Life Is Not Always Fuzzy

Happy memories of fun times and fuzzy feelings are many and treasured. But that is half of life. The other half is conflict and hurt. Ignoring that side is not honest. To deal with it is of questionable honesty. Feelings, fuzzy or hostile, are personal, fashioned by personal interpretation.

I have been forthcoming about my non-acceptance  of both Diane and JB. I have acknowledged my ‘near hatred’  of Arville whom I was forced to spend what seemed like an eternity –when I was but four years old—rocking to sleep because he was restless.

I have yet except by innuendo expressed how I felt about Ivy. She was at once my best friend, my constant playmate, and my nemesis. Most of these memories speak more of my insecurities and restructuring of events than to her culpability or actual history.

Right or wrong, restructured or real, these are memories which undermined my self esteem, which questioned my place in the family. Etched in my memory is the episode of the sweaters the year I turned eight. Mommie ordered two sweaters from Sears&Roebuck, two sweaters  just alike except for color. They came—but not the two Mommie had ordered. They were out of stock. Substitutions were sent. The two that came were quite different—one delicate and feminine – the other ‘not so feminine’. Both were the same size. Ivy got the pink feminine one; I got the blue ‘not so feminine one’.

The pitchfork incident I do not lie at Ivy’s door. But it does not belong to me.  Unless my memory is wrong I give this account as true.  Daddy scythed  the tall grass just outside the back yard. Raking it into piles was a task given to Ivy and me. Each of us were given pitchforks to rake the cut grass. The scene still flashes before my inward eye. I lifted a forkful of grass and aimed it at the larger pile. Ivy with empty fork jumped in front of me. My pitch fork pierced he leg. She screamed, “Jewell stuck her fork in my leg.”

I was handily beaten by Daddy’s razor strap.