1976 to 1978, Monticello and Laurens, New York

By Amy Block-Muzekari

By age 9, I had developed a knack for starting my life from scratch.

We’d moved a few times already, and each time, I had to make new friends and leave old ones behind. Each location promised a new best friend, so I left a trail of magnified blurbs of friendship behind me as we moved from Buffalo to Chicago to the Catskill Mountains.

The best year is the one in which I entered fourth grade. We moved to Monticello, New York, to live near my mother’s parents. Her husband, my stepfather, planned to spend that year in the Middle East, doing postdoctoral work in Arabic studies.

I had not felt safe since I was 2 years old, before they married. The day had come that we would be safe again.

For seven years, I had cringed each time Matt came near me. His words were at best unsupportive and at their worst cruel. His touch was anything but affectionate.

My childlike mother simply shared with me her tears and promised to leave him someday. “Someday” was a moment she was frantically trying to reach. I understood that something I didn’t understand kept holding her back.

Mom was 22 when she married Matt, and I was the baggage she brought with her. She lived to please everyone, to avoid hurting anyone’s or anything’s feelings. She was dreamy, trusting, and insecure. She was the perfect mother for a little girl who was, and always would be, even dreamier than she.

Two good things were borne of her marriage: my sisters. My mother sewed clothing for the three of us, usually smocked dresses in pretty fabrics – the kind little girls wore in nursery rhymes and fairy tales. She sang simple but poignant songs to us about daffodils and rolling hills. She read to us about mermaids and other magical things. She made simple dinners and kid-friendly breakfasts like “eggs in a frame” from scratch.

Being a good mommy was instinctual to her. Subjecting us to her cruel-hearted husband was her downfall. Maybe she stuck with him because she felt she deserved to be punished for her mistakes in life. Perhaps she was responding to verbal abuse she’d endured as a child from a live-in relative. She had pretty much been stripped of self-esteem.

When I was 8, it was not my mother’s strength that freed us from our prison. It was Matt’s decision to do what was best for himself, as always. This time, though, spending a year thousands of miles away was the best thing he could possibly do for the rest of us.

At 9, I let out a breath I’d been holding for six and a half years. And my mother was finally smiling, as she’d always deserved to.

Finally free to be herself, Mom filled her deflated 5-foot-tall frame with a newfound confidence. As she’d shown us how to be strong when faced with daily ridicule and abuse, she now showed us that a woman has the strength to stand on her own two feet.

Mom worked as a waitress and a clerk at Sullivan’s Department Store, earning what she could to support the four of us. Any extra penny she made was for her three little girls. Her only desire was to make us happier than we’d been before and maybe to even make up for some of the damage that had been done.

Matt lived no differently in Tehran than he had in Chicago; he lived on Planet Me. My mother lived no differently in New York than she had in Chicago; she lived to be a mom. But in our new life, no one was trying to stifle her kindness or cause her shame.

Although our Monticello bungalow was run-down, it was the happiest home we had ever known. Mom cared for the three of us just as she always had, but this time, she offered us the greatest gifts a parent can give her children: support and security.

My grandparents adored us. Rather than walking, I skipped or did cartwheels from our home to theirs, which was just next door. I had two homes where I was loved just for being myself; what a stark contrast to the prior years, when I longed for just one.

I remember fourth grade more vividly than previous grades because I had no need to stifle my memories out of self-protection. I felt at peace, carefree.

One happy memory is of Miss Zube proudly mounting a story I had written to the classroom wall. While most of my classmates had struggled to fill up a page or two, my words had flowed into a six-page story about a boy who felt left out because he had, of all things, four arms! The boy ultimately was accepted despite his differences, and he was even admired for his juggling (and other) abilities. He had many friends.

The story was an expression of triumph. It displayed an ultimate faith in people’s goodness that my mother had instilled in me.

After a year, we headed to the airport to pick up my stepfather. My heart sank as we approached the terminal for the reunion we’d chosen not to discuss.

Soon after Matt’s return, we moved to a farmhouse a couple of hours away from my grandparents, and we resumed the stifled lives we’d left back in Chicago. My grades suffered that year; I couldn’t concentrate. I did, as always, make a new set of best friends, and I spent weekends at their homes whenever possible. I hated my room and my bed.

My stepfather did us a bigger favor than we could have imagined by spending the previous year overseas: he gave us a big taste of life without him. It took only a year for my mom to pack us up and leave him for good.

On our way to “someday,” my 5-foot-tall mother grew right before our eyes as she clutched the homeward-bound steering wheel.

Amy Block-Muzekari is a freelance writer and a busy mom living in New Hope, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Steve, and two sons.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 | Email This Post

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