In!”,

Dr. Derby “Well, HellooOOO..OH MY GOD” (to the nurse behind him) “HELP HER!!”

Dr. Derby retreats to an unknown location…(A bar?)

Me: no reaction

Nurse: “What ARE you doing!? I gave you a robe!”

Me: “No you didn’t”

Nurse: reaching over and picking up the folded paper square “Yes I did! It’s right here!”

Me: Calmly and without shame, “Oh is that what that is? I didn’t know…I was going to ask you, when you came back in!”

Nurse: Look of utter contempt and shock…”Don’t stand there, put it ON!”

Me: Chipper and still not sure what the fuss was about.. “Okay, you know, this is the first time I’ve ever been to the doctor…..”

Nurse: “sit on the table, don’t move, and Dr. Derby will be back in..”

Me: “Okie Dokie!”….

One would think that at some point during this whole exchange, I might have clued in on the fact that it was totally inappropriate for me to be sitting in a Wing Back chair, completely naked, waiting for my gynecologist to enter the room…but I did not…In fact I just considered the whole experience strange and their behavior to be rather unprofessional. I couldn’t quite understand why a doctor, who looks at female parts all day long, would be so freaked out by me? I thought that maybe I just wasn’t supposed to sit down and THAT was what had upset the two of them. I remember feeling a little embarrassed that I had not known that particular unspoken doctor rule..but it wasn’t until she unfolded the paper robe and handed threw it at me..that I sort of knew. Maybe the fuss was because I didn’t put on the robe! However, I still didn’t TRULY understand what all the hoopla was about. It was MANY years later that I began to realize the gravity of the situation and how, there must have been some discussion about whether I was trying to tempt poor old doctor Derby with my young eighteen year old body,in order to slander his name, or whether I was just, “lock me up and throw away the key CRAZY”!

Today I find the situation absolutely hilarious! It is one of the BEST, Ice breaker stories EVER…and I share it often!…I’m sure Doctor Derby is no longer with us, but I would be willing to bet that I was one patient he NEVER forgot!