Spoiled

My mom had been in the hospital at least three times when I was between five and ten years old. Late in 1974, her mother — my cousins and friends and I called her Granny — came to stay. She was in her late sixties. At home, she lived in an expanded trailer house way out in southern Missouri, in the Ozarks region, just north of the Arkansas line. Working around her place, she wore sweatshirts and doubleknit pants and garden boots. Indoors, she made quilts and Barbie-doll clothes. At our house, she fed us and grocery-shopped, laughed at the silliness of Dani and me, and took my mom to her radiation treatments. My dad built her a quilting frame in our basement rec room.

I loved having my grandmother with us, but I felt guilty and babyish — I remember the feeling — for so obviously needing her care. I can see I also felt a vague gratitude for my home life. I wanted to do my part, but I didn’t know what that was.

I wish we had a maid who was very nice. I think Granny wants to go home. I want her to be happy. Today it seems like everything bores me. I wonder how some people seem to never get bored. I wish it would get springy out. I want to make my self better at lots of things, but I can’t seem to change my self in the least. I had fun playing pinners but I think I don’t want to do it now. I think I’m sort of good at it. I hope I can make my self nicer at home. I hope this notebook turns out good, and I hope I fill it fast. I’m glad I had a chance for life and didn’t die or, even worse, be a thing.

Journal entry, early 1975

Observation of a need, altruism, observation of self, restlessness, aspirational desire, impatience with self, observation of self, self affirmation, creative aspirations, gratitude, engagement with life. At ten and a half, I was full of declarations that speak to me today: “this is the small but whole person you were,” while fearsome stresses and worries drew near.

A friend of Dani’s had called me spoiled, and it stuck in my mind like a thorn. Day after day I saw that I depended on my grandmother. I did nothing to help around the house or to care for my mom, who had been everything to me. She laughed at my jokes, let me climb trees and wear boys’ sneakers, consoled me, had even washed my hair for me until she couldn’t. Now my grandmother did it. 

I wondered if Dani’s friend was right. My quick and evaluating mind compared my helplessness to the hard work of my grandmother and my dad. Their care allowed me to spend every minute of my free time running around, reading, and eating. I thought I was babyish at best, at worst spoiled. No good.

I felt better with younger Dani. I treated her as if she were a living security blanket. She was a mild-mannered, dark-haired little girl with a squeaky voice and a silly sense of humor. If I’d had my way, she would have been with me at all times. I wrote lists of shows we should both watch, made up rules to board games that would favor me, and tried to get her to walk to the drugstore without asking her mom first. When I was in charge of every little thing, I forgot how helpless I felt at home. On the other hand, getting away with it proved that I was spoiled. It was logical, I thought, but it didn’t seem fair. “Oh well,” was my refrain, when a hard problem had no good answer. Better to think about other things.