*this is a sample of the first chapter from a draft of my memoir. it hurts to write that, it feels like I forgot to put my pants on just like in all the bad dreams as a kid….
I was sure my mother didn’t love me. Was it possible for anyone to love me? There was always something disallowing it. I wasn’t ever sure exactly what it was, but it was something that I hadn’t done right. Hadn’t done well enough. As far back as I could remember, I always felt like a blind person trying to hit a faraway moving target. There was something I was expected to know that I didn’t know and couldn’t know and I was being punished for that lack of knowledge. Thinking back on the years growing up with her, I can’t remember seeing my mother being affectionate with anyone. But back then, I always thought it was just me.
Beginning when I was just a little girl, my mother, Geraldine Gertrude Goddard Reynolds, communicated a storm of disappointment and frustration that soaked into me; it was a sopping wet mess of unmet expectations. I claimed it as my self-description, my definition, my baggage to carry around for the first several decades of life. Thank goodness, now that I am older and wiser, I can understand the truth. Mom was really just disappointed in herself, frustrated by her own circumstances, and she found it impossible to love and accept herself. I was only an unfortunate secondhand recipient of that projected negativity. At least, that is what I have chosen to believe. Gerri left this earth when I was 32 and I can’t ask her, now that I think I might have myself figured out, now that I suspect I’m not really a bad person, just a normal one.
Geraldine Gertrude Goddard was born in New York City in the summer of 1941, with an upper middle class pedigree from a long line of New England professionals and revolutionary war patriots. Along with that pedigree and privileged life, there were certain expectations that came from the people who should have always been on Gerri’s side: her parents. It might have been easier for my mother if she’d had a sibling to share the burden of all those expectations, but Gerri ended up as an only child. There was another girl, Janet, who came after her, but Janet must have died as a tiny baby. I don’t know how it happened. No one ever talked about it or ever even told me that there was a Janet. I saw her name written down in a journal of genealogy records that my grandfather Charlie had put together when he applied for the Sons of the American Revolution, but I didn’t see it until after everyone had died and no one could answer my questions. If only I had known what questions to ask when I was younger and they were still alive. It would have been nice to know why people were the way they were; why I was the way I was. If I’d known to ask questions back then, I’d have been direct and sure: do you love me? Why or why not? What happened to make you so sad? And why must you take it out on me? Instead, like most every child does, I assumed the problem was me. There’s a note on a scrap of paper in my box of “things to keep”, in the midst of childish drawings and old Christmas cards. It’s undated, but the careful crooked handwriting tells me I was no more than six or seven.
Dear Mommy, I am sorry for being a bad, bad girl. I just need some spanking and some yelling and that will help me be good. I promise I will be a good girl.
Love, Tina
There were many things in life I would have done differently if I could have gone back and done it again. I made a lot of mistakes, poor decisions, and sometimes I was just mean. But there were many more things I wouldn’t have been able to change even with all the wisdom in the world. Things that happened to me because of things that happened to the people who came before me, just like the plot of a fictional story. Things that left me with an indelible mark. I tried to deny the mark. I tried to forget it. I tried to tie up all the loose ends and pretend that I was finally unaffected; that I had finally erased the mark. None of that worked. So I decided the best thing I could do for myself was figure out my story, and tell it to anyone who would listen.
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The story of what happened to my mother, and therefore what happened to me, must begin with my mother’s mother. My grandmother, Lillian Stone Goddard, was the most proper woman in Ithaca, and anywhere else she went. That’s conjecture. I wasn’t there when she was young, I didn’t get to observe it firsthand, but based on what I do know about her, I feel certain my maternal grandmother not only knew the right way to do everything, she did it.
People get the wrong idea about proper sometimes. Proper doesn’t necessarily mean “not fun.” I think Lillian knew not only the proper way to set a table and the proper way to dress and speak and act, she also knew the proper way to have fun. So when it was time to have fun she jumped in with both feet. I don’t think my grandfather Charlie, a boisterous movie star handsome lover of life, would have had it any other way. When the time was right, Lillian would throw her head back and open her mouth wide to let the laughs come out. She would hike up her skirt and dance a jig. She would throw back a Scotch and Tab with abandon. She knew how to enjoy the things one was supposed to enjoy and like everything else she did, she enjoyed them well. Of all the people in my life to remember, I remember Lillian most clearly. It took me a long time to come to the realization and acceptance of the notion that, based on the way things turned out with Mom, there may have been something very wrong with the way Lillian parented my mother, because unlike my memories of Mom, the things I remember about my grandmother Lillian were good. In the same way, huge chunks of my remembrances of the past are blurry and muted, but my memories of Lillian and Charlie and the home in Jacksonville Florida where they landed after a whirlwind life of traveling and living around the world, are crystal clear and detailed. You forget things for a reason, you remember things for a reason.
The best way to paint a picture of Lillian is to paint a picture of her typical day. The way I remember it, Lillian had created and enforced a routine for every aspect of life, beginning in the bedroom. I don’t think her feet touched the floor fully before she began making the bed at 6:00am. That was Sunday through Friday. On Saturday she stripped the sheets and washed them, a new clean folded set of Egyptian cotton 300 thread count waiting in the bottom bureau drawer. After the bed was made she washed the traces of Oil of Olay moisturizer off her face, patted the skin dry with a clean hand towel, and put on more moisturizer underneath a thin layer of foundation, two spots of rouge perfectly blended, and eyelashes curled by what looked like an instrument of torture. She poufed her hair out with a teasing comb and added a bit of hairspray, but even a full night’s sleep did not seem to be able to mess up that style. Every other week Lillian visited the beauty salon to have her bouffant hair, a shade of brunette that was difficult to describe, touched up and tweaked. It always looked exactly the same coming out as it did going in, but I guess that’s how you maintained a head of unchanging hair like that. You didn’t let it go all to shambles before you paid it the proper attention.
Lillian had just the right outfit for every occasion, even for staying at home. She would slide open the double wooden doors of her neatly appointed closet, consider for a moment, and select a simply cut shift dress with a nautical print, or a summerly pair of white slacks and a sleeveless floral blouse with darts in the bosom, with white low pumps, or heeled sandals if it was summer.
Then she would turn back to the bureau and its ponderous mirror and lift a tasteful costume necklace and a pair of matching clip earrings out of her perfectly organized jewelry box, clasping them on and checking her reflection one more time.
On a typical summer morning, Lillian would walk down the hall and through the heavy swinging door to her bright, wide open wood floored kitchen, the soles of her shoes tapping.
With the swinging door shut to keep the noise down for those of us still sleeping in the rear of the house, she’d turn on the portable radio that made its home on the pass-through counter to listen to the news while she was working. As morning light flooded through the window over the sink, adding a happy yellow tinge to the greenish light from the overhead fixtures, Lillian would slide a chrome toned KitchenAid stand mixer closer to the edge of the countertop and put the juicer attachment on before reaching overhead into one of the cabinets for a clean glass pitcher and gently setting it on the formica. She’d press the button that opened the extra wide chrome tone door of the refrigerator and take out a dozen fresh Florida oranges, carrying them to the counter and slicing each one in half before pressing it down onto the spinning implement of the juicer, allowing the pulp and juice to collect in a large measuring cup. When she was done juicing she would pour the finished product into the glass pitcher and place it into the refrigerator to chill while the rest of breakfast preparation commenced.
Lillian prepared grapefruit halves with a sprinkle of sugar and laid out the grapefruit spoons with the little teeth on them so you could cut each section out one at a time and pop it in your mouth. She made perfect poached eggs by swirling the boiling water into a mini whirlpool and sliding the cracked egg in slowly from a small egg-sized bowl. Slowly. When she brought the plate to you at the table, the egg sitting on top of the the toast, you slid your fork under the yolk and punctured it to let the warm, soft yellow liquid soak into the buttered with real butter bread. There was no margarine use in the Goddard household.
After breakfast there was time to run errands, go shopping, visit friends or stay home and write letters or pick elderberries from the thorny bush across the street and wash them and cook them and make jam. Before long it was lunch time and the thinly sliced bread came out of the cupboard. Lillian set to making sandwiches from leftover pork or chicken with a translucent slab of tomato and a single lettuce leaf. Each meal was lovingly and painstakingly prepared. I remember a lot of waiting.
At 4:55pm, the dogs, a pair of black cockapoos named Duke and Duchess, came into the kitchen and waited also. Right at the stroke of 5 o’clock, Lillian got the scotch out of the bottom cabinet and poured some neat into the whisky glass with a couple of ice cubes. Then she took her drink and the dogs for a walk in the backyard, inspecting the landscape, checking the loquat for new fruit, and scooping up the dog doo with a metal contraption built like a post hole digger. She would walk the fence and peek through it to see what the neighbors were doing, calling out to them. Sometimes they’d see her and wave. Sometimes they’d come on through the gate and have a drink.
Dinner came later. Unlike other Southern households where food was on the table by 6pm, in the Goddard family, we didn’t eat until 7:30 or 8pm.
Lillian Stone Goddard was not a traditionally beautiful woman. Elegant, stylish, proper, intelligent, attractive – a good wife for an ambitious man – but not beautiful. Something about her jawline violated divine proportions.Lillian had been a nurse before she married, and Miss Stone, as she was known then, ran a tight ship in the hospital. She carried this trait with her into life as keeper of the Goddard home, wife to Charles R. Goddard III, and mother to Gerri. Every action of life, every task, every routine, needed to be done a certain way and woe to you if you did not toe the line. Lillian had rules. Like, don’t put your wet towel on the bed. It wasn’t even really wet, just damp from the bath or shower. And, don’t wear underwear with your nightgown. Things have to air out down there. Don’t spin on the cassock in front of the vanity; you will break something. Fix your hair, brush your teeth, and be fully dressed before you make your first appearance in the morning. The first fork is for the salad and the second fork is for the entree. Perfection is expected and appreciated, thank you very much.
Any resident of the Goddard household would learn from day one that it was best to follow and obey; the blistering heat of Lillian’s antipathy was not a pleasant environment – but figure out and even anticipate her demands and desires and life could be pretty damned good. I’m not sure my mother, little Geraldine, was up for the task of figuring out Lillian’s ticks, and it didn’t take long for the lovely green-eyed only child to label herself deficient, as children often do in the face of relentless and/or harsh criticisms from parents they see as invincible.
Even trickier was that Lillian seemed to play favorites. If you were on her good side, she didn’t criticize much. If you irritated her or violated some unspoken standard, there would be no relief from the torrent of nagging and ill will and reminders. I shudder to think that maybe my mother had fallen on the bad side of Lillian and was the constant recipient of harshness throughout her growing years. I don’t know that to be true, but it would explain a lot.
Grandpa Charlie, who was less severe in execution and administration but who could belt out a frightening lecture, along with charming Sinatra renditions and snippets of tap dances, was not there in the beginning years to balance out Lillian’s draconian home environment. Charlie was deployed in the World War II European theater as a medical brigade engineer. He was a brilliant man and his brilliance was needed to help the wartime efforts, which meant that my mother had no father for the first two years or so of her life.
After the war, the Goddard family traveled extensively and lived abroad, following Charlie as his engineering career took him to places like Argentina and New Zealand. From Argentina the family learned a love for grilled meats of all kinds, and Charlie was never to be found without the most advanced backyard grill available. One of his favorites was the grill with an electric powered rotisserie. He’d happily roast hunks of beef, pork, and chicken for his family and anyone else who showed up, blasting out Duke Ellington on his reel to reel and shuffling in front of the grill as though it were his own personal dance floor.
It was New Zealand and its indigenous people that seemed to stay in the hearts of the Goddard family. Strange wooden carved masks and kiwi birds, Maori remembrances, were scattered through the home of Charlie and Lillian as long as they lived. Gerri learned to be a horse jumper in the beautiful mountain encircled valleys of New Zealand. She wore the English costume with a black felt tophat, a black wool blazer with brass buttons, and authentic tailored fawn wool jodhpurs, with calf leather riding boots. I don’t know if she was any good as a jumper, but I know she loved the horses. No one had to tell me that. I could see that Mom loved all animals and communed with them as if they were her confidants.
Gerri learned to play her mother’s game well enough, I guess. When I look at pictures, she is always dressed well, platinum hair coiffed just right, flashing a gorgeous toothy smile, with Lillian looking on in approval; Charlie holding the grilling implements or putting the star on the top of the perfect Christmas tree. But when I look closely I can see something in my mother’s eyes that belied her attempts to look gay and happy. And when I dig into the pictures I find a few in which her face is more than just sad. It’s not easy to pin down the right word for the emotion I see there. Hopelessness comes close.
No one who is still alive knows how my mother and father first met. It was sometime before Gerri went to college at Marjorie Webster in Washington DC in 1960. I know this because there is a picture of her in the yearbook that mentions her obsession with Skeeter, a soldier who was coming back for her sometime soon. There she was in the dorm room, looking with longing at a photograph hanging on the wall, of my future father dressed in his Army uniform.
Webster College was a two year women’s college with majors in acting, kindergarten teaching, and secretarial. The women who attended the college came from families where it was understood that there wasn’t really going to be a career in acting, teaching, or secretarial work. College for these women was more a bridge from girlhood to wifehood, at least that was the hope. I have to wonder if Lillian and Charlie sent Gerri there hoping that she might perhaps meet an eligible aspiring politician or lawyer in DC and would forget about Skeeter.
Skeeter – Winfield Stephen Reynolds Jr – was the third of five children in a blue collar family from Neptune, New Jersey. Neptune is only an hour’s drive from New York City, but it was a world away from the life that the Goddards had created for themselves and their beautiful only child Gerri.
I understand why Mom was attracted to Skeeter, if I rely on the photographs to tell the story. He was a blue-eyed version of James Dean, with angular features and lean muscles and a bad boy aura, leaning up against his muscle car or his motorcycle, or sitting on a high hill in Korea wearing a white teeshirt and a rascal’s grin and smoking a Lucky Strike. He was everything that was forbidden to an only daughter who was expected to be as perfect as she could be. Maybe they were the perfect couple in their own minds, or maybe that’s only what Dad thought and Mom knew she was headed for trouble. Maybe they never even considered what it would mean for a Goddard girl to fall in love with a blue collar Reynolds boy from Neptune. Maybe they just followed their hearts.
Skeet and Gerri got married in 1961. It was a proper Goddard wedding at a church in New York City. It was a Presbyterian Church, since that was the denomination the Goddards preferred and even attended sometimes throughout the years. Gerri had an official bridal portrait made. She stood in front of a three way mirror in her Alencon lace ballgown and cinched waist and crinolines and perfect hair and Delphic smile as the photographer captured the angles that told the story the way it looked that day: she was angelic and the perfect bride.
On her only child’s wedding day, Lillian had made provision for every detail, even shrouding the hedges outside their home with white sheets so that the crinolined gown would not be soiled when Gerri and her bridesmaids brushed past them on their way to the cars that would drive them to church.
The two young lovers appear bewildered in the photographs, bemused, anticipatory, and perhaps wholly unprepared for what lay ahead of them. I’ve been told that Skeeter was captivated by what he thought was surely the perfect wife, and I’ve deduced that for Gerri, rushing headlong into matrimony with the wrong man, no matter how handsome he was, was the ultimate act of rebellion against her parents. But what was it that pushed her to this rebellion? What was it about Lillian and Charlie and their parenting of her that made Geraldine feel the need to defy their wishes for her? I don’t know. Maybe it was nothing more than an unexplainable accident. But I have my ideas.
