...And Me in Ringlets: A Reflection

By Ruth Colaw

The story of one womans life that will touch the heart of the reader. Born to alcoholic parents, her first years are filled with fighting and discord, and even a bit of incest, until she is nine and her parents divorce. In the following year, life disintegrates through several moves across the country, an alcoholic stepfather, and separation from her older sister, her only security. In that year, she attends five schools, and will attend fourteen before her school days are done. At ten, she and her sister are taken away from their mother, and Ruth moves through six foster homes, the last one quite oppressive. She then faces pregnancy and is forced to relinquish her baby. Upon marriage, life seems wonderful until an accident almost kills her husband. Her second daughter brings true meaning to her life, but due to her own divorce, she must raise her daughter alone. She goes on to begin to grow, searches and finds her first daughter and begins to face the demons of her childhood, finally achieving self worth and confidence, until one day her life is once again shattered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9780759664715

Ruth Colaw

Ruth Colaw, a child of the 40s, was born to creative and intelligent parents who also were alcoholics. Upon their divorce when Ruth was nine, she left a less than innocent childhood only to enter a world not innocent at all. Taken from her mother at age ten, she moved through six foster homes in many different towns and would attend a total of fourteen schools before her school days were done, remarkably graduating with honors. At nineteen, she was faced with pregnancy out of wedlock and would be forced to relinquish her baby, only adding fuel to her beaten down sense of self-worth. She married at twenty-one, but her husband went overseas for a year, then was almost killed in a car crash after his return. The birth of her second daughter brought immense joy, but Ruth was then faced with raising her alone after her own divorce. This is the point at which the long road to recovery was begun, her daughter pulling her along at times. They grew up together, at the same time, often switching roles, and it is to her daughter that Ruth has dedicated this story.

Book preview

…And Me in Ringlets

A Reflection

By

Ruth Colaw

© 2001 by Ruth Colaw. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 978-0-7596-6471-5 (e)

ISBN: 978-0-7596-6472-2 (sc)

1stBooks-rev. 09/26/01

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 - IT’S IN MY BONES

CHAPTER 2 - THE COURTSHIP OVER…

CHAPTER 3 - FREEDOM, IN ANOTHER SENSE

CHAPTER 4 - A FOURSOME WE WEREN’T

CHAPTER 5 - KANSAS OR OZ, I WAS ALONE

CHAPTER 6 - HOME AT LAST, NOT

CHAPTER 7 - THE MADAM

CHAPTER 8 - ONLY A BLIP

CHAPTER 9 - ALMOST NORMALCY

CHAPTER 10 - JUST THE TEN OF US

CHAPTER 11 - CARL, EMILY AND THE BOYS

CHAPTER 12 - FIVE YEARS, ONE MONTH…

CHAPTER 13 - IF THIS IS LOVE…

CHAPTER 14 - CENTENNIAL CLASS

CHAPTER 15 - FREE AT LAST

CHAPTER 16 - FOREVER CHANGED

CHAPTER 17 - AND MY HEART WAS BROKEN TO BITS

CHAPTER 18 - LIFELONG TEARS WEST OF EDEN

CHAPTER 19 - HELP! ADULTHOOD!

CHAPTER 20 - WEDDED BLISS

CHAPTER 21 - THE WORST AND THE BEST OF TIMES

CHAPTER 22 - FOR KEEPS

CHAPTER 23 - THE DREAM HOUSE

CHAPTER 24 - A NEW DECADE, A NEW LIFE

CHAPTER 25 - SECOND CHANCES

CHAPTER 26 - FAMILY

CHAPTER 27 - COMING OF AGE

CHAPTER 28 - SHATTERED

CHAPTER 29 - HEALING

CHAPTER 30 - THE SEVENTH INNING STRETCH

This is dedicated to

my daughter Laura

who had to grow up

teaching me how to.

PROLOGUE

The year 2000 was to mark the telling of my tale, my life story. The year 2000 was so far in the future when I was young that it was science fiction, a space oddity long before it, plus one, became a Space Odyssey. It was so far in the future that I knew I had plenty of time to gather chapters and put off taking pen in hand. As I gathered all those chapters from life’s experiences, it was becoming more and more clear that my childhood, my life, was not like everyone else’s, it was a bit more bizarre. In relating parts of it to others after I reached adulthood, I was often advised to write a book, this after the listener’s jaw closed. In reality, there are some aspects of childhood and life that I share with some famous and infamous characters, both real and not, such as serial killers, sufferers of multiple personalities, the fairy princess who had a mean stepmother, the little girl who lived on the prairie and the woman who had to wear a scarlet letter on her chest. ‘Twas a mixture of both good and bad.

Recently, I’ve read the best sellers, Angela’s Ashes and All Over but the Shoutin’. Both books fueled the fires of my want to tell my story. They, with the advice of others earlier, have convinced me, so I shall begin.

I have written many bits and pieces, some in first person, some in third person with fictional names, some fictional entirely. I shall attempt herein to merge the truth and the chronology in them. After all, truth is often stranger than fiction, and time can be deceiving.

What I do want to emphasize is the fact that some very critical odds have not been against me or I could never have made it to this point in my life. Those odds are some great genes from my parents and ancestors. They provided the blueprint for my intelligence, creativity, temperament and good health. I am ever grateful for these perks. Genetically, luck was on my side. Environmentally, not so.

The other good odds are those perhaps already written. If, and that’s a big IF, we believe that our destinies are already written by some higher force, mine could have read something like this: She will live in a time of great strides in humanitarianism. She will know suffering, but will survive and choose the good path, not the evil. She will make mistakes but learn from them. It is written.

This will not only be my story, but my sister’s as well. My big sister was the brightest spot in the early years, and she is the other, and most important, perk. Without her to guide, protect and comfort me, the other odds would have been against me too. But perhaps, she, as well as her fate, were part of what was written.

My purpose is only to tell my story, not to ruin lives or reveal skeletons as yet unrevealed to innocent members of families, therefore I will try to avoid

using surnames. If the reader knows me personally, the names will already be known. There is no intent to cause unneeded heartache. The intent is merely to tell what happened to me and to pass along a message of hope for anyone who has experienced or is experiencing similar events. My message is that one can learn and grow from hardships, and can rise above…with the right help.

Come take my hand and walk with me through my life…

CHAPTER 1

IT’S IN MY BONES

An individual life is but a speck in the annals of time, but it neither begins at birth nor ends at death. We are each a part of the big picture, of the ongoing story of time. Our ancestry passes on the bloodline, our posterity carries it into the future. The more we learn about our ancestors’ lives, the more we can attempt to change the patterns for those who follow us. Herein is my story, my gift to those who will carry on my bloodline, who can know me as more than just a name on a branch of the family tree.

My sister’s and my lineage has been traced back to the 1500’s on our father’s side, and to the 1100’s on our mother’s. We were told when young that we were a 57 Variety, that we were Dutch, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, Indian and English, and later found German and French bloodlines. Who knows what else? A mixed bag for sure.

Our father’s grandparents were living during the time of the Civil War. His maternal grandfather was killed execution style by Yankees who accosted him on his way home from the war, after having survived the hand-to-hand combat, just as he looked forward to rejoining his family in time of peace, and resuming his ministry. Meantime, his wife and twin three-year-old girls and baby son were being forced out of their home to sit on a mattress on the lawn and watch the soldiers from the North burn their house down. Their lives were only spared at the last minute by a caring soldier on the other side. One of the twin girls was my grandmother, my father’s mother.

His paternal great-grandfather was one of three sons whose father gave them each a hollow (holler) of land in Virginia to settle and start their families and fortunes. A hollow is a rather large valley, so the three sons began their own little empires far from the other brothers, each having several children, and the family surname can be found all over Virginia, like Smith here. My father’s direct line stayed on in their hollow and the land is still owned by descendants.

Cyrus Welton, our father, was born before the turn of the century on August 31, 1893, to David and Mary, the twin, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, at the bottom of the hollow. The home where he was born stood proud and majestic until just a few years ago when it burned down, taking one of my elderly aunts-by-marriage with it. The valley was known for its meadows of rich blue grass as well as the wild orchards of crabapples, but there was one bad apple in the bunch, my grandfather, and my father was to grow up in a family that hosted many

skeletons. The intense beauty of the area could not cover up the scars and memories of what hell he experienced while he was under his father’s reign.

My father’s parents both passed away before I was born, but I felt like I knew them from the stories related. Mary, my grandmother, was a wonderful woman who was bigger than her husband and bore him nine children. She wrote a gossip column for the town paper and had an extension telephone line put in the kitchen so she could listen in while she cooked. All had party lines in those early days of telephones and she would listen to her neighbors’ conversations, butting in and asking them to repeat if she didn’t quite hear some piece of gossip! My sadness is never having met her.

David, or Dave, on the other hand, the rotten apple, was the evil side of this union. Smaller than his wife and probably all his cronies, he was a classic case for a small-man-complex. He beat his children mercilessly, but probably never touched Mary because she could have done him more harm.

In 1895, when Cy was just two years old, his father Dave beat his own four-year-old daughter to death. Her name was Mary Ruth. Our father Cy said that he loved his big sister so much, he tried to dig her up with his little hands, crying, Ruthie! Ruthie! She is whom both my sister Mary Lee and I, Ruth Gail, are named for. And I have always been called Ruthie. I take great pride in that and have her memorial plaque and a photo of her young portrait hanging for all to see. The death was covered up, of course, and the story was handed down that she died of pneumonia.

When Dave’s oldest daughter reached about eighteen, she wanted to go to California in the worst way. She begged and pleaded with her father to let her go. Finally, he said she could but only if she slept with him. A boy-child was born of that union. He was Dave’s youngest son and his first grandchild. He was the daughter’s brother and her son. He grew up with that shame and legacy and he was a little teched. And the family lived with that shame as well. He and my father Cyrus, though, six years older, his brother and his uncle, became fast friends and playmates.

Then, when my father was seventeen, in 1910, Dave kicked him out and stated that he would rather have a colored person on his property, using much stronger words than that. My father never returned except once right after World War I. His mother must have gone through such agony losing one of her youngest children because of her husband’s hatred. So this rather shaky background is the legacy that Cy brought into his adulthood.

Dave, my grandfather, died two days before Pearl Harbor. I think it was the rage of both Heaven and Hell, not wanting him either place.

Cyrus fought in France on the front lines in World War I, and because of that, did not want to have sons who would have to go off to war. After the war, he began working on the railroad and made it a career. He married once to a lady

named Sadie, but there were no children and we have little information about her. The story, though, was that she feigned being pregnant to snag him, and he married her because she had money. Neither story turned out to be true, and they soon divorced.

Cy couldn’t escape the demons of his childhood except by drink. He went from drinker to alcoholic soon and never quit until, as an old man, he was told by his doctor, Cy, if you take one more drink, you’ll die. So he quit, but it was too late to repair any damage done to his wife or to us.

In his young adulthood, he learned to play banjo, music to my ears, and he put boot black on and played in minstrels. He would do the buck-’n-wing and swing that banjo out never missing a strum or a step. While engineering the train, he tied a string to his toe for the whistle so he could keep strumming and still blow the whistle. That is a part of him that is very dear to my heart, the banjo strummin’, and the performances he and my mother put on for us and guests with her playing the ukulele and doing the hula in her authentic grass skirt.

In 1938, now approaching middle age, he sometimes got the run from San Francisco south to San Luis Obispo. All the engineers took their bean hour at the Park Cafe, the restaurant closest to the depot. He was a charmer, a flirt, a good time, not bad looking. Betty, our mother, wasn’t working the day Cy went in the first time, but the other waitresses were charmed and knew he was the perfect catch for her. By the time he came in again, she knew all about him and was anxious to meet this enigma. It was almost love at first sight.

In my mother’s own words written in 1988, a year before she died: "It happened in March of 1938. I was working at the Park Cafe, near the depot as a waitress. My hours were 11 PM to 7 AM and one night as I walked in the kitchen of the cafe, the other girls who worked there were talking about Cy. Most of their conversation was about what a great guy he was. They said he had taken them out to dinner and regaled them as no one else had, so I said, ‘If he is single and such a great guy, I would like to meet him.’ Mrs. Burrows went on to say that he didn’t drink, had a lot of years with the railroad and he would be a good catch for someone. Of course, I asked his age and she said ‘about forty-five’. Well, I was twenty-six at the time and it seemed a lot of difference in age. So I said, ‘Is he still in town?’ and she said, ‘No, but he will be back, he is working the Extra Board as a Fireman.’

"…a short time later he was back…When I walked in the kitchen that night, Mrs. Burrows said, ‘He’s here, Betty!’ I said, ‘Well, introduce us!’

"The introduction was made, we shook hands, and a warm feeling came over me as if I had known him for a long time. Of course, with him, the word Stranger was not in his vocabulary, I was to find out. I was early enough to have a cup of coffee before going to work, so I sat down beside him to drink it. Right away, he invited me to the Engineer’s Ball in San Francisco, saying he would get

me a room in a hotel near his and pay my way there, and even buy me a formal to wear.

"Of course, this was not being done fifty years ago. As I was still living at home, I knew my parents would have hit the ceiling if I had really wanted to go so I told him I didn’t think I could. After all, I HAD just met him!

"Then he asked me if he could write to me and ‘would I answer?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ Before I saw him again, my mother got sick and I had to take a leave of absence to take care of her, so I thought no more about him. In fact, I thought he was a little too old for me, but one day a letter came from him [He had beautiful ornate handwriting. That fact would have turned my head], but I was very busy and I just put it aside and forgot about it. I don’t remember how long I was off work, but when Mother was well enough, I did go back to work and the first thing Mrs. Burrows said was, ‘Have you heard from Cy?’, I said I had but I hadn’t answered yet…She went to her desk and got paper and a pen and said, ‘Now, you sit right down and write him a letter, right now!’ So I did!

"…He took a job on the ‘long runs’ [San Francisco to San Luis Obispo, the Daylight Run] so he could come to see me whenever he was in town. We would go to the beach at Avila or Pismo, or just go for a ride…in Dad’s car. Then in the meantime, Mrs. Burrows asked all of us who worked for her if we wanted to go to Big Trees in the Santa Cruz mountains to serve coffee to the Engineers and their guests at their picnic, and we all agreed that it would be fun. We had served a banquet at the Monday Club in white slacks and shirts and sailor caps, and were taking pictures outside the cafe, when one of the men on the entertainment committee for the picnic asked if we would do it.

We all piled into Mrs. B’s car early that Sunday morning, and when we got to Santa Cruz, we changed into our sailor outfits and went to the park. After we had done our thing, Cy and I sneaked away and drove into the town of Felton and had a drink and talked. We talked of marriage, but nothing definite was settled, so we got back to the picnic in time to start home.

It’s not the end of the story, but it is the end of her writing about it unfortunately. She had an ancient manual typewriter, and it was a major chore just to write the above priceless piece.

*****

Our mother Betty was born Mary Elizabeth on August 12, 1911, in Maryville, Missouri, the fifth child of William and Emma. She had five brothers and two sisters. One sister was three years older, the other was twelve years younger, the baby.

Betty’s ancestry is just as rich as Cy’s, of first cousins marrying many generations back, of step-brothers and step-sisters marrying, (a close family), and

of one mean grandmother who never smiled and cleared your plate before you were done eating.

My mother’s family packed up and moved out to California in 1930, traveling just like the Grapes of Wrath with pots and pans and the stove hanging off the side of the open car, and stopping along the way to cook and eat a meal. My mother stayed behind. She had just graduated high school and wanted to stay in Missouri with her friends. Soon, she and her best friend Helen, decided to come on out, and hitchhiked all the way!

Her father William, or Bill, was a barber, and his wife Emma was a dressmaker, milliner and a great cook. They were exactly what grandparents are supposed to be. No skeletons in these closets. The only thing they may have done wrong could have been moving as often as they did, almost every year, and being so busy they couldn’t give quality time to their children.

My mother always felt she was the ugly duckling. Her older sister was the cute one with hair that easily went into ringlets and who had no freckles. Betty was covered with freckles even though she had brown hair. It was always an embarrassment to her, but she was prettier than she thought and was often mistaken for Bette Davis in her younger days. Those Bette Davis eyes. And because she danced, she had Betty Grable legs. My father thought she was beautiful, his very own pin-up girl.

She excelled in school, top of her class in bookkeeping. English grammar and spelling were easy for her, and she could have done something with these qualities, even in those days when women had few choices, but the year of her graduation from high school was also the year of the Great Crash of 1929. After that, one was lucky to have a job at all. Any furthering of her education was completely out of the question.

Waitressing, then, was the profession hers had to be. She used it and worked hard and long hours to pay for her real love: dancing. She took lessons from the best and started teaching ballet, tap and ballroom. She performed and loved it. She could dance for hours and not repeat a step, so light on her feet, a natural. Many, many years later, when she was seventy-two, she, my sister and I performed together for a benefit. She made the Roaring 20’s costumes and we practiced and rehearsed and rehearsed some more. Mary Lee and I could not walk for sore calf muscles. It never phased our mother at all! She was always ready to Let’s do it again. We have that performance on tape.

So Betty was dancing and waitressing and still living at home (you had to in those days) at twenty-seven when Cy swept her off her feet. He was forty-five, just as Mrs. Burrows had guessed. Love won out, and they chose to ignore the generation that separated them.

They fought on the way to Reno to get married. It should have been a clue.

CHAPTER 2

THE COURTSHIP OVER…

After Cy and Betty married in Reno in October of 1938, they made their home on Haight Street in San Francisco. The city was a sophisticated place to live then. The Haight-Ashbury area was not the gathering spot for the flower children yet, and women would not think of leaving the house without hat, gloves and high heels.

Up to this point, Betty had only imbibed socially. Cy was a full-fledged drinker (Mrs. Burrows guessed wrong about this one), and he encouraged her to drink with him. Unfortunately, they each had the chemistry to become addicted, and when they drank, they couldn’t control it or limit themselves.

Betty, too, had been raised in a fairly strict, upstanding home which produced strong morals about intimacy. Cy was much older and more experienced and was always ready for sex. He talked her into reading adult books so she would be more in the mood when he came home. It was another reason to drink and fight. It was not a marriage made in Heaven.

Apparently Betty conceived before they married, but for Society’s or propriety’s sake, she had an illegal abortion of our oldest sibling. To the few who knew about the pregnancy, they told that she miscarried, and she told us many years later that it was due to Daddy kicking her in the stomach. She didn’t tell us the truth until a few years before she died. The subject was not what you would call controversial back then, it was not conversed about at all. It was far too illegal and secret to be a topic of discussion.

She then became pregnant with Mary Lee who was born February 11, 1940. She was the apple of her father’s eye. She was his first child at the age of forty-six.

Just because they were now parents, they didn’t change the way they conducted their lives. Betty did not drink quite as much during pregnancy, but after Mary Lee’s birth, they both went back to their old ways of partying until oblivion.

My sister tells horror stories of her first memories, of trying to get between them when they fought, and of falling out of the high chair when no one was near. One of her first memories is of our mother yelling at our father.

Back then, children were allowed in bars and Cy, who met no enemies and usually spent rent money on buying rounds for all, showed off his cute little girl by making her dance on the bar for everyone, a roomful of drunks.

And at home, behind closed doors, he made her stand at the foot of the bed and watch her parents having sex. This was only when Betty was passed out and unmoving. If Mary Lee left the foot of the bed, he would get up and spank her. If Betty came out of her stupor enough to realize her daughter was standing there, she would get up and spank her. Into Mary Lee’s adulthood, she thought women didn’t move during sex. She was shocked to find out it was natural.

When just a babe, my sister showed tendencies toward being left-handed. Left-handedness, in those days, was frowned upon, and Daddy said he wouldn’t have a southpaw in his family, so they tied her left hand behind her and forced her to use her right hand. She ended up right-handed with beautiful handwriting still being very dexterous with her left, but it confused something in her brain affecting her sight. Consequently, she wore glasses from an early age. Two of her children are left-handed, and far into the future, her own natural left-handedness would prove to be a God-send. Daddy could not control all things as he thought.

In 1943, they moved to a house on Eaton Avenue in Watsonville, and then in 1944 bought a property on California Street for a whopping $8000.00. It had a duplex in front and a two-bedroom house in the rear, separated by garages. We lived in the big house. I was conceived on a trip to Grandma and Granddad’s when Mama forgot her birth control suppositories and Daddy just couldn’t go without. I was surely not planned. I was born July 26, 1945, just days before the end of World War II.

My mother said she was sick with me from the day she conceived, so I was a welcome relief, I’m sure. Again, she didn’t drink much during pregnancy and even curtailed her smoking. I am ever so grateful for that.

The story goes that another baby had been conceived after Mary Lee was born and before I was conceived. Betty aborted again, the truth only being known many years later, and the reasoning never having been explained to our satisfaction. We are both thrilled that we made it to term.

Although Mary Lee had been the only child for over five years, she felt no jealousy toward the new baby. Right away, she loved me and helped our mother with my care. I was her very own live doll and she knew she would need to protect me when things got bad at home. My crib was in her room, and after I graduated from it, we slept in the same bed for many years. We would go on to bond fully, becoming sisters in the best sense of the word.

My earliest memory is of looking through bars at a window across the room and my arm hurt like hell. The truth is that I had to be very tiny, still in my crib, and I had just gotten a shot. My family was shocked that I remembered. I was shocked that it could hurt babies enough to form a conscious thought.

Another early memory is of getting to sleep between my parents and throwing up in their bed at age three. Actually, I have many memories of

throwing up. The bucket on a paper beside my bed, and upon the up-chucking, my mind’s eye would see a psychedelic pattern of squares and circles whirling around an apex. I could draw it, I saw it so often.

Earaches. The worst physical pain of my early life. The pain throbbed with each heartbeat and nothing made it stop except my mother sitting on the side of the bed holding my hand. Uncommon for her to show such patience, but unexplainable as it is, the pain subsided while she sat there. They were many, my earaches caused from infection, but seldom was I taken to a doctor, and it caused scarring in my ears and a hearing problem ever since.

In first grade, the teacher asked me not to read so loud in our little reading circles, but I was reading Dick, Jane and Sally loud enough to hear it myself. When we think of deafness, we picture an elderly person cuffing his ear and saying, Eh? I was already hard of hearing at the age of six.

I was a thumb sucker with a favorite blanket. I had worked a hole in the corner of the blanket for my thumb to go through so I could easily drag it along everywhere I went. My mother tried everything to stop my thumb sucking, but I would have nothing of it, and never would relinquish my blankee so she could wash it. I quit naturally before I went to school, and luckily, it had no negative effect on my teeth, except perhaps the one tooth that had to be realigned by a retainer later on.

At a fairly young age, I got chicken pox as most