One reason I’m sharing my memoir is because I have realized as a health coach, often, when we are struggling, like when trying to be healthier, our childhood may be holding us back. Until we address our past, our present and future may be affected.

Another reason is, when I shared it with friends, many said, “I feel the same. Can we talk?”

And maybe the most important reason; Right now, somewhere, an adult is harming a child. They may not know they’re doing it.

If what you read affects you, please reach out to me via email or phone, or leave a comment. My hope is to connect authentically with you, so we can support each other.

Caution, Dear Reader - Some of the content is graphic, and I have been told, disturbing at times. My goal is not to upset, but to share honestly. Only reflection and honesty have helped me glimpse what has eluded me for 50 years-happiness. Please read at your discretion. 

*Most names have been changed.

Click here to read my memoir from the beginning.

Click here to read installment 5.

Note:

This excerpt is about how low self worth can be passed down generationally, and may be why some may feel “bad,” are plagued by self doubt, and can make poor decisions, like choice of partners.

Installment 6

It’s 2019. My mother’s visiting my sister at her home in New England, one of my children's and my favorite places. My sister and her partner live two blocks from the beach, and a scenic few minutes drive to a quintessential New England down town with white steepled churches, cobblestone streets, and tugboats tied at the pier. From there, on the phone, my mother tells me the rest of the story; how she met, married, divorced, and buried my father, and the suffering that came in between.

When she’s done, I think, my parents should never have been married. But that makes me think, my brother, sister, and I would not be here, and neither would Kara, Bella, and Nicholas (names changed). So I don’t know what’s worse, my parent’s marriage, or my children not being here. It’s obvious to anyone who knew them, they were not a good match. My mother says, “My cousin in Australia warned me, don’t marry Lefteris. He’s not a human being.” She’s a virgin when she meets my father at 26, and doesn’t smoke or drink, the things my father seems to like best, besides sex.

They’re both born in Greece, meet in their twenties and go out together several times. Before they meet, my mother overcomes her fears and for the first time leaves her small fishing village at the edge of the Greek Mediterranean, 115 km south of Sparta, where her family is from. At 18, my quiet, meek mother looks for work in a larger town near Athens. Though scared to go, she’s ready to leave because she has been picking olives in the hills behind her home with her mother and sisters since she was eight. That’s the year her father died under suspicious political conditions after a stomach operation. Before that, he repaired boats down by the water for meager wages. After his death, she has to leave her one room schoolhouse, and any further education behind forever to help her family survive. She says, “First, I got work gathering peanuts in the fields. Then I worked in a factory putting plastic in a large oven and then a button would come out. And before I left for Australia, I worked in a factory that made thread for quilts. We gathered the thread and placed it on large spools.” Eventually, she and hundreds of young Greek girls from neighboring communities board planes bound for Australia. She says, “They came to our towns and told us, if you come to Australia we’ll pay your fare, give you a job, and a place to live.” With no education and little opportunity in Greece, she nervously steps onto an airplane for the first time.

I ask her, “How did you meet my father?” 

“I saw him walking on the street with a girl. He was tall and I liked tall men. He looked handsome in his soldier’s uniform. I asked who he was. My sister said they call him Lefetris. He was engaged to the girl, but then something happened and they broke up. He told me why, but I’m sure he lied. I think it was because he drank too much.”

She says, “Your father soon made the trip to Australia too because he got into trouble with some men for bothering their sister. He lied about what happened but I know they beat him and they all got arrested. He had to go to court, got scared and left the country,” she said. When he arrives in Australia they marry, against friends and family’s advice. 

“One night, soon after we were married, I came home from work and his clothes and suitcase were gone. I found out he moved in with a girl and people who knew them said he was acting wild and crazy. I went with my cousin and asked him if he was coming back. He said, ‘No, I’m not.’ A day later he came back and asked me to forgive him. I did.”

My mother hesitates, “One day, I asked if we could go to the Greek parade. He said no. I asked again, please, can’t we go out for a nice day? ‘Goddamn it,’ he said, slapped my face and threw me against the wall of our apartment. He took his belt off and hit me all over, switching between the belt and his hands. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I slid down the wall and crouched into a ball, turning my body away from him while he kicked me. I was trying to protect my stomach. I didn’t want him to punch or kick me in the belly and hurt my baby. I was pregnant with your brother.” 

“While he beat me, he said, ‘I’ve had enough of Parades.! Later, friends told me he was once at a political rally speaking out against the government. Soldiers beat him so badly they put a hole in his head. I don’t know if they fixed it with bone or metal because he wouldn’t talk about it. I think it was metal. I never touched it,” she says. 

Because of that, my mother and some family members subscribe to the, He was hit in the head and has never been right since, theory to explain my father’s behavior. When I ask my mother what my father was like before he got the hole in his head, she says, “Oh, his mother told me he beat her and his sisters when he was growing up. He was always wild she said.”

When she’s back home from New England, I ask, “Ma, if you knew that, why did you still marry him?” 

She drops her head, lifts her eye towards me, like she’s sorry, and says, “I don’t know. I was stupid.”

After my brother’s born, they have some more trouble in Australia, then leave for America in 1969. Ellis Island has been closed for 15 years so their ship sails into New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty with my soon to be parents standing on deck, ready to start over. They settle in Northern New Jersey where my mother has some family. I’m born the next year, and my sister comes two years later. “At your sister’s birth, he’s disappointed and says, ‘Women have burned me my entire life,’ then walks out,” my mother says, frowning.

I don’t tell Bella this. When I’m four and my brother’s seven, my father starts his son’s sex education, informing us, “Women are here for your pleasure.” He assures us, “They’re yours for the taking.” My brother and I look at each other, smile unsure, then when he walks away, shrug. My mother has her own thoughts on the matter. She warns, “Don’t put yourself on a girl. Don’t have sex until you are married. It’s bad.” I don’t know what they are talking about until years later when the older kids dumpster dive at the Krauszers, pulling out last month’s porn magazines with their covers ripped off.

Ironically, my experience with girls starts around the same time as my father’s lessons. I don’t know if he knew because he was in and out of our apartment, sometimes leaving on his own, and sometimes because my mother kicks him out. If he did know about this, I think he’d say. “That’s my boy.” I feel shame and embarrassment sharing this; I’m four and we’re living on the second floor of a two family house. Magdalena, who screamed in the hallway that my mother was being killed, lives downstairs with her two daughters, Christine, blonde, and Danielle, brunette. “Polish women are strong,” I remember her telling me with a sneer and raised fist. When she can’t take the noise anymore, she bangs her ceiling with a broom handle and screams, “Stop that jumping!” It scares my brother, sister, and me. We stop, for awhile.

One night, someone agrees it’s okay for Christine and me to have a sleepover. She’s four, like me, or maybe five. My brother and I share a room and continue to until I leave for college. He sleeps on the top bunk, I’m on the bottom. We’re lying in our beds when Christine climbs over me to get to the other side, next to the wall. She has a nightgown on and I see and feel her white skin when she straddles me for a moment before lying down next to me. I don’t know if I imagine this; my mother has a worried look on her face, like, I didn’t agree to this. She says, “Be good. Go to bed,” and waits. She doesn’t want to leave. I think I remember Magdalena saying, “They’re fine. Don’t worry.” Eventually, my mother leaves and my chest pounds. I’m not sure what to do because there’s someone in my bed with me; a girl. I lie paralyzed on my back, trying not to touch Christine’s body. She lies on her side, close, facing me, like she doesn’t mind if our bodies touch. She seems comfortable, as though this is normal, having a sleepover with the quiet four year old Greek boy upstairs. 

We fall asleep. I wake up to dark and quiet. She’s whispering in my ear. Her lips are close. I feel her breath. She says, softly, I guess so my brother can’t hear, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” I don’t know what she means. She then lifts her gown and shows me. I’m scared in a way that feels wrong, and something else. She says, “Now show me yours.” I hesitate, because I think it’s bad. But I’m confused, and I don’t want her to be upset with me, so after I say no several times, I pull my pajama pants down, then underwear, just enough to show her. She smiles, then turns over. I think she falls asleep right away, but I can’t. I lie there the rest of the night, staring at the bottom of my brother’s bed, but not seeing it. I can’t get what happened out of my mind. I feel bad, and wrong, and something else that I can’t verbalize as a four year old.

I’m too frightened to speak to my father about what happened, and don’t want to disappoint my mother, and because their lessons are extreme, and in direct conflict, my 4 year old brain is left to misinterpret innocent childhood experiences, over and over again. I’ve learned, when a healthy adult is not present to help a child navigate their world, their mind will often come to a negative conclusion about what’s happening. So, I conclude I did something wrong, and I’m bad, and become good at keeping secrets, especially about sex. My mother’s choice of partner, the result of her own upbringing, affects her young son in ways she couldn’t imagine, culminating in the perpetuation of self doubt, and alas, more poor decisions. The cycle repeats, until someone breaks it…

More to come…

Read installment 5

Read from beginning