We Once Were Family....Until The Preacher....

The White Supremacists, Sovereign Citizen, Alleged Domestic Terrorist and Fundamental Baptist who was also... My MOTHER!

 

She wasn’t’ really a terrorist,  
ALTHOUGH... those who knew her well would agree, she could be a terror to her dissenters and especially so to her husband, siblings and children!

 
 
She did proudly own the rest of those titles though.

 
I will explain the domestic terrorist allegation in a later post, but before I get to that, I want readers to know that in this series of blog posts, I will be revealing events of my childhood I have never revealed so publically and in writing before. 

  
 
It is because of this country’s current, aggressive conflation of politics and religion, that I am compelled to share my history—both as a child and adult—and how my history heavily influenced my political and religious beliefs now. 

 
I have posted enough opposition to the Right’s celebration of America’s return to its ‘Christian’ roots for those who know me to be wondering, “What the heck is wrong with her?”

 
So, I am going to tell you all what is wrong with me. Or, perhaps, what might just be right with me?   It will take more than one post so I hope you will continue to read until it makes more sense.

And here we go....

 
I grew up in a vocally, devoutly fundamental Baptist family that was as vocally right-wing-conservative politically as it was vocally, devoutly fundamentalist religiously.

 
Get the picture? 

 
You probably won’t unless you’ve spent enough time in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church and family.

 
These two cooperating and often even conflicting religious and political belief systems which were part and parcel to my family’s very identity created an emotional war zone for us.

To say we were ill-affected would be a sizable understatement.

 
The parent who was most influential to my developing beliefs in both systems was (not surprisingly) my mother.  She was the one who asserted and imposed her opinions on me the most.

 

My mother was an exceptionally gifted woman.

 
 
She was a classically trained soprano vocalist with at least a four-octave range. 
She could read music even though she was given only a few lessons in piano.  
She could draw and paint landscapes, animals and even portraits. 
She was intelligent and excelled in academics.  
She out-performed her high school competitors in band—making first chair on the clarinet her first year.
She was good with numbers and was able to set up and keep accounting for the successful exterminating business she and my father established in their forties.
She could type 60 words per minute with few to no errors.  
She was a quick study in any new endeavor she had reason to pursue.
She was a skilled and ruthless debater.
She was entirely self-sufficient, self-assured and never hindered by the possibility she could be wrong about anything.

 
Once, when my dad was asked what attracted him to her, he replied, “She had a lot of drive.” And that, she certainly did!

 
My parents were married in December 1955 when my mom was only 18 and still in high school. In May of 1956 she walked across the Sugarland High school stage to receive her high school diploma, six months pregnant with yours truly.  
I was born the following November, only 11 months after they married. My dad was 4 years older than my mother and had shortly before marrying her, completed 4 years of service in the army.

 
My dad didn’t become a Christian until I was 3 years old and when their marriage was in trouble, but when he did, he was all-in from that day forward. 

 
Not only was my mom gifted, but she was extremely physically attractive. Her hair was dark brown with glistening brunette highlights, her skin was olive in tone, her eyes a deep piercing blue and her figure, petite and shapely to boot. 

She was often told she looked a lot like Elizabeth Taylor who was famously admired for those same lovely features.

 
But as abundant as were her qualities, she was equally plagued with torments.

 
 
Her childhood was a difficult one to say the least. This was obvious to everyone close to her not only because she would say so, but her lack of emotional maturity and self-awareness was always on display.

 
 
Understanding that children are not born to be the troublemakers they often become, we also know that good and bad behaviors are mostly developed because of their earliest family connections and experiences, so my mother’s problematic behaviors and eventual irrational beliefs came mostly from somewhere outside her inherited traits.

 

More about her issues stemming from her childhood later.

 
As a growing child, I developed an awareness (possibly a coping strategy?) that all was not well in my family. Even though young children would normally want to believe their parents are the best parents ever and their family is the best family ever,  I perceived early on, that mine were not. Even still, I loved them as if they were the best ever!

 

But they fought  All.  THE.  TIME. 

 
My mother was almost always angry at my dad, angry with her dad (my grandparents lived next door to us until I was 13), angry with the preacher and other church members, angry with bosses and coworkers and more I don't care to remember,

She frequently claimed sickness as the reason she could never clean house or cook and always expected everyone to give her grace because she had asthma and “emotional problems”.

Emotional problems indeed!

 
My feelings ranged from complete contempt for her raging temper tantrums to guilt-driven sympathy for not feeling more affectionate towards her to a gnawing, lingering fear that I would grow up to be just like her. 

Eventually, I craved explanations for her perpetual state of unhappiness. 

  
So, without knowing how or where to find the answers I was needing, I inadvertently discovered a way to help minimize the harms and lessen the frequency of their conflicts.

 
By observing the interactions between my mother and my dad, her dad, her mother, my siblings and her siblings, I found I could influence each one’s perception of the other’s offenses away from a fight.

 
Another consequence for me of her constant troublemaking was I began feeling I needed to intervene somehow between her and the others but mostly between her and my dad.

  
 
It was painful hearing the yelling, the insults, threats to file for divorce, her cussing and throwing things, and the general helplessness being so close such emotionally-charged conflicts. 

In time, learned I could reduce the pain for my siblings and myself by finding ways to make peace between them before tensions escalated to all-out war.

 
I didn’t have the opportunity, or the courage to apply my immature peace-making skills on my dad, but I did learn what worked for my mother who was all too happy for an audience to  her grievances.

   

She was a willing participant even when she was suspicious of my motives.
 

It was a difficult position for me because I was almost always more sympathetic to my dad.  I understood his position better than hers because I was most like him. Nevertheless, it afforded me some level of control over what was usually a helpless situation for us.

  
 
In other words, my amateur attempts towards intervention gave me a voice, albeit a very carefully worded voice. 

 
At the end of the day, my accidental strategy helped me a lot more than it helped them. My mother’s habit was initially to respond to me as if I were getting through to her, but then at the next, big battle she would immediately default to her old ways of yelling, cussing, insulting, accusing and throwing breakable objects against the walls.

 
 
So my purpose for writing is not to detail the dysfunctional interactions of my family of origin, but to reveal what I discovered to be the undeniable source of the conflicts that resulted in those dysfunctional interactions.

 
I believe now it all boiled down to two things:

 
 

Religion and Politics.
 

And how extreme, authoritarian beliefs arising from these two subject areas were injected into every conversation with family members, resulting in lines being drawn.

It was all about what each person believed about each subject and the heated debates over who was right.

   

 
It was about who won the debate and gained control. 

Then ultimately, how truth and love had to take the back seat.

But, before my mother, was my PaPaw....