A Daughters Love Story, Part 2 Wendy Ward’s Charm School and the Ugly Disease

Dad and Mom met at church in Peoria, Arizona. They became youth leaders in that same church after marriage and starting a family. At some point we moved back to Oklahoma where my Dad’s parents lived. My dad was one of twenty-one children. Hearing Aunts and Uncles talk about their childhood can be very entertaining to say the least. I have a lovely set of Aunts and Uncles, and at last count I had around forty-six first cousins. 

Don’t think for a minute that you can’t have close relationships when you have that many cousins because that can’t be further from the truth. I remember going to church on Sundays then the entire family would go back to Grandma and Grandpa Beesley’s house for a huge lunch. Then, all us kids would play. We didn’t have video games or cellphones, we had dirt and each other! Then, when we got older we had music, dirt bikes, horses, and each other. I still have the muffler scar AND the pitchfork scars on my right leg, as well as the scar on my forehead from being dragged by a car to prove it! (The car thing was my own fault!)

Grandma Beesley was a faithful, devout Christian. On the flip-side of the Beesley coin, Grandpa was an alcoholic. Grandma was in church every time the little country church door was open. The only times I can remember Grandpa in church was when he was super intoxicated. I remember once him showing up at church then raising his hand to pledge to mow the church lawn every week. I wondered if he would remember that pledge the next day. Another time that I remember him at church was at an Uncle’s wedding. He ended up stepping on the bride’s dress. Then the last time I saw him in church was in Okfusky the day of his funeral. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever seen my Dad heartbroken cry.  The Grandparents seemed like complete opposites. But the older I get the more I realize that they had some type of connection that was deeper than eyes could see. After all, there had to be a deep commitment to have raised all those children together. My Grandfather also didn’t seem to interfere with my Grandmother’s relationship with God either. I’ve never really thought about that before. 

My grandfather was born on December 23, 1894. Can you even begin to imagine the World he lived through. The Great Depression, Dust Bowl, World Wars, the Vietnam War that sent his young son back without his legs, the start of the Olympics and the birth of  icons like Coca Cola and Better Homes and Gardens, whom I now sell Real Estate under, and so much more. The inventions of televisions and air conditioners!  This year, he would have been 129 years old. He passed away in 1973 at the age of 79 from a stroke. My Grandma was around 66 when he passed, but she never had any interest in remarrying. Thinking about that, she was 4 years older than I am now. She passed away in 1997 at the age of 90 years. I can still hear my Grandmother’s voice praying. She was a prayer warrior and because of her faithfulness to God our family is one of faith. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren can count ourselves as blessed that our roots began with her. 

My parents were both very devoted to God and their family. Unlike my Grandparent’s Beesley, they didn’t seem like opposites at all. They ended up moving back to Arizona when I was in 5th grade. Dad became the Pastor at The Pentecostal Church of God in Peoria, Arizona. This was the very same church where they met. A lot of our lives were spent in that little church on the corner. 

My Mom was pretty high-strung. When she got mad we all knew it. There was no mistaking that as plates flew overhead and the yelling at us was ongoing. A lot of people didn’t know that because they didn’t live in our home. On the opposite end of that spectrum was Dad. Quiet like he was always thinking. That drove mom nuts! I can remember her asking him during one of her angry tiraids, “what are you thinking right now?” His answer surprised me and that’s probably why I remember that moment so vividly. “My thoughts are my thoughts and I don’t have to tell you what I’m thinking!” I was absolutely shocked that mom’s angry rant completely stopped in its tracks! I remember holding my breath, afraid of his answer knocking her anger scale up a few notches. Instead, it stopped her in her tracks. She seemed taken aback by his answer. She chucked just a little then said “well okay!” And her fit of anger was over. Cut off as fast as it had arrived. I was blown away! That was not at all anything close to the response I expected. 

Dad was known to prank Mom on occasions. Us kids would laugh so hard and those pranks, looking back on them now, was him scaring poor Mom. He would be riding in the car with her driving and would have his arm out of the window. When she passed another car he would beat on the door as if she hit the other car. It would startle and scare her. When she yelped out, he would laugh hysterically. I also know that paybacks could be fun for Mom as well. I remember one winter the fireplace was roaring. Mom made chili and we all ate a piping hot bowl of it in our living room in front of the fire, bundled up under blankets. Mom took the fireplace poker and stoked the fire, then stepped toward the kitchen. About that time a bunch of firecrackers started going off in the fireplace and I don’t think I’d ever seen my Dad jump off a couch so fast. Again, us kids thought it was funny after the fright of the moment wore off.

Looking back at that time with adult hindsight, I’m sure we were all in front of that fireplace eating hot chili because we were incredibly cold. That house didn’t have central heat and it was cold and in the dead of a frozen winter. We had to use the restroom in a pot on the porch because we only had an outside bathroom. And when I say bathroom, I mean an old wooden, stinky outdoor John. We hauled our water or drew water from the well.  Us kids didn’t fully realize it then, but we were very poor. We didn’t have a car or a telephone at some points either. Had it not been for family, I don’t know how any of us would have survived. But we did with the grace of God. But the biggest testament to my parents was that us kids didn’t know we were impoverished. Mom made our clothes, as did my Aunt Dorothy and my Grandma Poe. I didn’t own a new store bought dress until I was around 12 years of age. I had dresses that came from a store, but the name of the store was “Goodwill.”  I lucked out with new shoes though when my feet were turned in and I absolutely had to have corrective shoes. Those little beauties came in one style: UGLY!

When I was 12 yrs old, my influences were the boys closest to me. It had consisted to that date of my two brothers, Chuck and Randy, and my Uncle Eddie. Mike Beesley, my closest cousin, was one of my most influential childhood friends. That love still exists even though Mike moved to Heaven and never calls! 

Mom wanted me to become more girlie. I’d become a pretty big tomboy since my major influencers were boys.  She had obtained a credit card from Montgomery Wards. That upset Dad greatly. In fact, when Mom died she had a credit card in her wallet that dad didn’t know about. He was very upset she had $200 racked up in debt on that card when he found out. With the help of that Montgomery Ward credit card she enrolled me in “The Wendy Ward School of Charm.”  Y'all may laugh, but I literally begged Mom to enroll me in clown school, not Wendy Ward’s School of Charm! I seriously wanted to go to clown school and had seen an ad on the wall at school. I came home, cleaned my room, cleaned the kitchen, made family dinner buttering up the atmosphere to get Mom in just the right mood to ask her for clown school! I didn’t ask for things as a kid, we just didn’t. But this was different, this was my future career. Haaa I laugh, but at the time I was serious! 

But, I ended up as the oldest student in Wendy Ward’s School of Charm.” I am being totally serious when I tell you that  I felt like Jethrine Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies  in a room full of Barbies.  One time each week for several weeks, the group of charm school students would meet in a room above the Motgomery Wards department store. The lesson plan included spending a couple of hours learning how to paint our finger nails, apply make-up, how to walk (yes, with a book on my head) and sit with good posture. Its purpose was to teach us “lady-like” behaviors. But, I wasn’t allowed to paint my nails or wear make-up, so I really didn’t see the benefits of sitting in a room full of Barbies looking at me like I was some kind of religious weirdo! The class culminated with a Montgomery Wards Fashion Show. I was taught the “modeling walk, pivot and turn, and supplied with two brand new dresses to model for the crowd. 

To this day I remember the smell of those two new dresses. It was absolutely intoxicating! I felt like a million bucks instead of feeling like a Flintstone! I remember my Grandma Poe coming to my fashion show. Her being there did something to my soul. It’s THAT feeling, a feeling I will never forget, that makes the Grandma me want to be at as many of my Grandchildren’s events as I can attend. To show them how important they are to me. I felt so important that day and Grandma’s presence was a huge part of that feeling. We hear the term all the time “comfort food”. Well, Grandmas are “soul comfort food”. 

After modeling, my wonderful, thoughtful, generous Grandmother who had made most my clothes to that point, purchased me that $26 Montgomery Wards dress. I was blown away. My Mom tried to talk her out of it, telling her we could just stop by Goodwill on the way home and try to find one similar. As those words came out of her mouth, my heart sank. The more she told Grandma that buying new was a waste of money because I would just grow out of it, the lower my heart sank.But my Grandma saw that! I remember the russtle sound of the shopping bag as the clerk gently folded my new dress and placed it in the bag. I remember what my Grandmother looked like with her wallet in left hand taking money out of it with her right hand. Then, the clerk put the receipt in the bag and handed it to Grandma, who handed it to me. If I’d have been a peacock, my colorful tail feathers would have filled the room. After that, my Grandma bought me two more new dresses. She kept buying me dresses every week until I had a closet full. I’m sure that she saw how that first brand new, store-bought dress made me feel. I had such wonderful Grandmothers. Both very different, but both so full of love and understanding.

As I sit today beside my Dad’s hospital bed, tired from spending the night in a chair, with nurses coming in all night (one always leaving the door open when she’d leave) and I’m thankful for so much. Yesterday, a Chaplain came to Dad’s room. He told me that his morning devotion with his Chaplain team was about how God promises to bless a ministers generations to follow, for a thousand years. He said, you need to tell your family that they will have blessings because of your Dad’s sacrifices to lead others to serve God. 

There are things, and people in this life who forget or just don’t care that we are all just humans who come with flaws. We are not perfect because we didn’t have that perfect childhood. In life, we may have regrets, and we have definitely all made mistakes. Some people, and it seems that’s especially true for many from the current generations of entitlement, that if there’s a different way of thinking, or an opinion that doesn’t match their own, then we are sometimes treated as if we aren’t human, with feelings too. There’s a quick reaction to withdraw without giving the other person the opportunity to talk out differences. Instead the “block” option is the immature choice. If I have learned anything in this life, it’s that we are grateful for what we have. I’m not a social climber, in spite of  Miss Wendy Ward’s techniques, and I never will be. I am simple. The things I want are simple; loyalty, mutual respect, happiness, family, and God, and not at all in that order. 

My parents loved their family. If they were needed, they were quick to be there. They constantly prayed for their family. They even experienced hurt from family that was greater than any other hurt because that love was supposed to be unconditional, like theirs. They poured their lives, their time, and their emotions into their family. Sometimes, they made mistakes or said too much. Sometimes dementia and Alzheimer’s said something different. I remover my Mom in the last few years of her life would say exactly what she thought. She didn’t think about how it came out or who was caught in the crossfire. It wasn’t out of any type of malice, it was because of the disease. I have sometimes said things to entice people to think, when really I should not have. No malice, no aforethought, just trying to get people to appreciate opportunities or be grateful for what we have. We can’t change any of our passed, we can only change the future and holding grudges and anger holds us back.

Facing aging issues now with Dad is sad to see and even harder to navigate. Looking back over the last 6-8 years, I can see clearer. I used to get so upset with my Mom for getting in the middle of situations trying to “fix it” only to make it worse. But know I know, she couldn’t help herself. The disease wouldn’t allow it. I’m convinced more than ever that my parents were great actors for many years. They were declining mentally, and in the completely lucid moments they knew it. That’s why I’d find out without hearing it from them that they’d had two fender benders in a week. Or that Dad made a drive through at the local tractor supply store. It’s also why I’d find my Moms pin cushion by the pond, and her car keys locked in the shed with her freaking out that one of the kids must have played with her keys. It’s why Mom drove them everywhere because Dad got lost constantly when he’d drive. They made up excuses, but looking back it becomes very clear….

To be confined…

 A Daughter's Love Story

Post #1

Let me start this post off by saying that I love both of my parents greatly. I respect them and that respect runs deep. This may not start off sounding like a story about unconditional love and understanding, but I promise you it is. Just keep reading until the end of my series of blog posts and you'll see that this story goes beyond love, into understanding and healing. If my story can touch someone else, then writing it will be time well spent. 

This week I took my father on a cruise. Being there with him in Stage 4 Alzheimer's, and our last trip like this, brought back a lot of memories of the years as Alva and Ruby's daughter.  I worried and thought, changed my mind, thought some more, changed my mind again, and took him on a cruise. It was a decision that opened my eyes, and my memories. Some good, some very bad. I am reeling today about the realization that the dad I took on this trip is not the dad I've known for 62 years. Alzheimer's has taken that man away from us. Why I felt the need to write this now is really a mystery to me. But after my trip with Dad this week, there's an ache in my heart that I can't even explain. That ache has triggered my emotions and those deeply held emotional hurts have come to the surface.

I planned this trip because when mom died, on March 4, 2021, he asked me if I would help him get through the holidays without her. He misses her so much and now that she is gone there are a lot of things, I'd like to say to her. I'd like to tell her that there are a lot of things I understand about her NOW that I never understood before. Fortunately, years ago we had a blatantly honest discussion about events that happened when I was a child. I needed her to know that I forgave her but she needed to forgive herself. Even in her last days she apologized to me and cried about things that up until that point she said she didn't remember doing. I believe that too, because the disease my mom suffered through was a roller coaster of emotions. 

Mom was big about Christmas. Even though they were on a fixed income, she bought, or made, every member of our family a gift. The gifts either had to be alike or cost the same amount. The reason for that was because she didn't want any of us to think she loved one more than the other. She really desired in her heart to treat us all the same. She may have with regard to Christmas gifts, but Mom couldn't process that she did indeed treat us all differently. 

My father was the first love of my life, and I don't mean that derogatory toward Mom. Mom had a disease that few people were privy to know about. Our family kept her secret. Our mother wanted to be a wonderful mom, wife, daughter, pastors' wife, etc. But she was fighting a losing battle that came very close to ending her life, and perhaps ours, on numerous occasions. She had what today would be known as Bi-Polar Disorder. She suffered from anxiety with depression, major depression, obsessive-compulsion, and panic. Back then, the medications used today to control the behaviors and chemical changes in the brain were not developed yet. 

People with this issue would be sent to a psychiatrist and that in itself held a very negative stigma. She always felt extremely helpless and frustrated that doctors seemed to think her issues were "all in my head" she would say.  She was embarrassed. She felt helpless. But it seemed like more than anything else she felt despair.  

She could go for weeks switching between happiness and depression. She would laugh about one thing today, but tomorrow that same thing would enrage her to anger and even to violent outbursts. To make matters worse, my Father, a minister, was asked to Pastor a church. She worked very hard to be a great preacher's wife, doing all those things a preacher's wife is expected to do. This put great pressure on her emotionally and that was just packing on more expectations that under her circumstances she would not be able to meet. 

I remember nights of smelling bleach and hearing the "swish swish swish" of the SOS Pad under her right foot and a mop in her hands as she scrubbed the tile floors of the church parsonage all-night-long! Those floors had to be clean and sparking "just in case" one of the parishioners dropped by. I remember her taking our new car and spending much of the night in her flannel gown washing the car at the car wash until some of the paint was removed. She would lock herself in the bathroom and turn on the gas heater, without lighting it. I look back now and wonder how our house didn't blow up, have a fire, or how nobody was asphyxiated. This also caused some issues for me with God. Where was God when my mom was being tormented by her mind? Where was God when violent outbursts were happening? Where was God when I was being hurt? Where was God? I remember thinking: "Is God seeing this and still doing nothing to fix it?" It took a long time for me to reconcile this with God too! Another secret my family didn't know was going on inside of me. Even the years I spent ministering at churches in music and traveling with a gospel band, I wondered where God was when my Mother and I needed him most. It left doubts for me about God's love for me, and mom. Mom loved God. Mom did her very best to be a great servant of God, and she was faithful to God in spite of her issues.  

Mom was always so sorry for her behaviors when those episodes ended, feeling like a failure in so many ways. It was a horrible, unfair, vicious circle for a woman whose greatest desire was to be normal. She had the unfair disadvantage of having a mind that expected perfection but at the same time wouldn't allow it either. She was in constant emotional turmoil, but through it all her faith in God's ability to heal her never wavered.  

Mom also expected her children to be as well behaved as those floors were white. The problem with that mindset is that children are just that: children! She insisted her oldest daughter wore dresses below her knee every day to school when at the time mini-shirts and pants were the social dress. I was made fun of and bullied every day because of the way I had to dress. We weren't United Pentecost, but in my mother's mind, it was sinful for a girl to wear anything but a dress.  In middle school I realized that I didn't get as much bullying or mocking if I wore a long dress (down to my ankles) to school as I did an old-lady-long (knee length) dress.  It wasn't just mocking and bullying either, I was targeted by a group of girls who were violent to me because of my oddity with what was the fashion norms of the time. To them, I was different, so I became their target. I experienced their wrath almost everyday walking to and/or from school. So not only did I experience violent outbursts at home, but I also couldn't get away from them going to school either. Mom refused to allow me to wear a maxi length dress to school, so I started hiding one in my school backpack and changing into it when I got to school. Mom worked at a sewing factory, so she wasn't home when we got home from school. So, I could wear it home and change back into the school clothes she sent me to school in and she would never know. UNTIL..... she went through my school bag and found the dress.  Anger is a light-hearted word for the beating I got. And when I say beating.... I'm not using that word lightly.

Mom would jump from 0-100 in anger in a second. And when she did, it was usually me that paid for it. I don't think my brother and sister remember her anger as vividly as I do, because for the most part, other than her yelling, throwing of dishes, and busting Dad's knee with a bat, it happened to me. I think I was the brunt of the anger because I tried to reason Mom out of her moods. I tried to calm her. I tried to be the equalizer between her, and the rest of the family and I would pay for it dearly. I remember one night her becoming angry. I can't even remember why. She had a broom in her hand, and she started raising her voice at my brother Randy. The loud tone became anger, then screaming, then she grabbed a broom and was headed to his room. I know what that broom was for, and it wasn't for sweeping. She was going to hit him with it. So, I, in my desire to spare my brother and any other siblings that might get in it during the fit of rage, said to her "Mom, please don't do this." She then proceeded toward me with the broom. I retreated to my room and when I ran out of room to move out of her reach, I was between my bed and the wall, at a dead-end. She beat me with that broom until I was lying on the floor, crying and in pain. That was just one of the many stories I could recite. But I won't. Just know that if you are reading this and you have issues with anger as my mom did, there IS help now, and by accepting that help you spare your children the same hurtful memories locked away in my head and heart. Please don't leave your children with the type of scars I stare down every day in the mirror. 

Scars of abuse, be in physical or emotional, follow us for life, and they really do affect our emotional well-being for the rest of our lives. It can be seen by the way we get deeply hurt when we feel disrespected. Do you realize how disrespected an abused child has been?  It can be seen when words or actions trigger those memories and anger appears. Can you imagine how much anger a child of abuse feels, but can't express? We often think "they are just children" and many "won't remember" their abuse. Not true! There is absolutely no way to see emotional scars that abuse leaves behind. The physical scars heal, the emotional scars never heal. We just try to constantly figure out how to live with them. Memories and emotional hurt can't be erased, but with time and understanding they can fade a bit and hurt a little less, but they never go away completely, ever. With the help of God, I've learned over the years how to cut a path around some of those triggers. Sometimes it even means eliminating exposure to people who use those triggers to hurt you. 

At some point in my late teens to early 20's, the drug "Paxil" was released for prescribing for depression. I've often heard that in any joke there is also an element of truth. My Dad joked that "Paxil is my best friend." I also thanked God every single day for Paxil. After being prescribed Paxil, my mother became someone different. She was happier and her entire being changed. The mood swings were not frequent anymore. However, we knew if she'd forgotten to take it for a day or two because anger would return. After Paxil, Mom was someone, and I say this respectfully, that I could like. Don't get me wrong, I loved my mother even with every swing of that broom, and every object she would throw, and every angry insult she would throw. But, abused kids do love their parents and we make excuses for their abusive behaviors. Often times, we don't see that it is abuse. We start thinking it is all our fault.  

I also look back at the other areas in my mom's life that made her insecure. She always worked because we were poor. Looking back now, we were much poorer than I even knew because of mom's ability to stretch not just the dollar, but the pennies too. As long as I can remember she worked piece work at sewing factories. My dad, having an 8th grade education, worked manual labor even while pastoring a church. He cut wood during the winters when he couldn't cut yards. He worked in a shop that produced equipment for the oil industry. His rough, worn-out, arthritic hands are proof of his hard manual labor.

  I hadn't thought much about it as a child or a teen, but I can't remember my dad saying "I love you" to my mom the entire time I was growing up. I can remember though him saying it to us kids, but I can't remember him expressing his love in words to Mom. I can't remember, because he didn't. When I was in my 30's, I had moved to the Nashville area, and when I came home my mom told me that she thought Dad didn't love her and she wanted a divorce. It shocked me! They ended up going to a counselor and that's when it all made sense to me. My Dad literally said, " I said I loved you the day we were married and if that ever changes, I will let you know!" "I have never told you I didn't so you should know I do love you!" 

I think now of all those years my mom felt insecure about being loved. How difficult would that be, especially in someone who had a mind that was accepting of nothing less than perfection, but a mind that also was incapable of allowing it either?  She lived in absolute turmoil emotionally for a lot of years.  I am happy to report that after the counselor visits, the visible and verbal signs of Dad's love for mom became the norm. They were married for over 65 years when Mom passed. She left this life with dad standing next to her, telling her he loved her, holding her hand. 

Mom and dad bonded for 65+ years. They matured together. They struggled together. They rejoiced together. They grieved together when my brother, Randy, died unexpectedly and suddenly. What I've also learned since her death, was that her and dad also covered-up their Dementia and Alzheimer's issues. We knew mom's memory was fading, and she struggled with that. She didn't want to outlive her mind. What we didn't know was that mom did the driving because dad shouldn't have been driving. He would drive and they would end up lost for hours. They managed to hide that from their children. Instead, mom became the sole driver. Dad would make fun of her driving, but he succumbed, only to her, that he shouldn't be driving, and she kept his secret. It wasn't until mom had two wrecks in the same week that I decided to "show up" at a doctor's appointment. They were surprised to see me. I didn't say they were happy to see me either! Their doctor was happy to see me though and asked if one or all of us offspring could be in attendance at each appointment, because of their memory issues. That was my first insight that both of my parents had Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. For several years they managed, as a team covering for each other, that they were in trouble.

To be continued...............