The latest was the inheritance of Michael Jackson. I heard that he leave nothing to his dad. I heard before that Joe Jackson (his dad) was “an abusive” father. When Michael Jackson died, there was a movie about “The Jacksons” that lasted about 5 hours. I was cooking and watching the movie at the same time, trying to understand how this man was abusive to his kids.
From that movie, I saw that when his kids did something “wrong” or were going to make a “mistake” he tried to correct them. I saw that when Marlon didn’t know how to “swing the microphone” and could not make the turn, he spanked him. He was a perfectionist and he was trying to bring the best out of them, and only time proved that he did (artistically speaking). For Joe Jackson, there is only one winner; second places or less is losing.
Why I don’t see anything wrong with that? I have 3 brothers and 4 sisters. When we were little kids and living in Mexico City, my mom used to beat us or spank us, sometimes with no reason at all.
My sister –who is older than me- had a problem learning the “s” and the “z”. I remember that she was doing her homework and my mom had a belt and hit her on the back every time she confused those letters. By watching that behavior of my mom towards my sister, I knew I had to learn and not confused whatever I had to learn.
My mom used to grab anything and everything she could to spanks us. Sometimes it was with a hanger, sometimes with the belt, sometimes with her shoe, the worst times were with a cable; and, we were not the VALDEZ 5 (lol). Oh, I just had that thought and it made me laugh.
The point is, that trying to figure out my mom’s behavior toward us to try to understand her in order to forget (or forgive), these are my reasons:
- She became an orphan at the age of 5. There were only 5 siblings left from that family (5 others died before) and they were taken by 5 different families. My mom went to live with the strictest of all. Needleless to say that she was treated like an outsider and like a maid. I know, because years later, I worked for my uncle and they treated me like that and without pay. Probably my mom was never hugged or said that she was loved and the only thing she could do, was run away from that family as soon as she could, being my dad the possibility of “freedom”.
- My mom didn’t love my dad. She married him because it was her only choice at that moment. My dad loved her. My dad was a gambler and an alcoholic. After they got married, they lived in Tijuana for a couple of years, and then they moved to Mexico, City to live with my grandmother. My grandmother was a widow and she raised her two kids alone. She never remarried. My dad was 4 when his dad died. My mom ended up living a life where the freedom was nowhere in sight.
So, here are two people trying their best to have a family with no father figure on their side. I don’t know the reasons why my dad started to drink alcohol, but I remember that he came home late, very late when everybody was sleeping. Only my mom and I were awake waiting for him. My mom warmed his food and after a few minutes, we all went to bed. My grandmother worked and my mom was a housewife all day long, dealing with 7 kids ages 5 month old baby to 10 year old twins. (Then we moved to Tijuana again). Not only my mom was alone all day long with 7 kids and all the household chores, but her mother in law complained about her to my dad when he got home. I can only imagine that my mom run out of patience with us and with her situation. She was pregnant almost all those years when we live in Mexico, City. I am just adding everything to make a clear view. We were poor. My grandmother was a school teacher and she used to steal bathroom tissue from the school she worked. Then, she came home, sat on her bed and started rolling the stolen bathroom tissue in an empty roll. I look back now and I ask myself: We were that poor? Those things stay on the mind of anyone that has lived that situation and thinking that bathroom tissue must be very expensive in order for my grandmother do that.
We lived in a very old building. Every time there was an earthquake (and in Mexico City there are a lot small ones), my mom used to grab the “columns” of the kitchen entrance. Why? I don’t know for sure why those ones, but a lot of roaches came out of those when the building was shaking. There were also rats that ran on the roof. We didn’t have a washer, much less a drier, so my mom washed all our clothes by hand, and she ironed everything. Of course, we only owned only 2 dresses, the one we were wearing and the one that was being washed. But after all, we were always clean and neat! We didn’t have a boiler (well, not a modern one) we had a boiler that used wood, so my mom had to walk to a place where people choose piece by piece what they wanted, pay for it and take it with them. (No home deliveries).
My mom made the best she could to feed us and she feed us well, in a healthy way. We always had a plate of soup, a piece of meat (sometimes weird meat like liver, cow’s tongue, udder, etc. whatever was cheap at the market) and some side dish. My mom made us eat everything on our plate and she told us that if we didn’t finish it, she was going to serve more food on our plates. We ate everything even if we didn’t like it. Years later, we joked with my mom about it, and she said that she only told us that so we would eat. She also said that there was no more food and sometimes she didn’t eat at all (probably that is why my mom stayed thin all her life uh?). We didn’t have a refrigerator, so when my mom made gelatin, she put the cups on the window’s edge so the cold weather could firm it. She had to boil the leftover milk every night. Instead of going to the supermarkets (like these days) my mom used to go to the market on wheels, because they had cheaper prices than the supermarkets. She didn’t have a car, so she just took one of us to go with her.
She was up very early and made us breakfast, but also made us lunch for school. At that time, she had 5 kids in school, 4 in elementary school and 1 in kindergarten. She had to get the neighbor’s help so they could walk us to the school while my mom was at home taking care of the rest. The school we were enrolled was very strict. At 8 a.m. they closed their doors and no one could get in. When we got home back from school, the meal was ready and after we ate, we were allowed to watch tv for 30 minutes, then, make homework, take a bath (we didn’t have a shower, so my mom used to bathed us by groups and I remember her putting the pieces of wood on the boiler that was inside the bathroom while she was making ourselves clean), then eat a light dinner and then go to bed.
I am taking care of my two grandsons here and after two years, I am physically tired. My mom did more than what I do now and I never heard her complained about it. I do :-(
My dad was absent physically and emotionally. My dad didn’t know that my mom used to beat us up. I told him a few years ago… that is how absent he was!
We were little kids afraid of our own parents. Not only my mom beat us up and grounded us, but she also told us that: “When your dad comes…!”. What the hell? What was the next thing to expect from him? So, the few times my dad was around, we tried not to be near him because of fear, but after we grew a little bit more, we learned that my dad was harmless.
When we moved back to Tijuana, we thought it was going to be better but it was worst. The mom we used to have in Mexico, who was under my grandmother’s eyes, behaved well there, not anymore! We lived in a 3 bedroom house that was on a hill, far away from “almost everything”. We had to go down the hill that took us around 30 to 40 minutes and then take a bus to go to school. We were up at 5 a.m. we made our own breakfast because my mom was sleep. By that time, my mom didn’t made us lunch for school, but our meal was ready when we got home. We still didn’t have washer, so my mom washed everything by hand. The clothes have to be hang to be dry by the sun, but on winter time, the clothes don’t get dry that easily, so we often used our socks “wet” (or not dry at all) for school.
As we grew, school kept asking for more things: sport uniform, more books, dance classes, etc. My dad was working at a factory and probably not making enough money, so, our requests for “new” things, were too much for my parents and sometimes –or most of the times- we didn’t have everything that was needed. The good thing for my parents was that because we were 8 kids now, with an age difference of 1½ to 2 years from one another, we passed along the uniforms and the books to our younger siblings. Things got worse when we started Junior high. The school requested more books and to work outside the school as teams with other classmates, but because we lived so far away, our classmates didn’t want to come to our house and our parents, didn’t let us go to their houses. We didn’t have encyclopedias or other sources to make our homework and I had to stay after classes on the school library to get my homework done.
Meanwhile my mom made friends with the neighbors. They made a group to play cards and my mom used us to take care of one of the neighbor’s children. She had 5 kids and she paid us .25¢ or sometimes .50¢ for the whole afternoon. For us that was good because we got some money and we were able to watch tv. My dad was not home because he was working, and my mom was every afternoon playing cards with her friends. My mom was no longer the mom we had in Mexico… Now, we were helping her cleaning the house, but when she was mad, she made us wash the walls and the carpet with our hands (no machines). She was not under anyone’s eyes, so she started behaving in rage for every little detail. She screamed a lot and slammed the doors. Once, she was screaming because a pair of shoe laces she left on the door knob was not there anymore, so she gathered us and asked where they were. We didn’t know, at least not me. She opened the back door and started throwing all the dishes, glasses, pots and pans outside. Because we lived in a hill, there was no other house where she was throwing the things. The next day, we went out and look for useful items so we could drink water.
Once we came home and the house was a mess. We had a cat and that day, the cat played with a ball of thread making the house look worst. My mom had taken pills and she had to be hospitalized. It was bad. I don’t know what made her do that, I just remembered that my sisters and I look at each other wondering what was going on. For many days, we were scared to come home again and see that same situation. Fortunately, didn’t happen.
I can understand why my mom “was an abusive parent”. In a way, that was her upbringing from the strict family she was raised and she didn’t have my dad support, it was like handling parenting all by herself. On the other hand, she pressured us to be better “or” to have a better life than what she had.
On Christmas, we waited until very late to eat, and my dad used to make a speech about how much they loved us and blah blah blah, he was drunk. I guess we never believed my parents when they said that they loved us. We were scared, afraid, not knowing what was going to be next. Not knowing about our future with all the restrictions and all the shortcomings. We started to believe that we were on our own. Our grandmother died years after we went back to Tijuana and my parent’s siblings were not that much help. We started to get married just to get out of the house.
That was long time ago, and with a lot of help and understanding, I learned that:
“Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want, doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all their being”.
Now I know that they did their best and probably they gave us more love than what they received as kids.
When someone has a potential to become “something” greater than what it is, there is always someone pushing that person to achieve it. My mom thought highly of us, and she kept pushing; only she didn’t know how and she didn’t have the resources. Joe Jackson saw in his siblings talent, and he pushed everything he could for them to achieve it. That is how the world got to know Michael Jackson, the best POP singer, performance and artist of our times.
I know that there are other ways to achieve whatever is great in us. There are parents that with love make their kids achieve the best of them. There are kids waiting for their dad to hold their hand and take them to know the world, other kids (like me) are not that lucky.
But life is whatever you make of. I can complain about it, or I can learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Now my heart knows both sides of the coin. If I flip a coin, I will always believe that I have the better side, even if my side is upside down.
